Trips to Mars

Radio Record, Volume VI, Issue 21, 2 December 1932, Page 20

Trips to Mars

Return Tickets in 50 years —

Huco GERNSBACK, of the Unite States, is looked upon as being the world’s greatest prophet. Gernsback, a scientist and publisher, has through his various magazines (he founded the world’s. greatest radio magazine) made young America scientifically minded.

What Mr. Gernsback says in the line of scientific phophecy "goes’-in America. This slim-built, dark-featured, mid-dle-aged man, who has made science a best-seller, foretold the wonders of wireless telegraphy some years before it actually happened. There has scarcely been an advance in science which Mr. Gernsback, through his publica tions, has not outlined before it took place, His sense of scientific prophecy is uncanny. Among the wonders which Mr. Hugo Gernsback sees ahead in certain pros pect for this old world of ours are:-~ Regular passenger-carrying "rocket?? aeroplanes flying from the earth to the moon, Mars and Venus within fifty years (return tickets will be available). Colonisation of habitable planets by the surplus population of the carth within a century. Wireless and television communications between the earth and most of the stars and planets within fifty years. Trans-Atlantic flights in eleven minutes within twenty years. It will be quicker then to reach New York from London than it is now to get by omnibus from the Bank of England to Victoria Station. "It is through science that the pre sent, economic depression will be solved," said Mr. Gernsback to a "Daily Express" representative when .on @ recent visit to London, "Hconomists

. i tell us that the world suffers from. overproduction in certain parts, with corresponding shortage in others. This will be cured by scientific transportation. "The ‘rocket’? plane age awaits only the discovery of a sufficiently high explosive fuel that will produce an ineredible number of heat calories in proportion to its weight, and it will spring into existence almost overnight. Perhaps the solution will be found through the unlocking of the energy of the atom. We do not know at the moment, but you can bet your shirt on it that science will find a way. "With the discovery of this fuel, giant rockets carrying wireless and television sets of ultra-short wavelengths will be sent to the moon, Mars, Venus, and other planets, which will send us back visible and audible messages telling us of conditions on those planets. In this manner the way will be paved for the landing of the first exploration parties in safety. "T look forward to a regular passenger service between the planets in fifty years; inter-planetary wireless and television communication as dependable as the present-day broadcasting service between continerts, within sixty years; and in about 100 years

the colonisation of habitable planets, preparing a way for the earth’s inhabitants when our own planet becomes over-populated.