MARS

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The "red planet," fourth out from Earth and named after the Roman god of war. The color red, which Mars shows as a tint when viewed in the sky (see Uranus), is used in several ways on Earth symbolically--often as suggestive of blood or at least fever and feverishness. Mars looks reddish because of all the sand on its surface. Like the rest of the Solar System, and possibly the Universe, it is utterly uninhabitable. It is monstrously pockmarked like a burnt-out cinder or (un)heavenly leper. Yet, like Venus, it has been-- and still is (see link to NASA)--the source of a lot of sci-fi nonsense about alleged "life" on its surface. E.g., those (in)famous would-be Martian "canals" and "other traces of life"--thanks to Profs. Lowell, then later Sagan--turned out to be nothing more than natural cracks and fissures etched out on its lifeless, parched surface.

At our site, Mars is the main depository for thinking and writing about military defense and security. The offerings are dedicated to the proposition that after 14,000 wars in recorded human history, and some 150 just since World War II, something should be done to prevent any more of them, especially in an age of rocket-delivered thermonuclear warheads. And if war cannot be prevented, our country at least should be made secure and protected against threats of enemy or accidental nuclear and/or terroristic attacks--whether from inside, outside, across the world, or in the form of Asteroids crashing in on us from outer space (see Asteroids).