Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: existential risks

Dear CERN:

I love you as only a scientist can love the biggest scientific institution on earth. My proposal how to stabilize the ITER (a still larger big-science experiment than your LHC) so it can produce unlimited usable energy for the planet, just got published. I very much cherish high tech whenever it serves humankind.

This attitude of mine notwithstanding, I have been asking you in public for 4 ½ years to, please, falsify some other results which prove that your LHC experiment is jeopardizing the planet on a maximally short term basis. Specifically, I showed in mounting detail that the black holes that you are trying to produce in the LHC, (i) arise much more readily than hoped for, (ii) are invisible to your superb detectors, and (iii) are going to grow exponentially once gotten stuck inside matter (so as to shrink the earth to two centimeters in perhaps ten years’ time).

As you know, I dearly hope that the result can be shown to be false at a critical junction. Anyone who succeeds in doing so is your closest ally. However, as long as this aim is waiting to be achieved, I continue being your only ally. All other apparent allies who support your strategy of non-updating your 4 ½ years old safety report are your worst enemies. They have good reason never to show their face in public. Anyone who is opposed to the danger being disproved is obviously not your friend.

Forgive me, dear CERN, that I am so much on your side as to give you the “order” to immediately halt the LHC experiment until the proof of danger has been dismantled.

I know I have no right to give you any orders. I am not the police nor the CERN Council nor the Security Council of your sister organization, the United Nations. As long as these institutions all violate their duty of requesting an update on your 4 ½ years old safety report before letting you continue, I have the right and the duty to speak in their name to you.

The planet will never forget it to you if you heed the friendly order given to you by someone who deeply admires all your great achievements but, at the same time, insists on the worst safely gap of history to be plugged immediately.

Take care,
Sincerely yours,

Otto E. Rossler, chaos researcher

I do not regret voting for this President and I would and will do it again. However.……I am not happy about our space program. Not at all. One would think there would be more resistance concerning the privatization of space and the inferior launch vehicles being tested or proposed. Indeed there would be objections except for a great deception being perpetrated on a nation ignorant of the basic facts about space flight. The private space gang has dominated public discourse with very little answering criticism of their promises and plans.
This writer is very critical of the flexible path.

It is a path to nowhere.

Compared to the accomplishments of NASA’s glory days, there is little to recommend the players in the commercial crew game. The most fabulous is Space X, fielding a cheap rocket promising cheap lift. There is so little transparency concerning the true cost of their launches that one space-faring nation has called the bluff and stated SpaceX launch prices are impossible. The Falcon 9, contrary to stellar advertising, is a poor design in so many ways it is difficult to know where to begin the list. The engines are too small and too many, the kerosene propellant is inferior to hydrogen in the upper stage, and promising to reuse spent hardware verges on the ridiculous. Whenever the truth about the flexible path is revealed, the sycophants begin to wail and gnash their teeth.

The latest craze is the Falcon “heavy.” The space shuttle hardware lifted far more, though most of the lift was wasted on the orbiter. With 27 engines the faux heavy is a throwback to half a century ago when clusters of small engines were required due to nothing larger being available. The true heavy rocket of the last century had five engines and the number of Falcon engines it would take to match the Saturn V proves just how far the mighty have fallen.

Long, long posts, doubling as SpaceX advertisements, swamp any forum where the deception is exposed. The most popular and endlessly repeated dogma concerns fuel depots. Refueling in space is hyped as the answer to all problems. Unfortunately the chances of making it work with the selected propellant- liquid hydrogen- are not good. This kind of blasphemy is sure to bring howls of protest on any forum where it appears. The sad truth is the American people are being conned into throwing away the Heavy Lift Infrastructure that is the only path to Beyond Earth Orbit Human Space Flight. SpaceX is more of an exploitation company to charge the taxpayer twice than aerospace company. Everything they are pushing- from the engine design to friction stir welded stages, to the heat shield on the capsule has all been developed by NASA on the taxpayers dime. They use NASA labs and engineers for token payment and then advertise low prices. It is a scam. Worse than a scam, it is a distraction from and drain on funds from the only real possibility for space travel on the horizon; the Space Launch System (SLS).

LEO is not space exploration. It is not space travel. It may have qualified as space flight at one time but not anymore. It is endless circles at very high altitude. If any achievement deserves the “been there” scoff it is Low Earth Orbit.

Human beings left Earth at 24,200 mph (38,938 km/hr) in December of 1968. In December of 1972 we returned and have not gone back. We did continue Heavy Lift launches after Apollo with the Space Shuttle- but the STS did not launch humans beyond earth orbit. Due to lack of funding the Shuttle regrettably launched a hundred tons of wings, landing gear, and never full cargo bay over one hundred times so they could come right back. What little stayed up there at very high altitude going in circles is that higher price tag people cry about.

To expand the human race into the solar system requires nuclear energy. We will not be assembling, testing, and lighting off any nuclear systems in LEO. We do however have a human rated capsule with a powerful escape system almost ready that is suitable for transporting fissionables directly to the Moon- where we can assemble, test, and light off nukes. To send that capsule directly to the moon, and the human beings to construct a base that can support a nuclear mission, we need an HLV with hydrogen upper stages. The hydrogen upper stages are what made Apollo successful by making a heavy payload go fast. That vehicle is a few years away and sooner with more money. The DOD has vast resources it expends on weapons that do not protect us from two clear and present dangers; impacts and plagues. I often give examples on this site of “cold war toys” that are “hideously expensive” and do not seem to work right or do anything magical. That big rocket is the magic that will open the solar system to human colonization. Private space efforts are not capable of making any of it happen. This is why I consider the whole “new space” movement as being essentially rich hobbyists selling tourist trips. My thoughts on this “narrow and inflexible path” are based largely on the work of Freeman Dyson and Eugene Parker- and the discovery of millions of tons of water on the Moon.

Despite having “been there,” the Moon is the next step in opening up the solar system to human exploration and colonization. Low Earth Orbit is being sold as space travel even though to travel, you have to go somewhere. The battle cry of “cheap lift” is promoting the equivalent of the “liar loans” that wrecked the housing market. Falling for this something for nothing too good to be true rip-off will leave the U.S. trapped. Decades more of nothing but more endless circles at very high altitude. Mars is used as a marketing gimmick but is really just a rock with a deep gravity well. Everyone seems to think it is “just close enough” for chemical propulsion. It is not. If you are going to build the necessary Atomic Spaceship (and we would have to have a moonbase to launch a nuclear mission) you might as well go someplace really interesting.

All those places are in the outer solar system.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120628190006.htm
To establish a moonbase requires the Space Launch System to be put into service. There is no substitute for a Heavy Lift Vehicle with hydrogen upper stages.

The 130 ton lift of the proposed SLS is also at this time slated to be used as a crew vehicle. This was one of the worst mistakes of the shuttle program. The crew capsules being tested and built by SpaceX and Boeing pack seven astronauts into a vehicle without a proper escape system and, in the case of SpaceX, doubling as a cargo vehicle. Both of these vehicles have an escape-system-that-is-not-an-escape-system. These underpowered hypergolic systems are not very good at saving a crew but will work great raising the orbit of tourist space stations. This is another one of those worst mistakes being repeated.

Infomercial hype aside, the falcon “heavy” and Delta IV are not HLV’s. This misinformation deceives the public and makes the average citizen think the SpaceX hobby rocket is a Saturn V. At a thrust of around 100,000 pounds each it would take 72 merlins to equal the thrust of the SRB’s on SLS, not counting what the 4 liquid hydrogen engines also produce- with much greater efficiency than Kerosene.

