Education Quote by Steven Squyres

It sounds like a throwaway line about off-roading, but it’s really a scientist’s deadpan warning about how quickly familiar rules stop applying when you change the world underneath your wheels. Steven Squyres, best known for leading NASA’s Mars rover science team, is talking in the language of engineers: you don’t argue about theory first, you build a testbed, stress it, watch what breaks. “You create a pile of dirt and then drive over it” is a miniature philosophy of exploration: simulate the hazard, run the machine through it, let reality embarrass your assumptions.

The subtext is that “dirt” isn’t just dirt. On Mars, soil can behave unlike anything in a terrestrial parking lot. It can be powdery, cohesive, electrostatic, full of hidden crusts and traps. The rover doesn’t fail because the math is wrong; it fails because the environment is indifferent. Squyres’ phrasing also nods to the human tendency to treat new frontiers as extensions of old habits. We don’t arrive on Mars with a blank slate; we arrive with Earth instincts, Earth metaphors, Earth confidence.

Then comes the sting: “We may have to learn to drive all over again.” That’s humility packaged as logistics. It reframes exploration from conquest to recalibration. Progress isn’t a straight line from knowledge to mastery; it’s a loop of trial, stuck wheels, revised procedures, and hard-won intuition. In a culture that sells innovation as frictionless, Squyres reminds us the future is often just learning how not to get bogged down.