Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 16, 2014, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A5 Did you know that you can use your smartphone or tablet with the Blippar App when reading our newspaper to: Real- time Updates, Deeper, Richer Content 1. Download the Blippar app for free from Apple's App Store or Android's Google Play Store to your mobile phone or tablet 2. When you are reading the paper and you see the WFP Bonus icon ( left) launch the app and scan the page 3. Enjoy deeper, updated, bonus content SCAN THIS AD TO SEE VIDEO SCAN THIS AD TO SEE VIDEO Blipp this ad to see a demonstration from Paul Samyn, our editor . View videos . See photo galleries . Vote in our polls . See today's crossword puzzle answers . and much more NEWS CANADA A5 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2014 MONTREAL - Bryan Versteeg hasn't stopped drawing ever since he got his first crayons and left marks all over the walls as a child - all the while dreaming of someday living in space. He still remembers sketch books and drawing pencils were the predominant gifts on his fifth and sixth birthdays. So began the career of the 38- yearold Calgary space artist who's becoming known for his futuristic out- of- thisworld illustrations. " I've always been seeking out the future of engineering," Versteeg said in an interview with The Canadian Press. Over the years, he has been inspired by magazines like Popular Science , which he collected during the 1980s and ' 90s. The monthly magazine has been well known for its concept drawings of flying cars and interplanetary spaceships. " It's a great way to look into the future," he added. Warp forward to Versteeg's recent illustrations of what a human habitat on Mars would eventually look like. His Mars One conceptual designs have appeared in thousands of articles on the Internet. Versteeg started working on the Martian space habitat after he was approached by the founders of the Mars One Foundation, which is planning a one- way mission to the red planet. In December, the non- profit organization selected 75 Canadians to enter the second round of the mission's selection process. The 43 Canadian women and 32 men were among 1,058 candidates selected. Versteeg said he agreed with the Mars One approach, which involved sending up to six landers to the Martian surface before shipping up any humans. They would include two living units, two life- support systems and two supply units. " If you're going to be putting a permanent base there, you want to make sure everything is working before people get there," Versteeg said. " I really believe in Mars settlement and colonization as a foothold for human beings on another planet." Versteeg has worked in the graphics industry for more than 20 years, as a conceptual artist in the architectural and engineering fields. In 2011, he founded Spacehabs. com in order to focus on the conceptual visualization for space exploration. Versteeg is also a member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists. One of the other projects he has been working on for about two years is his Kalpana One space settlement. It's named after Kalpana Chawla, one of seven astronauts killed when U. S. Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart while returning to Earth in February 2003. Kalpana One is Versteeg's idea of what living in outer space could actually look like. " The interior of the space station is basically a space for about 10,000 people," he said. " I designed the golf courses and the football fields, the farms, the recreation spaces and ponds and landscaping - it was probably 50 projects within one project." Versteeg's illustrations can aptly be compared to the artwork for the iconic rotating space station in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey . " They did a lot of research and they made something that was as close to realistic as possible," he noted. Versteeg referred to his greeneryfilled Kalpana One space station as " 2101" - 100 years after the setting of Stanley Kubrick's science- fiction masterpiece. " I know I've always wanted to live in space and so it doesn't need to be all that incredible for me to want to live there," Versteeg said. " I try to create places that my wife could see herself live in." The futurist artist, who has been married for 10 years, began studying art and design in school at the age of 14. He originally considered a career in architecture and learned interior design along the way. Versteeg said a lot of research goes into his artwork and he's always reading up on the latest cutting- edge technology. " You try to limit yourself within the laws of physics and within existing concepts that we already understand because I really want to make sure it's realistic," Versteeg said. " If a person looks at it and says: ' That's impossible' right off the bat, then we've kind of already lost a bit of the audience." Catherine Hazin, director of arts and culture for the Canadian Space Society, has called Versteeg " an incredibly important Canadian artist." " He is really making the idea of living and inhabiting space accessible to the public," she said in an interview. " It's an incredibly important job that nobody has