Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

The Telemach theorem of general relativity (a Time-, Length-, Mass, Charge-change in gravity named after Ulysses’ son Telemachus) implies that CERN has for one year attempted to shrink our planet to 2 cm by initiating an exponential black-hole growth. Therefore, CERN is ill-advised to raise the odds by a factor of 4 this year as planned.

Telemach’s only drawbacks are (1) his youthfulness and (2) his simplicity as an outgrowth of Einstein’s happiest thought.

The world press club is kindly requested to stage a public discussion between black-hole hero Stephen Hawking – or nobelist Gerard ‘t Hooft – who like everyone else in science reserved judgment so far and Telemach’s father. So the public gets a chance to judge whether CERN’s 2008 decision to not quote the published danger-proving results from Tübingen (a decision which allowed it to go ahead) was a wise strategy or not. Deliberate non-quotation is a big no-no in science.

A shortcut would be to ask Netanyahu’s and Ahmadinejad’s opinion about the CERN cover-up. I predict that both will in response to being asked this question postpone the planned war until Telemach has fought his battle with goliath CERN. A common enemy from outer space – or the depths of the earth – unites humankind.

As we all know, Venus’s atmosphere & temperature makes it too hostile for colonization: 450°C temperatures and an average surface pressure almost 100 times that of Earth. Both problems are due to the size of its atmosphere — massive — and 95% of which is CO2.

The general consensus is that Venus was more like that of the Earth several billion years ago, with liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of greenhouse gases.

It poses not just a harsh warning of the prospects of global warming on Earth, but also a case study for how to counter such effects — reversing the runaway greenhouse effect.

I have wondered if anyone has given serious thought to chemical processes which could be set in motion on Venus to extract the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The most common gas in the Universe is of course hydrogen, and if sufficient quantities could be introduced to the Venusian atmosphere, with the appropriate catalysts, could the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be eventually reversed back into solid carbon compounds, water vapor and oxygen? The effect of this would of course not only bring down the temperature, but return the surface pressure, with 95% of its atmosphere removed, to one more similar to that of Earth. Perhaps in adding other aerosols the temperatures could be reduced further and avoid a re-runaway effect.

I’d like to hear others thoughts on this. It would be a long term project — but would perhaps make our closest planet our most habitable one in the future — one we could turn into a habitat that would be very accessible, with ample oxygen, water and mineral resources… The study of such a process would also greatly benefit Earth in the event that theorized runaway greenhouse effects start to occur on our own planet, the strategies learned could save it. Other issues to address regarding Venus: lack of magnetic field and  its slow rotation would have to be considered, though hardly off-putting, and 150ppm sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be cleansed — surely not insurmountable.

How can I be sure without having asked? Because the otherwise unavoidable stop will be much more expensive to CERN.

The Telemach theorem renders CERN’s detectors blind to the production of artificial mini black holes while making the latter both much easier to produce and infinitely dangerous.

The fact that CERN already did its best to produce them for almost a year becomes excusable only if Telemach is absolute nonsense, as CERN and the whole planet are praying for.

So please, dear best young or old physicist of the planet: do come forward to prove Telemach wrong. The age of the tactfully silent physics community is over.

Mars is the worst place to go. A deep gravity well to climb in and out of. A case of too much gravity and no protection from radiation.

Ceres is a much better deal. A multi-year mission is a multi-year mission and if you are going to Mars it makes more sense to go farther to Ceres. No problem landing as it has very little gravity, but may have liquid oceans. Solar resources on Mars are not very good.

The Moon has ice and is the first place to go for the simple reason that any human missions outbound will require massive shielding and that shielding will require nuclear propulsion.

Building and lighting off a nuclear spaceship in earth orbit is not acceptable and bringing up all that water is problematic. The moon has water for shielding and no restrictions on nuclear activities.

The safest way to transport fissionables to lunar orbit is a direct launch of a human-rated HLV with an escape tower and the material packaged in a capsule.

My essays on Lifeboat also talk about nuclear energy in space:

Water and Bombs talks about nuclear propulsion,

Plowshare in Space talks about nuclear excavation of colonies,

How to Build a Spaceship is self-explanatory.

