Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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I was recently accused on another blog of repeating a defeatist mantra.

My “mantra” has always been WE CAN GO NOW. The solutions are crystal clear to anyone who takes a survey of the available technology. What blinds people is their unwillingness to accept the cost of making it happen.
There is no cheap.

Paul Gilster comments on his blog Centauri Dreams, concerning Radiation, Alzheimer’s Disease and Fermi;

“Neurological damage from human missions to deep space — and the study goes no further than the relatively close Mars — would obviously affect our planning and create serious payload constraints given the need for what might have to be massive shielding.”

Massive shielding.
This is the game changer. The showstopper. The sea change. The paradigm shift.
The cosmic ray gorilla. Whatever you want to call it, it is the reality that most of what we are familiar with concerning human space flight is not going to work in deep space.
Massive Shielding=Nuclear Propulsion=Bombs
M=N=B
We have to transport nuclear materials to the Moon where we can light off a nuclear propulsion system. The Moon is where the ice-derived Water to fill up a Massive radiation shield is to be found.
Massive Shield=Water=Lunar Base
M=W=L
Sequentially: L=W=M=N=B
So, first and last, we need an HLV to get to this Lunar Base (where the Water for the shield is) and we need to safely transport Nuclear material there (and safely assemble and light off the Bombs to push the shield around).

Radiation shielding is the first determining factor in spaceship design and this largely determines the entire development of space travel.

http://voices.yahoo.com/water-bombs-8121778.html?cat=15

I recently posted this on the only two other sites that will allow me to express my opinions;

I see the problem as one of self similarity; trying to go cheap being the downfall of all these schemes to work around human physiology.

When I first became interested in space travel several years ago I would comment on a couple blogs and find myself constantly arguing with private space proponents- and saying over and over again, “there is no cheap.” I was finally excommunicated from that bunch and banned from posting. They would start calling me an idiot and other insults and when I tried to return the favor the moderator would block my replies. The person who runs those two sites works for a firm promoting space tourism- go figure.

The problem is that while the aerospace industry made some money off the space program as an outgrowth of the military industrial complex, it soon became clear that spaceships are hard money- they have to work. The example of this is the outrage over the Apollo 1 fire and subsequent oversight of contractors- a practice which disappeared after Apollo and resulted in the Space Shuttle being such a poor design. A portion of the shuttle development money reportedly went under the table into the B-1 bomber program; how much we will never know. Swing wings are not easy to build which is why you do not see it anymore; cuts into profits.

The easy money of cold war toys has since defeated any move by industry to take up the cause of space exploration. No easy money in spaceships. People who want something for nothing rarely end up with anything worth anything. Trying to find cheap ways around furnishing explorers with the physcial conditions human beings evolved in is going to fail. On the other hand if we start with a baseline of one gravity and Earth level radiation we are bound to succeed.

The engineering solutions to this baseline requirement are as I have already detailed; a tether for gravity and a massive moonwater shield with bomb propulsion. That is EXACTLY how to do it and I do not see any one else offering anything else that will work- just waffling and spewing about R&D.
We have been doing R&D for over half a century. It is a reason to go that is supposedly lacking.

When that crater in Mexico was discovered in 1980 the cold war was reaching it’s crescendo and the massive extinction it caused was overshadowed by the threat of nuclear weapons. Impact defense is still the only path to all that DOD money for a Moon base.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121231180632.htm

Excerpt: “Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts,” said M. Kerry O’Banion, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and the senior author of the study. “The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

It appears when Eugene Parker wrote “Shielding Space Travelers” in 2006 he was right- and all the private space sycophants claiming radiation mitigation is trivial are wrong.

Only a massive water shield a minimum of 14 feet thick and massing 400 tons for a small capsule can shield human beings in deep space on long duration missions. And since a small capsule will not have sufficient space to keep a crew psychologically healthy on a multi-year journey it is likely such a shield will massive over a thousand tons.

This mass may seem to make Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO) impractical but in fact it is not an obstacle but an enabler. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion using bombs to push a spaceship to the outer solar sytem becomes more efficient the larger the ship and this amount of water is useful in a closed loop life support system.

