Lifeboat Foundation

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 came to realize space operas were to be realized only 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 exposing these “facts” as not true results in vicious attacks. Private space cult members disgust me and I will not apologize for my hard feelings about these people. They mislead and obfuscate, and insult and dogpile anyone who disagrees with their dogma.

It was a 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 has been on what is called “the flexible path” and this turned out to be a contradiction of almost everything I found in my research. There is no Flexible Path. The path to colonizing the solar system is narrow and straightforward due to the laws of physics and materials science. Science fiction movies seem to have conditioned the public to believe such natural laws can be violated and technology that breaks these laws is possible and immanent. This kind of ignorance of natural limitations has led to much waste and many tragedies in the past decades by pushing said limits 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 and influence peddling. It is a convoluted and confusing path and perhaps the best way to make my meaning plain despite this distraction 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 Joseph Bernal. I must say I am no socialist or capitalist, but I am someone who is sometimes very 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 hollow moon can provide those conditions.Though the hollow artificial moon 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, billions, perhaps tens of billions of people. Space is big, with alot of sunlight and rock floating around 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 much of a stretch of the imagination. It is the strongest shape and the energy to melt and refine ore and the various rocks and ices are available, and there are no engineering showstoppers. Fill a Bernal sphere with comet water and air and spin and humankind has created a new world to live “in.” New 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 with them– revivable cryospreservation. 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 warp drive stargate winged starship fantasy the public has in mind. Though slowboats do not lend themselves well to screenplays and formula blockbusters, they are more exciting to those of us who understand what is possible in the near future. 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 activity.

To live in space is different than to survive. Missions based on how much radiation and zero G debilitation a human being can survive on average 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 acceptable. This path 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 recieving tank have to be pre-cooled with liquid helium and a perfect precool 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 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 is 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. It is the DOD that is spending money on useless cold war toys that guarantee huge profits for the defense industry while neglecting the most vital mission of the U.S. space program; safeguarding the earth and the human race.

It may be a point of little attention, as the millennium bug came with a lot of hoo-ha and went out with a whimper, but the impact it had on business was small because of all the hoo-ha, not in spite of it. And so it is with some concern that I consider operating system rollover dates as a potential hazard by software malfunction at major industrial operations such as nuclear power stations and warhead controls, which in worst case scenario, could of course have disastrous implications due to out-dated control systems.

The main dates of interest are 19 January 2038 by when all 32-bit Unix operating systems need to have been replaced by at least their 64-bit equivalents, and 17 Sept 2042 when IBM mainframes that use a 64-bit count need to be phased out.

Scare mongering? Perhaps not. While all modern facilities will have the superior time representation, I question if facilities built in the 70s and 80s, in particular those behind the old iron curtain were or ever will be upgraded. This raises a concern that for example the old soviet nuclear arsenal could become a major global threat within a few decades by malfunction if not decommissioned or control systems upgraded. It is one thing for a bank statement to print the date wrong on your latest bill due to millennium bug type issues, but if automated fault tolerance procedures have coding such as ‘if(time1 > time2+N) then initiate counter-measures’ then that is quite a different matter entirely.

I believe this is a topic which warrants higher profile lest it be forgot. Fortunately the global community has a few decades on its hands to handle this particular issue, though all it takes is just one un-cooperative facility to take such a risk rather than perform the upgrades necessary to ensure no such ‘meltdowns’ occur. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

I am taking the advice of a reader of this blog and devoting part 2 to examples of old school and modern movies and the visionary science they portray.

Things to Come 1936 — Event Horizon 1997
Things to Come was a disappointment to Wells and Event Horizon was no less a disappointment to audiences. I found them both very interesting as a showcase for some technology and social challenges.… to come– but a little off the mark in regards to the exact technology and explicit social issues. In the final scene of Things to Come, Raymond Massey asks if mankind will choose the stars. What will we choose? I find this moment very powerful– perhaps the example; the most eloguent expression of the whole genre of science fiction. Event Horizon was a complete counterpoint; a horror movie set in space with a starship modeled after a gothic cathedral. Event Horizon had a rescue crew put in stasis for a high G several month journey to Neptune on a fusion powered spaceship. High accelleration and fusion brings H-bombs to mind, and though not portrayed, this propulsion system is in fact a most probable future. Fusion “engines” are old hat in sci-fi despite the near certainty the only places fusion will ever work as advertised are in a bomb or a star. The Event Horizon, haunted and consigned to hell, used a “gravity drive” to achieve star travel by “folding space.” Interestingly, a recent concept for a black hole powered starship is probably the most accurate forecast of the technology that will be used for interstellar travel in the next century. While ripping a hole in the fabric of space time may be strictly science fantasy, for the next thousand years at least, small singularity propulsion using Hawking radiation to achieve a high fraction of the speed of light is mathematically sound and the most obvious future. That is, if humanity avoids an outbreak of engineered pathogens or any one of several other threats to our existence in that time frame.