There has been a lot of discussion about a lunar colony or at least a base as a precursor to sending humans to Mars. The advantages cited are its proximity to Earth, the use of telerobotics for construction, and the fact that we’ve been there before. My position is that it would be far easier to establish a self sufficient colony on Mars with existing technology.

One thing everyone agrees on is that local resources will have to be used. We now know that There has been a lot of geological and hydrological activity on Mars that has segregated and concentrated useful ore bodies that can be exploited with current extractive technology. One type of mineral of interest is the occurrence of iron and magnesium carbonate formations on the surface. Magnesium carbonate is easily converted by heating to magnesium oxide, the primary component of a type of cement that I am researching as a construction material for Mars. The widespread occurrence of sulfate salts also gives reason to believe that metal sulfide ore bodies are also available there. This type of ore can easily be refined with simple electrolytic equipment. The same metal refining on the Moon would require grinding and processing basalt with a lot of heavy equipment.

I would argue that Mars also has a more friendly environment. First, it has higher gravity than the moon, at 38% of Earth’s gravity. This may prove to be significant in minimizing the health effects of reduced gravity. The higher gravity would also aid in many industrial processes such as ore separation and concrete consolidation. Mars also has an atmosphere, however thin. While 4 to 8 millibars may not sound like much, it is enough to burn up a lot of micrometeorites before they reach the surface, reducing the danger of micrometeorite damage. It may also help reduce the danger of galactic cosmic rays, but that will need to be tested. One thing that is certain from my own research is that the thin atmosphere is enough to allow magnesium oxychloride cement to cure before a significant amount of water has evaporated from it, and prevent boiling during the curing process. On the airless Moon, this type of cement would boil violently and the water would evaporate before it would cure. The total lack of atmosphere on the Moon would preclude the use of any cement that depends on water for curing.

Dust will be the biggest challenge to machinery in either place, and I argue that it is much less of a challenge on Mars. We have already studied lunar dust, and it is composed of fractured particles that retain sharp edges and points, with no mechanisms for smoothing the surfaces such as wind or water movement. This makes Moon dust very abrasive to machinery (and air seals) and very irritating to human tissues on contact. Mars has annual wind storms that blow dust around the planet, and has had flowing water recently in it’s history. This would serve to smooth out Martian dust particles to something more closely resembling the kind of material found on Earth, which we can more easily deal with. As further evidence, we have had rovers survive multiple dust storms and keep operating. I would say this is as much a testament to the Martian environment as it is to NASA engineers. Additionally, the dust has been found to be largely magnetic, meaning that magnetic filtration could be used to keep it out of habitable spaces.

Some would argue that solar power is more abundant on the Moon, but the problem there is that it intermittent. 14 days on, then 14 days off. Power either has to be stored for two weeks at a time, or produced from other sources. On Mars, you just need to get through a single night. The dust storms can cause problems of course, but that is at most a month out of every 22.

Finally, there is the question of water. On the Moon, water ice is probably at the bottom of some deep craters near the poles. It can probably be mined beneath the surface, we are just not sure how far down we need to go. On Mars, snow has been observed made up of water ice, and water ice has been seen just beneath the surface in rover tracks. It appears to be everywhere, just below the surface.

The Moon may be closer as the bird flies, but in terms of energy to get there, Mars is not much further. The biggest challenge will be getting humans there alive, but once that is done the learning curve once we get there is much shorter. Instead of developing new and untested industrial processes to exploit lunar resources, we can use proven technology to exploit Martian resources with much less effort. The prize is there for the taking, and there is no point in stopping on the way to build a temple to Luna.

Now I ask you as your only fidel (in the old sense) son to save the planet by officially quitting CERN until they no longer refuse to provide evidence against the proven fact that they are attempting to turn the planet into a black hole in a few years’ time.

There must be one person in Israel who believes me.

presently offer the world the unique chance that a high-ranking personality on the planet has the courage to ask to be officially informed about CERN’s legal status before the International Court of Crimes against Humanity before which it was accused more than 3 years ago without any defense ever having come forward.

The issue on hand concerns scientific ethics: CERN refuses to offer a counterargument for nearly 4 years. And, to the best of the present writer’s knowledge, no scientist speaks up in person on behalf of CERN by offering a scientific counterargument that he or she would be ready to defend. The much simplified 2010 theorem proving the danger was not even attempted to be defeated by a scientist.

