Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Butler, Missouri, a small town some sixty-five miles south of Kansas City. He and his six brothers and sisters were raised in Kansas City, where he attended grade school and high school, graudating from Central High in 1...

Scientists are scrambling to find an alternative landing site for a long-armed robot set to launch this summer on a mission to dig into Mars' icy north pole to search for signs of primitive life.The original landing spot was nixed after images beamed back by...

A robotic dirt and ice digger rocketed toward Mars on Saturday, beginning a 422 million-mile journey that NASA hopes will culminate next spring in the first ever landing within the red planet's Arctic Circle.The Phoenix Mars Lander blasted off before dawn, precisely on time, hurtling...

An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence for the presence of water on Mars. Scientists long have debated whether water flowed on the red planet, with evidence increasing in recent years. The presence of water would raise the possibility of at least primitive life...

In Mr. Heinlein's cosmos, interplanetary rocket travel is old stuff. Earlier books got his characters to the moon and to stations parked in space. [In "Red Planet"] he describes colonial life on Mars some years after men from the earth have settled there. He even throws in a desperate revolt against dishonest agents of the operating company back on earth. When Jim and Frank, sons of colonials go to boarding school they take Willis, a Martian called a bouncer, about the size and shape of...