Lighting off bombs in the Earth’s magnetosphere is not acceptable and this points to the Moon as the obvious place to launch nuclear missions and also to acquire the water for radiation shielding. The Space Launch System (SLS) is the human-rated Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) with a powerful escape system that can safely transport the required fissionables to the Moon.

2013 may be the year of the comet and the year of the spaceship if the two goals of protecting the planet from impacts and establishing off world colonies are finally recognized as vital to the survival of humankind.

May peace break into your home and may thieves come to steal your debts.
May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet for $100 bills.
May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your lips!
May happiness slap you across the face and may your tears be that of joy
May the problems you had, forget your home address!

In simple words .….….……May 2013 be EXTRAORDINARY … the best year of your life!!! Simply the best New Year greeting anyone has sent to me. This was from Robert White of Extraordinary People.

This morning I checked the Lifeboat stats for 2012. When I started blogging for Lifeboat at the end of July, we ended July 2012 with 42,771 unique visitors. We closed 2012 with 90,920 unique visitors for the month December. Wow! Our blogging has become more relevant, and more thought provoking. As a community of bloggers (with the exception of one) we have moved away from the 3 Cs of pseudoscience. Clouding the field. Confusing the public’s perception. Chasing away talent.

How did we do this? By backing up our discussions with hard facts, robust debate and real numbers. From years if not decades of investigation in our field of research. By speaking from our own unique experience. By sharing that unique experience with our readers.

Once again, may 2013 be an extraordinary year.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

A happy new year to the human race from it’s most important member; me. Since self-worship seems to be the theme of the new American ideal I had better get right with me.

With my government going over the fiscal cliff it would appear that the damned soul of Ayn Rand is exerting demonic influence on the political system through worship of the individual. The tea party has the Republicans terrified of losing their jobs. Being just like me, those individuals consider themselves the most important person on the planet- so I cannot fault them.

As Ayn Rand believed, “I will not die, it’s the world that will end”, so who cares about the collective future of the human race? Towards the end of 2013 the heavens may remind us the universe does not really care about creatures who believe themselves all important. The choice may soon be seen clearly in the light of the comet’s tail; the glorification of the individual and the certain extinction of our race, or the acceptance of a collective goal and our continued existence.

Ayn Rand made her choice but most of us have time to choose more wisely. I pray for billions, tens and hundreds of billions of dollars- for a Moonbase.

I am not one of the Earth is overpopulated crowd. We could have a high quality of life for every man, woman and child on this planet if we did not, as a species, spend most of our resources pandering to moral weakness and cravings for profit. The myth of scarcity is a smokescreen to obscure the reality of greed and ignorance. Which is why people like Gerard K. O’Neill sought to improve the human condition with space colonies.

We need to go into space to first safeguard the Earth from impacts and the human race from extinction, and along with these missions to spread life into the universe through colonization. None of those three things has anything to do with getting filthy rich or intimidating other nations with our firepower so we can steal their resources. Which is why it has not happened.

Happy New Year with hopes for a more enlightened public.

Happy new year to my Wife, my Daughter, my Father, and to those who give a damn about next year even if they will not be there.

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts, Legal Standing, Safety Awareness, Economic Viability, Theoretical-Empirical Relationships, and Technological Feasibility.

In this set of posts I discuss three concepts. If implemented these concepts have the potential to bring about major changes in our understanding of the physical Universe. But first a detour.

In my earlier post I had suggested that both John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman, giants of the physics community, could have asked different questions (what could we do differently?) regarding certain solutions to Maxwell’s equations, instead of asking if retrocausality could be a solution.

I worked 10 years for Texas Instruments in the 1980s & 1990s. Corporate in Dallas, had given us the daunting task of raising our Assembly/Test yields from 83% to 95%, within 3 years, across 6,000 SKUs (products), with only about 20+ (maybe less) engineers, and no assistance from Dallas. Assembly/Test skills had moved offshore, therefore, Dallas was not in a position to provide advice. I look back now and wonder how Dallas came up with the 95% number.

Impossibly daunting because many of our product yields were in the 70+%. We had good engineers and managers. The question therefore was how do you do something seemingly impossible, without changing your mix of people, equipment and technical skills sets?

