APOD: 2011 December 12 – An Unusual Vein of Deposited Rock on Mars

APOD: more evidence of earlier life on Mars

This comment is going to sound like I'm kidding, but I'm not. I keep expecting Mars to look exotic and hostile, like something out of the imagination of a S/F writer. Yet every picture I see reminds me that the Mars landscape looks exactly like West Texas. (And probably contains approximately the same likelihood of intelligent life.)

Put up a check-cashing place, some sagging telephone poles, a decrepit highway, and a couple of 7-Elevens in that picture, and you got yourself the countryside near Odessa.