TRIPS TO MARS IN 50 YEARS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 563, 17 September 1932, Page 17 (Supplement)

TRIPS TO MARS IN 50 YEARS.

There will be Return Tickets, Declares Famous Scientist.

T ISTEN to the world’s greatest prophet. He is Mr Hugo Gernsback, of the United States, scientist and publisher, who, through his various magazines, has made young America “ scientifically minded.” What Mr Gernsback says in the line of scientific prophecy “ goes ” —in America. This slim-built, dark-featured, middleaged man, who has made science a bestseller, foretold the wonders of wireless telegraphy some years before it actually happened. There has scarcely been an advance in science which Mr Gernsback, through his publications, has not outlined before it took place. His sense of scientific prophecy is uncanny. Among the wonders which Mr Hugo Gernsback sees ahead in certain prospect for this old w r orld of ours are: Regular passenger - carrying j “ rocket ” aeroplanes flying from the j earth to the moon, Mars and Venus j within fifty years (return tickets I will be available). Colonisation of habitable planets ! by the surplus population of the i earth within a century. Wireless and television communications between the earth and most j of the stars and planets within fifty I years. j Transatlantic flights in eleven I, minutes within twenty years. It J. will be quicker then to reach New j York from London than it is now j to get by omnibus from the Bank i of England to Victoria Station.

| “It is through science that the pre- , sent economic depression will be solved,” said Mr Gernsback to a • “ Daily Express ” representative when on a recent visit to London. “ Economists tell us that the world suffers from over-production in certain parts, with corresponding shortage in others. This will be cured by scientific transportation. “ The ‘ rocket ’ ’plane age awaits only the discovery of a sufficiently high explosive fuel that will produce an incredible number of heat calories in pro portion to its weight, and it will spring into existence almost overnight. Perhaps the solution will be found through the unlocking of the energy of the atom. We do not know at the moment, but you can bet your shirt on it that science will find a way. “ With the discovery of this fuel, giant rockets carrying wireless and television sets of ultra-short wavelengths will be sent to the moon, Mars, Venus and other planets, which will send us back visible and audible messages tel!jing us of conditions on those planets. In this manner the way will be paved) for the landing of the first exploration Iparties in safety. ‘‘l look forward to a regular passenger service between the planets in fifty years; inter-planetary wireless and I television communication as dependable. as the present-da}' broadcasting service between continents, within sixty [years; and in about 100 years the colonisation of habitable planets, preparing a [way for the earth’s inhabitants when our own planet becomes over-populated.