Curiosity About The Future

I find it quite ironic, and quite fitting, that Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6th. Curiosity, while being just a rather small event that will eventually lead up to larger ones, landed on Mars on the 67th anniversary of a rather large event. On August 6th, 1945, the the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. That ushered in a new era of power and capability. It started the Cold War. However, without the

Cold War, we would not be where we are today, and Curiosity would not be on Mars. We would not have the Russians to compete with in the space race and the development of new technology, and we would not have had the early driving force necessary to propel us into space. All the lives lost on that day, and on August 9th at Nagasaki, and through the Cold War, were not lost in vain. We've taken technology that was once meant to kill - missiles, nuclear technology, spacecraft, etc - and turned it into something that can benefit all of humanity.