Einstein’s famous gravitational frequency shift is accompanied by an equally strong change in particle mass and particle charge, both locally undetectable too. The new-found corollaries to Einstein’s famous “happiest thought” endow black holes with radically new properties. These properties not only render CERN’s detectors blind to its most hoped-for product (black holes) but do simultaneously enhance the probability of the successful production of black holes – an ominous combination. The first sufficiently slow specimen produced will take lodging inside earth – to grow there exponentially leaving nothing but a 2-cm black relic of our planet after a few years’ time.

The decisive “Telemach” theorem is maximally simple as mentioned and therefore maximally easy to refute if false, but no one has come forward. The visible physics community refuses to discuss the proven results while the very few best are on my side.

Although the highest administrative bodies on the planet chose to rely on an invisible science pope’s word given to them with the kind request not to be mentioned by name, the planet has after a year of maximum-energy operation by CERN perhaps earned the right to learn about the identity of the father figure who took the responsibility for everyone into his able hands. And: What is his precious argument so we all may learn from it?

To return to the beginning: I can only say that I trust a man who with the greatest personal sovereignty survived Dr. Joffe’s mercilessly punching questions 9 days ago in a live “Zeit” interview. The planet is waiting for a personality of this caliber demanding to be publicly informed.

Please, do not refuse to help the planet, dear Mr. President Dr. Christian Wulff.

Recently, Newt Gingrich made a speech indicating that, if elected, he would want 10% of NASA’s budget ($1.7 billion per year) set aside to fund large prizes incentivizing private industry to develop a permanent lunar base, a new propulsion method, and eventually establishing a martian base.

THE FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY OF A LUNAR BASE
Commentators generally made fun of his speech with the most common phrase used being “grandiose”.  Perhaps.  But in 1996 the Human Lunar Return study estimated $2.5 billion from NASA to send and return a human crew to the Moon.  That was before SpaceX was able to demonstrate significant reductions in launch costs.  One government study indicated 1/3 of the cost compared to traditional acquisition methods.  Two of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavies will be able to launch nearly as much payload as the Saturn V while doing so at 1/15th the cost of the same mass delivered by the Shuttle.

So, we may be at the place where a manned lunar base is within reach even if we were to direct only 10% of NASA’s budget to achieve it.

I’m not talking about going to Mars with the need for shielding but rather to make fast dashes to the Moon and have our astronauts live under Moon dirt (regolith) shielding while exploiting lunar ice for air, water, and hence food.

IS A SMALL COLONY WITHIN REACH?
But the point of this post is this.  If a small lunar base is within our reach, how much more would it take to achieve something that most of us realize would be the single most important step in ensuring the survival of the human species should a truly existential event strike Planet Earth.  So I’m describing a small, self-sufficient colony.  I would say that the difference between a base and a self-sufficient colony is fairly small.  Small enough to make it worth our while to attempt to achieve.

THE MOST ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS
So, what are the requirements for a self-sufficient colony?  The most critical would be air, water, and food.  But understand, oxygen and water can be produced from the 600 million metric meters of water ice estimated to exist at the north lunar pole.  So there’s no shortage.  And with recycling, the amount of daily required input could be pretty small — small enough to easily be within a day’s task for mining.  But food also requires fertilizer.  Fortunately for us, the LCROSS results showed that there is also methane and ammonia in the ice and the regolith contains other minerals such as phosphorus and potassium.  So, the most critical components for a colony would already be present with a manned base at a lunar pole.

HABITATS
Besides this, the colony would also need protection from the vacuum and cosmic radiation — i.e. a sealed habitat.  This should not be too difficult.  For a base, options include inflatable habitats and using fuel tanks as durable, sealable compartments.  Radiation protection is as simple as piling regolith over the structures or even digging trenches or caves into the sides of hills or craters.  That’s fine for a base.  But a self-sufficient colony requires that future colonists be able to construct their own habitats.  This could be achieved in the intermediate term by simply caving out habitats, supporting them, and then inflating a liner.  Many such liners could be delivered in a single 5,000 kg payload.  In the long term, such liners could be produced as plastics from volatiles resulting from the production of water from lunar ice.  Broken liners could be patched or even melted to produce new liners.  Alternately, metals can be fairly easily produced from the regolith.  Run a permanent magnet through the soil, extract iron, melt it using solar concentrating mirrors and then process the molten metal to sheets, wires, cast forms, etc.  Glass could be made the same way along with fiberglass.  Natural lighting could supplement electrical power by using aluminum mirrors and glass.  Supplemental heat could be provided in a similar manner along with locally derived insulation.

