Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: policy – Page 85

Yesterday, March 25 2013, the Colorado Legislature passed a resolution making March 25, Aerospace Day. What a great way to celebrate Colorado’s participation in space endeavors. The state is the second largest employer of space related companies. Thanks to Colorado Space Business Roundtable (CSBR), the Colorado Space Coalition (CSC), the Rocky Mountain AIAA (RMAIAA), and the many sponsors who helped make this possible.

The sponsors are Aurora Chamber of Commerce, Ball Aerospace Technologies, GH Phipps Construction, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Metro State University of Denver, United Launch Alliance, Red Canyon Software, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Webster University, and the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum.

Picture of the Colorado Senate just after passing the resolution.

Picture of the Colorado House of Representative congratulating CSBR, CSC & RMAIAA just after having passed the resolution.

If we are to become a space faring civilization it is important to celebrate our efforts in space endeavors. Our Colorado legislature recognized the need and passed the resolution to make March 25 Colorado’s Aerospace Day. I hope all the other states will would join Colorado and make March 25 Aerospace Day, and one day March 25 will be the national Aerospace Day.

———————-

I received some photos from Michael Piccone. Here they are

Picture of the inside Capitol Hill showing some of the attendees visiting with the exhibitors.

Picture of 60+ of us who attended. There were more, and we were the ones who posed for this photo.

Close up of on of our state senators.

Some of the people who planned and made this event and resolution possible. They are from CSBR, CSC, Colorado Legislature, Lockheed, Boeing, Wings Over the Rockies.…

——————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author of the 12-year study An Introduction to Gravity Modification

The University of Colorado Boulder holds its annual Gamow Memorial Lecture around this time of the year. This year, Feb 26, 2013, Brian Greene gave the lecture, on multiverses.

His talk was very good. He explained why there are 10500 possible variations to possible universes, and ours was just one of many possible universes, thus the term multiverse.

How interesting. This is an extension of the idea that the Earth or the Sun not being at the center of our Universe.

Brian Green graciously allowed me to have my picture taken with him at the reception held in honor of him after his lecture. In the middle picture I am getting ready my new Nokia Lumia 920 Windows 8 phone.

I may not agree with string theories, but I think it is vitally important to allow all forms of physical theories to take root, and let the community of physicists & engineers determine which theories have a better chance of explaining some aspect of the universal laws of physics, through discussions and experimentations. I would add, and drive new commercially viable technologies.

——————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author of the 12-year study An Introduction to Gravity Modification

1. Thou shalt first guard the Earth and preserve humanity.

Impact deflection and survival colonies hold the moral high ground above all other calls on public funds.

2. Thou shalt go into space with heavy lift rockets with hydrogen upper stages and not go extinct.

The human race can only go in one of two directions; space or extinction- right now we are an endangered species.

3. Thou shalt use the power of the atom to live on other worlds.

Nuclear energy is to the space age as steam was to the industrial revolution; chemical propulsion is useless for interplanetary travel and there is no solar energy in the outer solar system.

4. Thou shalt use nuclear weapons to travel through space.

Physical matter can barely contain chemical reactions; the only way to effectively harness nuclear energy to propel spaceships is to avoid containment problems completely- with bombs.

5. Thou shalt gather ice on the Moon as a shield and travel outbound.

The Moon has water for the minimum 14 foot thick radiation shield and is a safe place to light off a bomb propulsion system; it is the starting gate.

6. Thou shalt spin thy spaceships and rings and hollow spheres to create gravity and thrive.

Humankind requires Earth gravity and radiation to travel for years through space; anything less is a guarantee of failure.

7. Thou shalt harvest the Sun on the Moon and use the energy to power the Earth and propel spaceships with mighty beams.

8. Thou shalt freeze without damage the old and sick and revive them when a cure is found; only an indefinite lifespan will allow humankind to combine and survive. Only with this reprieve can we sleep and reach the stars.

9. Thou shalt build solar power stations in space hundreds of miles in diameter and with this power manufacture small black holes for starship engines.

10. Thou shalt build artificial intellects and with these beings escape the death of the universe and resurrect all who have died, joining all minds on a new plane.

I continue to survey the available technology applicable to spaceflight and there is little change.