The real problem with the U.S. space program is obvious to anyone looking at how much money is spent by the DOD. It is always interesting to hear sermons about how critical surveillance satellites are to fighting illiterate mountain tribesman. Any DOD contractor hearing complaints about NASA wasting money breaks down in maniacal laughter. One of my favorite talking points is that we can train our young people to clear buildings with automatic weapons or we can train them to build spaceships; either way the money will get spent.

Take a look at military spending increases and it is obvious funding for spaceflight can go up. And there IS a valid DOD mission BEO and BELO (Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit). The valid military mission is impact defense and establishing outposts in the outer system- but this is hard money the aerospace industry wants nothing to do with. Unlike so many easy money weapon systems, spaceships have to actually work.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905134912.htm

It is a race against time- will this knowledge save us or destroy us? Genetic modification may eventually reverse aging and bring about a new age but it is more likely the end of the world is coming.

The Fermi Paradox informs us that intelligent life may not be intelligent enough to keep from destroying itself. Nothing will destroy us faster or more certainly than an engineered pathogen (except possibly an asteroid or comet impact). The only answer to this threat is an off world survival colony. Ceres would be perfect.

Complexity decomplexified: A List of 200 Results Encountered over 55 Years

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Science, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

The present list was compiled by a “specialist for non-specialization” who owes this scientific identity to the masters of three disciplines: physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker, biologist Konrad Lorenz and mathematician Bob Rosen. With the best findings, compressed into a line or two by heart, the synopsis brings hidden patterns to the fore. Simultaneously, the individual results become maximally vulnerable so as to facilitate either improvement or falsification.

(August 28, 2012)

Philosophical Preface

Descartes re-invented the rational world of Heraclitus. Specifically he asked the following question (paraphrased): “Do the ‘assignment conditions’ which we find ourselves glued to (the body; the now; the qualia including color or joy) represent an acceptable state of affairs?” The answer is “yes,“ Descartes proposed, if and only if the other two conditions that hold us in their grip (the “laws” and the momentarily applicable “initial conditions” in Newton’s later parlance) are intrinsically consistent. As long as this “machine conjecture” is fulfilled empirically, an infinite privilege separates the conscious observer from all other inhabitants of the world: The others become “mere machines” in the experience of the first (so that he can, for example, do a brain operation on them to save their life). Levinas calls this state of one’s being totally outside the other’s interior side, “exteriority.” The subject then has the option of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority – by acting fairly towards the poor “machine” of the other so as if it possessed a subjective side too even though this cannot be proven and indeed is totally absurd to assume were there not the miracle of the consciousness of the first. A single act of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority performed by the inmate of the dream of consciousness would then put the Dream-Giving Instance (DGI) to shame in case it is not benevolent. The fact that this risk is being taken by the DGI is living proof according to Descartes that the chain of colorful subjective moments, imposed on the subject is “not a bad dream.” In this vein the study of the “steel fibers” of the Cartesian coordinates that mathematically fit the colorless sub-portion of experience (its “Hades part”) acquires a maximum dignity. (Note that in the Greek Hades, all relations of our own upper world were preserved – except for the “blood” that gives color and substance to them.) The shadow part, as long as consistent, hence becomes an instrument by which to do good to one’s fellow dream figures which being machines are totally given into the dreamer’s hand as hostages. This “exteriority theory” (Levinas) endows science with an infinite dignity, Einstein-style, as long as it remains consistent. The problem of whether quantum mechanics fits in, with its apparent indeterminism reflecting a deterministic assignment, was first taken up by Everett. (I thank Ali Sanayei and Ivan Zelinka for discussions and Stephen Wolfram for encouragement. For J.O.R.)

The List

• An energy-saving nonlinear voice-proportional distortion-free amplitude modulation (based on negative feedback)

• “Almost invisible machines,” consisting of virtually infinitely many non-negative chemical variables that with arbitrarily long delays accruing at very low concentrations

• Chemical evolution is a special case, forming an Erdos-type growing automaton (similarly Stu Kaufmann and Joel Cohen)

• Teilhard’s “second arrow” in thermodynamics represents a valid description as an asymptotic approach toward “point Omega”

• “Recursive evolution”: Evolution improves evolution in the first place (with Michael Conrad in the footsteps of John Holland and John von Neumann)

• “Metabolic adaptation” (discovered by Darwin) is not predictive in its history-dependent details; however, “positional adaptation” (while itself implemented by metabolic adaption) is predictive

• “The Rossler task” (Michael Conrad): The decision-type traveling salesman problem

• Ric Charnov’s simultaneous “optimal foraging theory” is a parallel development

• Gödel’s theorem can be considered as a limiting solution to the NP-complete traveling salesman problem (which fact makes it intuitive)

• The “bacterial brain” implements a suboptimal local solution to the “smoothed-out traveling-salesman problem” (with Hans Bremermann)

• “The brain equation”: Yields an efficient local solution to the decision-type traveling-salesman problem

• An eusocial version of the brain equation does not exist

• A “universal brain”: Brain equation combined with a powerful “universal simulator” (or synonymously cognitive map system or Virtual-Reality machine)

• The “sinc algorithm” (real-space equivalent to a Fourier window in frequency space) can be approximated by a multi-level (both ascending and descending) Reichardt-von-Foerster type neural net (with Bernhard Uehleke)

• “Tolerance attractors” form under recurrence in such a neural net, implementing Poincaré-Zeeman-Poston-DalCin “tolerance theory” and realizing von Foerster’s dream of “Platonic ideation” (with Michael Klein)

• The “problem of fast picture-shifting” in multi-resolution neural nets, while solved by nature, eludes mathematical understanding

• “Pandaka-pygmaea Institute“: Was proposed to solve this and other brain problems by investigating the smallest fish brain (and that of its normal-size relative, Gobius niger)

• The positive sum-potential in the brain equation (“happiness”) is displayed by the young of social animals

• One particular sub-potential in the brain equation (“bonding”) is predictably displayed by social animals independently of age

• Two distinct displays (like “happiness” and “bonding”) can, through an evolutionary accident called “Huxley evolutionary ritualization,” acquire a functional overlap

• This accident happened independently in the evolution of two mammalian species: tail-wagging signals both affection and happiness in wolves, and the Smiley face signals both happiness and bonding in humans (similarly Jan van Hoof)

• “All animals are autistic” (AAAA): because the brain equation, an autonomous optimizer, is autistic

• Every brain-equation-carrier is “alive” independently of hardware because it solves the positional adaptation problem which is no less vital than the metabolic adaptation problem ( biochemical life and brain life have equal rank)

• Universal brains are “mirror-competent” owing to their high simulational capabilities

• Unlike humans and some other species, wolves do not have an universal brain (their VR component is too weak for mirror-competence)

• Smile-laughter overlap + strong bonding + mirror-competence = sufficient condition for an “epigenetic function change” in the sense of Robert Rosen, called the “personogenetic function change” (PFC)

• The PFC consists in the invention of the “suspicion of benevolence shown by the other” (which leads to a state of “being moved” in a positive feed-back comprising both sides)

• The PFC represents an example of “creation out of nothing” (the suspicion of, and production of, benevolence)

• “Person attractor” (Detlev Linke): The new stable mode of functioning arising in the PFC

• The PFC can be seen to be nothing but a misunderstanding (a mistaken convergence concocted in the universal simulator; but it is interactively confirmed

• The fact that the PFC represents a joint functional trap allows one to speak of “Nature’s Schadchen trick” (with Roger Malina)

