To save you some time and effort … this review is for dyed-in-the-wool film buffs. No one else, you see, will ever understand or appreciate a film such as “Destination Mars.” And more’s the pity, since this 2002 spoof is one fun film. However, you do need to be intimately acquainted with the films of Ed Wood Jr. and of the naive science-fiction flicks of the ’50s to get the point of the whole thing.
August 5th, 2001
High Drama on the Red Planet The Grand Rapids Press
It’s probably a good thing Brent Bos wasn’t really on the surface of Mars. If he had been on the Red Planet, the former Zeeland resident might not be heading back home today. “We didn’t need any simulated drama. We had quite enough of the real thing,” Bos wrote in an e-mail as he entered his last week at a simulation site on Devon Island in Canada’s High Arctic. Bos, a researcher at the University of Arizona, completed 10 days of a simulated human mission to Mars at a site on Earth that most resembles the distant planet. The summer project, sponsored by the Colorado-based Mars Society, continues with other teams through August.
June 10th, 2001
A Zeeland native hopes his Arctic adventure will pave the way for man’s next big journey The Grand Rapids Press
Brent Bos hopes people can one day plant their feet on the surface of Mars. For now, the Zeeland native and Arizona researcher is willing to settle for the next best place — Canada’s high Arctic. Bos will be among dozens of researchers traveling this summer to distant Devon Island in Canada’s Nunavut Territory — within 1,000 miles of the North Pole — for a research project in the place most like Mars here on Earth. The team will camp at a research pod and conduct simulations of a human mission to Mars — exploring terrain and geological formations, taking pictures and sending information to mission control.