Hand in hand with any practical method of journeys to other star systems in the concept of the “sleeper ship.” Not only as inevitable as the submarine or powered flight was in the past, the idea of putting human beings in cold storage would bring tremendous changes to society. Suspended animation using a cryopreservation procedure is by far the most radical and important global event possible, and perhpas probable, in the near future. The ramifications of a revivable whole body cryopreservation procedure are truly incredible. Cryopreservation would be the most important event in the history of mankind. Future generations would certainly mark it as the beginning of “modern” civilization. Though not taken seriously anymore than the possiblility of personal computers were, the advances in medical technology make any movies depicting suspended animation quite prophetic.

The Thing 1951/Them 1954 — Deep Impact 1998/Armegeddon 1998
These four movies were essentially about the same.…thing. Whether a space vampire not from earth in the arctic, mutated super organisms underneath the earth, or a big whatever in outer space on a collision course with earth, the subject was a monstrous threat to our world, the end of humankind on earth being the common theme. The lifeboat blog is about such threats and the The Thing and Them would also appeal to any fan of Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Blood Rites. It is interesting that while we appreciate in a personal way what it means to face monsters or the supernatural, we just do not “get” the much greater threats only recently revealed by impact craters like Chixculub. In this way these movies dealing with instinctive and non-instinctive realized threats have an important relationship to each other. And this connection extends to the more modern sci-fi creature features of past decades. Just how much the The Thing and Them contributed to the greatest military sci-fi movie of the 20th century (Aliens, of course) will probably never be known. Director James Cameron once paid several million dollars out of court to sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison after admitting during an interview to using Ellison’s work– so he will not be making that mistake again. The second and third place honors, Starship Troopers and Predator, were both efforts of Dutch Film maker Paul Verhoeven.

While The Thing and Them still play well, and Deep Impact, directed by James Cameron’s ex-wife, is a good flick and has uncanny predictive elements such as a black president and a tidal wave, Armegeddon is worthless. I mention this trash cinema only because it is necessary for comparison and to applaud the 3 minutes when the cryogenic fuel transfer procedure is seen to be the farce that it is in actuality. Only one of the worst movie directors ever, or the space tourism industry, would parade such a bad idea before the public.
Ice Station Zebra 1968 — The Road 2009
Ice Station Zebra was supposedly based on a true incident. This cold war thriller featured Rock Hudson as the penultimate submarine commander and was a favorite of Howard Hughes. By this time a recluse, Hughes purchased a Las Vegas TV station so he could watch the movie over and over. For those who have not seen it, I will not spoil the sabotage sequence, which has never been equaled. I pair Ice Station Zebra and The Road because they make a fine quartet, or rather sixtet, with The Thing/Them and Deep Impact/Armegeddon.

 The setting for many of the scenes in these movies are a wasteland of ice, desert, cometoid, or dead forest. While Armegeddon is one of the worst movies ever made on a big budget, The Road must be one of the best on a small budget– if accuracy is a measure of best. The Road was a problem for the studio that produced it and release was delayed due to the reaction of the test audiences. All viewers left the theatre profoundly depressed. It is a shockingly realistic movie and disturbed to the point where I started writing about impact deflection. The connection between Armegeddon and The Road, two movies so different, is the threat and aftermath of an asteroid or comet impact. While The Road never specifies an impact as the disaster that ravaged the planet, it fits the story perfectly. Armegeddon has a few accurate statements about impacts mixed in with ludicrous plot devices that make the story a bad experience for anyone concerned with planetary protection. It seems almost blasphemous and positively criminal to make such a juvenile for profit enterprise out of an inevitable event that is as serious as serious gets. Do not watch it. Ice Station Zebra, on the other hand, is a must see and is in essence a showcase of the only tools available to prevent The Road from becoming reality. Nuclear weapons and space craft– the very technologies that so many feared would destroy mankind, are the only hope to save the human race in the event of an impending impact.

Part 3:
Gog 1954 — Stealth 2005
Fantastic Voyage 1966 — The Abyss 1989
And notable moments in miscellaneous movies.

Steamships, locomotives, electricity; these marvels of the industrial age sparked the imagination of futurists such as Jules Verne. Perhaps no other writer or work inspired so many to reach the stars as did this Frenchman’s famous tale of space travel. Later developments in microbiology, chemistry, and astronomy would inspire H.G. Wells and the notable science fiction authors of the early 20th century.

The submarine, aircraft, the spaceship, time travel, nuclear weapons, and even stealth technology were all predicted in some form by science fiction writers many decades before they were realized. The writers were not simply making up such wonders from fanciful thought or childrens ryhmes. As science advanced in the mid 19th and early 20th century, the probable future developments this new knowledge would bring about were in some cases quite obvious. Though powered flight seems a recent miracle, it was long expected as hydrogen balloons and parachutes had been around for over a century and steam propulsion went through a long gestation before ships and trains were driven by the new engines. Solid rockets were ancient and even multiple stages to increase altitude had been in use by fireworks makers for a very long time before the space age.

