So there may be rocket fuel on Mars. It’s in our drinking water and now it’s on the Red Planet.

What would we be more likely to find as the remains of a past civilization, a past effort, than this explosive ingredient? Maybe from the rockets that left when things got too bad. Maybe from the rockets whose red glare signaled the end. Maybe from other explosives. Maybe from fireworks to celebrate on the way down.

Could there be a more profound time in our species’ history to discover the remains of Mars? To give us just enough clues of past life now departed, past trappings of destructive civilization now broken down into dust? Sure, October 1962. Maybe even August 1945, now just 63 years in the rearview mirror. People said it was a miracle that we discovered space travel just after, made it happen on the vision of the same President who nearly ended it all before we got the chance.

Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe it’s time.

Humans have a hard enough time paying attention to their own history. Even though the species is the same and the people sometimes occupy the same land or speak the same language, something seems wholly irrelevant about time long past. That was then and this is now.

But what could be more now than space discoveries? What could make history more relevant than it being brand-new? What could make experience more powerful than it being experienced by those we can only imagine, those we never met, those who killed themselves before we began to be?

It’s far too early and already, since this post idea came to mind, the internet has run away with the idea of life and been lambasted for it. NASA is trying to reign in science fiction imaginations with cold hard science. Water isn’t life. Perchlorate isn’t rockets. Conjecture isn’t evidence.

We have to dig deeper, further. We have to excavate. We will probably need to send our own species to look for the last one. We will probably need samples and endless debate, theorizing until one piece of evidence stands so irrefutable that it changes our view of the universe overnight.

But make no mistake, it’s there. We have never been less alone. We have never been closer to the edge of our collective ego. With apologies to Jake, the space program has never seemed more relevant.

In time, we will likely find that our obligation, our debt of gratitude to the long-gone beings of Mars, is to not repeat their mistakes.

If we have time.