At 05:40:56 GMT on 14 December, 1972, Apollo 17 Mission Commander Gene Cernan returned to the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) Challenger, ending the last Extravehicular Activity (EVA) of what would prove to be the final expedition of the Apollo program. To date, no other humans have yet returned to set foot on the Lunar surface, foisting on Captain Cernan the dubious honor and title of being “The Last Man on the Moon.”

Gene Cernan, along with the rest of us who were space enthusiasts in that era, expected our off-planet explorations would continue, expanding our knowledge and reach across the cosmos at the same time.  Long before he passed away on  16 January 2017, Captain Cernan wrote “Too many years have passed for me to still be the last man to have left his footprints on the Moon. I believe with all my heart that somewhere out there is a young boy or girl with indomitable will and courage who will lift that dubious distinction from my shoulders and take us back where we belong. Let us give that dream a chance.”

It’s now fifty (50) years later, and still no one has set foot on soil beyond this globe we call Earth.  It’s time to go back, to the Moon and beyond, because there’s not enough room or resources here for the 8+ billion people living on our planet.  We need SPACE to grow, and a frontier where society can let off steam.  Government funded space programs are floundering in politics, and the only way commercial space will work is if investors can be shown a profit at the bottom line.  That’s a reasonable expectation on their part, and I believe I can make it happen.  Please see Race To Space, Space Power Now, L5 Condos, and some of the other projects I’ve got cooking to wake this up.

Given sufficient interest, I’ll reissue the Last Man on the Moon t-shirt.  Note that the shopping cart on L5Development.com isn’t working at this point (bit rot due to lack of time for attention), so you’ll have to email me or contact me on LinkedIn to let me know you’re interested.

          

Space Travel/Exploration/Development – a shorthand way of expressing the way we move into a new frontier:

First we travel there, go somewhere we’ve never been before, and come back (usually with interesting stories about the trip).  Once we’ve found that we can travel somewhere, and get back successfully, we’re bound to want to explore this new destination, see what’s there, what it has to offer, and if there are any opportunities worth looking into.  After doing enough exploring so that we know what we’re working with, we set out to develop the frontier and its resources, expanding into the new sphere of influence as the development continues.

For most of history, human civilizations have had frontiers to grow into, so that travel, exploration and development was a feasible way of approaching the rest of the world.  While there are still a few places that can be considered frontiers left on the Earth (the ocean floor, much of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and some forbidding mountainous areas), they are actually hostile environments that really don’t offer a lot for those who might otherwise conquer them.  In effect, there are no usable frontiers left anywhere on the planet, a condition that has existed since the late eighteenth century.

Space is, admittedly, an extremely hostile environment – but we have developed ways to deal with that to the point where travel can almost be considered routine, and exploration is already under way.  There are a lot more resources out there than there are down here, all that needs to be done is find a way to capitalize on those resources.  When that happens, underwriting the development effort will become an obvious choice, and humanity will have a new frontier to expand into.  That expansion will drive a vast new array of innovations as new solutions are created for the unique challenges that can only be found in places we’ve never been before.

A frontier is necessary for the health of the human psyche:  It gives us room and resources to deal with an ever expanding population, and to make everyone more comfortable.  It also provides a relief valve for the discontent that’s always present in society, an opportunity for misfits to go carve out their own niche where no one will bother them, or be bothered by the different ways they want to do things.

Right now if someone or a group decides they don’t like the way things are being done, they can leave their country – but the only choice is to go to another country, and try to live with a new set of laws and lifestyle:  Everywhere on Earth that’s a habitable place to be is in the jurisdiction of one nation or another (or under dispute of which nation is in control):  There is nowhere “beyond national boundaries” left where someone can carve out a place and say “this is my home, leave me alone” and have that desire respected.  Expanding into space, and developing the planets, moons and rocks beyond will give us back the frontier our species needs to survive:  We need space to grow, to live, and to thrive.

That’s why Space t/e/d is so important…

          

In case you missed it in my Deja vu post on the 11th (buried three quarters of the way down the page), I’ve decided that, absent any other proposals for working on one of my other current projects, I should spend my time working on selling reservations for condos in the colonies I’m proposing to build at L5.

For most of my working life, I’ve had a dream of being able to fund what I now estimate to be a $50 trillion dollar project because when we get to the bottom line in 30 years, there’s going to be a huge profit for everyone who invested into the effort.  The problem has always been – how do I get the first million? so that I can actually spend my time working on said project, and attract other people to work on it with me? i.e., how can I start hiring enough people to have a reasonable chance of getting it done?

