(Image Source: Space Ref)
BY ELISA LOPEZ AGUADO
ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY
Men — Mars.
 Women — Venus.
 Hey, baby, let’s move to Mars?
 That’s the prerequisite for space tourist
and magnate Dennis Tito’s grand plan.
He wants to recruit a married couple for a
private mission to Mars in 2018.
The tycoon presented his new nonprofit organization
Inspiration Mars Foundation Wednesday in Washington,
D.C.  Tito is reportedly very serious about
the “married” part — “to combat the
isolation and loneliness that could set in.”
[Source: Space.com]
The private Mars mission would last a year
and a half.
And the couple would live in a really small
capsule, so maybe a married couple could make
it work.
But, if you’re in your twenties or you’re
gay, don’t bother applying for the job.
The Inspiration Mars teams says it wants a
married, middle-aged man and woman.
The rationale?
Science, apparently.
“ … the plan was to choose a middle-aged
couple because their health and fertility
would be less affected by the radiation they
would be exposed to.”
[Source: BBC]
The Christian Science Monitor says the mission
is planned for 2018 because of a very-favorable
alignment between Earth and Mars that won’t
occur again until 2031.
Dennis Tito became the world’s first space
tourist back in 2001.
[Image: Wikimedia Commons]
He has “no spaceship yet, and little notion
of a budget” though, as the Washington Post
reports, “but he has assembled a team of
advisers.”
Another interesting element is the timetable.
Tito doesn’t want to wait until the 2030s,
when President Obama said a NASA Mars landing
could be possible.
“‘I’ll be 95 years old,’ Tito said.
‘I don’t want to wait until that time.’”
The Daily Mail reports there’s no backup
plan to rescue the space tourists if something
goes wrong.