• The person attractor resembles a “folie à deux” (a form of animal schizophrenia) compared to the physiological (autistic) functioning of the two autonomous optimizers with cognition

• The PFC constitutes a miracle worked by the toddler

• Watching this creation-out-of-nothing being achieved by the toddler is a maximally moving event; there appears to be no recorded documentation of this “holy of holies” of humankind

• Friendly teasing jokes (“humor”) are implicit in the PFC

• The mutually confirmed suspicion of benevolence acquires the character of an “objective truth” (there is no older objective truth)

• The “miracle” goes still further: A third fictitious person is involved in the personogenesis (called “god” or “Buddha” etc. in different cultures): The Dream-Giving Instance DGI or, synonymously, the “non-I” (or even the “emptiness behind the dream”)

• The “non-I” arises concomitantly with the “I” and the “you” (the two other persons created in the PFC)

• Women are probably more religious (they statistically have more “heart” in the sense of bonding and in regard of the presence of the bonding hormone oxytocin, and moreover in the majority of cases are the partner in the PFC

• A “nonautistic languaging” automatically develops as a consequence of the PFC (similarly C. Andy Hilgartner)

• Human society in all its essential aspects is formed as a consequence of the PFC: Society is based on asking questions and giving answers – on the basis of the mutual trust between persons

• The mentioned “physiological autism” of every autonomous optimizer with cognition persists in human beings with an innate “smile blindness” strong enough to prevent the epigenetic PFC from occurring

• The causal explanation of autism enables a causal therapy: The caretaker can deliberately produce an “acoustic smile” whenever momentarily happy (the acoustic smile consists in a tender bonding noise)

• The fact that the caretaker must be the essential bonding partner proves that modern child cribs are a collective tragedy (their uninformed use explains the global rise of autism)

• The “causal therapy of autism” has been shunned by the profession for 37 years (only Gregory Bateson approved of it)

• The reason for the silent boycott probably lies in the fact that the person attractor is “too easy to elicit”: Young mirror-competent bonding animals can predictably be lured into the personogenetic function change, too

• “Galactic export” is the technical term for the export of the personogenetic bifurcation towards non-human mirror-competent bonding animals (since the “small step” of recruiting another terrestrial life form is the giant leap involved)

• The planet-wide shying-away before the main step is an example of a collective subconscious “speciesism”

• The fear is palpable ever since Gregory Bateson and John C. Lilly’s joint student, Margaret Howe, tried to adopt a male dolphin 47 years ago; Koko (Francine Patterson’s gorilla life partner) and Kanzi (Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s grown-up bonobo child) are underrated

• Stephen Spielberg played on the same taboo in his movie “AI” – which brings-in the added feature that his non-biochemical person is potentially immortal (a fact he played-down tactfully)

• Leo Szilard introduced non-human persons in his 1948 sci-fi story “The Voice of the Dolphins” (written in the aftermath of his failure to prevent his other brainchild, the bomb, from being dropped)

• The “Rosette phenomenon” of sperm whales deserves to be taken seriously: What function has their daily meeting? (Cf. the author’s Sci-Fi story “The Tale of the Whale” mentioned in the Neosentience book by Bill Seaman and the author)

• “Horizontal exteriority” in the sense of Emmanuel Lévinas, is the omnipotence of the PFC, re-activated in an act of fairness

• “Vertical exteriority” is the matching term in the theological sense of Edmond Jabès (with Nils Röller)

• “A program can force the programmer to reply” (with Christa Sommerer and Adolf Muschg)

• “Simulacron Three” (by Daniel F. Galouye 1964) and “A Puppeteer’s World” (by Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1973) are anticipations of the same insight (followed by the “Matrix” movie and Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity Theory”)

• The “Turing test” – a test for personhood – got first passed in ancient Rome by the Cretan slave and later stoic philosopher Epictetus (as I learned from Bob Rosen, with Bill Seaman)

• Mathematical proof that the orangutan brain is functionally superior to the human brain

• An equation for a universal immune system (with Robert A. Lutz)

• A chemical universal circuit (with Dietrich Hoffmann)

• Differentiable automata exist mathematically (because certain ordinary differential equations can be approximately if correctly described by automata theory)

• Well-stirred automata exist physically

• Reaction scheme for a temperature-compensated chemical clock

• An “ultra-longterm continuous-stirred-tank-reactor version” of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction proposed: To check for a “late explosion” in the number of variables (with Michael Conrad)

• “Traffic-light” version of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (with Reimara Rossler)

• “Slinky attractor” (with Okan Gurel)

• “Reinjection principle” is valid in more than two-dimensional phase spaces (independently Christian Mira)

• Chaotic electronic multivibrator (built with Hartmut Waible)

• “The Rossler attractor” (Norman Packard)

• “Spiral chaos”

• “Screw-type chaos”

• “The sound of chaos” (idling motor; hoarse voice)

• Chaos (a stereoscopic sound movie made with Reimara Rossler and Thomas Wiehr 1976)

• “Hyperchaos” (name courtesy Paul Rapp)

• “The sound of hyperchaos” (like raindrops falling on a car’s roof)

• X-attractor (still unidentified)

• “Playdough task” (to be given to thousands of toddlers to find the hoped-for X-attractor)

• Atrio-ventricular heart chaos (with Reimara Rossler and Herbert D. Landahl)

• “Endocrinological chaos” (with Reimara Rossler, Peter Sadowski and Colin Sparrow)

• Chaos in the Zhabotinsky reaction (with Klaus Wegmann, in parallel to John L. Hudson)

• “Cloud attractor” (with James A. Yorke)

• “Folded-towel map” (in parallel with Masaya Yamaguti’s “folded handkerchief map”)

• “Punctured hyperchaos” as source of any transfinitely exact 2-D self-similarity (with Michael Klein)

• “The chaotic hierarchy” (the simplest pertinent equation was subsequently found by Gerold Baier and Sven Sahle)

• Explicit differentiable Smale-Urysohn solenoid (with Pal Fischer and W.R. Smith)

• “Transfinitely invertible attractors” (almost everywhere)

• First explicit Poincaré recurrence (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• A generic Milnor attractor (with Francisco Doria and Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• A “society of flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Hyperfat attractors” (with John L. Hudson and Erik Mosekilde)

• Particle indistinguishability is transfinitely exact (with Hans Primas)

• Deterministic entropy (with Hans Diebner)

• “Gibbs-Sackur cell” in phase space

• Classical unit action (the system-specific Sackur cell)

• Micro time reversals in the Sackur cell of the observer (with Richard Wages)

• An estimate of Planck‘s constant (based on Sackur cell)

• Causal (exo) explanation of quantum mechanics (with David Finkelstein and Peter Weibel)

• Causal (exo) explanation of spin (with Michael Conrad)

• “Single-spin chemistry” in ultra-strong magnetic fields (with Dieter Fröhlich, Günter Häfelinger and Frank Kuske)

• “Second Periodic Table of Elements” (single-spin chemistry)

• “Cession twin of action”: hc (with Claudia Giannetti)

• Everett’s global Psi-function replaced by Boltzmann’s global H-function (on the exo-level)

• Everett’s observer-centered explanation of nonlocality (1957), confirmed

• The momentarily consciousness-bearing Sackur cell in the brain determines both h and c – a conjecture (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Weibel)

• “VX-diagram” in spacetime of the “completed Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox” (with John S. Bell, in parallelism to Susan Feingold)

• The partly satellite-based VX-type EPR-Bell experiment: To prove that more than one quantum world exists (similarly Anton Zeilinger)