The idea is actually quite simple:  I’m asking people to invest into reserving a condo in the colonies, secured by a deposit of $10,000 (for the first 100 units).  The final purchase price is obviously going to be much more than that, but if I can sell one reservation a week for two years, that’s the first million dollars that has been my stumbling block all this time.  I’m building L5Condo.com as the vehicle for making those sales, actively constructing the site while I look for visionary investing customers who can see the value of financial participation in the project at this early stage.

Part of my problem is that I don’t personally know many people who would be interested in signing up to join this project at that level.  Consequently, as mentioned in my Deja vu post, I’m willing to pay a 10% commission – $1,000 – to anyone who introduces me to a customer who does reserve a condo and puts down the $10,000 deposit I’m asking.  Even if, like me, you don’t necessarily know anybody who fits the bill, tell your friends they have an opportunity to earn a commission:  The more people spreading the word, the sooner I’ll be able to start hiring people – maybe even you – to get the whole system built.

Let’s work on this together – let’s all make money – lots of it!

Money is a tool, just as a hammer is, or a screwdriver. Like any other tool, money can be used to do good or to do evil: That choice is made by the person using the tool, not the tool itself. Don’t condemn money as evil, any more than you would another tool.

I want to make money, enough to support myself and let me build the dreams I have of a better future. In order to do that, I expect the people working with and for me will likewise make enough to support themselves, and build their dreams.

Change is always going to happen.  Even if you do nothing to move the world forward, change is still going to happen.  Please join me in working to make the world a better place, because if we don’t, it’s still going to change – and if it’s not getting better, …

          

When I was reviewing and updating the entries in today’s issue of the Space History Newsletter, I rediscovered something that I had forgotten in the intervening years:  The Space History Newsletter was first published online eighteen years ago today, 13 October 2004:  The site is now old enough to vote (in some jurisdictions, I’m sure…)

Please note that at the present time, you can’t sign up for the Space History Newsletter directly from the Web:  Spammers kept using bogus email addresses to create subscriptions, which resulted in negative action by some large providers.  Until I get to implement a two-step subscription request process for the newsletter, if you want to subscribe, you need to send me an email.  I hope to have the problem fixed within a couple of days – time and resources permitting (all it will take is back-porting some newer code into this ancient site…)

It’s been easy to remember that PhotoByFred.com is also turning eighteen this month, on the twenty-sixth.  The thing which makes that date easy to remember is I’ve been posting a picture a day since then, and after 6562 daily pictures, I’ve been reminded (and bragged) about it enough times to have that date firmly planted in my brain.

The Space History Newsletter hasn’t fared nearly as well:  It languished for years, going out automatically every morning (7AM EST) without me doing anything to add to or update the database.  Consequently, almost everything reported in the SHN happened before 2005, although there are a few exceptions.  A couple of years ago, I started going through the records a week at a time, mostly deleting things unrelated to space travel, and eliminating some dead links.  Since then, the time I’ve been putting into it has grown; now I often spend at least an hour a day on it – while trying to get everything else done.  What I need to do is hire a programmer to implement some of the changes that should be made, and at least one historian to add to the database …

All it takes is money.  So guess what I’m working on…?

          

Today is the 60th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the first satellite humanity put into orbit, launched 4 October 1957 from Baikonur at 10:28pm Moscow time.

It’s a national holiday for those of us who are citizens of the #L5Nation, celebrate it appropriately!

This is picture of the day # 4727 on PhotoByFred.com

From the Space History Newsletter:

Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite successfully placed in orbit around the Earth.  (The Russian word “Sputnik” means “companion,” “satellite” in the astronomical sense.)  In 1885, in his book “Dreams of Earth and Sky,” Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had first described how such a satellite could be launched into a low altitude orbit.  Coming at the height of the Cold War, the launch caught the West by surprise, and began the space race by galvanizing interest and action on the part of the American public to support an active role in space research, technology, and exploration.

Sputnik 1 was launched on an R-7 (ICBM) booster from Baikonur Cosmodrome at Tyuratam (370 km southwest of the small town of Baikonur) in Kazakhstan, then part of the former Soviet Union, on 4 October 1957 at 10:28:04 pm, Moscow time.  It was the first in a series of four satellites in the Soviet Sputnik program, a contribution to the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958).  Three of these satellites (Sputnik 1, 2, and 3) reached Earth orbit.