Let me tell you the end first. We achieved 99% to 100% Assembly/Test yields across the board for 6,000 SKUs within 3 years. And this, in a third world nation not known for any remarkable scientific or engineering talent! I don’t have to tell you what other lessons we learned from this as it should be obvious. So me telling Dr. David Neyland, of DARPA’s TTO “I’ll drop a zero” at the first 100YSS conference in 2011, still holds.

How did we do it? For my part I was responsible for Engineering Yield (IT) Systems, test operation cost modeling for Overhead Transfer Pricing, and tester capacity models to figure out how to increase test capacity. But the part that is relevant to this discussion was team work. We organized the company into teams, brought in consultants to teach what team work was and how to arrive at and execute operational and business decisions as teams.

And one of the keys to team work was to allow anyone and everyone to speak up. To voice their opinions. To ask questions, no matter how strange or silly those questions appeared to be. To never put down another person because he/she had different views.

Everyone from the managing director of the company down to the production operators were organized into teams. Every team had to meet once a week. To ask those questions. To seek those answers. That was some experience, working with and in those teams. We found things we did not know or understand about our process. That in turn set off new & old teams to go figure! We understood the value of a matrix type organization.

As a people not known for any remarkable scientific and engineering talent, we did it! Did the impossible. I learned many invaluable lessons from my decade at Texas Instruments that I’ll never forget and will always be grateful for.

My Thanksgiving this year is that I am thankful I had the opportunity to work for Texas Instruments when I did.

So I ask, in the spirit of the Kline Directive, can we as a community of physicists and engineers come together, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not, to make interstellar travel a reality within our lifetimes?

Previous post in the Kline Directive series.

Next post in the Kline Directive series.

—————————————————————————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts, Legal Standing, Safety Awareness, Economic Viability, Theoretical-Empirical Relationships, and Technological Feasibility.

I was not intending to write Part 5, but judging from the responses I thought it was necessary to explain how to read a journal paper – and a good read cannot be done without a pen and paper. If you are writing a paper, when you have completed it, I would suggest you set it aside for at least a week. Don’t think about your paper or the topic during this shmita period. Then come back to your paper with a pen & paper and read it afresh. You’d be surprised by the number of changes you make, which means you have to start well before your deadline.

Note, you can find articles on how to review or write papers and here is one, by IOP (Institute of Physics, UK) titled Introduction to refereeing, and is a good guide to read before reading or writing a paper. This is especially true for physics but applies to all the sciences and engineering disciplines.

Note, for those who have been following the comments on my blog posts, IOP explicitly states “Do not just say ‘This result is wrong’ but say why it is wrong…” and “be professional and polite in your report”. So I hope, we as commentators, will be more professional in both our comments and the focus of our comments. Thanks.

In this post I will address what is not taught in colleges. There are three things to look out for when reading or writing a paper, Explicit and Implicit Axioms, Mathematical Construction versus Mathematical Conjecture, and finally, Concepts and Logical Flow. In this first part I discuss Explicit and Implicit Axioms.

This may sound silly but 1+1 = 2 is not an axiom. Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell proved that 1+1 adds to 2. Therefore, we see, that the immense success of the modern civilization compared to all other previous civilizations, is due to the encroachment of the imperceptible mathematical rigor in our daily lives by nameless, faceless scientist, engineers and technicians. Now that is something to ponder about. If we lose that rigor we lose our society. We can discuss economic and political theory but without this mathematical rigor, nothing else works.

Any theoretical work is based on axioms. For example in Pythagorean geometry, one assumes that surfaces are flat in such a manner the sum of the angles of a triangle adds to 180º. In Riemann geometry this is not the case. Explicit axioms are those stated in the paper.

Implicit axioms are axioms that are taken for granted to be true and therefore not stated, or considered too trivial to be mentioned. More often than not, the author is not aware he or she is using or stating an implicit axiom.

For example, mass causes a gravitational field is an implicit axiom, as we cannot with our current theoretical foundations nor with our current technologies prove either way that mass is or is not the source of a gravitational field. This axiom is also considered trivial because what else could?

But wait, didn’t Einstein … ? Yes correct, he did .…

Mass is a carryover from Newton. It shows how difficult it is to break from tradition even when we are breaking from tradition! Since Newton figured out that mass was an excellent means (i.e. “proxy” to be technically rigorous) to determining gravitational acceleration in mathematical form, therefore mass had to be the source. All tests pertaining to Einstein’s relativity test the field characteristics, not how the source creates the gravitational field.