• Locally-counterfactual superluminal telegraph (with Uwe Niedersen and Jürgen Parisi)

• Everett immortality (with Markus Fix and Bryce DeWitt)

• Aging equation (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• Evolutionary explanation of larger female longevity (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• A constant-temperature physico-chemical time-of-life clock in the body, predicted (with Reimara Rossler)

• Melatonin as a likely “handle” of the time-of-life clock (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• Lampsacus, hometown of all persons on the Internet (with Valentino Braitenberg and Gerhard J. Lischka)

• Early attempt to found Lampsacus (with Ezer Weizmann and Mohamed ElNaschie)

• “Earth-Moon University” in Lampsacus (with Wilfried Kriese, Artur P. Schmidt and George Lasker)

• The 16-level “pyramid of knowledge” (in Lampsacus)

• “WM-diagram” in time across different levels in gravitation (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• Gravitational-redshift proportional size increase (with Dieter Fröhlich, Heinrich Kuypers and Jurgen Parisi)

• Non-uniqueness of simultaneity on the rotating cylinder (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• Proof of flatness for the famous Ehrenfest rotating disk

• Black holes are “almost-black holes” (with Dieter Fröhlich, Heinrich Kuypers, Hans Diebner and Mohamed ElNaschie)

• A first proof of angular-momentum conservation in gravity (with Heinrich Kuypers)

• Einstein’s gravitational Time dilation possesses three new corollaries: Length, Mass and Charge suffer a proportional or antiproportional change (TeLeMaCh theorem)

• General relativity is in for a far-reaching mathematical and physical re-interpretation

• c is globally constant (Max Abraham, rehabilitated)

• Nonexistence of gravitational waves (as corollary)

• Nonexistence of gravitons (as corollary)

• The famous “indirect evidence for gravitational waves” (Hulse-Taylor), explained instead by tidal friction (with Dieter Fröhlich and René Stettler)

• A “Reeb foliation in spacetime” exists around any rotating black hole (with Dieter Fröhlich, following stimulation by Art Winfree)

• Kerr metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-meter disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-kilogram disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Charge conservation disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Reissner-Nordstrom metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Eddington-Finkelstein transformation disproved (via Telemach theorem) (with apologies to my close friend)

• Bekenstein theory disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Hawking radiation disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• The “coordinate singularity” at the horizon rehabilitated as a physical singularity (via Telemach theorem)

• Interior Schwarzschild solution: Proof of nonexistence

• Singularity theorem inside black hole horizon (Penrose) proven non-existent (with aüologies to my superior friend)

• Wormholes proved non-existent

• Upper half of Flamm’s paraboloid: Replaced by a generic 3-pseudosphere; lower half proven nonexistent

• Supersymmetry disproved (field particles do not exist on exo level)

• The human Lorenz matrix (of facial expressions): A universal natural facial-expressions simulator (with Wilfried Musterle)

• An equation for a one-dimensional – purely temporal – brain (with Michael Conrad; similarly Susie Vrobel)

• Evil as a contagious disease (unlike the good, evil cannot arise spontaneously)

• Children and adults form two different species, ethologically speaking (with Konrad Lorenz)

• “Pongo goneotrophicus” is a more appropriate biological name of Homo sapiens (meaning “the parent-feeding ape”)

• Biochemical life (including Robert Forward’s nuclear-chemical life) on the one hand, and “brain life” on the other, are functionally disjoint

• A transfinitely exact version of Edward Fredkin’s Digital Information Mechanics (including both classical indistinguishability and universal time-reversal invariance)

• Electrons have finite volume (follows from Telemach theorem)

• As a corollary, string theory is qualitatively confirmed

• The qualitative confirmation of string theory implies that a successful generation of black holes by particle colliders has become much more likely

• Freshly generated black holes are undetectable at nuclear colliders

• The empirical “quasar scaling theorem” is extended downwards by some 50 orders of magnitude

• There exist no more unstoppable and voracious parasites in the universe than black holes

• Miniature black holes grow exponentially inside solid matter (after getting stuck)

• “Clifford conjecture”: Finite-volume universe solutions to the Einstein equations are predictably unphysical (with Walter Ratjen); in this case, no “Gödel solution” exists and no time travel is possible

• The fractal dimensionality of the cosmos is close to unity, not only empirically but also theoretically (“Fournier-Mandelbrot solution” to the Einstein equation)

• Low-surface-brightness galaxies (“black galaxies”) are extraordinarily old

• A first consistent history of galaxy formation becomes possible

• Giacconi’s ultra-faint equidistributed X-ray sources are most likely ultra-distant, very-high-redshift quasars (so that redshift measurements are maximally desirable)

• The microwave background radiation is predicted to merge smoothly with equal-temperature galactic-halo objects (therefore the raw data of the “Planck mission” need to be published)

• Existence of differentiable dynamical systems that are made up, not of one-D locally parallel threads but of two-D locally parallel surfaces (Bouligand-Winfree theory)

• The Hubble-Perlmutter law holds true in a non-expanding Fournier-Mandelbrot cosmos (with Dieter Fröhlich, Ramis Movassagh and Anthony Moore)

• Zwicky-Chandrasekhar “dynamical friction” numerically confirmed (with Klaus Sonnleitner)

• Deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Hans Diebner)

• Deterministic statistical cryodynamics: Exists as a new fundamental science besides deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Klaus Sonnleitner and Frank Kuske)

• “Deterministic ectropy” formula (with Ali Sanayei)

• The smaller (almost-) black hole in a collision gets predictably “re-circulated (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• Black hole mergers are a source both of charged and of uncharged cosmic rays

• “Metabállon anapaúetai” (metabolizing it remains unchanged): Heraclitus’ transfinitely recycling cosmology proven valid after 2 ½ millennia

• Abramowicz’s “topology inversion” near black-hole horizon confirmed (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• “Identity jumps” between 3 indistinguishable classical particles on a ring calculated (with Peter Weibel and Richard Wages)

• Two shells form in a classical atom containing two indistinguishable electrons

• The counterfactual superluminal telegraph is “subluminally confirmable”

• A counterfactual world-change machine (with Jürgen Parisi)

• History of transfinitely exact indistinguishability (Anaxagoras, Gregorus of Naziance, the Mutakallimún, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz, Gibbs, Pauli, Hans Primas, Alexandre Ganoczy, Richard Wages, Rudolf Matzka)

• “Everett-Schrödinger Russian Roulette” (with Markus Fix)

• Unit “el-action” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit action)

• Unit “el-cession” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit cession)

• “G-zero” is a new fundamental constant of nature, replacing the gravitational constant G and the magnetic constant mu-zero which both remain locally constant (similarly Richard J. Cook)

• The nonlinear simultaneity generator in the brain is qualitatively reminiscent of general relativity (with Eva Ruhnau)

• Proposal to use the new science of cryodynamics to stabilize Tokamak-type fusion reactors (enabling unlimited free energy for humanity)

• Cryodynamics and thermodynamics, combined, allow for a revived eternal cosmology in modern science in the footsteps of Saint Augustine

• No WIMPs since cold dark matter was disproved

• No dark energy since accelerated expansion was disproved

• No big bang and no space expansion since cryodynamics explains the Hubble law in a fractal cosmos

• No inflation owing to the absence of space expansion

• No “primordial” nucleosynthesis in the absence of space expansion

• No Sunyaev-Zel’dovich cutoff, in the absence of a very distant origin of the background radiation

• The “survival of the scientific-technological world”-problem (C.F. von Weizsäcker) is once more the most pressing problem of humanity (with Eric Klien)

• An attempt made to convene an “LHC safety conference” (with Markus Goritschnig)

• Absence of Emile-Zola type intellectuals in our present time, and of devoted high-ranking journalists and politicians — if the following fact holds true: The European Nuclear Research Council CERN is for many months continuing operation of its LHC experiment at historic energies and luminosities while refusing to address an (to the best of my and everyone else’s knowledge) un-falsified published scientific proof of black-hole danger, or to at least update its 4-years-old safety report

(Note: Friedrich Valjavek kindly compiled an annotated bibliography in 2002: http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/RosslerBibliography.pdf )

Christian Astronomers

Posted by Gary Michael Church in asteroid/comet impacts, biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, climatology, complex systems, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, finance, futurism, geopolitics, habitats, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, lifeboat, media & arts, military, nuclear weapons, open source, physics, policy, space, sustainability, transparencyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments on Christian Astronomers

“The more anxiety one produces, the more the discussion there would be about how real and how possible actual existential threats are.”