The Sputnik 1 satellite was a 58.0 cm (14.7 inches) diameter aluminum sphere that weighed 84 kg (184.3 lb) with four whip-like antennas that were 2.4-2.9 meters long.  The antennas looked like long “whiskers” pointing to one side.  The spacecraft obtained data pertaining to the density of the upper layers of the atmosphere and the propagation of radio signals in the ionosphere.  The instruments and electric power sources were housed in a sealed capsule and included transmitters operated at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz (about 15 and 7.5 meters wavelength), the emissions taking place in alternating groups of 0.3 seconds duration.  The downlink telemetry included data on temperatures inside and on the surface of the sphere.

Since the sphere was filled with nitrogen under pressure, Sputnik 1 provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection (no such events were reported), since losses in internal pressure due to meteoroid penetration of the outer surface would have been evident in the temperature data.  The satellite transmitters operated for three weeks, until the on-board chemical batteries failed on 26 October 1957, and were monitored with intense interest around the world.

The orbit of the then inactive satellite was later observed optically to decay 92 days after launch (4 January 1958), after having completed about 1400 orbits of the Earth over a cumulative distance traveled of 70 million kilometers.  The orbital apogee declined from 947 km after launch to 600 km by 9 December.

The Sputnik 1 booster rocket also reached Earth orbit and was visible from the ground at night as a first magnitude object, while the small but highly polished sphere, barely visible at sixth magnitude, was more difficult to follow optically.  Several replicas of the Sputnik 1 satellite can be seen at museums in Russia and another is on display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

#BlowUpTheTunnel – visit my campaign and help get my book written!

          

In today’s Space History Newsletter, you will find this information:

Program information, NASA manned space flight after 1969

Two major directions were identified for NASA’s manned space flight in the next decade on 11 September 1969. These were further exploration of the Moon, with possibly the establishment of a permanent Lunar surface base, and the continued development of manned flight in Earth orbit, leading to a permanent manned space station supported by a low-cost shuttle system. To maintain direction, the following key milestones were proposed:

• 1972 AAP operations using a Saturn V launched Workshop
• 1973 Start of post-Apollo lunar exploration
• 1974 Start of suborbital flight tests of Earth to orbit shuttle
•   Launch of a second Saturn V Workshop
• 1975 Initial space station operations
•   Orbital shuttle flights
• 1976 Lunar orbit station
•   Full shuttle operations
• 1977 Nuclear stage flight test
• 1978 Nuclear shuttle operations-orbit to orbit
• 1979 Space station in synchronous orbit

By 1990

•   Earth orbit space base
•   Lunar surface base
•   Possible Mars landing

(The acronym “AAP” stands for the “Apollo Applications Program” established by NASA headquarters in 1968 to develop science-based manned space missions using surplus material from the Apollo program.)

Obviously, things didn’t work that way – in effect none of those objectives were achieved:

• the Saturn V Workshop was downgraded to Skylab, with only one workshop launched, and which was later abandoned (see 11 July 1979 Skylab fell – and the American public was robbed)
• Lunar exploration stopped after Apollo 17, never mind putting up a Lunar orbit station or surface base, foisting on Gene Cernan the dubious title of being the Last Man on the Moon
• the “low-cost shuttle” turned into the “Space Transportation System” which proved to be one of the most expensive launch options whose first flight didn’t occur until 1982 and never achieved the number of flights per year that was predicted when the project was proposed, and now discontinued, leaving America without a way to send humans to orbit on our own
• the space station in synchronous orbit never happened, and the Earth orbit space base that was supposed to be in place by 1990 devolved into the International Space Station now with a “permanent” crew of 3-6 occupants
• NASA’s initial space station operations didn’t begin until the first ISS resident crew consisting of one American (commander) and two Russians arrived in November 2000 in the Russian Soyuz TM-31 capsule
• the nuclear stage and nuclear shuttle for orbit to orbit operations have been completely abandoned
• the first human Mars landing hadn’t occurred by 1990, current predictions are that the earliest it will happen is in the 2030’s

So, what went wrong? Essentially, it boils down to politics – President Richard Nixon decided that the American public wasn’t interested in space travel, and cut NASA’s budget drastically, putting the money into the military and social welfare programs. Rather than continuing the peaceful development of space exploration and travel which was driving innovation and economic growth at an amazing pace, America was turned to a weapons manufacturer where “need” is given higher precedence than ability or reason. Among other things, that led to the September 11, 2001 attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and the subsequent “war on terror” that has stripped American citizens of so many of their fundamental rights, and to an economy on the brink of collapse due to uncontrolled expansion of the “entitlement” mentality.

