HOLLYWOOD LOVES MARS RED PLANET IN PUBLIC SPOTLIGHT.Byline: Usha Sutliff Staff Writer PASADENA - We're just mad about Mars. The public's love affair with the fourth planet from the sun has waxed and waned over the years. But with the recent opening of the movie ``Mission to Mars,'' along with several other Mars-related events on the calendar, the Red Planet is getting about as much ink as a Hollywood star The Hollywood Star was an idiosyncratic gossip tabloid published on an erratic schedule in Hollywood, California by William Kern, who wrote much of the magazine under the pseudonym "Bill Dakota. . What is it about our neighbor 250 million miles away that continues to capture the attention of scientists and the masses alike? And could humans really colonize col·o·nize v. col·o·nized, col·o·niz·ing, col·o·niz·es v.tr. 1. To form or establish a colony or colonies in. 2. To migrate to and settle in; occupy as a colony. 3. Mars in the coming decades, as scientists and explorers say? Part of it is our fascination with finding life in the universe, according to Louis Friedman, executive director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society. ``Mars is the only other planet we know of that has accessible oxygen, accessible water. So, basically, we're looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. ourselves. We're looking for life,'' he said. ``We all want Martians, and if there's not life on Mars Scientists have long speculated about the possibility of life on Mars owing to the planet's proximity and similarity to Earth. It remains an open question whether life exists on Mars now, or existed there in the past. , that's considered a negative result, a disappointment. It doesn't have to be little green men with bombs that are going to destroy the Earth. It can be just hints of a different origin of life through some microbe microbe /mi·crobe/ (mi´krob) a microorganism, especially a pathogenic one such as a bacterium, protozoan, or fungus.micro´bialmicro´bic mi·crobe n. .'' Hollywood will be sure not to miss that trick. In addition to ``Mission to Mars,'' Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore will lead a team of colonizing astronauts to Mars in ``Red Planet'' later this year. The two will be challenged not only by Mars' harsh temperatures and caustic atmosphere but by - you guessed it - killer space worms. Also on the table are a series of more science-based offerings from ``Titanic'' director James Cameron, who is set to release two Mars projects next year - a five-hour miniseries for network television and an hourlong 3D IMAX IMAX Noun a film projection process that produces an image ten times larger than standard film. ``It's nice for Hollywood to catch up with the real world,'' Friedman said. But while Hollywood imagines the less plausible and perhaps sexier side of Mars exploration - hunky hun·ky 1 n. pl. hun·kies Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person, especially a laborer, from east-central Europe. guys in chunky spacesuits - NASA's actual missions to Mars have captured international attention, proving just how popular Mars is. Through the big success of 1997's Mars Pathfinder mission and the twin losses of the Mars Climate Orbiter The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was one of two spacecraft in the Mars Surveyor '98 program, the other being the Mars Polar Lander (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander). on Sept. 23, 1999, and the Mars Polar Lander The Mars Polar Lander was part of the NASA Mars Surveyor '98 program, which consisted of two spacecraft launched separately, the Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) and the Mars Polar Lander (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander). on Dec. 3, 1999, the public has been riveted. That's evidenced by the staggering amount of traffic at the Web site for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory “JPL” redirects here. For other uses, see JPL (disambiguation). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center located in the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, near Los Angeles, California, USA. in La Canada Flintridge (www.jpl.nasa.gov). Hits from January 1997 through February have topped 1.1 billion total at the Pathfinder, Global Surveyor, Mars Surveyor '98 and Mars Surveyor 2001 sites. In December 1999 alone, 176 million hits were logged to those sites, with the Mars Surveyor '98 site seeing most of that traffic. In fact, in an odd bit of fantasy melding with reality, Cameron attended the JPL news briefing to videotape the scientists' defense of the ill-fated Mars probe late last year. But long before the World Wide Web, humans were fascinated with Mars - since they first noticed the reddish pinpoint was different from most of the stars in the sky, said David Seidel sei·del n. A beer mug. [German, from Middle High German s  del, from Latin situla, bucket.]Noun 1. , the head of the Mars Communication and Education Team at JPL. And in modern times, he said, ``The people's imagination (is) being fueled by some wonderful speculative fiction.'' The granddaddy of Mars novels, H.G. Wells' ``War of the Worlds,'' prompted the original Mars fever - the hysteria that resulted from Orson Welles' famous radio dramatization dram·a·ti·za·tion n. 1. The act or art of dramatizing: the dramatization of a novel. 2. A work adapted for dramatic presentation: on Halloween night in 1938. Wells broke in to a broadcast of ballroom music with a string of pseudo-news broadcasts about Martians landing in New Jersey. About 6 million people heard the broadcast, and perhaps 2 million of them believed it, Seidel said. ``At that time, there wasn't a lot of attention being paid to Mars by the public. There was a level of scientific interest, but not really any public perception,'' Seidel said. ``But I think if you would have asked people about Mars after that broadcast, then you would have seen a big spike in interest.'' From the hit '60s TV series ``My Favorite Martian'' through the days of the Viking 1 and Viking 2 missions in 1976, that interest has remained. Now, humankind looks to Mars as the next frontier, Seidel said. Despite Hollywood fantasies, Seidel said there's currently no program in place to send humans to Mars, as NASA examines its program in light of last year's two failed missions. ``We're doing the robotic precursors, or laying the groundwork, so that when we're ready as a nation to send people to Mars, we'll know how to do it and where to send them,'' he said. Richard Zurek, the project scientist on the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions, said NASA may be able to send humans to Mars in the next few decades. But Robert Zubrin, president of the Colorado-based Mars Society, an ``international organization committed to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars,'' said he doesn't plan to wait that long. The Mars Society plans to build the world's first fully simulated Mars base, a $1 million Arctic research station on Devon Island in Nanavut, Canada, about 900 miles from the North Pole, Zubrin said. There, ``scientists, engineers and eventually astronauts (will) test the equipment and technology for habitation HABITATION, civil law. It was the right of a person to live in the house of another without prejudice to the property. 2. It differed from a usufruct in this, that the usufructuary might have applied the house to any purpose, as, a store or manufactory; whereas , transportation, life support and recycling for future deployment on Mars missions,'' the group says on its Web site. Zubrin speculated that with support from the U.S. government, NASA could have people on Mars by 2008. ``From a technological point of view, we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to send people to the moon in 1961, when Kennedy started the moon program and we were there eight years later,'' Zubrin said. ``We could be on Mars before the end of the first decade of the 21st century. It is simply a matter of political will and vision.'' ``(Mars) is the planet on which perhaps we could someday settle and develop a new branch of human civilization,'' he added. ``Mars is the new world. Mars is the new frontier.'' CAPTION(S): 3 photo illustrations Photo illustration: (1 -- color) FULL-PAGE GRAPHIC, PAGE 16 A manned mission to Mars  This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. could be reality in 11 years... Check out the details along with some facts and fiction about the Red Planet. Jon Gerung/Staff Artist (2) Magnetoplasma spacecraft (superimposed su·per·im·pose tr.v. su·per·im·posed, su·per·im·pos·ing, su·per·im·pos·es 1. To lay or place (something) on or over something else. 2. on five images.) Left: Mars' tiny moons Deimos and Phobos; south polar ice cap
Jon Gerung/Staff Artist (3 -- color) DESTINATION: MARS (Twenty-image, full-page montage.) Research and graphics by Jon Gerung/Staff Artist |
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