John Hunt recently queried me on what steps I might take to form an organization to advocate for survival colonies and planetary defense. His comment on anxiety is quite succinct. In truth the landing on the moon was the product of fear- of the former Soviet Union’s lead in rocket technology. As we as a nation quelled that anxiety the budget for human space flight dwindled. But the fear of a nuclear winter continued to grow along with the size of our arsenals.

Interestingly, at the height of the cold war, evidence of yet another threat to human existence was uncovered in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico in 1981; Chicxulub. But even before the dinosaur killer was discovered, perhaps the greatest threat of all to humanity was born in 1973 when Herb Boyer and Stanley Cohen created the first genetically modified organism. The money to answer both of these threats by going into space continues to be expended by the military industrial complex.

Mile wide rocks in space and microscopic organisms on earth are both threats to our existence, but the third and undoubtedly greatest threat is our own apathy. Why do we expend the tremendous resources of our race on everything BUT keeping it from going extinct?

The answer to this important question is our own fear of death. As I have written previously, we are as individuals in the predicament of a circus freak on death row. It is a bizarre yet accurate characterization. None of us expect to live forever, but then we do not expect to die tomorrow either. We are in limbo between certain death and temporary life and cannot face the reality of the first while obsessing over the banalities of the second.

Examples of our determination to stay distracted can be found in the babbling of gravity modifiers, CERN doomsday prophets, and various other fruit flavored contributors to this blog. We desperately want to believe in UFO’s, conspiracies and fantastical solutions so we do not have to face the disquiet we experience whenever we pass a funeral home or graveyard. I am happy to pummel these idiots with the harsh language they deserve- especially when they destroy the credibility of sites like this which are trying to accomplish something worthwhile.

So I am thinking there is so much anxiety being monopolized that there is little market left for me capitalize on. Something different is required; as Bill Gates advised young entrepreneurs recently, “Don’t do what I did.” It has all been done and no clever marketing or deceptive advertising is going to build cities on other worlds. Space tourism is not going to save us- if anything it is a dangerous waste of time and money.

What is required is a popular culture renaissance that can focus the energy of several generations in a single direction. The uniqueness of this crossroads in history can be found in considering the nearly unbelievable difference in the level of scientific knowledge today compared to a half century ago. There is nothing more evident to the mature members of the western world than it’s age- our standard of living has brought about fewer children while the less fortunate parts of the world have accelerated their reproductive rates. Disparities in wealth and standards of living are stark evidence of the circus freak scenario. Very few of us are aware that there is a possible escape from this death sentence we are all born under. A standby of science fiction for decades has been the freezing of human beings for space travel. To delay death indefinitely and be resurrected when a cure for a disease or old age is found is a familiar concept. The parallels with Christianity are unmistakable.

We, as in my fellow human beings who were born around 1960, are seeing the culture we grew up in fade away as no other generation ever has. We lived through decades of threatened nuclear holocaust only to see our hoped for space age future dismantled by consumerism and profiteering. Personally, I find the presence of skulls everywhere to be the most poignant and disturbing portent of things to come. The veterans who fought in World War II and were everywhere when I was a boy would never have allowed this emblem of the Nazi SS to become so popular. It was the symbol of ruthless and murderous force as being the only meaningful feature of reality. 60 million human beings were killed in the fight against the evil it represents. And now it is back.

To counter to the present lack of vision I would like to introduce an agent of change in the form of a idealized past age. What better ideal than the movement that conquered fascism originally? Christianity did in fact conquer the Roman Empire- and as it is said we are all children of Rome, then we are also children of the carpenter from Nazareth. A technological analogy that can be discerned when considering the original Christianity and the modern world is the Gladius and the Atom Bomb. The Romans learned the fine points of using their infamous short swords by watching gladiators fight to the death- a funerary tradition they inherited from the Etruscans they assimilated. The training of professional gladiators was applied to the military and made “Drill a bloodless Battle and Battle a bloody Drill.”

The sword made the Roman Empire and Christianity inherited this prize. The Atom Bomb has kept modern civilization from World War for over a half century- but so far there is no great social movement that will inherit this mighty construct before it falls into a new dark age. The Fermi Paradox points to the possibility that this empire could well be the last; there will be no more cycles of civilizations rising and falling if we become extinct. If so then this really may be the end of the world- with no need to throw away reason in favor of the Book of Revelation.

What is most curious is that while the sword had no utility outside of murder, the Atomic Bomb holds the power to transcend this arena of earth and allow humankind to populate the galaxy. If this civilization can survive to travel to new worlds then the last empire will have risen- the last because it can never fall again.

So, to form a society of believers in life, in the future of the human race, the goals must be clear and easily understood;

If the human race is to survive, the individual must have some hope of surviving. The immediate need is a way to delay death and that procedure is practically a reality with advances in cryopreservation.

If the human race is to survive, new worlds must be found and colonized. The immediate need is for survival colonies off-world and atomic spaceships to establish those colonies and defend the earth from impact threats.

If the individual and the race as a whole is to survive, action must be taken. The immediate need is an organization to take money in and distribute it to the corporations and politicians that can direct the massive governmental resources necessary to accomplish a great rescue with cryopreservation and to construct spaceships to establish off world colonies and deflect impact threats.

Figuratively, metaphorically, the Christians conquered the old empire and the Astronomers who harness the power of the sun will inherit this empire. Since the more catchy titles have been taken by religious cults, I suggest the organization that will initiate action be called,

The Society of Christian Astronomers

My first call is for the money to copyright the title of the society and a brand I have in mind.

Four years ago MARCUS WOHLSEN wrote about genetic engineering as a hobby. We are faced with a growing list of pathogens that with a little modification could bring about the end of civilization. It could happen tomorrow.

If you are afraid of guns in the United States, the only solution is to leave. There are millions of guns, many more than estimated, sitting in closets and packed away from when grandpa died. We face the same situation with the Hanta virus, and several others that are in the environment. There is no getting rid of them and no stopping anyone with not-too-expensive lab equipment from playing god and changing them into the end of the world.

