One Statement Mr Quayle example essay topic

Dan Quayle once said "Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe. 8/11/89" In the following writing you will be informed as to why those statements were wrong.

The basis of his statement was made on fuzzy photos showing what looked to be canals; the problem is, he does not mention even the possibility that these "canals" could be almost anything. The main problem with canals is that a canal by definition is an artificial waterway or artificially improved river used for travel, shipping, or irrigation. This implies that it was created by someone or something. So with this one statement Mr. Quayle is acknowledging that he or the United States Government believe there is or was a intelligent form of life living on mars.

What really happened is Dan Quayle used a term from a miss translation of Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli observations in 1877. Italian astronomer, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli was director (1862-1900) of the Brer a Observatory, Milan. He is especially noted for having detected (1877) on the surface of the planet Mars the markings that he called canali (channels), later misinterpreted as "canals". He showed that meteor swarms travel through space in cometary orbits and suggested that Mercury and Venus rotate on their axes.

He discovered the asteroid Hesperia (1861) and several double stars. The hype that followed mistranslation allowed it the to become the excepted term and prompted a lot of research to be done on these alien "canals" even Dan Quayle with all the resources available to him quoted the wrong translation. Another example of how Mr. Quayle's statement was skewed to meet his objectives and the goals he was trying to promote at the time. Is the fact is that we sent Mariner 9 spacecraft into orbit around Mars in 1972 and there where no canals or even anything resembling one found.

The United States had satellite images from a space craft orbiting mars in 1972 that showed no canals but it appears that this information had yet to reach the white house by 1989. There is another problem with his statement; he implies that because there is waster on mars there is oxygen that we could breath. Water can exist without the presence of oxygen; Water is known to exist on some comets that do not contain enough oxygen for us to breath. At the time of the statement we already had determined that mars had essentially no atmosphere without an atmosphere there is know way for oxygen to build in a concentration that would allow us to breath.

He also mentions that earth and mars are in essentially the same orbit, and that mars is somewhat the same distance from the sun. This may be true if you use the entire galaxy as a reference; otherwise, it is nowhere near the same. In the end most of the statements made by Dan Quayle where flat wrong. These had been proven wrong quite a while before he made his statements, Which only shows his ignorance to the research done by the government..