Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Mars \Mars\, n. [L. Mars, gen. Martis, archaic Mavors, gen.
   Mavortis.]
   1. (Rom. Myth.) The god of war and husbandry.

   2. (Astron.) One of the planets of the solar system, the
      fourth in order from the sun, or the next beyond the
      earth, having a diameter of about 4,200 miles, a period of
      687 days, and a mean distance of 141,000,000 miles. It is
      conspicuous for the redness of its light.

   3. (Alchemy) The metallic element iron, the symbol of which
      [male] was the same as that of the planet Mars. [Archaic]
      --Chaucer.

   {Mars brown}, a bright, somewhat yellowish, brown.

Source : WordNet®

Mars
     n 1: the 4th planet from the sun [syn: {Red Planet}]
     2: (Roman mythology) Roman god of war and agriculture; father
        of Romulus and Remus; counterpart of Greek Ares

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Mars
     
        A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone
        Wrong.  Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10
        compatible computers built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC
        Group): the multi-processor SC-30M, the small uniprocessor
        SC-25M, and the never-built superprocessor SC-40M.  These
        machines were marvels of engineering design; although not much
        slower than the unique {Foonly} F-1, they were physically
        smaller and consumed less power than the much slower DEC KS10
        or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines.  They were also
        completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10
        binaries (including the operating system) with no
        modifications at about 2--3 times faster than a KL10.
     
        When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983, Systems
        Concepts should have made a bundle selling their machine into
        shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in
        fact their spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of
        excitement in the PDP-10 world.  {TOPS-10} was running on the
        Mars by the summer of 1984, and {TOPS-20} by early fall.
     
        Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems Concepts were much
        better at designing machines than at mass producing or selling
        them; the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout
        of perfectionism into continually improving the design, and
        lost credibility as delivery dates continued to slip.  They
        also overpriced the product ridiculously; they believed they
        were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and failed to reckon
        with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry startups
        building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a
        fraction of the price.
     
        By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in late
        1985, most customers had already made the traumatic decision
        to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix boxes.  Most of
        the Mars computers built ended up being purchased by
        {CompuServe}.
     
        This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for
        hackers: if you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to
        learn Real World moves.
     
        [{Jargon File}]