Brian Thorn wrote:
There have been some good programs on lately. Discovery HD Theater had
an intesting documentary about Explorer 1 and the early space age the
other day. History Channel (usually overwhelmed by documentaries on
Bigfoot and UFOs) has a good series called "The Universe" which had a
good episode about spaceflight last night.


Then of course there's hour after hour of that "Mars Rising" miniseries
on the Science Channel, which neatly mixes very optimistic assessments
of life on Mars, and indeed colonization and terraforming of Mars -
which is only going to take around 800 years - with complete
misstatements regarding the technology they want to use to get there.
In that world, the Russian Energia rockets are ready to go back into
full production at the drop of a hat, and Russia has a very vigorous
manned Mars program of their own, and may well beat us there if we
aren't careful and do the smart thing...shoveling several billion
dollars at them to use their wonder technology.
I assume they had a lot of input in that series.

Pat