European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - March 25, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 8 the stars and stripes March Are we stuck in our own solar system space travel breakthrough youngsters told by King Cruger Bureau chief London travel by Man to other solar systems is impossible unless some fundamental scientific break through one of the worlds leading astronomers told a group of american students and teachers Patrick the British planetary helped pave the Way for americas Moon missions with two decades of work in mapping the surface of the he explained the need for a breakthrough in an address to 110 students and 30 teachers during the 11th annual Junior science and humanities symposium of the department of defense dependents he told the from schools in All three Dodds school regions in that manned inter Stellar travel by present Means cannot take place because the journey would have to be made by rocket and that would take Many if we Are Ever going to travel to other solar we Are going to have to wait for a fundamental break through which May come this year or next year or in 100 a million or but until it i think we Are confined to our own particular part of the which is the solar but one if All goes there will be some revolutionary method and it will be said the who has presented a popular pro Gram called the sky at night on British television for the past 28 told the weekend gathering that Mars should be the planet in our own solar system that Man should next Mars is much the least unfriendly of the planets and if we Are going to go anywhere after the its got to be to Mars no question about he said such a trip would take months because in its closest orbit to Mars is 35 million Miles such an Effort would necessitate setting up a manned base on Mars to support subsequent within a few Hundred perhaps we May have extensive colonies on Mars and a Martian Colony May eventually become he said that Prospect raises an interesting Point be cause the Gravity on Mars is Only on third of that on Earth meaning that anyone living on Mars would weigh a third of their Earth if you have a boy or girl born on Mars and brought up on i just wonder whether he or she will Ever be Able to come to Earth where the Gravity is three times As just imagine How you would feel without any muscular increase in you suddenly weighed three times As you might not be Able to i think its quite Likely that eventually there Are going to be two entirely different races of Homo Sapiens like plus our descendants who will be born and brought up on Mars and can never actually come to their he said he doubts whether any of today students will live Long enough to see humans get to but said he certainly  Rule it if you then your children May and in certain that your grandchildren provided that we dont indulge in any More wars and we learn to work he said his fellow planetary scientists Are nearly unanimous in thinking that the next place in our solar system that should be explored by unmanned space probes is one of the 20 Moons of although its not much bigger than our it has a dense atmosphere made up chiefly of which makes up 78 percent of the air we and there Are certainly organic compounds i think its fair to say that All the ingredients for life exist on but i dont think life has started there because the temperature is simply too Titan is there is nothing else like it in our solar he said Titan should be orbited by a spacecraft which would map its surface by radar and then drop a Lander onto its solid i think Titan May have some surprises in store for but in afraid that no further Saturn probes Are funded As yet so we will have to wait and Moore told the Young scientists that he believes there Are other intelligent beings outside our solar there Are million stars in our so Why should our Sun also a Star and it alone be the Center of a planetary system 1 cant prove but i believe there must be Many planetary systems and there must be Many worlds very similar to our there Are very Good grounds to suggest that we Are by no Means unique and we Are probably a very Low form of Moore cautioned that the chances of contacting intelligent life elsewhere Are extremely he said for a variety of sound scientific any other intelligent beings would have to be in solar systems other than our and even the nearest stars at All like our Sun Are More than 10 Light years Moore said the Only Way to Contact any life out there would be by radio signal but pointed out that a message sent now and travelling at the Speed of Light would not get to the nearest of these solar systems until 1996 and that even if some radio astronomer was listening and sent Back an immediate it would not reach Earth until the year 2007 making a total delay of 22 dont forget that although when we talk about teleportation and thought travel its pure science fiction to us it is no More science fiction to us than television would have been to Abraham probably rather we May be no further away from that exotic form of space travel than Lincoln was