The remarkable near impact and NEO on the same day seems to fly in the face of the experts quoting a probability of such coincidence being low on the scale of millenium. A recent exchange on a blog has given me the idea that perhaps crude is better. A much faster approach to a nuclear propelled spaceship might be more appropriate.

Unknown to the public there is such a thing as unobtanium. It carries the country name of my birth; Americium.

A certain form of Americium is ideal for a type of nuclear solid fuel rocket. Called a Fission Fragment Rocket, it is straight out of a 1950’s movie with massive thrust at the limit of human G-tolerance. Such a rocket produces large amounts of irradiated material and cannot be fired inside, near, or at the Earth’s magnetic field. The Moon is the place to assemble, test, and launch any nuclear mission.

Such Fission Fragment propelled spacecraft would resemble the original Tsolkovsky space train with a several hundred foot long slender skeleton mounting these one shot Americium boosters. The turn of the century deaf school master continues to predict.

Each lamp-shade-spherical thruster has a programmed design balancing the length and thrust of the burn. After being expended the boosters use a small secondary system to send them into an appropriate direction and probably equipped with small sensor packages, using the hot irradiated shell for an RTG. The Frame that served as a car of the space train transforms into a pair of satellite panels. Being more an artist than an *engineer, I find the monoplane configuration pleasing to the eye as well as being functional. These dozens and eventually thousands of dual purpose boosters would help form a space warning net.

The front of the space train is a large plastic sphere partially filled filled with water sent up from the surface of a a Robotic Lunar Polar Base. The Spaceship would split apart on a tether to generate artificial gravity with the lessening booster mass balanced by varying lengths of tether with an intermediate reactor mass.

These piloted impact threat interceptors would be manned by the United Nations Space Defense Force. All the Nuclear Powers would be represented.…..well, most of them. They would be capable of “fast missions” lasting only a month or at the most two months. They would be launched from underground silos on the Moon to deliver a nuclear weapon package towards an impact threat at the highest possible velocity and so the fastest intercept time. These ships would come back on a ballistic course with all their boosters expended to be rescued by recovery craft from the Moon upon return to the vicinity of Earth.

The key to this scenario is Americium 242. It is extremely expensive stuff. The only alternative is Nuclear Pulse Propulsion (NPP). The problem with bomb propulsion is the need to have a humungous mass for the most efficient size of bomb to react with.

The Logic Tree then splits again with two designs of bomb propelled ship; the “Orion” and the “Medusa.” The Orion is the original design using a metal plate and shock absorbing system. The Medusa is essentially a giant woven alloy parachute and tether system that replaces the plate with a much lighter “mega-sail.” In one of the few cases where compromise might bear fruit- the huge spinning ufo type disc, thousands of feet across, would serve quite well to explore, colonize, and intercept impact threats. Such a ship would require a couple decades to begin manufacture on the Moon.

Americium boosters could be built on earth and inserted into lunar orbit with Human Rated Heavy Lift Vehicles (SLS) and a mission launched well within a ten-year apollo type plan. But the Americium Infrastructure has to be available as a first step.

Would any of my hundreds of faithful followers be willing to assist me in circulating a petition?

*Actually I am neither an artist or an engineer- just a wannabe pulp writer in the mold of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I was recently accused on another blog of repeating a defeatist mantra.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If, we as a community, are intending to accelerate the development of interstellar travel we have to glower at the record and ask ourselves some tough questions. First, what is the current record of the primary players? Second, why is everyone afraid to try something outside the status quo theories?

At the present time the primary players are associated with the DARPA funded 100-Year Starship Study, as Icarus Interstellar who is cross linked with The Tau Zero Foundation and Centauri Dreams is a team member of the 100YSS. I was surprised to find Jean-Luc Cambier on Tau Zero.

Gary Church recently put the final nail in the Icarus Interstellar‘s dreams to build a rocket ship for interstellar travel. In his post on Lifeboat, Cosmic Ray Gorilla Gary Church says “it is likely such a shield will massive over a thousand tons”. Was he suggesting that the new cost of an interstellar rocket ship is not 3.4x World GDP but 34x or 340x World GDP? Oops!

Let us look at the record. Richard Obousy of Icarus Interstellar and Eric Davis of Institute for Advanced Studies claimed that it was possible, using string theories to travel at not just c, the velocity of light but at 1E32c, or c multiplied by a 1 followed by 32 zeros. However, Lorentz-FitzGerald transformations show that anything with mass cannot travel faster than the velocity of light. Note that Lorentz-FitzGerald is an empirical observation which was incorporated into Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.

