Jan Millsapps's Blog

I never imagined this would result from my becoming a Mars One Round Two candidate: I’m having an all-out, interplanetary identity crisis. As one of “The 1058” (it didn’t take long for the group to coalesce around this moniker, at least on Twitter), I find myself connected to a planet I never cared for that much […]

Sobering up on New Year’s Day, not from over-partying, but from over-thinking my end-of-2013 Mars news. Over 200,000 Mars One applicants vying for a one-way trip to Mars, then suddenly on Dec. 30 the applicant pool shrunk to 1058 – and I’m one of those.  My friend Bill Sheehan says those odds are about the […]

This image – and the female symbol inside the red triangle – prove it: Venus first landed on Mars on July 4, 1997, the date Pathfinder touched down and the first Mars rover, toaster-sized Sojourner Truth, rolled out onto the Martian soil: The history of how this came to pass reveals a lot about the overwhelmingly […]

“Men went to the moon but everyone will be going to Mars,” NASA’s Colleen Hartman says. The first foot to step onto the surface of Mars will be the greatest small-step/giant-leap event in space exploration since the 1969 Apollo 11 landing. Here’s why that first footstep could, and perhaps should, be made by a female. […]

To the ancient Chinese, a sighting of Mars in the night sky signaled “bane, grief, war and murder”. Because the Martian soil contains iron oxide (rust), the planet’s reddish hue inspired early observers to associate Mars with blood and bloodletting. The Babylonians called it the “star of death,” but the name that stuck was the […]

When I read yesterday that 76-year-old Valentina Tereshkova has applied to go to Mars, I thought: well of course she does. Ever since she made news as the first woman in space (June 1963 in Vostok 6), Valentina has wanted a return trip – and has been denied it. The Soviets would not hear of […]

Venus on Mars is all about the Martians. Did they build canals? Are they trying to contact us? Can we send spaceships to photograph them? Can we go there ourselves? Are there more transcendent ways to experience “Martian-ness?” When I began researching and writing this book just a few years ago, we had not yet […]

Posting the best news Venus on Mars has received in a long time: Venus on Mars will be released in late 2013/early 2014 by Jaded Ibis Press. Plans are to produce the book in five editions: full color print, b&w print, ebook, interactive multimedia, and fine art limited edition. What this means: I am in the [...]

A friend who teaches high school English in South Carolina wants to incorporate Venus on Mars in her literature class as a way to demonstrate how writing and technology can combine to present a story. She plans to use a passage from the book with a scannable QR code as an example. Then we’re going [...]

I’m preparing my Keynote (Mac version of Powerpoint) presentation for my Wednesday book event at SFSU library, “Book Without Boundaries.”  While thinking of how to organize it, I realize I’ve written more than one book. There’s the book, “Venus on Mars.” Then there’s the book inside the book, Lulu’s secret journal, suppressed for generations until her [...]