to unless and until that then i reckon that we have to stay in our own part of the universe and explore it by the author of 65 said there is no reason Why Man  have bases on the Moon before the end of the Century and according to recent Nasa this is very in by no Means joking when i say that very Proba Bly there Are at least two or three people in this room now if they really want will one Day be Able to go to the he although we have made More Progress in the last 30 years than we did in the previous 30 i think even More exciting times lie Moore of berths spaceflight ideas once fantasy year old Hermann Oberth holds part of a Steerable rocket engine lie other ideas he has developed Are All based on practical mathematical As Well As a bit of they include a space shuttle like Ion mining on the Moon and a space station for by Tony Nauroth Nuernberg Bureau Germany Hermann Oberth Doest think much of president reagans proposed strategic defense Ini if we dont learn to live with our Oberth life on Earth will be obliterated from the 90yearold father of space trav retired and overseeing a 16th Century Castle that houses the Hermann Oberth said he is a peace Loving i am very disturbed by the militarization of he no matter what we scientists dream there is always a politician ready to make a weapon of Waves of rockets Oberth should his theories helped Hitler Send Waves of v2 rockets screaming into the heart of London during world War and if Hitler would have trusted a second generation of two stage v2s would have found their Mark in times he he  listen to my new ideas to improve the v2 because i was a foreign Oberth and a twinge of satisfaction cracked his craggy born in 1894 in Tran Sylvania now in Oberth lives in near nextdoor to the Castle museum dedicated to his White haired and wrinkled and Only slightly Oberth could be a Carbon copy of Albert he uses his wrinkled mis Shapen with to poke around in the air in front of him As if be were separating and categorizing his eyebrows Are Bushy and when that prodding Finger finds some thing solid in those his right brow rises dramatically like a Gate trolling the flood of intelligence behind Oberth said he remembers clearly what nurtured his Faith in mans ability to escape earths Field of berths Eyebrow pops up As he talks about French novelist Jules in staggering but Lucid conversation he spoke of How Vernes 1865 from the Earth to the Moon inspired during swimming 11yearold Oberth would watch a raft Glide Back wards As he stepped from it to the he said he was disappointed when he found out that sir Isaac Newton had Dis covered this phenomenon that for every there is an equal but opposite re action much earlier in but the fancy he found in Vernes work set him to wonder if the same holds True in space where there is nothing for a Force to work in Vernes adventurers use a Mammoth Cannon buried in the ground to blast their vessel to the Oberth tested this possibility in a simple Experiment at his swimming Hole by crashing into the water from a specific his initial finding was that it using his budding mathematical he calculated that neither a human being nor the materials used in the vessel would be Able to survive the cannons a Force of 16 is 16 times the Force of the earths Gravity would be he and the passengers would go from 1 g to 16 is he wryly called the result of such an attempt Obert concluded that some sort of Grad Ual acceleration was driven by his Faith in Vernes vision and his passion for Oberth searched for a practical solution to the questions Verne by the time be was he thought such a trip might be by he was and by the time be was Oberth bad Bis theory solidly in be went before a University of Heidelberg examining committee As a candidate to mathematically prove As a that Man could escape into his dissertation was dismissed Oberth published it at his own the rocket into interplanetary space Drew immediate worldwide the time for it was unknown to scientist Robert Goddard was experimenting with different rocket propellant mixtures on what is now fort and Konstantin to Solkov a russian schoolteacher from a Village in published the first scientific paper on the use of rockets in space these three Are known As the fathers of space after world War Oberth spent four months As a prisoner of at the urging of Werner von a former student of berths and later berths supervisor at hitlers Baltic Shore v2 Laboratory in Oberth joined other expatriated German rocketry scientists to work on the Early space projects in Ala reusable vehicle berths vision produced a reusable space vehicle that looks an awful lot like the space and a weightless Laboratory that looks a lot like he designed both before behind that cobweb curtain Are other visions Ion mining on the a space station for and others All based on practical mathematical but driven by fanta Many have proved these Are possibilities for future his Erna Roth Roberth my father is years ahead of the rest of and be gives him enough Edge to make critical assessments of How today leaders plan to use he has seen the future