The solution is survival colonies in space. Though it sounds bizarre, these colonies should be “manned” by fertile women and maintain sperm banks. 99 men and one woman is the end of the world, while 99 women and a sperm bank is a new one.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/25/do-it-yourself-dna-amateu_n_153489.html

http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/genetically-engineered-bird-flu-recipe-lab-bred_n_1160709.html

1) Hawking radiation — that the produced mini black holes would immediately evaporate

2) Chargedness — that they would get stuck immediately and hence as everyone can see do no harm

3) Competence — that CERN’s detectors could register them

4) Unlikeliness — that an unproven theory (string theory) was a precondition for CERN’s being successful

5) Familiarity — that cosmic rays would prove CERN does nothing new to earth

6) Distant safety warranty — that neutron stars would provide a safety guarantee

7) Second safety warranty — that white dwarf stars would provide a safety guarantee

8) Delay — that the death of earth would take billions of years rather than just years

Comment: All 8 reasons lie refuted before CERN’s eyes since May 2008 — before its never-updated last safety report of September 2008 (which ignores them) appeared.

Meta-comment: CERN is using mental violence in continuing its unprecedented nuclear collisions. My country of nationality left CERN in protest in May 2009 but was forced-back by CERN. No scientist on the planet defends CERN since my peer-reviewed Telemach paper appeared. The United Nations are prevented by a veto from interfering. All intellectuals and politicians are muted. This is “the most interesting time” of history.

The Truth about Space Travel is Stranger than Fiction

Posted by Gary Michael Church in asteroid/comet impacts, biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, climatology, complex systems, cosmology, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, finance, futurism, geopolitics, habitats, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, lifeboat, media & arts, military, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, physics, policy, space, sustainability, transparency, treatiesTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments on The Truth about Space Travel is Stranger than Fiction

I have been corresponding with John Hunt and have decided that perhaps it is time to start moving toward forming a group that can accomplish something.

The recent death of Neil Armstrong has people thinking about space. The explosion of a meteor over Britain and the curiosity rover on Mars are also in the news. But there is really nothing new under the sun. There is nothing that will hold people’s attention for very long outside of their own immediate comfort and basic needs. Money is the central idea of our civilization and everything else is soon forgotten. But this idea of money as the center of all activity is a death sentence. Human beings die and species eventually become extinct just as worlds and suns also are destroyed or burn out. Each of us is in the position of a circus freak on death row. Bizarre, self centered, doomed; a cosmic joke. Of all the creatures on this planet, we are the freaks the other creatures would come to mock- if they were like us. If they were supposedly intelligent like us. But are we actually the intelligent ones? The argument can be made that we lack a necessary characteristic to be considered truly intelligent life forms.

Truly intelligent creatures would be struggling with three problems if they found themselves in our situation as human beings on Earth in the first decades of this 21st century;

1. Mortality. With technology possible to delay death and eventually reverse the aging process, intelligent beings would be directing the balance of planetary resources towards conquering “natural” death.

2. Threats. With technology not just possible, but available, to defend the earth from extinction level events, the resources not being used to seek an answer to the first problem would necessarily be directed toward this second danger.

3. Progress. With science advancing and accelerating, the future prospects for engineering humans for greater intelligence and eventually building super intelligent machines are clear. Crystal clear. Not addressing these prospects is a clear warning that we are, as individuals, as a species, and as a living planet, headed not toward a bright future, but in the opposite direction toward a dead and final end.

One engineered pathogen will destroy us forever. One impact larger than average will destroy us forever. The reasoning that death is somehow “natural” which drives us to ignore the subject of destruction will destroy us forever. Earth changes are inevitable and taking place now- despite our faith in television and popular culture that everything is fun and games. Man is not the measure of all things. We think tomorrow will come just like yesterday- but it will not.

The Truth about Space Travel is that there are no stargates or warp drives that will take us across the galaxy like commecial airliners or cruise ships take us across oceans. If we do wake up and change our course, space voyages will take centuries and human expansion will be measured in millenia. We will be frozen when we travel to distant stars. And this survivable freezing will mark the beginning of a new age since being able to delay death by freezing will completely transform life. The first such successful procedure will mean the end of the world as we know it- and the beginning of a new civilization.

Though unknown to the public, the atomic bomb and then the hydrogen bomb marked the true beginning of the Space Age. Hydrogen bombs can push cities in space, hollow moons, to some percentage of the speed of light. These cities can travel to other stars, such as Epsilon Eridani with it’s massive asteroid belt. And there more artificial hollow moons can be mass produced to provide new worlds to live in. This is not fiction I am speaking of but something we could do right now- today. We only lack the procedure to freeze and successfully revive a human being. It is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

In Beam Propulsion we have the answer to bending the rocket equation to our will and allowing millions and eventually billions of human beings to migrate into space. Just as Verne and Wells made accurate predictions of the decades to come, we now are seeing the possible obvious future unfolding before our eyes.

But the most possible and probable obvious future at this moment is destruction. The end of days. Unless we do something.
You and I and everyone you know is involved in this. Let’s get started.

This essay was posted last year, removed, and is back with small changes. Enjoy.

I became interested in Beyond Earth Orbit- Human Space Flight by way of a college paper I helped my wife research some years ago. Her project for an ethics class was nuclear weapons. I stumbled upon the book “Project Orion, the true story of the atomic spaceship” by George Dyson and was hooked. I had been a science fiction fan in my youth but like most people I thought space operas were only to be realized in the far future. Project Orion changed my worldview. Since then my made up mind has been unmade several times concerning most of the “common knowledge” floating around about space flight in this 21st century. Much of what is generally believed to be true about our space program is made up of recent hearsay used to hype products that further a business plan. When I read these infomercials endlessly repeated as fact I get pretty upset, mostly because exposing these “facts” as false advertising almost always results in vicious attacks. The private space cult fanatics disgust me and I will not apologize for my hard feelings about these people. They mislead, obfuscate, and insult and dogpile anyone who disagrees with their dogma.

It was a slow step by step process but I came to realize the path to the stars is a narrow one. I found the U.S. space effort, described as being on “the flexible path”, to be going nowhere. There is no Flexible Path. The path to colonizing the solar system is narrow indeed due to the laws of physics and materials science. Science fiction movies have conditioned the public to believe such natural laws can be violated and technology that breaks these laws is possible and immanent. This attitude has led to much waste and many tragedies in the past decades and there is soon to come great disappointment over breakthroughs that are far easier said than done. By way of political contributions and backroom deals, the flexible path scheme came into existence as a way of making money for a small group of investors looking to cash in on public ignorance of technology through influence peddling. It is a convoluted and confusing story and perhaps the best way to make the truth clear is to start at the desired end and work backwards.

If the end goal is new worlds for humankind to inhabit, the earliest practical portrayal of a possible new world was in the 1929 work, “The World, The Flesh, and The Devil”, by socialist John Desmond Bernal. I must say I am no socialist (or capitalist), but I am someone who is often unhappy with people at either end of that spectrum. Space is not about politics- it is about survival. More than just surviving- thriving. Human beings need earth-like conditions to thrive and a artificial hollow moon as described by Bernal can provide those conditions.Though the sphere proposed by Bernal does not address artificial gravity, the hollow sphere concept does, if spun, allow for earth gravity on the inner surface at the equator. Hollow spheres in space can provide habitats for thousands, millions, perhaps even tens of billions of people. Space is big, with quite large quantities of rock floating around and plenty of solar energy waiting to be exploited. And tens of thousands of icy comets. Solar energy and low gravity resources in the asteroid belt mean that building on a much larger scale than we do on earth is practical. While we construct thousand foot supertankers and skyscrapers with some difficulty in earth gravity, the same masses of metal and concrete in space can form a shell many miles in diameter with many times less energy expended.

