At 26, Chien-Ming Wang is a national hero in his home country. Wang started playing baseball in his 26 grade, as a pitcher, first baseman and outfielder in elementary school. He 27 high school in Taipei, on the north side of Taiwan; his hometown, Tainan, is in the south. Then he went to a sports college and was signed 28 the Yankees in 2000. Wang pitched for the Taiwan national baseball team in the 2002 Asian Games, and he also 29 the Taiwan team to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. He has come to be 30 as the Yankees ace pitcher over the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Wang has been idolized in his native country 31 all of his games are televised nationwide. Wang, a 19-game winner in each of the past two seasons, got a 32 from nearly half a million U.S. dollars to $4 million. Because of his popularity, he was named one of the Time 100 for 2007.

    Bob Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, believes that virtual space 34 using telerobots, which humans control from the ground, is a better solution than 35 astronauts, which he calls a waste of 36 . "We've gone about as far as we can with manned space 37 ," Park says. "We could go to Mars at 38 expense, but what would a human do when he got there? We can't do much locked in a 39 . There isn't much to hear except a very low rumble from the Martian wind. The only sense that would be available to us is our eyes, and we can build robots with 40 better eyes than humans. Already, the little rovers on Mars right now can focus in on a distant mountain or a grain of sand. We can build telescopes on our robots with any sort of visual capability that we want."