Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

NASA infighting

I have followed with interest the controversy over the imagery sent back from Mars by the Orbiter that zeroed in on the Caledonia region of the Planet. This is where the famous Face on Mars and Pyramid images were taken.

Since the face image was published over two decades ago, the arguments have gone back and forth as to whether they show "Natural Occurring (NO)" features or if they are "Man Made. (MM) "

There are claims that the imagery has been "doctored" in favor of NO hypothesis, not because of a coverup by the Government or NASA, but rather as a consequence of internal politics within the US Space program. Two opposing groups have "Big Time Skin" in the game.

One camp is the Moonies. They see Mars as a dead planet like the moon. Their focus is geology and they are championed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The JPL is heavily invested in a continuation of Robotics and unmanned probes. The second group are the Greenies who see Mars as a once living and in some regards, still, a planet like Earth. They favor manned exploration.

This polarization between the groups has less to do with a search for truth and more to do with who is going to get the lead in contracts that will come, as our exploration of the solar system continues.

Since much of the exploration currently taking place is Robotic, the Moonies, who control the image gathering technology, are accused by the Greenies of doctoring the pictures to fit their parochial view and interests. The story goes that the tax payers are being fed a distorted picture of the truth. Software is being used to obscure, mask, and blur the imagery.

It is mind boggling that these "Men of Science" are behaving like school boys duking it out on the playground. The Greenies claim is that the "Public" is not getting transparency .

The obvious answer is to simply image the sites with photographs on par with the satellite imagery that DOD uses. I can assure you that the spy satellites could tell the difference between a man-made structure and a boulder strewn mesa.... between a Sphinx like object, looking up at the sky and some coincidental appearing arrangement of stones. NASA needs to show once and for all, high quality pictures and put to rest the question, are the Caledonia anomalies Man Made or Naturally Occurring? How hard is that?