Romance to reality

Monday, February 26, 2001

Flagstaff, AZ--Although fascinating, Romance to Reality (RtR) is not a website where you can buy lingerie. Instead it's geared to chronicling lunar and Mars expedition and settlement plans hatched since the 1950s (http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/explore.htm).

Author and historian David Portree set up the site in 1996 and it now contains 270 annotations of Moon and Mars project plans. NASA and contractor personnel, as well as students, visit RtR for reference information. Portree recently overhauled the site to coincide with the NASA History Office's publication of Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mars Planning, 1950-2000, written by Portree, which details Mars mission design approaches. His future upgrade plans for RtR include: primers and background papers by experts on space exploration; a search engine; downloadable original public domain documents; biographies of Moon and Mars pioneer planners; original artwork; and an annotation collection devoted to student design projects.