One-way ticket to Mars: space colonists wanted!

Moscow (Voice of Russia)
Dec 10, 2013

Bas Lansdorp, the founder of Mars One colony project, believes that in about a decade from now a colony of people from the Earth will appear on Mars. Experts confirm that with the current technologies this is quite possible.

Eccentric as Bas Lansdorp's ideas may sound, his speech at a recent International Space Commerce summit gathered a full hall of listeners, mostly entrepreneurs.

Lansdorp is expecting that the first unmanned mission to pave the way to the Red Planet will leave in 2016, followed by a first rover in 2018. The first colonists will come to Mars in 2023, he says.

"There's no good answer to the question why exactly we want to go to Mars. But it will happen because exploration is what we humans do," Lansdorp says, enthusiastic as a child.

The facts that there are no water and no atmosphere breathable for an Earth human on Mars do not seem to embarrass Lansdorp. "The rovers will activate life support systems, they will feed them with Martian soil, which has ice crystals in it. This water will evaporate, and to make oxygen, we'll take nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere. We'll create an atmosphere," he says.

Everything you will eat on Mars will be natural, with no pesticides, Lansdorp assures his followers.

One listener asked Lansdorp whether he has thought about the space radiation on Mars.

Lansdorp, who seems not to be at loss at answering any question, provocative as it may be, replied that he has thought about this problem. He explained that the water that the crews will carry to Mars will serve as shielding against deadly solar particles and cosmic rays. Besides, the roof of the colonists' house on Mars will have some two meters of Martian soil for protection. You'll just have to make sure not to wander outside too much.

Asked whether he will go to Mars himself, Bas Lansdorp answered: "I started Mars One because I wanted to go, and I still want to go to Mars, but I had my first son a few weeks ago. But it's not even the main reason. I am just not that kind of person who can be locked up in a small room for 30 months with other people without hating each other. But I really hope I will be able to take my family to Mars one day."

According to Lansdorp's calculations, it will cost about $6 billion to get the first four people on Mars and $4 billion for every crew that follows. Where to get such money? Lansdorp has an answer to that as well. The flights will be highlighted on TV, he says.

"The Olympic Games in London made about $4 billion in just three weeks of broadcasting, just because the world was watching. But this will be a lot bigger."

Well, one may say, this may work for some time, but sooner or later, flights to Mars will become a routine, and the interest of TV viewers in them will fade.

"There is a small group of people in the world who have a lot of money," Lansdorp says with a smile. "There are 200 billionaires who can finance the trip from their net wealth."

Meanwhile, Lansdorp acknowledges that the colonists would never be able to return to Earth - even if they have or build a rocket that is able to take them back. Life on Mars will provoke irreversible changes in their organisms. They will lose bone mass and muscle mass to such an extent that it will be extremely difficult for them to gain it back to survive a return trip to Earth and then to live in the Earth's atmosphere. They will be doomed to live on Mars till the end of their lives.

One may say that Bas Lansdorp is an odd guy, if not a madman. However, he has a large army of followers - more than 200,000 people have already expressed a wish to go to Mars, even without ever coming back. In about a month from now, Lansdorp is expected to announce who has made it into the second round of selection.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/One_way_ticket_to_Mars_space_colonists_wanted_999.html.

China-Brazil satellite fails to enter orbit

Beijing (AFP)
Dec 09, 2013

A joint Chinese-Brazilian environmental monitoring satellite launched Monday from northern China failed to enter orbit, state media and experts said, in a rare setback for the country's ambitious space program.

The satellite, meant to be a key tool in Brazil's efforts to control Amazon rainforest deforestation and to monitor its huge agribusiness sector, blasted off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in Shanxi province on a Long March 4B rocket at 11:26am (0326 GMT), Xinhua said.

"The rocket malfunctioned during the flight and the satellite failed to enter orbit," the state news agency quoted military sources as saying.

The satellite is known as CBERS-3 (China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite 3), or Ziyuan I-03 in Chinese. Ziyuan is the Chinese word for "resource".

In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said in a statement that "there was a failure of the launcher during the flight and consequently the satellite was not positioned in the planned orbit".

