It’ll Still Be Called “The Red Planet”

One cool thing about Mars is that the atmosphere is such that the sky during the day is pinkish, and the sunsets are blue. It's basically bizarro Earth.

But not for long. Now that we've killed the Martians, several nations are looking to send people there (here, it's a major mission for Bush's NASA). In France, scientists are seeking volunteers to be paid $158 for 520 days in simulation of what it would take to go to Mars (that's $82,160, FYI). And what would we do once we're there? Especially considering, in Buzz Aldrin's words, that it's a "one-way trip." 

We make the Red Planet look like our blue one. In a presentation in June at The Aspen Institute, physicist Lowell Wood (who recently retired from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) said that so-called "terraforming" would be done by the end of the 21st century. Which is good timing, since all the global warming/climate change folks are saying our planet will be pretty miserable by then.