ELECTRICITY
Thin film solar panels can provide > 1,000 W/kg.  So a 5,000 kg payload could provide a very large amount of onging power (if my math is correct, enough for perhaps 500 colonists).  Excessive solar panels could be stored under ground and then used as needed thereby giving the colony decades of power.  Eventually, a self-sustaining colony would need to produce its own power from silicon in the regolith.  Storage of energy during the lunar night could be accomplished through the use of electrolysis of water to oxygen and hydrogen.  These could then be recombined in a fuel cell to produce electricity and heat. Alternately, the colonists could simply travel every two weeks to the other side of the hill near the pole to another sunlit habitat.

CLOTHING
Again, to buy the colony time to be able to develop the ability to produce its own space suits, many years’ worth of thin airproof liners to space suits could be delivered in a single 5,000 kg payload.  Again, a self-sustaining colony would need to eventually produce their own.  Between the use of fiberglass, metals, and locally produced plastic or silicon sealants, eventually the colony could produce their own.  Of course plants could be grown to provide fibers for clothing.

EQUIPMENT
To avoid day-long exposure to cosmic radiation while mining surface ice, mining could either be conducted underground or telerobotically.  But regolith is very gritty and can wear out teleoperated mining equipment.  But if a colony is able to produce its own metals and had machining equipment which could be used to produce more machining equipment, then the colony could stay ahead of equipment wearing out. 

High-tech equipment (computer chips, cameras, and radio equipment) is certainly useful but I believe that there are ways around needing them.  Still, in the interim, a single 5,000 kg payload delivery could provide centuries worth of computer chips, camera chips, and critical radio equipment components.  For example, the Voyager craft have been exposed to 30+ years of 360 degree space radiation yet still work fine.  So, an apple box worth of computer chips could last centuries.  Eventually the colony would need to produce its own high-tech equipment.  Perhaps they could use 1940’s technology such as vacuum tubes.

GRAVITY & PREGNANCY
The Moon’s 1/6 gravity is probably not enough to prevent bone and muscle loss.  Experiments on the international space station (ISS) show that an exercise program can do much to prevent bone loss.  A recent study indicates that Fosamax prevents bone loss in astronauts.  A 5,000 kg payload could give 83 million doses of Fosamax.  Stored in a permanently shadowed area, it could provide for a very large number of future colonists.  But also, a basic centrifuge or even a tether ball-like contraption could provide artificial gravity for colonists for part of the day.  Trenches dug along its path could provide partial protection from cosmic rays.  Alternately, space forums have discussed completely underground centrifuges using various ingenious approaches.

Of particular concern is how fetal children would develop given limited gravity.  Studies of animals on the ISS indicates that this is a real concern.  We don’t know enough about this issue.  Perhaps pregnant women would need to spend significant amounts of time in a centrifuge perhaps in all trimesters.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
I have started with the most essential requirements and have worked down.  I propose that there are technologic solutions for each of the requirements but perhaps I have been unrealistic in one or more areas or perhaps have neglected to address an important requirement.  Feel free to comment below.

GENETIC DIVERSITY
For a truly self-sustaining colony, for humans, the Minimum Viable Population (MVP) is in the realm 1,000.  I personally suspect that it is actually less than that but a solution here could be for a single payload delivery of frozen embryos for surrogate parenting to be frozen long-term in permanently shadowed areas.  Although this may strike some as being unethical, these would only be needed in the event of a truly existential event on Planet Earth. 

PRESERVING THE BIOSPHERE
I envision the colony as not only securing the human species but a good representation of Earth’s entire biosphere.  But discussing the details of that topic would extend this post much longer than it has already become.  More on that later.