"Preliminary evaluations suggest that the CBERS-3 returned to Earth."

The CBERS remote-sensing satellite program grew out of a bilateral partnership agreement signed in 1988.

The satellite is based on the Chinese Ziyuan 1 design but includes Brazilian-designed mission payload.

Three satellites of the series were launched in 1999, 2003 and 2007 aboard Chinese-made Long March rockets.

CBERS-3 was originally scheduled to be launched in 2009, but the launch date was repeatedly postponed.

A CBERS-4 is scheduled to be launched in 2015.

China launched its first moon rover mission last week, the latest step in an ambitious space program which is seen as a symbol of its rising global stature.

The rover -- known as Yutu, or Jade Rabbit -- is due to land on the moon in mid-December.

China sees its space program as a symbol of its growing international status and technological advancement, as well as of the Communist Party's success in reversing the fortunes of the once impoverished nation.

It aims to establish a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually send a human to the moon.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China-Brazil_satellite_fails_to_enter_orbit_999.html.

Silent Orbit for China's Moon Lander

by Morris Jones
Sydney, Australia (SPX)
Dec 09, 2013

China's first Moon lander is in a stable orbit around that world, awaiting the command to lower its orbit and eventually descend to the surface. Judging by what little we know, the Chang'e-3 spacecraft seems to be in a good state of health.

It has successfully navigated its way from low Earth orbit though cislunar space and fired its main engine to brake into lunar orbit. These are major hurdles for the mission, and Chang'e-3 has passed them well.

Given the apparent success of the mission, it is thus frustrating to confront the relatively scarce reportage on the mission by China's state media. Low coverage is normal for most Chinese space launches, but it is especially frustrating for high-profile missions like this.

China has released almost no information since the spacecraft arrived in orbit. We have seen no images returned by the spacecraft, which must have transmitted plenty to Earth by now. Even the exact landing time and date remain undisclosed.

It seems likely that the "mid-December" landing window previously released by China would suggest a landing this weekend. Unfortunately, it's difficult to calculate exactly when it will land from orbital extrapolations. The spacecraft will modify its orbit prior to the final descent, so considerations based on its current "parking" orbit are not much use.

There have been some clues to the nature of the next planned orbital change, but we don't have the exact parameters for the real orbit, and won't have them until it actually happens. By then, Chang'e-3 will clearly be getting closer to landing, but we still don't know how long it will stay in this second orbit before it actually touches down.

In short, China's failure to release even a single image taken by Chang'e-3 after launch is disappointing, and seems to indicate that China's restrictive media policies are well in force.

To be fair, coverage of the launch of Chang'e-3 was highly explicit, with live television coverage from a group of well-placed cameras on the launch vehicle. But after this, the veil came down.

We shouldn't have too long to wait for the landing, but the lack of coverage and the uncertainties of the time are frustrating. China should understand that this media strategy is working against their own interests, and taking kudos away from one of their finest technical achievements.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Silent_Orbit_for_Chinas_Moon_Lander_999.html.

Russia state news agency gets controversial chief

December 09, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin on Monday appointed a controversial news anchor to head a restructured state news agency, a move signaling the Kremlin's intention to tighten control over the media and use it increasingly for propaganda of ultraconservative views.

Dmitry Kiselyov, who spent much of his weekly news program on state Rossiya television maligning homosexuality and speculating about Western-led conspiracies, was put in charge of all the resources of the former RIA Novosti, which was renamed Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today).

The agency has been known for news coverage that at times appeared too comprehensive for the government's comfort, including active reportage on the anti-Putin protest movement. The appointment makes Kiselyov the chief executive in a company of 2,300 employees, removable only by Putin himself. That promotion has come as a shock to many who previously derided the pro-Kremlin pundit — who controversially suggested that the internal organs of homosexuals should be burned and buried rather than donated — as an irrelevant lackey.

Kiselyov's conspiratorial, almost coquettish grin and over enthusiastic hand gestures have made him a recognizable staple of Russian television. But it's his toxic cocktail of punditry and sensationalism that has gained him his reputation as one of Russia's most famous —and reviled— news anchors.

