Whoop ti Do.

Well, I have to say that after a year on Mars, the Curiosity rover has proven the one thing that I hoped it would not prove:

Mars truly is a boring rock.

There is nothing really going on there. Not only is it now a cold, almost airless, immensely dry and lifeless ball of frigid stone, it has been that way for billions of years.

Yeah, yeah. It had flowing water and a thick atmosphere once upon a time. Yatta yatta yatta. But for billions of years it has been cold and airless and bereft of just about anything we could term as activity. There is no rain, no rivers or lakes, no vegetation. There is not even any tectonic activity, nor active volcanism.

Mars is just a dead, rusty period--a tiny dot of blood on a black velvet surface.

Apparently it was murdered by a vast collision with something about the size of Pluto about four billion goddamned years ago. Since then the atmosphere has been blasted into the ether. What little atmosphere it still has (almost none), is still leaking off into the solar wind and will be stripped completely away in time.

It's just a goddamned boring destination.

Alas, there are no tharks. There are no denizens dark and golden-eyed. No beings living in the dust with glass javelins.

Big Whoop.