Some predictions were seen to come about in ways far removed yet still connected to their fictional counterparts. The U.S. Navy flagged steam driven Nautilus swam the ocean blue under nuclear power not long before rockets took men to the moon. While Verne predicted an electric submarine, his notional Florida space gun never did take three men into space. However there was a Canadian weapons designer named Gerald Bull who met his end while trying to build such a gun for Saddam Hussien. The insane Invisible Man of Wells took the form of invisible aircraft playing a less than human role in the insane game of mutually assured destruction. And a true time machine was found easily enough in the mathematics of Einstein. Simply going fast enough through space will take a human being millions of years into the future. However, traveling back in time is still as much an impossibillity as the anti-gravity Cavorite from the First Men in the Moon. Wells missed on occasion but was not far off with his story of alien invaders defeated by germs– except we are the aliens invading the natural world’s ecosystem with our genetically modified creations and could very well soon meet our end as a result.

While Verne’s Captain Nemo made war on the death merchants of his world with a submarine ram, our own more modern anti-war device was found in the hydrogen bomb. So destructive an agent that no new world war has been possible since nuclear weapons were stockpiled in the second half of the last century. Neither Verne or Wells imagined the destructive power of a single missile submarine able to incinerate all the major cities of earth. The dozens of such superdreadnoughts even now cruising in the icy darkness of the deep ocean proves that truth is more often stranger than fiction. It may seem the golden age of predictive fiction has passed as exceptions to the laws of physics prove impossible despite advertisments to the contrary. Science fiction has given way to science fantasy and the suspension of disbelief possible in the last century has turned to disappointment and the distractions of whimsical technological fairy tales. “Beam me up” was simply a way to cut production costs for special effects and warp drive the only trick that would make a one hour episode work. Unobtainium and wishalloy, handwavium and technobabble– it has watered down what our future could be into childish wish fulfillment and escapism.

The triumvirate of the original visionary authors of the last two centuries is completed with E.E. Doc Smith. With this less famous author the line between predictive fiction and science fantasy was first truly crossed and the new genre of “Space Opera” most fully realized. The film industry has taken Space Opera and run with it in the Star Wars franchise and the works of Canadian film maker James Cameron. Though of course quite entertaining, these movies showcase all that is magical and fantastical– and wrong– concerning science fiction as a predictor of the future. The collective imagination of the public has now been conditioned to violate the reality of what is possible through the violent maiming of basic scientific tenets. This artistic license was something Verne at least tried not to resort to, Wells trespassed upon more frequently, and Smith indulged in without reservation. Just as Madonna found the secret to millions by shocking a jaded audience into pouring money into her bloomers, the formula for ripping off the future has been discovered in the lowest kind of sensationalism. One need only attend a viewing of the latest Transformer movie or download Battlestar Galactica to appreciate that the entertainment industry has cashed in on the ignorance of a poorly educated society by selling intellect decaying brain candy. It is cowboys vs. aliens and has nothing of value to contribute to our culture…well, on second thought, I did get watery eyed when the young man died in Harrison Ford’s arms. I am in no way criticizing the profession of acting and value the talent of these artists– it is rather the greed that corrupts the ancient art of storytelling I am unhappy with. Directors are not directors unless they make money and I feel sorry that these incredibly creative people find themselves less than free to pursue their craft.

The archetype of the modern science fiction movie was 2001 and like many legendary screen epics, a Space Odyssey was not as original as the marketing made it out to be. In an act of cinema cold war many elements were lifted from a Soviet movie. Even though the fantasy element was restricted to a single device in the form of an alien monolith, every artifice of this film has so far proven non-predictive. Interestingly, the propulsion system of the spaceship in 2001 was originally going to use atomic bombs, which are still, a half century later, the only practical means of interplanetary travel. Stanly Kubrick, fresh from Dr. Strangelove, was tired of nukes and passed on portraying this obvious future.

As with the submarine, airplane, and nuclear energy, the technology to come may be predicted with some accuracy if the laws of physics are not insulted but rather just rudely addressed. Though in some cases, the line is crossed and what is rude turns disgusting. A recent proposal for a “NautilusX” spacecraft is one example of a completely vulgar denial of reality. Chemically propelled, with little radiation shielding, and exhibiting a ridiculous doughnut centrifuge, such advertising vehicles are far more dishonest than cinematic fabrications in that they decieve the public without the excuse of entertaining them. In the same vein, space tourism is presented as space exploration when in fact the obscene spending habits of the ultra-wealthy have nothing to do with exploration and everything to do with the attendent taxpayer subsidized business plan. There is nothing to explore in Low Earth Orbit except the joys of zero G bordellos. Rudely undressing by way of the profit motive is followed by a rude address to physics when the key private space scheme for “exploration” is exposed. This supposed key is a false promise of things to come.

While very large and very expensive Heavy Lift Rockets have been proven to be successful in escaping earth’s gravitational field with human passengers, the inferior lift vehicles being marketed as “cheap access to space” are in truth cheap and nasty taxis to space stations going in endless circles. The flim flam investors are basing their hopes of big profit on is cryogenic fuel depots and transfer in space. Like the filling station every red blooded American stops at to fill his personal spaceship with fossil fuel, depots are the solution to all the holes in the private space plan for “commercial space.” Unfortunately, storing and transferring hydrogen as a liquified gas a few degrees above absolute zero in a zero G environment has nothing in common with filling a car with gasoline. It will never work as advertised. It is a trick. A way to get those bordellos in orbit courtesy of taxpayer dollars. What a deal.

So what is the obvious future that our present level of knowledge presents to us when entertaining the possible and the impossible? More to come.