The most interesting fact of all about Bernal spheres is that building them is not any kind of futuristic science fiction undertaking in terms of materials and engineering. The sphere is the strongest shape and the energy to melt and refine ore and the various rocks and ices are available, and so there are no apparent showstoppers. Fill a Bernal sphere with comet water and air and spin and humankind has created a new world to live in. Enclosed worlds capable of traveling for centuries to other star systems when the time comes. While we have the technology, amazingly, to build such hollow moons right now, we lack only a single medical procedure to allow for star travel- revivable cryopreservation. This one key piece of technology, which also breaks no laws of physics, is all that holds the human race back from colonizing the galaxy. This future is not the hyperspace or warp drive or stargate fantasies the public has in mind. Though slowboats do not lend themselves well to screenplays and formula blockbusters, they are exciting to those who understand what is possible in the near future, in just a matter of decades. But before these new worlds can be manufactured, probably near the end of this century, humankind must first establish an infrastructure in deep space to enable that industry.

To live in space is different than just surviving a visit. Missions based on how much radiation and zero G debilitation a human being can survive are certain to fail. Providing earth radiation levels and gravity is certain to succeed. Radiation is the first killer, and lack of gravity as a debilitator is the second made even worse by the first. To set up an infrastructure that will allow colonies and eventually migration requires spaceships and these radiation and hypogravity hazards cannot be avoided. The only guaranteed shield against the heavy nuclei component of cosmic radiation is mass and distance. The only practical spaceship shielding is 14 or more feet of water. The only way to propel this much mass around the solar system is with nuclear energy. Nuclear activities in earth orbit are not acceptable. Lifting thousands and eventually millions of tons of water into earth orbit are also not plausible. This path of reasoning leads to the moon where nuclear activities are permissible and there is water. The only way to get to the moon is with Heavy Lift Vehicles like the Saturn V and the future SLS. The only way to transport fissionables to the moon safely is with Heavy Lift Vehicles. And this is where the private space agenda rears it’s ugly head. HLV’s and anything needing massive governmental resources, such as nuclear energy, are blasphemy to the private space cult. While their dogma preaches that cheap lift can be had with smaller kerosene rockets with a high launch rate, they go on to enable missions beyond earth orbit by way of fuel depots and transfer in space. For a scientifically ignorant public this all makes sense. But it is the kerosene-hydrogen disconnect that exposes the private space flexible path as a business plan to fool taxpayers into subsidizing a Low Earth Orbit space tourism industry for the ultra-rich.

Liquid hydrogen does not store well and is very difficult to transfer. It is difficult on the ground but in space it has never been done because it is such a nightmare. The entire transfer system and receiving tank have to be pre-cooled with liquid helium and a perfect pre-cool is physically impossible. This generates liquid hydrogen boil-off that must be re-liquified- which generates the exo-thermic form of hydrogen- that generates more boil-off. Compounded by space radiation and zero gravity effects, this is all a real mess that no one wants to talk about. Like radiation shielding, it is a topic avoided by private space advocates to the point of hurling insults. Not only is hydrogen hard to handle on the ground and much harder to deal with in space, an engine burning it requires a turbopump ten times more powerful than one for a kerosene engine. Which is why kerosene is hyped by private space as such a wonderful propellent- because both handling hydrogen and using hydrogen engines is much more expensive and cuts into projected profit margins. So why does the orbital fuel depot and transfer concept specify liquid hydrogen? If kerosene is so much better then why bother with liquid hydrogen in orbital fuel depots? Because there is no substitute for hydrogen Earth Departure Stages when it comes to escaping earth’s gravitational field. Using other propellants multiplies the size of these stages several times. Any human missions Beyond Earth Orbit not using liquid hydrogen Earth Departure Stages look like Battlestar Galactica. Because of the Apollo program and every study done on any BEO missions, private space knows they cannot claim otherwise and get away with it. So private space advocates avoid this subject like the plague. Since it is not practical to store or transfer liquid hydrogen in space a direct launch out of orbit, like the Apollo program, is required. The laws of physics have not changed since the 1960’s. Since the inferior lift vehicles advocated in the flexible path are only capable of boosting a few tons at a time out of orbit, Heavy Lift Vehicles become necessary. Thus, there is no substitute for a HLV with hydrogen upper stages. There is no cheap; space flight is inherently expensive.

The resources necessary to build an infrastructure for BEO-HSF are unavailable to private space. HLV’s sending packaged fissionables to the moon are completely out of reach of “entrepreneurs” claiming the flexible path will open the solar system to colonization. In fact, private space claiming they are the future of space exploration is a lie, a deception being used to acquire taxpayer support for space tourism. Forty years of space stations going in endless circles at very high altitude is a dead end. The space tourism industry wants this truth suppressed and portrays LEO stations as the cutting edge of “exploration.” The justification and source of funding for BEO-HSF is impact defense and survival colonies. The DOD is spending vast treasure on useless cold war toys that guarantee huge profits for the defense industry. Just as the new space movement is all about deception, so the the DOD is guilty of neglecting the most vital mission of the U.S. space program; safeguarding the earth and the human race.

This essay was originally posted last year and is now back with small changes. Enjoy.

The first decade of the 21st century ended with human space flight nowhere near to fulfilling the predictions made at the beginning of the space age. Not even close. Just as the Vietnam war robbed the space exploration budget, the end of the century found vast public funds, a truly mind boggling amount of treasure, spent on the cold war toys that have yielded guaranteed huge profits for the military industrial complex. Many of these incredibly expensive weapon systems do not work as advertised and very few of them have any application in the present war on terror. 911 did not stop the money flowing to new super fighter planes and missiles designed to shoot down other missiles. The promise of space was in truth sacrificed for the profits of the weapons industry. The expected moon bases and colonies on Mars were never funded and no human being has escaped earth orbit since the last Apollo mission. The underfunded space shuttle completely failed to provide the cheap lift and multi-mission capability that was never really possible to achieve. The showpiece International Space Station is little more than a 100 billion dollar collection of tin cans flying in endless circles.

Over a quarter century wasted and the human race seems in large part to have accepted the end of the space age. Despite a collection of old and new inferior lift vehicles incapable of accelerating a spacecraft to escape velocity, there is endless hype concerning the privatization of space and the bright future these for profit enterprises will bring about. The single point of failure in these schemes is the false miracle of fuel depots in space. These orbital gas stations will supposedly enable all the missions that previously could only be accomplished by a Heavy Lift Vehicles like the Saturn V. Cryo fuel storage and transfer is at this time a myth and has never even been attempted due to the extreme difficulties involved. It is simply a smoke screen to disguise defeat. We are not going anywhere if we stay on this path. The only hope for human space flight is the realization that deep space travel may at any time mean the difference between humankind surviving or disappearing forever. If this truth cannot unlock the vast resources required then we are sealing our collective fate. The Spaceship is the only insurance against extinction. Safeguarding the entire human race is the ultimate military mission, yet is completely ignored by our leaders and the defense industry. The inevitable asteroid or comet impact and the threat of a 100 percent lethal plague are with us right now. We as a species are playing a game of Russian roulette. We truly do not know when, but we know what is coming.

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when it is explained that disastrous impacts only occur an average of once every several million years. The key fact never discussed is impacts are random. An impact could occur tomorrow, and again the next day, and it would just be a blip on a curved line representing the immensity of geologic time. No one would be left to exclaim, “WOW! What were the odds of that happening?” In the same way the threat of engineered pathogens is ignored, overlooked, or scoffed at in the hopes it will just go away. Just as there is little than can be done to stop seasonal flu, there is very little that could be done to stop such an airborne plague once it begins. Naturally evolved pathogens always leave a certain percentage of survivors but an engineered virus does not follow that rule. We are led to believe there is no defense, but we are being decieved and there is nothing further from the truth.

