The colonisation of space
NASA is considering a project to fly astronauts to Mars within the next 20 years, to settle permanently.
In fact those behind the multi-billion dollar project, Hundred Year Starship, don't mince their words. For cost reasons, the atronauts will have one-way tickets. There will be no coming back.
The Starship project is being led by Nasa's Ames Research Centre.
The US government and Nasa have already put in substantial funding but Ames director Pete Worden is hoping to attract the world's billionaires to the project.
He says: "We hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund. The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds. Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired. Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds."
Nasa research claims a one-way human mission is technologically feasible and would be cheaper than returning astronauts to earth. The costs of safely returning a crew would take up most of such a mission's budget. The one-way human mission to Mars would be the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet.
Experts say the cost of sending 20 Mars settlers with a one-way ticket would be equal to bringing four astronauts back.
There's something very familiar about all this. They used to call it transportation.
But do we really want another Australia in outer space?
Disparaging?
PRESIDENT Zuma's cabinet shake-up highlights the fact that we have in this country a "Ministry for Women, Children and Persons With Disabilities".
Is this title not somewhat disparaging of women? It's like the maxim of Roman-Dutch common law which denied contractual capacity to "minors, married women and lunatics."
It's who you're bracketed with that counts.
Numbers game
READER Brian Gilham crunches some numbers concerning the Currie Cup final.
Date: 30-10; Score: 30-10; Difference: 20; Top scorer: No. 10; Year: 2010; Number of players on field: 30; Time between halves: 10; Duration of half: 30 + 10.
Yep. Do the maths!
Cheers!
THE LEBANON has produced the world's biggest wine glass. Measuring 1.5m in height and 1.46 m at its widest point, it holds 100 bottles of wine and has been officially declared the champion by Guinness World Records.
It was produced for a wine festival in Beirut – but it wouldn't have been big enough for the jollifications in Durban last Saturday. Nor to drown the sorrows of Cape Town.
Pear-shaped world
THIS week's remarks on the way things have mostly gone pear-shaped since we entered the 21st century remind Sally Stretch of a song she first heard in the 60s.
They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls,
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud,
For mans' been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off, and we'll all be blown away.
They're rioting in Africa, there's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us, will be done by our fellow man."
Not much has changed, she says. Indeed, not much.
Health food
OBESITY has reached serious proportions in much of the world. Half the problem is youngsters being flush with cash plus the easy availability of chocolates and other junk food.
But in China they're doing something about it. In Nanjing, capital of the province of Jiangsu, chocolates and potato crisps have been removed from the vending machines that serve rail commuters.
They have been replaced by the Dazha hairy crab, a popular traditional delicacy that is eaten live. The vending machines spit them out in custom-fitted plastic boxes, chilled to 5 degrees centigrade, which leave them sedated but still alive.
Delicious! Non-fattening! Healthy! And if a customer gets a dead crab, he gets three more live ones in compensation. What could be fairer?
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ...
Tailpiece
WHAT do you call a short-legged tramp?
A low-down bum.
Last word
Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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