It is quite clear that you can use string theories to say anything you want. I used the term ‘mathematical conjecture’.

In April 2008 the esteemed Michio Kaku said in his Space Show interview, that it would take several hundred years to do gravity modification. But Michio Kaku is a string theorist himself. And I might add down to Earth one at that, since his opinion contradicts Richard Obousy and Eric Davis.

Then there is George Hathaway also with the Tau Zero Foundation who could not reproduce Podkletnov’s experiments, even when he was in communication with Podkletnov.

And this is the one group our astronaut Mae Jemison, leader of the 100YSS effort, has teamed up with? My sincerest condolences to you Mae Jemison. Sincerest condolences.

For the answer to the second question, you have to look within yourselves.

—————————————————————————————————

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

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

Recently, I met Josh Hopkins of Lockheed’s Advanced Programs, AIAA Rocky Mountain Region’s First Annual Technical Symposium (RMATS), October 26, 2012. Josh was the keynote speaker at this RMATS. Here is his presentation. After his presentation we talked outside the conference hall. I told him about my book, and was surprised when he said that two groups had failed to reproduce Podkletnov’s work. I knew one group had but a second? As we parted we said we’d keep in touch. But you know how life is, it has the habit of getting in the way of exciting research, and we lost touch.

About two weeks ago, I remembered, that Josh had said that he would provide some information on the second group that had failed to reproduce Podkletnov’s work. I sent him an email, and was very pleased to hear back from him and that the group’s finding had been published under the title “Gravity Modification by High-Temperature Semiconductors”. The authors were C. Woods, S. Cooke, J. Helme & C. Caldwell. Their paper was published in the 37th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, 8–11 July 2001, Salt Lake City, Utah. I bought a copy for the AIAA archives, and read it, reread it, and reread it.

Then I found a third team they published their lack of findings “Gravity Modification Experiments Using a Rotating Superconducting Disk and Radio Frequency Fields”. The authors were G. Hathaway, B. Cleveland and Y. Bao. Published in Physica C, 2003.

Both papers focused on attempting to build a correct superconducting disc. At least Wood et al said “the tests have not fulfilled the specified conditions for a gravity effect”. The single most difficult thing to do was to build a bilayered superconducting disc. Woods et al tried very hard to do so. Reading through Hathaway et all paper suggest that they too had similar difficulties. Photo shows a sample disc from Woods’ team. Observe the crack in the middle.

Further, Woods’ team was able to rotate their disc to 5,000 rpm. Hathaway’s team reports a rotational speed of between 400–800 rpm, a far cry from Podkletnov’s 5,000 rpm. This suggests that there were other problems in Hathaway’s disc not reported in their paper. With 400–800 rpm, if Hathaway were to observe a significant weight change it would have been less than the repeatable experimental sensitivity of 0.5mg!

Here are some quotes from Hathaway et al’s original paper “As a result of these tests it was decided that either the coil designs were inefficient at producing …”, “the rapid induction heating at room temperature cracked the non-superconducting disk into two pieces within 3 s”, “Further tests are needed to determine the proper test set-up required to detect the reverse Josephson junction effect in multi-grain bulk YBCO superconductors”.

It is quite obvious from reading both papers that neither team were able to faithfully reproduce Podkletnov’s work, and it is no wonder that at least Woods et al team stated “the tests have not fulfilled the specified conditions for a gravity effect”. This statement definitely applies to Hathaway et al’s research. There is more to critic both investigations, but .… this should be enough.

Now, for the final surprise. The first team I had mentioned earlier. Ning Li led the first team comprised of members from NASA and University of Huntsville, AL. It was revealed in conversations with a former team member that Ning Li’s team was disbanded before they could build the superconducting discs required to investigate Podkletnov’s claims. Wow!

If you think about it, all these “investigations” just showed that nobody in the US was capable of faithfully reproducing Podkletnov’s experiments to even disprove it.

What a big surprise! A null result is not a disproof.

—————————————————————————————————

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once again, may 2013 be an extraordinary year.

—————————————————————————————————

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year with hopes for a more enlightened public.

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