The first decade of the 21st century ended with human space flight nowhere near to fulfilling the predictions made at the begining of the space age. Not even close. Just as the Vietnam war robbed the space exploration budget, the turn of the century found vast public funds, a truly mindboggling 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 over sold and 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.

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 crewed 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 Heavy Lift Vehicles (HLV)  like the Saturn V. Cryo propellant storage and transfer is at this time a myth and has never even been attempted due to the extreme difficulties involved. It is a smoke screen to disguise defeat while subsidizing space tourism for the ultra-rich. 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 may very well be  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 that 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 or extinction level event on earth. The vital importance of building such craft is obvious. However,  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 as advertised, 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 more precise definition is 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 artificial gravity and radiation shielding required for interplanetary flight. Another feature of lunar travel is the ability of chemical propulsion systems to accomplish these missions. Due to the mass of radiation and gravity solutions, a Spaceship designed for 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. The hundreds of 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. The nuclear environmental hazard is overcome by virtue of the previously mentioned body that can be reached using 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 cosmic 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 but 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. Spaceships can transport thorium reactors, with fuel derived from lunar thorium ore, to these distant moons, establishing permanent colonies. 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 composite 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 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.  Seperate tethers payed out from the split tower can be adjusted in length 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. The minimum Spaceship design uses at least 400 tons of water to protect the crew from the heavy nuclei component of Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR).

Science fiction has instilled in the public 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 and are close to going much, much farther. With a single advance in medical technology– the ability to freeze human beings and then successfully revive them, we would be capable of centuries long 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 that requires another stretch of the imagination. 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 achieved this 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 attack and 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 bestows the ability to weaponize comets and asteroids. A series of such attacks would destroy most life on our world. An advance alien force would probably sanitize the earth of indigenious life and then 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.

In summary, the Spaceship is basically a tower mounted on a disc. The crew and engineering section descend inside this tower like an elevater as a shock absorbing feature– which is necessary with a bomb propelled design. Riding in one would be like an aircraft carrier jet catapult launch. Over and over. The artificial gravity system deploys by splitting the tower and separating the crew and engineering section with the disc in the center and two tethers radiating outward– like the face of a clock with strings going out from the 9 and 3 oclock.

From discussing building the first Spaceships and off-world base on the moon, to the subject of preparing for an alien invasion seems a fantastical and inappropriate leap. It is no more incredible than the other unbelievable features of the universe.

For those not familiar with project plowshare, it was an atoms for peace initiative that tried to use nuclear devices for large scale excavation. Plowshare was a gross mistake on earth– but makes sense for the moon and other bodies. Drill a hole, put an H-bomb at the bottom, seal it up and light it off. And suddenly there is a big cave. Dandridge Cole wrote about this in his book “Beyond Tomorrow” in 1965. I read, or rather looked at the pictures in this wonderful book when I was in elementary school.

All the plans for building off world bases stumble over the difficulty of constructing habitats. Anything on the surface will be hit by cosmic radiation. Covering surface habitats with twenty feet of regolith is not easy with the limited equipment that can be soft landed off-world. It would not be easy on earth. The H-bomb is a variation of that theme of enough high explosive solving any problem. It worked for the Panama Canal.

Of course after detonation the underground construction would have to wait a couple months for the rubble to cool off and then use robots to excavate the radioactive debri.  H-bombs are actually fairly clean compared to large atom bombs and can be designed to be even cleaner. Well, as clean as a nuclear weapon can be. The directional type of bombs intended for Project Orion or the bunker buster designs the Orion bombs originated from would create the maximum amount of space.

Fill this spherical chamber partially with water, use a concentrating mirror to shine a beam down the shaft (and energy storage for the 14 day night) and we have a habitat for however many people a closed cycle ecosystem can support. It should be understood that bio-dome type systems would not be ideal. Using electricity (alot of it) to run plasma reformers can break down waste products, and breathing oxygen can be electrolyzed from water.
A large electrical supply can do wonders for extending resources to the maximum extent possible.

Solar power satellites could possibly relay solar energy to solar arrays on the surface during the lunar night– or nuclear reactors could be used.

Microwave gyrotrons, developed for fusion reactor research, are presently being experimented with for beam propulsion by NASA. While fusion will never work anywhere except in a star– or a bomb– beam propulsion would work quite well in the vacuum of space. Such a system could eventually be used to soft land payloads using very little fuel– or to launch ships to the outer solar system. Since one of the main products of lunar industry would eventually be thorium for spaceships and colonies in the outer system, maybe starting off with nuclear power would be best.

Transporting nuclear materials to the moon is best done with a human rated HLV, with an escape tower and material packaged to survive a launch failure or reentry, on a straight shot to the moon. That is the safest way to do it.

So I would guess, a drilling rig (get Bruce Willis!) to dig the shaft, an H-bomb,  a vehicle to process water from ice, and a power system would be the minimum. And as much electricity as can be generated from whatever source.

How many 20 or 30 ton soft landed HLV payloads would that take? Could it be done robotically or would humans make all the difference?

These are questions that can be answered– there are no showstoppers. One thing is for sure– inferior lift vehicles depending on cryo depots will fail miserably. The resources to build such a base will not come from entrepreneurs looking for big profits running orbital bordellos. An international effort to provide impact defense and a separate population in case of an extinction level event on earth would be the genesis of such a project.

