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Millions of dollars will be spent on the NASA programme and co-ordinated research for the investigation and proof of extraterrestrial life. The first bio-probes will be sent to Mars. Undoubtedly man will soon follow the mini-laboratories which are the forerunners. The senior officials of NASA are unanimous in saying that the first astronauts will land on Mars by 23 September, 1986, at the latest. This precise date has a reason. 1986 will be a year with little solar activity Dr von Braun supports the view that men could land on Mars as early as 1982; the NASA does not lack the technical resources, but only an adequate and unbroken financial grant from the American Congress. In addition to all the USA's current responsibilities two money swallowers such as the war in Viet Nam and the space programme are a heavy burden even for the richest nation in the world. The plan for travel to Mars exists. The Mars space-ship has been designed. It 'only' needs to be built as well. A model of it stands on the desk of an unusual man in Huntsville—stands in front of Professor Dr Ernst Stuhlinger. Stuhlinger is Director of the Research Project Laboratory, which is part of the George Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. He employs over a hundred scientific collaborators in his laboratories. In them they experiment in plasma-, nuclear and thermo- physics. The scientists also occupy themselves with the basic research for projects pointing into the future. The research for the electric rocket motor of the future is for ever linked with the name of Dr century. Dr Stuhlinger was brought to the USA soon after the Second World War by his friend Dr Wernher von Braun; in Fort Bliss they made rockets for the American Air Force. Accompanied by 162 fellow- countrymen, the two rocket pioneers moved to Huntsville after the outbreak of the Korean War, in seen before. In those days Huntsville was a small sleepy nest on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. With the arrival of the rocket men the little cotton town turned into a circus. Factories, rocket-testing platforms, laboratories, giant hangars and corrugated iron offices shot up from the ground breathtakingly fast in a few years. Today more than 15,000 people live in Huntsville; the little town has woken from its sleep and the Huntsvillites have become enthusiastic space fans. When the first Redstone rockets thundered away from the testing platform, many Huntsvillites ran down into their cellars in a panic. Nowadays, when a Saturn rocket is tested and a roar fills the air as if the world was coming to an end in the next second, nobody takes any notice. The Huntsvillites always carry their earplugs with them, just as Londoners carry their umbrellas. They call their town simply 'Rocket City' and if Congress will not grant the hundreds of thousand of millions of dollars demanded for space travel, they get bad- The Huntsvillites have every reason to be proud of their 'Germans' and the NASA, for Huntsville has grown into the biggest NASA centre of all. Here the rockets that make headlines all over the world are thought up and designed, from the little Redstone to the gigantic Saturn V. Up to now the USA has invested around 10 milliard pounds in the Moon programme. 15 Saturn V rockets have been the acid content by an electrical pH measurement. These results would also enable us to make conclusions about existing unknown life. Stuhlinger. He is the designer of the Mars space-ship which will carry men to the red planet in our order to conjure up a project such as even America, accustomed as it is to gigantomania, has never tempered and start agitating.