Kiselyov has often led the attack in taking down the opposition movement, the West, homosexuals, and other groups that top the Kremlin agenda. His pugnacious punditry contrasts with that of some other anchors on state-owned channels, who often are more eager to censor issues out of the limelight than attack them head-on.

When Ukrainians flooded the streets last week to protest their president's shelving of a treaty with the European Union, Kiselyov lambasted Sweden and Poland, accusing them of encouraging massive protests in Kiev to take revenge for military defeats by czarist Russia centuries ago.

Kiselyov, who earned his degree in Scandinavian literature, rolled a clip of a Swedish children's program called "Poop and Pee," designed to teach children about their bodily functions. After the clip finished rolling, Kiselyov turned to the camera to suggest that this was the kind of European decadence awaiting Ukraine, if it signed a deal with the EU.

In Sweden there is "the radical growth of child abortions, early sex — the norm is nine years old, and at age 12 there is already child impotency," he said after the clip rolled. That reportage gained him few friends in Ukraine, where one man bounded over to hand "an Oscar for the nonsense and lies" of Dmitry Kiselyov to the state television correspondent standing on Kiev's main square. He was brusquely pushed out of the shot before finishing his speech.

Kiselyov has also proven an avid attack dog on the issue of homosexuality, as international criticism over a Russian law banning gay "propaganda" reached a fever pitch this summer. The TV anchor said that homosexuals' hearts should be buried or burned, and that gays should be banned from donating blood or organs, which were "unsuitable for the prolongation of anyone's life."

He has turned his guns as well on the Kremlin's internal foes, airing critical accounts of opposition activists such as Alexei Navalny, who garnered nearly a third of the vote in an election for Moscow mayor in September. Kiselyov ran footage of Nazi marches, directly comparing the crowd's adulation of Hitler to that of Navalny's own audience: "A recognizable exultation, is it not?"

Russian media outlets speculated that the reshuffle was aimed at RIA Novosti's former director, Svetlana Mironyuk, who presided over the company's more objective coverage of massive anti-Putin protests sparked by a fraud-tainted parliamentary vote in 2011. While Mironyuk was said to be backed by some liberal figures in the Kremlin, that reportage received a more critical reception among its hawkish wing.

RIA Novosti's relatively broad coverage — particularly in its foreign language services — was even on display in the report on its own dissolution that said the changes "appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector."

While officials have claimed that the move is simply an attempt to make the company run more efficiently, Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov asserted the importance of the company's new political message in comments on Monday: "Russia ... strongly defends its national interests: it's difficult to explain this to the world but we can do this, and we must do this."

In 2005, RIA Novosti helped found Russia Today television, or RT, which now employs more than 1,000 people and broadcasts in English, Spanish and Arabic. It will remain separate from the revamped news agency, and Kiselyov will have no say in its operation.

Coptic activist: Large number of Christians reject the coup

Friday, 27 September 2013

Coptic political analyst and founder of Anti-Coup Christians, Rami Jan has affirmed that there are many Christian Egyptians who reject the army's bloody coup and its crimes and massacres committed against unarmed protesters.

Speaking to Al-Jazeera Jan said that, despite having many differences, a lot of Christians still support Mohammed Morsi. He affirmed that these Christians are against a military solution for the crisis, which has strengthened the power of the security forces over the people.

He severely criticized the army's crackdown on those Egyptians refusing the coup. "Their only crime was that they took to the streets to peacefully express their refusal of the coup," he said.

Jan added: "We are the grandsons of Makram Obaid, a Christian rebel in the middle of last century who denied the accusations against Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, that he was a terrorist."

He said that Obaid was the first one to take part in Al-Banna's burial, defying strict measures imposed on taking part in that event.

Candidly, Jan criticized the stance of the Church in Egypt, which kept silent regarding the massacres carried out in Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda Squares, as well as the crimes committed later on.

He explained how this stance contradicted that of the Church regarding the killing of 18 Christians by military forces after January revolutions. The Church rejected the violence then, "However, we see that it is supporting the violence today," he said.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/7562-coptic-activist-large-number-of-christians-refuse-the-coup.

