Red Planet

Red Planet is a nickname for the planet Mars, due to its surface color. It may also refer to:

DNA (Little Mix album)

DNA is the debut studio album by British girl group Little Mix. It was released on 19 December 2012 in the United Kingdom via Syco Music. The group began work recording the album in December 2011 and concluded in September 2012. Throughout the recording process, Little Mix worked with several producers, including TMS, Future Cut, Steve Mac, Jarrad Rogers, Richard "Biff" Stannard, Ash Howes, Jon Levine, Xenomania, Fred Ball and Pegasus. The album was co-written by Little Mix and they stated that they were involved in the development of the album as much as possible. Sonically, the album is primarily a mixture of pop and R&B records, with influences from dance-pop, pop rock and hip hop found on specific songs as well. The album's lyrical content explores empowerment, relationships and heartbreak. Songs on the album were also co-written by members of other girl groups, including Nicola Roberts of Girls Aloud, Shaznay Lewis of All Saints and T-Boz of TLC.

DNA received mixed reviews from music critics. The album's lead single, "Wings", was released on 26 August 2012, reaching number one in UK and Ireland as well as charting in Australia, New Zealand, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, Canada and the US. The second single, "DNA", was released on 11 November 2012, peaking at number three in the UK. Two post-album singles were released: "Change Your Life" on 3 February 2013, and a remix of "How Ya Doin'?" featuring American rapper Missy Elliott was released on 17 April 2013; both songs reached the top 20 in the UK.

Red Planet (novel)

Red Planet is a 1949 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about students at boarding school on the planet Mars. It represents the first appearance of Heinlein's idealized Martian elder race (see also Stranger in a Strange Land). The version published in 1949 featured a number of changes forced on Heinlein by Scribner's, since it was published as part of the Heinlein juveniles. After Heinlein's death, the book was reissued by Del Rey Books as the author originally intended.

Plot summary

On Mars, Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton travel to the Lowell Academy boarding school for the start of the academic year. Jim takes along his native, volleyball-sized pet, Willis the Bouncer, who is about as intelligent as a human child and has a photographic memory for sounds, which he can also reproduce perfectly. At a rest stop, Willis wanders off and encounters one of the adult sentient Martians. The three-legged alien takes the two boys and Willis to join a ritual called "growing together" with a group of its fellows. They also share water, making Jim and Frank "water friends" with the Martian, who is named Gekko.

BattleTech Centers

Battletech Centers are commercial virtual entertainment venues that feature multiplayer virtual combat in the fictional BattleTech universe. The games are played in fully enclosed cockpits with multiple screens, joysticks, and rudder pedals. The centers were initially created and operated by Virtual World Entertainment, LLC. Today, the gaming cockpits can now be found in various sites around the United States.

History

The first BattleTech Center opened in Chicago in 1990, with others in Yokohama following in August 1992 and Tokyo in 1993. Eventually, 26 such facilities were built and included other game types and more elaborate operations. These new locations were called 'Virtual World'. Each Virtual World site featured at least 16 networked "pods" designed in part by Frog Design. In 1991, Computer and Video Games called Battletech "definitely the most exciting interactive videogame system yet devised." It was also featured in Discovery Channel's Beyond 2000.

By 1993, patrons could compete against players in other centers across the country. Red Planet was the first non-BattleTech game added, and involved racing through the mining tunnels of Mars using vectored thrust mining hover-crafts. However, rapid advances in arcade games and online games meant that the Japanese Centers began closing in 1995, and by 2000 no BattleTech Centers remained operational in Japan.