Every high-school student can confirm this conclusion, but the Albert-Einstein-Institute says this conclusion is false. For it implies if true that CERN is building a planet-buster – a fact which must perhaps not become known at the time of a planned new war.

“The house is burning but no one takes notice” (Buddha).

I write this post on specific request from Anthony, who kindly asked that I write a bottom line summary of what I found through my research which leads me to suggest the points should be cleared up in a safety conference on the LHC.

1. As HR is an unproven theory, it may prove to be inffective compared to the math model. This regardless of Rossler’s Telemach therom which attempts to prove this.

2. The G&M calculation on theoretical MBH accretion rates is fundamentally flawed, as it bases the analysis on one single MBH and fails to consider about MBH aggregation.

3. As HR is an unproven concept, it cannot be relied upon to detect MBH. The only method to be certain no MBH are created is to monitor unaccounted loss of mass/energy.

As concerns raised in the public domain were not being answered sufficiently, there is a  moral duty for a public safety conference to discuss likely MBH decay/accretion rates.

I dismissed what I would consider the more colourful risks. I’m considering writing a follow-on whitepaper on the topic of MBH aggregation. If two MBH aggregate at any point it would halve the G&M calculated time-frame, and further aggregation would reduce the accretion time-frame accordingly. If frequent MBH aggregation was a typcial expected occurrence, then you would have a run-away effect, so this requires an analysis.

If one of the following three elements can be defused, the black-hole danger is over:

# 1: Black holes possess radically new properties in general relativity that make them both much more likely to arise and undetectable at CERN.

# 2: A new chaotic attractor (rotation-symmetric Shil’nikov-Kleiner attractor) exists in real space which implies exponential growth of black holes inside matter.

# 3: The presumed safety guarantee provided by neutron stars’ persistence is disproved by quantum mechanics.

Three different fundamental sciences (general relativity, chaos theory, quantum mechanics) are needed jointly to help humanity evade nature’s trap. Very few scientists are up to the combined task. Is this our death sentence?

“From highly centralized to highly decentralized societies” describes the dramatic changes that will likely occur when photovoltaics (solar electricity from solar panels) reaches the key price point that many call “grid parity.” In short, Adam Smith’s famous “invisible hand” will take over and make electricity production highly localized. People will tend to generate their own power on their roofs. Burning coal far away to make electricity will dwindle, and that will be good: less CO2 and less reliance on centralized electricity generation with expensive, vulnerable distribution infrastructure. Highly centralized essentials of life are risky: if distribution breaks down for whatever reason, society is at risk. How can we live without electricity nowadays? Or food trucked in on highways? So I believe the future prospects for localized production of essentials like electricity are both bright, and highly desirable.

Dear Mr. President Obama: Thank you for the “Time” interview given 8 days ago. Could you, therefore, request a public answer from scientists:
“Is the offered proof that Geneva is planting a miniature but exponentially growing bomb into our planet flawed: Yes or No?”

The planet will not forget your kindness if you do. Thank you that I was allowed to ask.

Otto E. Rossler, chaos researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany

Roy Kerr found a beautiful solution to the Einstein equation 49 years ago. He long deserves a Nobel Prize. The recent Telemach theorem (in print in the African Journal of Mathematics) modifies the appearance of every solution “close” to a black hole’s horizon.

What Dieter Fröhlich discovered in yesterday’s chaos course at the University of Tübingen started out from the fact that every rotating black hole has a nonrotating horizon owing to the infinite local slowdown of time. We had concluded before that the in-spiraling trajectories must form something like a “Reeb foliation” on the way to the unmoving horizon. He suddenly realized that an “anchored rotating Reeb foliation” is the answer.

I repeat: We had conjectured before that In between the outer unstable limit cycle of in-spiraling trajectories and the inner motionless horizon, there exists a “circular chain of cups” – non-crossing trajectories that in a U-turn-like fashion connect the two limiting trajectories (the unstable outer limit cycle and the stable inner limit cycle of opposite orientation). Such a beautiful differential-topological flow was discovered in 1952 by Georges Reeb (as had been pointed out to me by Art Winfree).

However, the problem is that the attractive inner limit cycle has rotation rate zero. Does this not destroy all hope for consistency? Fröhlich saw the solution in a flash: Put the standard Reeb foliation into a rapidly spinning motion, which makes no qualitative difference. Then smoothly reduce the cups’ rotation rate until the attractive inner limit cycle becomes a singular spiky (“star-node related”) limit cycle while the ring of “cups within cups” retains a constant rotation rate. The obtained “anchored rotating Reeb foliation” (anchored everywhere on the horizon) represents a new differential-topological prototype, embraced by nature.

It would be marvelous to get a response from Professor Kerr himself. (For J.O.R.)

More gibberish from the loon of all loons.
If he is going to post such trash, then I might as well join in the vandalism.
I pray to all the gods of the conspiracy theory universe that Mad Otto is stricken with an epiphany and builds his own particle collider to un-collide the black holes that collide with our collider in the collision of telemach and achilles in a festering passion pit of boy love.

I think that should cover it.

♥ Kim Jong Un dared not reply – just as Saddam Hussein did not reply when I offered him Lampsacus hometown of all persons on the Internet.

♥ Ahmadinejad I never wrote. But someone is bound to have told him about CERN’s lying to the planet about its assault on everyone and every child.

♥ Peres was the first politician whom I informed in 2007, Sarkozy the second, the pope the third.

♥ Now they are planning a war on deck while there is time bomb in the ship. No one is able to think as a captain.

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Buddha said “The house is burning but no one is thinking to leave.”
Jesus said “Who has ears to hear should hear.”
The angel said “The Lord can always be seen – haShem yera’eh.”
Mohamed said “You are in the fragrance of the flower.”
They all said “Think for a moment, my dear child.”
Hewlett-Packard agrees: “Thinking helps.”

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W H Y   N O T   C H E C K   O N   C E R N   ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Readers, let’s have at it. What do *you* think?

I wrote: “without faster-than-light travel and/or communication, meaningful interaction with intelligent aliens seems unlikely.”

Gary Church responds on January 22, 2012 12:39 pm:
I disagree Jared,
Since the power requirements go up in a sharp curve after about a third of the speed of light, consider .3c to be the practical speed limit for, let’s say, most of the next century. Considering acceleration and decelleration, let’s call it 4 years for every light year. “Meaningful” depends upon your own personal interpretation. Both life extension and cryopreservation will most likely redefine what is meaningful for most people– perhaps in the very near future. It might very well become meaninful for both of us.

The most likely form of star travel for the next millenium after a century of technological development is small singularity propulsion– perhaps near the end of the next century. This will boost speeds close to light where time dilation will make trips only a few years long (ship board time).
Though simplistic, my rough prediction is this century spent on colonizing the solar system and building up an infrastructure capable of manufacturing sleeper ships, the next century spent building up an infrastructure capable of manufacturing small singularity starships, and the third century will find us expanding into the galaxy in massive migrations.

We just need to consider longer time scales– and possibly living much longer. At least our children or their grandchildren may find intelligent life out there and interact with them in a meaningful way. But not considering them could mean stagnation– much like the often used example of the Chinese empire.
And of course, the reason for this blog; the possibility we might destroy ourselves or be destroyed.

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.

How long does Mad Otto get to post his drivel here? Does anybody have the faintest idea what he is talking about? It is gibberish.  No one is ever going to take this site seriously while this fool is allowed to continue.

There’s the Fermi Paradox and the Drake equation, which many readers are familiar with. There is also lots of action in the astronomy community currently on discovery of new planets. Potentially habitable ones in the “Goldilocks zone” (not too hot, not too cold, juust right!), are hitting the national news periodically these days. For example Kepler-22b, Gliese 581 d (only 20 light-years away which is really close but, also, really far…), HD 85512 b, and some “KOI” planets are pretty intriguing.

Really, astronomy is just getting started. Now we know there are many billions of planets in our galaxy, so there must be lots that *could* support life. Even Titan (a moon of Saturn) might possibly have life of some sort; at least it has lots of organic molecules and more petroleum than we could ever burn, and we have actually landed there and taken pictures from the surface! (See http://www.astronomy.org/StarWatch/January/1-05-titan-huygens.jpg.) I keep one of those pics framed in my office.

In my view the next major step in habitable planet discovery is to detect oxygen in their atmospheres. That is a sure-fire sign of photosynthesis, i.e., extraterrestrial life.