John Carpenter, who first made his mark with low-budget shockers like Assault on Precinct 13 before achieving international fame with Halloween in 1978, has wanted to make a Mars movie for nearly two decades. “Throughout our civilized history, Mars has been a symbolic deal to human beings. Mars himself was the god of war, of blood lust, passion, death … all that kind of good stuff that movies are made of.” But for a long time, Carpenter couldn’t find a plot idea for the kind of Mars movie he wanted to make. Finally, about three years ago, an idea started to jell.
November 20th, 2000
Canadian students win Mars buggy contest Ottawa Citizen
Students from Queen’s University and the University of Toronto have won a world-wide contest to design a prototype vehicle for exploring Mars — one that will be tested in the Canadian Arctic. The Mars Society, an international private research group whose members want to further the cause of travel to Mars, had given $10,000 to each of three university teams to design a Mars lander.