Okay, let me guess ... Whose law firm will make big bucks (through a
government monopoly) handling the title to Martian real estate for aging
yuppies with Alzheimer's?
Mrs. Clinton, Kids Dream of Mars
WASHINGTON (AP) -- First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and arts officials kicked
off planning Thursday for the first permanent station on Mars by some of the
schoolkids who may eventually go there.
Youngsters are being asked to think about the year 2030 and a ``Millennium
Mars Project.'' So far, only small experimental vehicles have been landed on
Mars.
``We will all be reliving, through these young people's imagination, what it
means to create a new world,'' Ms. Clinton said during the kickoff at the
National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution.
The idea is to get pupils and high school students working with scientists and
technicians on the design for a permanent Mars settlement, according to
officials at the National Endowment for the Arts, which is putting $500,000
into the project.
``Our young citizens will not only imagine what new dance and music and
painting will emerge in a community on Mars,'' said NEA Chairman Bill Ivey,
``but they must also consider what our interplanetary pioneers will carry with
them. They will need creative minds -- imagination and ingenuity -- to solve
the problems they are certain to encounter as they invent their new world.''
Before her speech, Mrs. Clinton and Donna Shirley, who managed the Mars
Pathfinder project, met 15 pupils from Washington's Anne Beers Elementary
School.
Sitting under a prototype space suit for visitors to Mars, they talked about
work the children have done on how they imagined living conditions would be --
based on what has already been discovered about conditions on the planet.