But our understanding of the world has changed substantially since both Newton and Einstein. We know that quarks are at the center of matter and exist in the same ‘amount’ as mass. So how does one tell the difference between quark interaction and mass as the gravitational source?

The importance of implicit axioms in particular and axioms in general, is that when we recognize them we can change them and drive fundamental changes in theory and technologies. I asked the questions, what is gravity modification and how can we do it? These questions are at best vague, but they were as good a starting point as any? But life happens backwards. We get the answer and then only do we recognize the precise question we were attempting to ask!

When I started researching gravity modification in 1999, I just had this sense that gravity modification should be possible in our lifetimes, but I did not know what the question was. It was all vague and unclear at that time, but I was very strict about the scope of my investigation. I would only deal with velocity and acceleration.

I spent 8 years searching, examining, discarding, testing and theorizing anomalies, trying to get a handle on what gravity modification could be. Finally in 2007 I started building numerical models of how gravitational acceleration could work in spacetime. In February 2008 I discovered g=τc2 and at that moment I knew the question: Can gravitational acceleration be described mathematically without knowing the mass of the planet or star?

So the implicit axiom, mass is required for gravitational acceleration, is no longer valid, and because of that we now have propulsion physics.

If, in the spirit of the Kline Directive, you want to explore what others have not, and seek what others will not, my advice is that when you read a paper ask yourself, what are the implicit and explicit axioms in the paper?

Previous post in the Kline Directive series.

Next post in the Kline Directive series.

—————————————————————————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

2012 has already been a bad omen when it comes to humankind solving the dangers ahead. Perhaps an early review will make next January 1 brighter.

There has been strong information questioning the existence of Hawkins Radiation, which was a major reason most scientists think Black Hole Collider research is safe, without any increase in a call for a safety conference. Once, due to classification keeping it away from the general public, there was a small debate whether the first atomic explosion would set off a chain reaction that would consume the earth. On March 1, 1954 the Lithium that was, for other purposes, put in what was intended to be a small Hydrogen Bomb test, created, by far, the dirtiest atomic explosion ever as the natives on Bikini Island woke up to two suns in the sky that morning. History would be different had the first tests gravely injured people. Eventually people in the future will look back at how humankind dealt with the possibility of instantly destroying itself, as more important, than how it dealt with slowly producing more doomsday-like weapons.

With genetic engineering the results are amazing, goats with hair thousands of times stronger than wool would offer some increased protection from its predators. Think what would happen if, 1 foot long, undigestible fibers possibly with some sharp spots gets accidental inbreed in goat meat, or very un-tasty animals spread in the wild throughout the ecosystem. In 2001 Genetic Insecticide intended only to protect corn to be used in animal feed spread by the winds and cross breading to all corn in the northern hemisphere. Bees drinking corn syrup from one discarded soda can can endanger an entire hive. Now there is fear of this gene getting into wheat, rice and all plants that don’t rely on insects in some way. The efforts to require food to be labeled for genetically modified ingredients doesn’t address the issue and may actually distract from warning of the dangers ahead.

There are some who say bad people want to play God and create a god particle, likewise some say evil Monsanto,with bad motives, is trying to prevent us from buying safe food. This attitude doesn’t help create a safer future, or empower those trying to rationally deal with the danger.

The next danger is the attempt to impose Helter Skelter on the world with an Islam baiting movie. To Coptic Christians there was to be a movie on them being mistreated in Egypt. Actors hired to perform in a movie about flying saucers landing 2000 years ago and helped a man who never needed a shave and had a far away look in his eyes who had a donkey who he loved, and didn’t know who his father was. Islam haters fund-raised to create a movie smearing bin Laden but tricking Muslims to see it with movie posters in Arabic.

Somehow despite the false claim of 100 Jewish donors, no one who looked Jewish and rich was attacked in Los Angeles. Prompt expose‘ by Coptic Christian religious leaders, instead of someone else, exposing the claim that the person who pretended to be a Coptic Christian refugee and a rich Jewish businessman was the same person. Quick response prevented attacks on Copts in Egypt. Every relative of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, didn’t want Romney to use their name for campaign purposes. It is amazing that of all the people killed in the riots around the world following this hate trailer none of them were Americans who wanted their relative’s name used to promote anger at Muslims.