Interplanetary travel will require nuclear propulsion and such arrangements will not be made in earth orbit. The moon is the key to defending the earth from the impact threat and establishing a separate population. As a source of raw materials, water for radiation shielding, solar energy, and underground manufacturing spaces, there is no place else within a few days travel from earth.

The moon is the place to safeguard earth and to launch colonists to the outer solar system. Low Earth Orbit is a dead end. Given a choice of spending treasure on establishing more space stations going in endless circles or accomplishing something worthwhile like desert solar energy farms, I would choose solar energy.

There is a more important mission.  A mission of the highest priority for the military, for NASA, for international concerns. The critical enabler is a moon base. There is no “Flexible Path.” The only path is narrow and will require vast resources. There is no cheap.

1. We must go out there.
There is a reason to go into space. The human race is threatened with extinction by way of an asteroid or comet impact, or by release of a 100 percent lethal engineered organism. Unfortunately Hollywood has made this reality a great fiction. The danger is real, not science fiction. The greatest threat of all is complacency. On the scale of the universe there is little difference between failing to prepare for an earthquake or hurricane, and failing to prepare for an impact or plague. The universe is unconcerned whether a city is destroyed, or a world. Keeping the human race from going the way of the great dragons is off the scale serious for humanity. It is the moral high ground from which to call upon public funds without reservation. Humankind must build spaceships and off-world colonies now. In the event of an impending impact or outbreak, it will be far too late.

2. It is all about politics.
If complacency brings the end of the world, much of the blame will go to politicians. The U.S. space program has throughout it’s history been an underfunded political football without direction or a proper mission. NASA has been called a jobs program and constantly denounced for wasting money. The truth is not so black and white. Pledging to provide jobs while reducing spending has little to do with space travel protecting the planet. The space shuttle was actually a very powerful system but most of the lift was wasted on the reusable winged orbiter. Designed to be all things for the price of one was doomed to fail. In trying to save money the shuttle was ultimately a costly failure. There is no cheap; space flight is inherently expensive.

3. Space travel is worth the money.
Building spaceships to protect Earth from impacts and to establish off-world colonies as insurance against a no survivor epidemic is worth every penny. The money spent by the Department of Defense (DOD) for cold war weapons and counter-insurgency campaigning is mind boggling. Aerospace companies are addicted to the easy money that weapons programs represent. Unlike many billion dollar weapons, spaceships are hard money because they actually have to work. A small percentage of DOD funding redirected toward impact defense would accomplish a critical mission. A random impact could happen tomorrow and there would be no one left to marvel at the improbable spike in that comforting probability curve. The public must demand protection.

4. Going nowhere.
To travel we must go somewhere. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is NOT space travel. It is not space flight or space exploration anymore. It is endless circles at very high altitude. After decades of space station experience, it is now understood that LEO is a dead end. Space stations are not capable of powered flight. It is not spaceflight.There is nothing to explore. It is not space exploration. The only course is to leave Earth behind and fly directly Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO). A spaceship is always the best space station.

5. Going somewhere.
The first stop for the space traveler is the Moon. The Moon comes first because of an unavoidable sequence of requirements. While chemical propulsion is just sufficient to reach the Moon, nuclear energy is required to travel anywhere else in the solar system. Active nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel will not be allowed near the earth. Packaged fissionable material can be transported to the moon on a direct trajectory from earth only using heavy lift rockets. The moon also has water for radiation shielding and is where any deep space travel must begin.

6. Space can kill you.
Solar storms periodically flood space outside LEO with deadly radiation. In addition there is a constant extremely powerful form of cosmic radiation that sprays more radiation into a spacecraft when this “heavy nuclei” hits metal. For this reason, the partial shielding used to stop solar storm radiation greatly increases radiation exposure from heavy nuclei. The only solution is a massive shield that can stop both forms of radiation. The mass and distance of such a shield equates to 14 feet of water and a minimum of 400 tons. Like nuclear power and propulsion, space radiation is a subject that is avoided when proposing new spacecraft. It is necessary to move beyond denial and accept the cost.

7. Space is unhealthy.
While floating in zero gravity looks like great fun, it is impossible to stay healthy. Months of living in zero gravity causes muscles to weaken and a permanent loss of a certain percentage of bone mass and marrow. Particles of every kind, including human waste and germs, are difficult to filter out of the air and are inhaled. The blood pools in the head causing constant congestion and discomfort. Combined with radiation exposure, immune system suppression, and mutated pathogens,“zero G” debilitation is a hazard second only to space radiation. Artificial gravity and a massive radiation shield is the solution.

8. Spaceships are heavy.
A true ship of space capable of traveling to other planets in the solar system must be big. Since solar energy is not available in the outer system, nuclear reactors are required. Because of zero G debilitation, artificial gravity must be provided by splitting a ship in half and reeling out the two sections on a cable (tether) and then spinning them. Long voyages to the planets are only possible with artificial gravity and massive shielding. Not only electricity from reactors, but nuclear propulsion is absolutely required. Sending crews into deep space for years at a time based on how much radiation exposure and zero G debilitation they can survive will fail. Providing the basic human requirements of Earth radiation and Earth gravity will succeed.