Egypt's central bank confirms economic achievements under President Morsi

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

The Egyptian Central Bank announced on Tuesday that net transfers from Egyptians working abroad increased during the past fiscal year to reach a record high of $18.7 billion. During the previous year, transfers totaled $18 billion.

The bank said in a statement that capital and financial transactions achieved a net influx of $9.7 billion compared with about only one billion USD during the previous year.

In addition, the Balance of Payments achieved an overall surplus of $237 million compared with a deficit of $11.3 million the previous year.

In Egypt, the fiscal year starts on 1 July and concludes on 30 June, thus these economic successes were all achieved under the government of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

According to the Bank, the deficit was also reduced by 45 per cent to $5.6 billion, compared with $10.1 billion during the previous fiscal year. The bank noted a considerable retreat in the deficit of the trade balance of 7.6 per cent.

Regarding investment in Egyptian stocks, the statement said that it achieved a net inflow of $1.5 billion compared with a net outflow of $5 billion during the previous year.

Meanwhile, the net income from the Suez Canal recorded a slight decrease of 3.4 per cent, down to $5 billion compared with $5.2 billion the previous year.

Payments from investment income also retreated by 11.6 per cent after foreign companies working in Egypt decreased their number of transactions.

However the tourism industry fared much better. The Anadolu news agency cites official Egyptian figures indicating that during the first half of this year, the number of tourists to Egypt had increased by 13 per cent. The same source also cited today the minister of industry and trade as confirming that exports from the agricultural sector increased by 20% during the financial year 2012-13, which coincided with Morsi's rule.

Economists remarked that these results reflect Egypt's economic success under the government of Hisham Qandil and President Morsi.

On 3 July, the Egyptian army carried out a coup against President Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, justifying their actions on the grounds that Egypt's economy could not survive and flourish under President Morsi.

And despite the unprecedented economic success of Morsi's government, on Tuesday US President Barack Obama candidly announced his support for the military coup, accusing President Morsi of failing to achieve the goals of the Egyptian revolution.

Although the bank recognized these accomplishments, they failed to attribute them to Morsi and his administration.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/7525-egypts-central-bank-confirms-economic-achievements-under-president-morsi.

Egypt shutters offices of Brotherhood newspaper

September 25, 2013

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian security forces on Wednesday shuttered the office of the newspaper of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party and confiscated furniture and documents, journalists from the Freedom and Justice daily said.

In a statement Wednesday, the journalists appealed to Egypt's press syndicate to take action against the closure in Cairo's Manial district, where the office is now sealed. The closure comes two days after a court ordered the group outlawed and its assets seized. Egypt's interim government however said Tuesday that it would not ban the group until the ruling is upheld by a higher tribunal.

Islam Tawfiq, an editor with the Freedom and Justice daily and a member of the Brotherhood, said the newspaper will continue to be published, and its edition for Thursday is ready for print. He said the newspaper staff had evacuated the office in June, days before mass protests against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, under threat of attack.

The staff has been working elsewhere, he said, and only furniture, electrical appliances, and some documents were confiscated from the office. An order to ban the publication was issued a day after Morsi was ousted on July 4, he said, amid a crackdown on pro-Brotherhood media. The Brotherhood's TV channel, Misr25, has been off the air since then and was later banned by a court order.

But the state-owned Al-Ahram printers continued to publish the paper, he said, on condition it reduce its pages by half and print circulation down to 10,000 from 100,000. The orders came from security authorities, he said.

The shuttering of the newspaper appears to be part of an extensive crackdown on the Brotherhood since Morsi's ouster, after millions took to the streets demanding his resignation. Tawfiq said the newspaper staff was informed by press syndicate officials that the office, which served as the historic headquarters of the Brotherhood under now deposed President Hosni Mubarak, was closed not as a political party property but as a property of the Brotherhood.

He said however that the ownership had changed following the official registration of the political party in 2011. The paper was informed, he said, on Wednesday that prosecutors ordered the closure late last month, nearly three weeks before a court decision to ban the group and seize its assets.

A security official couldn't immediately explain the discrepancy between the two claims. He added that the paper had only rented parts of the building as its office. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.