I remember as a child, my father reading the book, "By Spaceship To Saturn" to me at bedtime. I remember fussing with the rabbit ears antenna so I could watch the 1969 Apollo moon landing on a grainy TV picture. (I recall I was already a bit of a conspiracy theorist even at that tender age because I always wondered who, if these were the first people on the moon, was holding the camera!) And now, it seems, the Russians have undertaken the first manned mission to Mars.

Or have they?

Actually, it's all done on earth as an experiment to see how people will hold up in a very claustrophobia inducing environment like the inside of a space ship long enough to reach Mars. The other day they held a virtual expedition out onto the surface of the red planet. You can read the whole story from CNN here. You know, I think I'll reread that old book my father gave me.

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