9. Big rockets are the only way.
There is no substitute for a heavy lift vehicle with hydrogen fueled upper stages. Liquid hydrogen is the most powerful rocket propellant and is very difficult to store and handle. Advertisements showing “gas stations in space” are too good to be true. Cryogenic transfer in space to multiple small spacecraft has never been done for good reason. Private concerns endlessly promote these depots that will not work as advertised. Heavy Lift Vehicles (HLV’s) launched from earth are guaranteed to succeed just as they have over one hundred times in the form of the space shuttle. Currently, the proposed “SLS” is the only way to transport nuclear materials for spaceship power and propulsion systems directly to the moon. Schemes using smaller inferior lift vehicles are only capable of reaching LEO– and that is a dead end.

10. Private Space is deceiving the public.
The “Flexible Path” which hands over Human Space Flight (HSF) to privately operated companies has no chance of providing spaceships or off-world colonies to safeguard the human race. The main focus is on space tourism; joy rides to space stations for the ultra-wealthy subsidized with tax dollars. Private space promises yet has none of the resources necessary for actual space travel. Congress has mandated the Space Launch System (SLS) as a HLV designed for BEO-HSF. However, the NASA budget only allows for very slow development of the SLS and strict limitations on future missions. Nuclear powered and propelled spaceships launched from the moon with massive radiation shielding and artificial gravity will only become reality by raising the spaceflight budget ceiling. The DOD has the responsibility and duty to fund impact defense and off-world colonization.

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 almost every press release 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.

The 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.

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.

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 also have an escape-system-that-is-not-an-escape-system. These underpowered hypergolic system are not very good at saving a crew but will work great raising the orbit of tourist space stations. This is one of those worst mistakes being repeated.

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. There is a valid military mission for 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. There is no cheap; space flight is inherently expensive.

The future is not bright.

Several dates are cited as marking the beginning of the space age. Sputnik, October 4th, 1957, Yuri’s day April 12th, 1961, and the first successful V-2 launch by the Nazis on October 3rd, 1942, to name a few. Some prefer December 21st, 1968, when human beings first escaped the Earth’s gravitational field on Apollo 8. When studying the events that allowed man to leave Earth, future historians may agree on a date not generally associated with space flight. July 16th, 1945 was Trinity, the first nuclear weapon test. Ground zero was visited after the test by Stanislaw Ulam, a 36 year old Polish mathematician who helped build “the gadget.” Ulam later conceived the idea of propelling a spaceship with atomic bombs. Near the end of his life the eccentric genius stated the idea was his greatest work.

When considering nuclear propulsion, it must be understood that space is not an ocean, though often characterized as one. The distances and conditions are not comparable. While chemical energy has allowed humankind to travel across and above the surface of Earth, the energy required to travel in space is of a different order. Water, in the form of steam, was the agent of change that brought about the industrial revolution. Fossil fuel, burned and transformed by steam into mechanical work, would radically change the world in the span of a century. What is difficult for moderns to understand is not only how limited human capabilities were before steam, but how limited they are in the present in terms of space travel. The psychological limits of human beings limit space journeys to a few years. Chemical propulsion is not capable of taking human beings to the outer solar system and back within those crew limits. The solution is a reaction one million times more powerful. Nuclear energy is to the space age as steam was to the industrial age.

Space is not an ocean and this was the correct lesson drawn by Stanislaw Ulam after that suddenly bright morning in 1945. While metal can barely contain and harness chemical energy, Ulam thought outside that box and accepted nuclear energy could never be contained efficiently by any material. However, nuclear energy could be harnessed to push a spaceship in separate events to the fantastic velocities required for interplanetary travel without any containment problems at all — by using bombs. An uncontained burst of nuclear generated plasma could be withstood by a surface momentarily before the physical matter had time to melt.

Sixty years after Ulam’s stroke of genius, atomic bomb propulsion still has no competition as the only available propulsion system for practical interplanetary travel. This fact is almost completely unknown to the public. The term “ISP”, expressed in seconds, is used in measuring the efficiency of a rocket engine and chemical rockets have low ISP numbers but high thrust. The most efficient rocket engines, such as the space shuttle main engines, with a listed ISP of 453 seconds are also among the most powerful. Atomic bomb propulsion, thanks to the billions of dollars poured into star wars weapons research, would have an ISP exceeding 100,000 seconds. While other propulsion systems that use electricity have similar or higher numbers, the amount of thrust is trivial and requires months or years of continuous operation to develop any significant velocity. Considering space travel as not only a speed and distance problem, but also a time and distance problem, low thrust lengthens any missions to the outer solar system beyond crew limits. The thrust imparted by atomic bombs can in a short period easily accelerate thousands of tons to the comparatively extreme speeds necessary and then coast. Unlike an electric propulsion failure, a few dud bombs need not doom a mission or crew.

