Did you see that NASA landed another rover on Mars last week? It’s a technological marvel – impossibility might be a better word. The more you know about orbital mechanics, the mathematics of space flight, the more improbable such a feat is. While I was watching some of the coverage from the NASA-TV web site, a large sign in the lobby of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) caught my eye:

Dare Mighty Things

I thought, “That will preach!” It’s from a speech by Teddy Roosevelt and it’s the motto of the JPL:

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure … than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.  – Theodore Roosevelt speech (“The Strenuous Life”), April 10, 1899, Chicago.

Someone had an idea and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of engineers, mathematicians, and others came together to make it happen. Today, the rover Perseverance sits on Mars and is transmitting pictures! Here’s a short video summarizing the mission. The video following is the longer version of the landing. Here is the first color photo transmitted from Perseverance:

I found it refreshing to see people who actually had a concrete, measurable goal, one they could fail at. People with a can-do spirit. Much better than theory, constant criticizing, etc. Much better than what we usually seem to have: decisions made for political and faddish reasons rather than scientific reasons. And, of course, the idea that people who “dare mighty things” sometimes succeed. It’s very inspiring. There’s also a flip side which I’ll explore briefly tomorrow.

In the meantime, what mighty things ought we to be daring?

I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16.18, ESV)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1.8, ESV)