Looking for a new adventure vacation? Tired of Antarctica and Mount Everest? Save your dollars (it's only a few hundred thousand) and you can ride a rocket ship into outer space. Travel companies are already taking reservations. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, tourism in space. Also, one man's dream of colonizing Mars. And the letters of Galileo's daughter.

Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin is President of the Mars Society and author of "Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization." He tells Judith Strasser why human must leave planet Earth, and that we should start colonizing Mars now. Look him up on the web at www.marssociety.org. Also, Eric Anderson, Vice-president of Alexandria, Virginia's Space Adventures, tells Steve Paulson his company is already taking reservations for tourist flights into orbit. He describes the range of activities underway to promote the space tourism industry. More information is available at 888-857-7223.

Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, tells Jim about the microphone his group and UC- Berkeley put on the Mars Polar Lander, due to touch down on the Red planet in December. They plan to put the live sounds of Mars on their website at www.planetary.org. Also, science fiction writer Mary Doria Russell ("The Sparrow" and it sequel, "Children of God") talks with Steve Paulson about both books, and the role of religion in discovery and exploration.

Dava Sobel is the author of "Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love." She talks with Jim Fleming about her book, which is based on the correspondence between the great astronomer and his daughter, a nun called Maria Celeste. Only her letters survive, but they reveal Galileo as a tender and loving father.

Distribution dates:

• week of 11/14/99 - hour 1