Though an incredible use of awesome power, the obstacles to employing bomb propulsion are not technical as some of the best engineers and physicists on the planet evaluated and validated the concept. A cadre of celebrity scientists also endorsed atomic bomb propulsion, including Werner Von Braun, who was present as a Nazi SS officer at the first successful V-2 launch, and as an American citizen at the launch of Apollo 8. Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan were also supporters. The first serious work on bomb propulsion was done by physicist Freeman Dyson and weapon designer Ted Taylor on the top secret project Orion. Dyson’s son, in his book Project Orion, refers to the classified star wars project Casaba Howitzer. This device focused most of the energy of a nuclear explosion in one direction. Ted Taylor’s specialty was small warheads and he designed the Orion bombs, aka “pulse units.” The “unclassified” state of the art in nuclear weapons can direct 80 percent of bomb energy into a slab of propellant, converting this mass into a jet of superheated plasma. A pusher plate would absorb the blast without melting for the fraction of a second it lasts and accelerate the spaceship in steps with each bomb. Perhaps the closest experience to riding in an atomic bomb propelled spaceship would be repeated aircraft carrier catapult launches. Instead of the ocean, space. Instead of supersonic fighters, a thousand ton spaceship.

Project Orion was canceled due to nuclear weapon treaties which required international consent for any such devices in space. A parallel to the failure of atomic bomb propulsion may be found in an examination of the industrial age. In The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, author William Rosen theorizes English patent law was the key enabler of the industrial age by allowing inventors to retain and profit from their intellectual property. The atomic bomb originated with a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 from pacifist Albert Einstein — who was afraid the Nazi’s might build one first. With the human race living at the bottom of a deep, damp, and easily contaminated gravity well, atom bombs have never been applied successfully to a peaceful purpose. Stan Ulam, who lost most of his family in the holocaust, held the patent on atomic bomb propulsion. In the space age, nuclear weapon treaties and anti-nuclear activism have had the opposite effect of patent law and prevented atomic bomb propulsion from opening up the solar system to human exploration and colonization. Ironically, the nuclear industry is not safe on Earth — but deep space seems designed for it. There are no contamination or waste hazards, no long term storage problems.

The problems with space travel are more than just the political barriers to detonating nuclear devices. The space industry is ipso facto a nuclear industry. Not only is nuclear energy the only practical source of propulsion in deep space, nuclear radiation generated by supernova and other celestial sources permeate space outside the protection of the earth’s atmosphere. All astronauts are radiation workers. Most, but sadly not all, space radiation is relatively easy to shield against. Many will argue using atomic bombs for propulsion is unnecessary. The presence of a small percentage of highly damaging and deeply penetrating particles — the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic rays makes a super powerful propulsion system mandatory. The tremendous power of atomic bomb propulsion is certainly able to propel the heavily shielded capsules required to protect space travelers. The great mass of shielding makes chemical engines, inefficient nuclear thermal rockets, the low thrust forms of electrical propulsion, and solar sails essentially worthless for human deep space flight. Which is why atomic bomb propulsion is left as the only “off the shelf” viable means of propulsion. For the foreseeable future, high thrust and high ISP to propel heavy shielding to the required velocities is only possible using bombs. The most useful and available form of radiation shielding is water. While space may not be an ocean, it appears human beings will have to take some of the ocean with them to survive.

The water comes before the bombs in human space flight because of the humans. The radiation hazards of long duration human space flight beyond earth orbit are only recently being addressed after decades of space station experience. The reason for this neglect is low earth orbit space stations are shielded from much of the radiation found outside the Earth’s Van Allen belts and magnetic field. An appreciation of the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic radiation, as well as solar events, will put multi-year human missions beyond earth orbit on hold indefinitely until a practical shield is available. While vested interests continue to promote inferior or non-existent technology, dismissing the radiation hazards and making promises they cannot keep, radiation scientists studying deep space conditions are skeptical — to say the least.

In the March 2006 issue of Scientific American magazine, Dr. Eugene Parker explained in simple terms survivable deep space travel. In “Shielding Space Travelers”, Parker states “cosmic rays pose irreducible risks.” The premise of this statement is revealed when the only guaranteed solution to reducing the risk — a shield massing hundreds of tons — is deemed impractical. Active magnetic shields and other schemes are likewise of no use because while they may stop most radiation, the only effective barrier to heavy nuclei is mass and distance. The impracticality of a massive shield is due to first the expense of lifting hundreds of tons of shielding into space from Earth, and secondly propelling this mass around the solar system. Propelling this mass is not a problem if using atomic bombs, however, another problem arises. Even if the bombs could be politically managed, there is still the need to escape Earth’s gravitational field with all that shielding. Bomb propulsion is ideal for deep space but cannot be used in Earth orbit due to the Earth’s magnetic field trapping radioactive fallout that eventually enters the atmosphere. Not only lifting the shielding into orbit but chemically boosting it to a higher escape velocity away from the Earth is thus doubly problematic. Earth is a deep gravity well to climb out of.