Spaceships can intercept impact threats and deflect them with nuclear devices. Spaceships can carry the people and equipment to construct permanent self-sustaining colonies in the outer solar system that will survive any plague on earth. The vital importance of building such craft is obvious. But Beyond Earth Orbit Human Space Flight (BEO-HSF) cannot be accomplished with a few expendable rockets. While complex weapons systems are easy money for industry because they do not have to work, Spaceships are hard money because they must work. Human beings must adjust their worldview concerning what is expensive and what is worth the expense. To understand the difficulty in building one, we must first define what a Spaceship actually is.

The entertainment and documentary film industry has conditioned the public to think of any craft that carries human beings beyond the atmosphere as a spaceship. A better definition would be a vehicle designed to carry human beings outside low earth orbit (LEO) while providing artificial gravity and radiation protection equal to earth. In addition, a ship makes crossings and changes course so a true ship of space would necessarily be able to travel to other bodies in the solar system. Travel to the moon does not qualify as a true crossing to another body due to the short distance compared to other destinations. Such a quick trip can be made without the gravity and shielding required for interplanetary flight. Another feature of lunar travel is the ability of chemical propulsion systems to accomplish these missions. Due to gravity and radiation solutions, a Spaceship traveling deep space has no propulsion option except nuclear energy. While travel in the inner solar system may use solar power for life support and other systems, nuclear propulsion is still required. Due to the lack of inner system destinations, nuclear power, as well as nuclear propulsion, must be included in defining the true Spaceship.

At this point in history the technology exists for only one form of nuclear propulsion; nuclear pulse (bomb propulsion). This fact is generally unknown to the public and is given little serious consideration in the popular press. Nuclear explosions pushing a ship through space does stretch the imagination, but no more than the idea of heavier than air flight did in the 19th century, even into the first years of the 20th. The difficulty in nuclear propulsion is not the engineering. Billions of dollars of classified weapons research would reveal exactly how to build such a system. It is not how, it is how to build and operate the system well away from the earth. Nuclear materials are an environmental hazard without equal. For this reason transporting and assembling the fuel and components of any nuclear power and propulsion system is the first obstacle. It is overcome by virtue of the previously mentioned body that can be reached with just chemical propulsion; the moon.

As with the Apollo missions of the last century, the moon can be reached on a direct trajectory with a Heavy Lift Vehicle. Such a vehicle, using human rated components, an escape tower, and specially packaged fissionables able to survive a launch failure or reentry, is the only practical method. While a worst case nuclear accident in earth orbit is unacceptable, the potential risk of contamination in lunar orbit is acceptable. Thus, the first problem in building a Spaceship is solved. Nuclear power components and the fuel for nuclear propulsion can be transported by HLV to the moon for assembly and preflight testing. The heaviest parts of the Spaceship are the massive pusher plate the nuclear pulse reacts against and the crew’ s massive radiation shield. The Earth Departure Stages (EDS) that boost the moon bound payloads out of earth orbit to their destinations, can be converted into the double hull of the Spaceship crew section that holds the liquid shielding, and also the structural members of the tower assembly used to absorb the shock of the pulse bomb detonations. The moon facilitates one of the two high mass necessities and can eventually supply the other.The first massive component, the radiation shield, can be supplied immediately in the form of water derived from lunar ice deposits to fill a double hull crew section. Until they are locally fabricated, the Spaceship pusher plates, or “pushers”, will have to come from earth by HLV in thin sections one at a time and stacked to form each ship’s heavy pusher.

The HLV at launch with a wide thin disc mounted at the nose and with side mounted SRB’s will be vaguely familiar to many science fiction fans. There is some resemblance to the starship Enterprise. How many such discs will have to be launched and later stacked to build an all up pusher remains to be seen. Eventually monolithic pushers can be manufactured from lunar materials. Until that time the pushers will have to come from earth in slices with multiple HLV missions. Considering the mass and energy involved, the schemes proposing human space flight by way of smaller cheaper rockets and “gas stations is space” are laughable. There is no cheap; space flight is inherently expensive.

A shock absorbing tower structure mounting a massively shielded crew section coupled to a nuclear reactor and bomb storage section, a massive pusher, and a tether system to generate artificial gravity complete the Spaceship. Using the hundreds of tons of water making up the radiation shield for growing bio-engineered organisms can sustain a closed loop life support system with an endurance of several years. A bomb propelled ship can attain velocities far above those possible with chemical propulsion and enable expeditions to the moons of the outer planets. The slug of matter that is superheated by the bomb and converted into the plasma that actually pushes the Spaceship can be obtained in situ from those distant moons in the outer system. By carrying a percentage of bombs without the mass of plasma slugs, speed and range is extended. This method of extending range was proposed in the original Project Orion. Spaceships can also transport thorium reactors, with fuel derived from lunar thorium ore, to these distant moons enabling permanent colonies to be established. Over 100 bodies in the outer system are large enough to anchor colonies.

During powered flight, when the reactor is shut down and both sections of the ship are joined, a tower structure would be used to decellerate the composite section during bomb pulses. Projecting far ahead of the pusher at the end of the tower, the composit ship section at the front would stroke backward like a descending elevator toward the plate. This system would lower the acceleration forces on the crew and equipment to the level of an aircraft carrier jet catapult launch. When coasting, the Spaceship would spit in half and reel out the engineering section and crew section opposite each other on long tethers to generate artificial gravity by spinning both sections around the pusher as the axis. The spaceship’s nulcear reactor can then be run without the need for very heavy shielding due to the several thousand feet of separation from the crew section. When the tethers are deployed for cruising, one half of the tower would fold against the pusher and reel out the tether with the crew section, and the other half of the tower would do the same in the opposite direction with the nuclear section of the ship. seperater lengths of tether payed out from the split tower can be adjusted to balance the two spinning masses. During coast the crew would look out through viewports separated by14 feet of water and view a slowly rotating star field.

Science fiction has instilled the idea that Spaceships and large scale space exploration is centuries away. In fact, we are perfectly capable of colonizing the solar system with present technology. With a single advance in medical technology- the ability to freeze human beings and then successfully revive them- we would also be immediately capable of travel to the stars. Such a cryopreservation procedure violates no laws of physics and is already used on a smaller scale with sperm and ovum. With this in mind another existential threat to humanity must be appreciated at –the risk of the writer being considered paranoid or delusional. Physicist Stephen Hawking has warned of a possible threat from alien civilizations. Indeed, if we lack only a single technological advance to be capable of star flight, alien civilizations could have already made this advance and embarked on missions of colonization to other stars. The danger is that our world was selected for alien colonization many centuries ago. Unlike the dramatic combat found in science fiction novels and movies, the most likely invasion would take the form of comets steered toward earth as a method of sterilization. Just as we are capable of diverting impact threats away from earth, this capability also entails arranged impacts. An advance alien force would probably sanitize the earth of most indigenious life and plant invasive micro organisms from their native ecosystem. When the alien colonists arrive centuries in the future and are revived, they would find a world already adapted to their biology and ready for introduction of flora, fauna, and settlers. This conversion process may be common in our galaxy. The millions of planets now confirmed to exist only increase the likelihood.

From discussing building the first Spaceships and off-world base on the moon, to the subject of preparing for alien invasion seems a fantastical and inappropriate leap. It is no more incredible than the other unbelievable features of the universe- from super massive black holes to past ages on our own world that saw the end of the dinosaurs.