Mars in fiction from red-colored vegetation, and Schiaparelli observed what he took to be linear features on the face of Mars, which he thought might be water channels. Because the Italian for channels is "canali", English translations tended to render the word as "canals", implying artificial construction. Lowell's books on Mars expanded on this notion of Martian canals, and a standard model of Mars as a drying, cooling, dying world was established. It was frequently speculated that ancient Martian civilizations had constructed irrigation works that spanned the planet in an attempt at saving their dying world. This concept spawned a large number of
Mars to Stay article by Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University) and Paul Davies (Arizona State University) from the book "The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet" summarizes their rationale for Mars to Stay: [Mars to stay] would for years of rehabilitation for returning astronauts, which would not be an issue if the astronauts were to remain in the low-gravity environment of Mars. We envision that Mars exploration would begin and proceed for a long time on the basis of outbound journeys only. In November 2010, Keith Olbermann started an interview with Derrick Pitts, Planetarium Director at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia,