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A secret agent travels to a secret underground desert base being used to develop space weapons to investigate a series of mysterious murders. The agent finds a secret transmitter was built into a supercomputer that controls the base and a stealth plane flying overhead is controlling the computer and causing the deaths. The agent does battle with two powerful robots in the climax of the story.

Gog is a great story worthy of a sci fi action epic today- and was originally made in 1954. Why can’t they just remake these movies word for word and scene for scene with as few changes as possible? The terrible job done on so many remade sci fi classics is really a mystery. How can such great special effects and actors be used to murder a perfect story that had already been told well once? Amazing.

In contrast to Gog we have the fairly recent movie Stealth released in 2005 that has talent, special effects, and probably the worst story ever conceived. An artificially intelligent fighter plane going off the reservation? The rip-off of HAL from 2001 is so ridiculous.

Fantastic Voyage (1966) was a not so good story that succeeded in spite of stretching suspension of disbelief beyond the limit. It was a great movie and might succeed today if instead of miniaturized and injected into a human body it was instead a submarine exploring a giant organism under the ice of a moon in the outer solar system. Just an idea.

And then there is one of the great sci-fi movies of all time if one can just forget the ending. The Abyss of 1989 was truly a great film in that aquanauts and submarines were portrayed in an almost believable way.

From wiki: The cast and crew endured over six months of grueling six-day, 70-hour weeks on an isolated set. At one point, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had a physical and emotional breakdown on the set and on another occasion, Ed Harris burst into spontaneous sobbing while driving home. Cameron himself admitted, “I knew this was going to be a hard shoot, but even I had no idea just how hard. I don’t ever want to go through this again”

Again, The Abyss, like Fantastic Voyage, brings to mind those oceans under the icy surface of several moons in the outer solar system.

I recently watched Lockdown with Guy Pearce and was as disappointed as I thought I would be. Great actors and expensive special effects just cannot make up for a bad story. When will they learn? It is sad to think they could have just remade Gog and had a hit.

The obvious futures represented by these different movies are worthy of consideration in that even in 1954 the technology to come was being portrayed accurately. In 2005 we have a box office bomb that as a waste of money is parallel to the military industrial complex and their too-good-to-be-true wonder weapons that rarely work as advertised. In Fantastic Voyage and The Abyss we see scenarios that point to space missions to the sub-surface oceans of the outer planet moons.

And in Lockdown we find a prison in space where the prisoners are the victims of cryogenic experimentation and going insane as a result. Being an advocate of cryopreservation for deep space travel I found the story line.……extremely disappointing.

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

Otto E. Rossler

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

Abstract

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

(August 28, 2012)

Philosophical Preface

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

The List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• An eusocial version of the brain equation does not exist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The PFC constitutes a miracle worked by the toddler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A chemical universal circuit (with Dietrich Hoffmann)

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

• Well-stirred automata exist physically

• Reaction scheme for a temperature-compensated chemical clock

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

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

• “Slinky attractor” (with Okan Gurel)

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

• Chaotic electronic multivibrator (built with Hartmut Waible)

• “The Rossler attractor” (Norman Packard)

• “Spiral chaos”

• “Screw-type chaos”

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

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

• “Hyperchaos” (name courtesy Paul Rapp)

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

• X-attractor (still unidentified)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• “Transfinitely invertible attractors” (almost everywhere)

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

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

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

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

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

• Particle indistinguishability is transfinitely exact (with Hans Primas)

• Deterministic entropy (with Hans Diebner)

• “Gibbs-Sackur cell” in phase space

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Everett immortality (with Markus Fix and Bryce DeWitt)

• Aging equation (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Proof of flatness for the famous Ehrenfest rotating disk

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

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

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

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

• c is globally constant (Max Abraham, rehabilitated)

• Nonexistence of gravitational waves (as corollary)

• Nonexistence of gravitons (as corollary)

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

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

• Kerr metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-meter disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-kilogram disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Charge conservation disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Reissner-Nordstrom metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

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

• Bekenstein theory disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Hawking radiation disproved (via Telemach theorem)

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

• Interior Schwarzschild solution: Proof of nonexistence

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

• Wormholes proved non-existent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Electrons have finite volume (follows from Telemach theorem)

• As a corollary, string theory is qualitatively confirmed

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

• Freshly generated black holes are undetectable at nuclear colliders

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A first consistent history of galaxy formation becomes possible

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

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

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

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

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

• Deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Hans Diebner)

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

• “Deterministic ectropy” formula (with Ali Sanayei)

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The counterfactual superluminal telegraph is “subluminally confirmable”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• No WIMPs since cold dark matter was disproved

• No dark energy since accelerated expansion was disproved

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

• No inflation owing to the absence of space expansion

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48869943#.UELWXqD0SXY

The glacial pace of NASA’s human spaceflight program –even with the glaciers melting- may possibly see human beings leave Earth’s gravitational field in 2025. Possibly.

The missing piece of the puzzle is a radiation sanctuary massive enough to protect a crew from a major solar event on such a journey.

http://www.nasatech.com/NEWS/Nov05/who_1105.html

A fairly massive shelter, probably made of RFX1, will have to be available for any deep space mission. But why chase down a boulder? A mission to orbit the moon is a much more worthwhile project.

Why do we have a space station orbiting the Earth instead of the Moon? The answer is money of course. Such a station would not have the protection of the Van Allen belts and would require heavy shielding. The vehicle to insert such a heavily shielded station into lunar orbit and resupply it existed in the form of the cargo version of the space shuttle- called Sidemount.

Sidemount was never funded, and a vast amount of money- over 100 billion dollars- spent on the ISS was essentially wasted on tin cans going in endless circles at very high altitude. It does have a nice window though.

Low Earth Orbit is a dead end.
We now have the opportunity to launch a station to orbit the Moon in a relatively short time frame using the Delta IV vehicle. But again, the political football that is human space flight is the first to be cut- while cold war monstrosities like the V-22 Osprey and F-35 Stealth Fighter suck up billions and deliver wonder weapons that do not work.

Why are we trapped and going in circles- going nowhere? Along with the trillion dollar war, billions of dollars are.….missing. Nobody even knows where those billions went.

I know one thing; there went our space program.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/13/official-billions-miss…l-history/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/28/billions-afghan-aid-unaccounted-audit/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/30/military-spending-waste_n_942723.html

Christian Astronomers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Society of Christian Astronomers

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

Would It Keep Us Awake At Night?
It is not sufficient to just challenge the foundations of physics just for the theoretical interest. To make the challenge come alive we need a goal that will keep us awake at night at the possibility of new unthinkable inventions that will take man where no man has gone before.

Is interstellar travel possible? I have found that in trying to answer this question, I am forced to challenge the foundations of physics. This question provides a vessel to discuss how to challenge, and if we have found some of the answers, there are still more questions.

The two most important questions in my opinion are, what is force?, and what is the difference between ‘travel’ and ‘arrival’? That is, why do we need to ‘travel’, why can’t we just ‘arrive’?

I started questioning the foundations of physics in 1999. In attempting to answer the question, what is force?, in 2007 I discovered a new formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc2 that does not require us to know the mass of the planet or star. τ is the change in time dilation divided by the change in distance. This is an immense discovery, never before accomplished in the 346-year history, since Newton, of the physics of gravitational fields, as all theories on gravity require us to know the mass of the planet or star.

Gerard ‘t Hooft the 1999 Nobel Laureate showed in 2008 that gravitational forces can be present in space even where planets and stars are not. My work goes a step further. We can determine the acceleration present in space without any knowledge of the planets or stars that cause this gravitational field (Solomon, 2011).

A New Schema To Advance Propulsion Physics
Unlike Newtonian gravity or General Relativity, the importance of the shape of spacetime lies in the fact that it informs us of what time dilation and length contraction are, as these two parameters are the minimum information one requires to determine gravitational acceleration. Therefore, the formalism in this essay will be different from that of Newtonian gravity or General Relativity, as a tensor treatment is outside the scope of this essay.

A schema is an outline of a model of a complex reality to assist in explaining this reality. The work of various researchers in the gravity field can be presented by a conceptual formalism referred to as source-field-effect schema. The source-field-effect schema corresponds to the mass-gravity-acceleration phenomenon, respectively.

Puthoff’s (Amoroso et al, 2002) source-field schema describes how the mass source could create a gravitational field; how General Relativity’s curved spacetime could be produced by the polarizability of vacuum in the vicinity of a mass. Rueda & Haisch (Amoroso et al, 2002) source schema is about mass only. They discuss inertia mass, mass as a field and Higgs boson as the origin of mass.

Bondi (1957) suggested the possibility of a field schema not requiring mass. Bondi made two observations when reviewing gravitation as a theory and suggested that mass may not be critical to a theory of gravitation. First, as “long as relativity is considered purely as a theory of gravitation, the inertial and passive gravitational masses do not in fact appear.” This is consistent with the fact that gravitational acceleration (but not force) is independent of the mass of the object being accelerated. His second observation was that “active gravitational mass occurs for the first time as a constant of integration in Schwarzschild’s solution” suggesting the possibility that this constant of integration could have other experimentally untested interpretations.

One could conjecture that mass is a proxy for number of quarks and therefore a proxy for quark interaction as the source of gravitational fields. Bondi did not explicitly say it, but maybe one should look into other mechanisms for gravitational field sources. Hooft (2008) takes another step in Bondi’s direction with his source-field schema. He states that the “absence of matter no longer guarantees local flatness” that the absence of mass does not guarantee that acceleration will not be present. In effect the field is being disengaged from its source. Wagoner (1998) describes a local-field schema, how a gravitational field “emerges from a local analysis” leading to a broad class of metric theories.

Solomon’s (2009) schema proposed a different local analysis, one where local field distortions in spacetime lead to a local particle distortions, and alter the ‘shape’ of the particle causing the center of mass of the particle to shift. This shifting is seen as acceleration g and is governed by g = τc2, where τ is the change in time dilation divided by the change in distance across this particle; thereby providing a mathematical solution to Hooft’s (2008) assertion that “absence of matter no longer guarantees local flatness”.

To be continued … Part 2 of this Essay is here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/genetically-enginee…60709.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Truth about Space Travel is Stranger than Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/meteor-explodes-…34670.html

What will it take before the public realizes that we are on the endangered species list as long as we have no defense against impacts?

If the “golf ball sized” exploder had been another Tunguska and London was incinerated it might become quite clear that we need to get into space in a big way.

Will it take a major disaster? The unfortunate truth is that a rock or snowball just a little bigger than what might wake the human race up- might also render our species extinct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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