DATE: Thursday, July 10, 1997               TAG: 9707100477

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

ROCKS ON MARS? WE HAVE QUITE A FEW ALREADY - TRY ARIZONA

So we spend $16 billion to land a golf cart on Mars and what do we learn? That rocks up there are very much like rocks down here.

Even more surprising, we learn that geologists are highly emotional people, something nobody except their families suspected before.

Talk with your ordinary geologist and you'd swear he had nothing but rocks in his head - no, no, that's not fair - on his mind. It is like being in Geology 301. His chat is apt to be dry as the dust that the golf cart, equipped with some kind of robotic stethoscope, found up there, much as Martians would confront down here if they landed a golf cart in Los Angeles.

To do geologists justice, keep in mind that single-minded individuals add most to the sum of knowledge in this old world, as must be so among Martians if scientists look up from eyeing rocks long enough to see if there are any. Consider, too, how much better off we'd be if more of us studied rocks, not war.

Mars is given largely to rocks. So many haven't been seen since the 1930s when mothers were seized en masse with a craze to create rock gardens in back yards. When done, the dry and tumbled beds resembled long-ago glacial flows.

For years, touring Arizona, people have said, ``Hey, this looks like Mars!'' Should it have come as a surprise then that Mars, close up, looks like, sure enough, Arizona?

Scientists are endowing rocks with names and personalities. ``Here,'' one said, ``is Yogi Bear. Notice ears atop its head and a pointy nose. And there,'' he added, gesturing at a plain surface on its alleged head, ``is where the eyes would be.''

It's as if we're back in kindergarten under care of a teacher bent on arousing a sense of wonder in us.

Scientists are giddy with success. ``We did the engineering, but I think the people of Earth willed Pathfinder to life,'' said one. ``Thank you, people of Earth. And I promise not to cry.'' Then he cried.

Another said spinoffs from the trek through space would transform our lives, even promising better automobiles. He'd best stick to the thrills of the quest, or we may think of what $16 billion could do applied directly to ills on Earth.

A billion to scientists at the National Institutes of Health to erase cancer. Another for them to allay heart disease. A third to redeem the ghettoes. A fourth for science to harness solar energy and spare oil reserves. A couple of billion for schools. And so on down the list.

As rewarding as it may be to gladden the hearts of scientists in learning that the solar system is pretty much of a piece with the same rocks and that sure enough, as we had known, Mars used to be awash with life-breeding waters, we could help work wonders by putting that money to work first in the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on Earth.

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