The situation changed in March 2010 when NASA reported Mini-SAR radar aboard the Chandrayaan-1 lunar space probe had detected what appeared to be ice deposits at the lunar North Pole. An estimated 600 million tons of ice in sheets a couple meters thick. Moon water would allow a spaceship in lunar orbit to fill an outer hull with the 500+ tons of water required to completely shield a capsule from heavy nuclei. This would enable an empty spaceship to “travel light” to the Moon and then boost out of lunar orbit using atomic bomb propulsion with a full radiation shield. Parker’s guaranteed but impractical solution had suddenly become practical. Fourteen feet of water equals the protection of the Earth’s air column at an altitude of 18,000 feet above sea level. This would protect astronauts not only from all cosmic radiation but the most intense solar storms and the radiation belts found near the moons of Jupiter. With water and bombs, epic missions of exploration to the asteroid belt and outer planets are entirely possible. The main obstacles are again political, not technical. Bombs work, water works, and the Moon is in range of chemically propelled spacecraft launched from Earth.

There are other challenges to long duration beyond earth orbit human space flight but the solutions have been known for many decades. Zero gravity debilitation causes astronauts to weaken and permanently lose bone and bone marrow mass. The most practical solution, theorized since the early 1930′s, was investigated in 1966 during the Gemini 11 mission. A 100 foot tether experiment with the capsule attached to an Agena booster was successful in generating a small amount of artificial gravity by spinning the two vehicles. Equal masses on the ends of a tether can efficiently generate centrifugal force equal to one gravity. The concept is to “split the ship” when not maneuvering under power so the 500+ tons of shielded capsule is on one end and the rest of the craft of equal mass is reeled out on the other end of a thousand foot or more tether. Looking out through 14 feet of water, the crew of such a spaceship would view a slowly rotating star field. Long duration missions may last close to half a decade and the only option for providing air and water is to use a miniature version of Earth’s ecosystem. Equipment to enable a closed cycle life support system providing years of air and water is now available in the form of plasma reformers and facilitated by tons of water in which to grow algae or genetically modified organisms. With Earth radiation, Earth gravity, and air and water endlessly purified on board, crews can push their psychological limits as many years and as far out into the solar system as the speed of their atomic spaceships allow.

At the time of this writing, in early 2011, the outlook for human space flight is not encouraging. There are zero prospects for funding a long duration beyond earth orbit mission. Using atomic bombs to push minimum spaceship masses of over one thousand tons around the solar system for years at a time would cost as much as several major U.S. department of defense projects combined. Space flight is inherently expensive; there is no cheap. However, there is a completely valid military mission for atomic bomb propelled spaceships. Planetary protection became an issue in 1980 after the Chicxulub impact crater in Mexico was assigned blame for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Though overshadowed by the cold war, the impact threat remains. Comet and asteroid impacts are also the stuff of Hollywood movies and this is unfortunate in that a grave threat to the survival of life on earth is viewed as fictional entertainment. The impact threat is not science fiction; it is quite real, as the frequent near misses and geologic evidence of repeated extinction events show. Optimized directional bombs used in bomb propulsion could also be employed to deflect comets and asteroids long before they approach Earth.

While the consequences of ignoring the threat of an inevitable tsunami, earthquake, or hurricane are bad, the consequences of ignoring the inevitable comet or asteroid impact are apocalyptic. It is not only random impacts that could strike at any time the human race need guard against. In April of 2010 renowned physicist Stephen Hawking warned of alien civilizations posing a possible threat to humanity. Several large comets purposely crashed into a planet to wipe out the majority of indigenous life and prepare for the introduction of invasive alien species may be a common occurrence in the galaxy. Before readers scoff, they might consider towers brought down by jetliners, the discovery of millions of planets, and other recent unlikely events. It is within our power to defend Earth from the very real threat of an impact, and at this time self-defense is the only valid reason to go into space instead of spending the resources on Earth improving the human condition. Protecting our species from extinction is the penultimate moral high ground above all other calls on public funds. The vast treasure expended by nations threatening each other is not protecting the human race at all. Earth is defenseless. President Ronald Reagan in his 1983 Star Wars speech said “I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace.” President Barack Obama has expressed a desire to reduce the world nuclear arsenal and converting these weapons to propulsion devices would do so. A powerful force of nuclear powered, propelled, and armed spaceships cannot guarantee Earth will not suffer a catastrophe. The best insurance for our species is to establish, in concert with a spaceship fleet, several independent self-supporting off world colonies in the outer solar system. The first such colony would mark the beginning of a new age.

Time line

1939 (August) Einstein sends letter recommending atomic bomb.

1939 (September) Germany invades Poland, World War 2 begins.

1942 First successful V-2 rocket launch by the Nazis.

1945 Trinity; the first atomic bomb is detonated.

1957 Sputnik achieves orbit using a rocket designed to carry an atomic bomb.

1961 Yuri Gagarin orbits Earth.

1966 Gemini 11 mission demonstrates artificial gravity.

1967 Outer Space Treaty restricts nuclear weapons in space.

1968 Apollo 8 crew escapes Earth’s gravitational field.

1980 Chicxulub impact crater revealed as dinosaur killer.

1983 Ronald Reagan gives Star Wars speech.

2006 Eugene Parker explains survivable deep space travel.

2010 (March) Millions of tons of ice are discovered on the Moon.

2010 (April) Stephen Hawking warns of alien civilization threat.

References

George Dyson, 2002, Project Orion: The True story of the Atomic Spaceship, Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Eugene Parker, March 2006, Shielding Space Travelers, Scientific American Magazine

William Rosen, 2010, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, Random House