美富豪投十亿美元 欲招夫妻免费火星游

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?”

美国亿万富翁金融家丹尼斯-蒂托正在筹划一次“历史性的旅程”，在2018年1月将两位平民送上火星。蒂托在2001年成为首位太空游客。

蒂托本周三在华盛顿一次记者招待会上说：“40多年来，我们一直没能把人类送往比月球更远的地方。我和很多同龄人一直在等待。我觉得不能再这样等下去了。”

此次长达500天的飞行将是一次“往返飞越”，航天器将环绕火星飞行，但不着陆。据称此次火星任务将需要10亿美元到20亿美元。蒂托希望可以与电视台合作，或将数据出售给美国宇航局来筹集部分资金。

这一“灵感火星”计划将挑选一对已经生养子女，并愿意冒损害生育能力风险的中年夫妇来完成。长期接受宇宙辐射将损害人的生育能力。

宇航乘客将被迫在14英尺乘12英尺的“龙”飞船里呆上一年半，舱里还挤满了供给，包括一吨多脱水食品和28公斤厕纸等等。

那么为什么专门挑选一对夫妇来完成旅行呢？技术主任泰伯尔－麦克卡勒姆告诉媒体：“这很有象征意义，而且我们确实需要一位男士和一位女士来代表人类。”他也可能成为未来的宇航成员。

他说，如果一位男士和一位女士在长期旅行中在狭小的空间内共处一室，那么挑选一对已婚夫妇就很重要，这样他们就能给彼此情感支持，当他们望向窗外，看到地球越来越小越远时，很需要相互支持。他补充说：“我只能说那很吓人。”

此次飞行任务预计在2018年1月5日实行，目的是利用每15年才出现一次的行星连成一线的机会。

72岁的蒂托说，他决心完成此次飞行，因为他担心首次载人火星飞行时自己就不在了。美国政府计划在21世纪30年代中期完成首次载人火星飞行。

他说自己希望帮助解答的一个问题是：“当向窗外望去，看到地球这个淡蓝色的星球与其他行星毫无区别时，人们会作何反应？”