January 23, 2004

Code Blue - Human Ship Coming Having destroyed a British lander and partially disabled an American one, the Martian Defense Forces await the US spy craft Opportunity Sunday at 12:05 a.m. ET as it lands at the Meridiani Planum equatorial plain. 10:23:26 PM

NBC News space analyst James Oberg examines overblown claims that it will cost one trillion dollars to send astronauts to Mars and states it will cost much less. He notes that while the cost of a mission to Mars was thought to be extremely large during the 1960’s on the basis of the costs of the Apollo missions but during the 1990s more feasible plans have been developed. Even the supposed one trillion-dollar gold plated 1989 plan lists a much lower cost for a mission to Mars: The cost of a permanent moon base in that 1989 plan, including the 55 percent "cushion," would have been $100 billion in constant 1991 dollars between 1991 and 2001. The Mars expedition would have cost an additional $158 billion between 1991 and 2016, based on the same stipulations. Thus, achieving a return to the moon to stay and a mission to Mars would have cost a total of $258 billion, of which 55 percent ($141 billion) was cushion and $117 billion was the expected actual cost. Newer plans are for much less, a direct mission to Mars that utilities an advance robotic probe sent to Mars to synthesize fuel for the return trip back to Earth would cost $50 billion. 10:18:08 PM

It has been announced that an actor was providing his DVD screeners of Academy Award nominated films to another person who is now charged with illegally distributing copies of them. The lending of his copies to another person by actor Carmine Caridi was against the agreement he had with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and he could face losing his membership. The accused copier is charged two counts of violating copyright laws and with the discovery of other equipment with illegally obtaining satellite television signals. I suggest that in order to cut download on the leakage of such screeners, the movies provided not a standard DVDs but as encrypted Windows Media or QuickTime films. The recipients of the screener would also be provided with special built media PCs to play such files. Nobody else would be able to play copies of these movies. 10:05:22 PM