been able to do as effectively as he has until now." Versteeg is also one of the founders of Deep Space Industries ( DSI), a company that plans to mine and utilize space resources like asteroids. NASA is currently studying a plan to send astronauts to study an asteroid and Versteeg said DSI has been co- operating with the U. S. space agency. " Some of the DSI guys have been consulted for NASA's designs, but exactly how NASA is planning on doing it is up in the air," he said. " We have our own ideas of how we can go out and prospect and analyze and target asteroids and then return them, process them and use the resources for manufacturing." - The Canadian Press O TTAWA - When the Conservative brain trust sits down to hash out a crowd- pleasing alternative to income splitting, hoping to undo the damage from backing off a key 2011 campaign promise, experts say there will be plenty of options on the table. Critics of the controversial, three- year- old proposal - and there are many - say allowing spouses with children under 18 to share up to $ 50,000 of their income for tax purposes does little for low- income families and encourages one of the parents to stay out of the workforce. The C. D. Howe Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives alike say roughly 85 per cent of households would gain nothing from the proposal, particularly single parents. Some 40 per cent of the benefits would go to families earning more than $ 125,000, for whom the change could be worth $ 6,400 a year, the institute calculates. That would likely include Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who makes $ 320,400 a year and has two teenage children. If the Conservatives want to provide tax relief for more families with children, there are some alternatives, said Alexandre Laurin, who co- authored the 2011 study. Increase the universal child care benefit, which gives $ 100 a month to families with children under six, he offers. Kevin Milligan, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia, suggests extending the age range to older children, to the benefit of both low and high- income families. Another example, the Canada child tax benefit for families with children under 18, provides a certain amount per child and is phased out by income level. Widening the employment insurance provision for parental leave would give parents to spend more time with their children, Laurin says. His personal preference would be an across- the- board tax cut and, as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has suggested, paying down the $ 619- billion federal debt. " The more you lower the tax rate, the less the need for income splitting, if the intention was to equalize the tax burden between two types of families," he says. " It's just simple arithmetic." University of Calgary economist Jack Mintz argues it's time to change the tax system so single- income families aren't facing a higher tax rate than other households. The income- splitting proposal can be tweaked so different families can share the benefits, he argues. Right now, one spouse can transfer the unused portion of the basic personal tax exemption to the other spouse. One alternative would be to make that personal exemption nontransferable if they decide to take advantage of income splitting. " Between income splitting and this provision, you actually create a lot of equality between families of different types," Mintz says. " Because to me, this whole issue is how to treat families of different types." If the Tories were to lower the $ 50,000 transfer limit on the original proposal - $ 25,000, for example - they'd not only save on the cost of income splitting, it would also help middle- income families, says Mintz. Or it could also be clawed back from higher- income earners. David Macdonald, the chief economist with the Centre for Policy Alternatives, says the Tories should abandon the income- splitting proposal entirely because it only helps wealthy, single- earner families. " It's sort of like a poison," Macdonald says. " If you take too much poison, it's going to kill you. If you take a little less poison, maybe you're just going to get a sore stomach for a couple of days, and then if you take even less poison, maybe you'll only get a headache." If the Tories want to help families with children, they could look at existing childbased benefits, such as the national child benefit supplement, he suggests. It provides monthly payments to low- income families with children, no matter if it's one or two parents, and reduces them as they earn more income. - The Canadian Press Harper has options to income splitting: experts By Maria Babbage His very own space odyssey in drawings By Peter Rakobowchuk Canadian artist envisions living on Mars ' I've always been seeking out the future of engineering' - Artist Bryan Versteeg HANDOUT ( ABOVE) / LARRY MACDOUGAL / THE CANADIAN PRESS ( BELOW) Bryan Versteeg's idea of what a martian space habitat would look like. GALIT RODAN / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Whether it's increasing the child- care benefit or cutting taxes, Stephen Harper has some alternatives to income splitting. A_ 05_ Feb- 16- 14_ FP_ 01. indd A5 2/ 15/ 14 9: 54: 05 PM ;