It is a bad omen that this was looked upon by many as a free speech issue not a terror attack. When Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed to cause tit for tat revenge killings by a van that was stolen a year earlier in Japan, the UN took charge of the investigation. When Charles Manson tried to impose a Helter Skelter race war on the earth he didn’t come close enough to warrant being punished for a separate crime. If these two previous terror attacks on the world had been done in a way that no one was killed in the initial attack, is the earth really dumb enough to discuss it as a free speech issue?

Michael Jackson’s sister, before he died, was alarmed claiming that Michael Jackson’s handlers were systematical putting him under stress to put her brother in harm’s way. Comrad Murray this year wants a new trial insisting that he never would have given Michael orally such a badly mixed dose of anesthesia, and as no one seems to remember he had been distracted by a call on his cell phone for an offer of an important business deal. The world is full of incidents where professionals commit a crime in such a complex , convoluted way that it is hard to prosecute as a crime. Perhaps all these incidents could be looked into again.

It would be helpful if those stereotyped as not being concerned speak out like a sky diver warning about the Collider or a atheist leader and/or smut dealer speaking out on the hate religious film attack calling for investigation and prosecution. This Lifeboat site can accomplish more when it joins in where stereotypically one wouldn’t expect it to.

January through October, 2012, hasn’t been a good omen, in humankind’s ability to solve its problems and deal with danger, perhaps doing a year in review in October instead of waiting till January will make next January’s review brighter.

Most blogs expire concerning comments, one can comment below months from now,

http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/22-22/14022-ambassador-stevens-is-a-hero-four-heroes-who-ended-a-helter-skelter-chain

http://richardkanepa.blogspot.com/2012/10/it-is-only-human-to-be-angry-over-ones_18.html

A systematic decay rate of white dwarf stars in the galaxy is possibly implicit in the data that the LSAG scientists of CERN just sent you and which you kindly forwarded to me.

This preliminary evidence is quite alarming. It allows one to extrapolate to the effects that the same causally to be implicated agent (black holes) has when produced on earth in ultra-slow form at CERN. This CERN attempts to do for 2 years – and with maximum luminosity during the remaining weeks of 2012.

Much as in nuclear fission the “cold neutrons” (slow neutrons) possess a much larger “cross-section” than fast ones, so the artificial “cold mini black holes” predictably possess a much larger cross section than their ultra-fast natural cousins in white dwarfs. Hence the nightmare of but a few years remaining to planet earth would be supported by empirical evidence for the first time.

Can you arrange for a first public dialog with CERN?

Thank you very much,

Sincerely yours,

Prof. Otto E. Rossler, University of Tubingen, Germany

P.S.: An Italian court just convicted 7 scientists for not having predicted an earth quake. This judgment will not prevail, I predict, because it amounts to clairvoyance requested from science by the court. CERN’s public behavior for 5 years belongs into an entirely different category, however, since they openly ignore an extant scientific proof of their actively causing the worst conceivable disaster. I give CERN the kind advice to stop collisions to date. And I thank the Lifeboat administration for leaving this text online for this is not a game. (Compare also a recent German-language newspaper article http://newsticker.sueddeutsche.de/list/id/1374980 .)

I cannot let the day pass without contributing a comment on the incredible ruling of multiple manslaughter on six top Italian geophysicists for not predicting an earthquake that left 309 people dead in 2009. When those who are entrusted with safeguarding humanity (be it on a local level in this case) are subjected to persecution when they fail to do so, despite acting in the best of their abilities in an inaccurate science, we have surely returned to the dark ages where those who practice science are demonized by the those who misunderstand it.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/10/20121022151851442575.html

I hope I do not misrepresent other members of staff here at The Lifeboat Foundation, in speaking on behalf of the Foundation in wishing these scientists a successful appeal against a court ruling which has shocked the scientific community, and I stand behind the 5,000 members of the scientific community who sent an open letter to Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano denouncing the trial. This court ruling was ape-mentality at its worst.