美富豪投十億美元 欲招夫妻免費火星遊大綱

Dennis Tito, a billionaire financier who in 2001 became the first space tourist, has launched a project to send two civilians on “an historic journey” to the Red Planet in January 2018.

“We have not sent humans beyond the moon in more than 40 years,” Mr Tito said at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday. “I’ve been waiting, and a lot of people my age, have been waiting. And I think it’s time to put an end to that lapse”.

The mission, a “return fly-by”, in which the spacecraft would fly around Mars rather than land, would last for 500 days. It is expected to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion, which Mr Tito is hoping to fund partly through television rights and by selling data to Nasa.

His organisation, Inspiration Mars, is planning to select a middle-aged couple who may have already had children and would be willing to risk the potential risk to their fertility of being exposed to radiation for a prolonged period.

They would be forced to spend a year and a half together in a 14ft x 12 ft Dragon space craft, accompanied by supplies ranging from more than a tonne of dehydrated food to 28kg of lavatory paper.

As for why they were specifically seeking a couple to make the flight, “this is very symbolic, and we really need it to represent humanity with a man and a woman,” Taber MacCallum , chief technical officer and potential crew member told the media.

He said if it is a man and a woman on such a long, cramped voyage, it makes sense for them to be married so that they can give each other the emotional support that will probably need when they look out the window and see Earth get smaller and more distant, adding: “If that’s not scary, I don’t know what is.”

The mission has been scheduled for 5 January, 2018, in order to take advantage of an alignment in the planets that occurs once every 15 years.

Mr Tito, 72, said he was determined to complete the mission because he feared not being around for the first manned mission to Mars being planned by the US government for the mid 2030s.

He said that one of the questions he hoped to help answer was: “How do humans behave when they look out and see this pale blue dot that they can barely differentiate from a star?”美國億萬富翁金融家丹尼斯-蒂託正在籌劃一次“歷史性的旅程”，在2018年1月將兩位平民送上火星。蒂託在2001年成爲首位太空遊客。

蒂託本週三在華盛頓一次記者招待會上說：“40多年來，我們一直沒能把人類送往比月球更遠的地方。我和很多同齡人一直在等待。我覺得不能再這樣等下去了。”

此次長達500天的飛行將是一次“往返飛越”，航天器將環繞火星飛行，但不着陸。據稱此次火星任務將需要10億美元到20億美元。蒂託希望可以與電視臺合作，或將數據出售給美國宇航局來籌集部分資金。

這一“靈感火星”計劃將挑選一對已經生養子女，並願意冒損害生育能力風險的中年夫婦來完成。長期接受宇宙輻射將損害人的生育能力。

宇航乘客將被迫在14英尺乘12英尺的“龍”飛船裏呆上一年半，艙裏還擠滿了供給，包括一噸多脫水食品和28公斤廁紙等等。

那麼爲什麼專門挑選一對夫婦來完成旅行呢？技術主任泰伯爾－麥克卡勒姆告訴媒體：“這很有象徵意義，而且我們確實需要一位男士和一位女士來代表人類。”他也可能成爲未來的宇航成員。

他說，如果一位男士和一位女士在長期旅行中在狹小的空間內共處一室，那麼挑選一對已婚夫婦就很重要，這樣他們就能給彼此情感支持，當他們望向窗外，看到地球越來越小越遠時，很需要相互支持。他補充說：“我只能說那很嚇人。”

此次飛行任務預計在2018年1月5日實行，目的是利用每15年纔出現一次的行星連成一線的機會。

72歲的蒂託說，他決心完成此次飛行，因爲他擔心首次載人火星飛行時自己就不在了。美國政府計劃在21世紀30年代中期完成首次載人火星飛行。

他說自己希望幫助解答的一個問題是：“當向窗外望去，看到地球這個淡藍色的星球與其他行星毫無區別時，人們會作何反應？”