$10 per lb To Go To Mars In 2001

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31011, 17 March 1966, Page 15

$10 per lb To Go To Mars In 2001

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Mar. 16. If you are of average size and would like a spaceship flight to Mars or Venus in 2001, your round-trip ticket might cost about 1600 dollars, the Associated Press reported. Heavy passengers would probably pay more, small ones less, a space scientist predicted today. The tickets would be -esti-

mated about 10 dollars a pound of bodyweight, Dr. Eugene B. Konecci said. Dr. Konecci, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration council, is chairman of a symposium opening today on “Space Age in 2001.” He said that by 2001 “an economical manned transportation system to the near planets is likely to be either in service or in active development.” Mr Daniel Fink, deputy director of the Defence Department’s Division of Defence Research and Engineering, also took a look at the future. Some Unpredictable He said many future developments were unpredictable now—but then ventured some predictions, including the development of mechanical robots activated by radio signals from earth to do construction work and other jobs several hundred mites in outer space; three-dimensional television; great systems of communications satellites—with 150 ft antennas constructed in space—capable of beaming messages to selected points on the earth so that “Rhode Island might be coupled by direct beam with Rumania, and Vermont with Venice”; a “standard second language” whereby all nations could communicate with one another via satellite. And, even before that, perfection of a system of automatic language translation, employing ielectronic computers. “To call Sweden from Washington in the year 2001,” Mr Fink said, "you might pick up your all-language videophone, speak the number—dialling, including push-but-tons, would be obsolete—and, when the circuit is established, converse in your own language.”