Fun but dangerous trips to Mars

SpaceX chief unveils ambitious plan

GUADALAJARA, Mexico, Sept 28, (AFP): SpaceX chief Elon Musk unveiled on Tuesday ambitious plans to establish a Mars colony by sending 100 humans at a time on massive spacecraft, possibly costing as low as $100,000 per person.

Taking the stage under a large globe of Mars at the International Astronautical Congress in western Mexico, Musk showed his vision for a giant rocket that would propel people to the Red Planet “in our lifetime.”

He told reporters he was “optimistic” that the first human mission could leave Earth in 2024 and arrive several hundred million kilometres away on the Red Planet the following year.

Before that, SpaceX plans to send an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule as early as 2018.

“I think the first trips to Mars are going to be really, very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There is just no way around it,” Musk said. “It would basically be, ‘Are you prepared to die?’ Then if that’s ok, then you are a candidate for going.”

These risk-taking pioneers would open the way for others under Musk’s vision, which one expert warned was “long on vision, short on detail.”

Public Health Ministry says.

Zika causes only mild symptoms in most, including fever, sore eyes and a rash. But pregnant women with the virus risk giving birth to babies with microcephaly — a deformation that leads to abnormally

“We need to go from these early exploration missions to actually building a city,” Musk said to an overflow crowd at an expo center in the city of Guadalajara.

A futuristic video depicted his concept of an interplanetary transport system based on reusable rockets, a propellant farm on Mars and 1,000 spaceships on orbit, carrying about 100 people each.

The spacecraft would have a restaurant, cabins, zero-gravity games and movies.

“It has to be fun or exciting. It can’t feel cramped or boring,” he said.

The South Africa-born CanadianAmerican entrepreneur said the plan would require a “huge public-private partnership,” but did not announce any alliance with a government agency.

The first flight would be expensive but the aim is “making this affordable to almost anyone who wants to go,” by dropping the price of a ticket over time from $200,000 to $100,000, Musk said.

“You can’t create a self-sustaining civilization on Mars if the ticket price is $10 billion per person,” he said.

While SpaceX was hit by a setback on Sept 1 when its Falcon 9 rocket, after several successful missions and vertical

small brains and heads.

There have been no confirmed cases of Zika-related microcephaly in Thailand so far, but authorities have been monitoring 36 pregnant women infected with the virus. landings, exploded on the launch pad during a test in Florida, Musk said “this is just a small thing on a long road.”

SpaceX is not alone in aspiring to travel to Mars.

The US space agency NASA, which is studying the effects of long-term space flight on the human body, has announced its own plans to send people to Mars by the 2030s.

Blue Origin, a company founded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, also envisions a Mars mission, but decades from now.

Experts warn that reaching Mars — 225 million kilometers (140 million miles) from Earth on average — and living there requires major engineering feats and a massive budget.

John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said Musk’s presentation was “long on vision, short on detail.”

Musk did not explain in detail how he would get the “billions of dollars that would be required to put the vision into reality.”

The plan also faces technical challenges, such as refueling in orbit, which has never been done, and building fuel depots on Mars.

“If a case of Zika-related microcephaly is confirmed then it would be the first confirmed case in the WHO Southeast Asia region,” said Michael Vurens van Es, World Health Organization regional spokesman.

“As of now we cannot conclude that there is a link to Zika,” said Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai, a ministry official, in the statement. (AFP)

Miami-Dade to release trap sites:

Miami-Dade County officials say they’re planning to release the locations of mosquito traps that captured Zika-positive insects in Miami Beach.

Michael Hernandez, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, told the Miami Herald (https:// goo.gl/rBttmw ) they’ll be naming the locations Wednesday morning.

County officials made the announcement Tuesday evening after Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Surgeon General Celeste Philip agreed that Miami-Dade can release the trap locations.

Earlier that day, Gimenez sent a letter to the state Health Department saying he would release the locations unless state health officials prohibited the action in writing by Wednesday afternoon.

But both the state and county had previously refused to disclose the locations, arguing the records were exempt from public records law because they were part of an epidemiological investigation. (AP)