More Martian handwaving, yippee! Physicist Lowell Wood presented his ‘Mars Manifesto’ at the Aspen Institute, suggesting we experiment on a planet that we’re not living on, and that the terraforming of the red planet could be essentially complete by the end on the 21st Century. And before you raise the usual objections, he thinks that “It is not technology, nor money […] the pacing ingredient is marshaled will.” Maybe he’s right; the space geek in me would love to see it. But I can’t help but side with Bruce Sterling’s comments back in 2004, when he stated he’d “believe in people settling Mars at about the same time [he sees] people setting the Gobi Desert.”