I just watched a private screening of the cinematic release (There was a Disney TV episode of the same name but shorter) of the feature 'Mars and Beyond' (Disney circa 1957) and was amazed how current it still seemed after 44 years! Much better than Disney's material today!

I was more excited about going to mars after watching this film... much more so than anything I have seen put out to promote space exploration in a long time.

The film is only about fifty minutes long and was originally released in Europe. (In Europe they had series of short feature films playing all day long and repeating in the Bahnhof theatres of this era..or so my relatives have told me.)

Wernher von Braun and the German scientists point and nod a lot at diagrams - but do no actual talking - as the narrator talks for them. (Those german accents only twelve years after the war might make people nervous!) The Disney Animators and Ward Kimball outdid themselves in presenting a balanced piece.

Of course, ten years earlier, they were still in a detainment facility, having been taken from their homeland for expanding our rocket and space program.

Seeing them in action, I wished they were still around - as we would probably be light years ahead of where we are now. Von Braun could twist a President's ear - like no other scientist I know.

China isn't a scary enough opponent - yet - to spur the sort of government provided space program we need. However...I am working on that one ;-)

I used to pin hopes on the private sector - but since the market crash - space dollars are likelier to come in suitcases filled with unmarked thousand dollar bills handed over by Venusians.

Something about seeing a fleet of US space ships heading to mars....stirs the blood.

I am pinning my hopes on a 'element race' - supercomputers of the future, nanotechnology and other quantum advances may be made possible by new elements ....or more properly different isotopes of existing ones.

Presented properly...we may get a military funded manned exploration of mars out of this endeavor. I wish I could say NASA would try to do it by themselves...but I know NASA too well - and this just isn't a feasible or realistic gameplan.

China's race to the moon has these same goals in mind. The only way a nation can displace the US superpower status is by finding a 'new uranium' - a more potent element which lifts up that nations technology light years ahead of the US.

Hundreds of billions of dollars - are well worth that potential pay off.

As it was put in Mars And Beyond...

The End...

...And The Beginning!

Infinite Wishes,

SDAI-Tech1