Can this be fixed?

I believe it can – but not if space travel and the economy are left in the hands of the government.

Historically, two things have led to growth of the American economy – expansion into new frontiers, and innovation – creation of new industries, and new methods for existing ones. Since there are no longer any frontiers available on the Earth, there’s only one option left: Innovation is what has to drive economic growth. While there have been bursts of development such as introduction of personal computers and the whole set of industries that grew out of that innovation, and there are many fields where incremental innovation can be seen today, the whole-economy blast of innovation painted in broad strokes that led to six pairs of astronauts landing on the Moon hasn’t been seen since the government-funded space program was castrated in the early 1970’s. Developing a strong space exploration and development program, one that can and will achieve the kind of plans laid out in NASA’s 1969 outline, will require a lot of innovation, in nearly every field of endeavor. That is how to solve the economic woes the country now finds itself mired under.

Does that mean the only way we can get back on track is through another expansion of the government-run space program, by pouring more dollars into NASA? No! For example, America’s transcontinental railroad system wasn’t built as a government project – it was built by investors who recognized a tremendous market opportunity and put their money into it. The “advantage” of using tax dollars to put money into space programs is everybody participates – whether they want to or not. Wouldn’t you rather make your own choices about how your money is being invested, and where future growth will come from? I know I would – which is why I think the government needs to get out of the space “business” and let private enterprise take over.

In order for a healthy space exploration and development business to come to reality, funding has to come from everywhere – from kids bagging groceries, from multinational corporations, and everywhere in between. People and institutions that want to invest into the project need to have a mechanism for doing so, with an understandable and believable way to get a return on their investment. The L5 National Bank bonds briefly outlined on the Space Power Now Development Plan page are a system I am trying to build to make that possible: The objective is to provide investors, large and small, with a good way to invest in the future, to build a space program that will open new frontiers, solve the world’s energy problems, and boost the American economy back into high gear. Building the space business will make the military-industrial complex obsolete, creating jobs that will reduce dependency on social welfare programs, the only realistic solution to their cancerous growth.

It’s going to take political action to stop the “war on terror” and its cohorts – unconstitutional domestic surveillance, militarization of police departments, etc., and people will find it a lot easier to focus on those issues if they don’t have a failing economy about to bury them.

Space – the next frontier – the cure for what ails you!

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy, and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

As it circled Mars on the 25th of July 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter photographed the Cydonia region of Mars. One of the frames included an image of a 2 km (1.2 miles) long mesa, situated at 40.75 degrees north latitude and 9.46 degrees west longitude, with the appearance of a humanoid face.

The “Face on Mars” photo captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter on 25 July 1976

When the image was originally acquired, Viking chief scientist Gerry Soffen dismissed the “Face on Mars” in image 035A72 as a “trick of light and shadow.” In a press release issued on 31 July 1976, NASA provided a caption for the picture stating “The picture shows eroded mesa-like landforms. The huge rock formation in the center, which resembles a human head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth. …”

Since it was originally first imaged, the “face” has been nearly universally accepted as an optical illusion. On 8 April 2001 the Mars Global Surveyor turned so it was looking at the “face” 165 km to the side from a distance of about 450 km. The resulting image has a resolution of about 2 meters (6.6 feet) per pixel in its full-resolution (2400 x 2400 pixels) version. As noted on the Malin Space Science Systems page, “If present on Mars, objects the size of typical passenger jet airplanes would be distinguishable in an image of this scale.”

MGS view of the “Face on Mars” mesa, MOC image E03-00824, 8 April 2001
Click the image to see the full-resolution frame (2400 x 2400 pixels)

The region was also studied by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. Combining the MGS and Mars Express data, a three dimensional model of the “Face” was constructed.

3D computer-generated model of the “Face on Mars” mesa

After examining the higher resolution Mars Express and Mars Global Surveyor data NASA stated that “a detailed analysis of multiple images of this feature reveals a natural looking Martian hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination.” That certainly seems a plausible conclusion, especially in a universe where humans are the only intelligent species in a solar system which has never been visited by extraterrestrials, and civilization spontaneously appeared in Mesopotamia around 4,000 B.C.

In the high Andes mountains in South America, the Nazca plateau is covered with drawings that are best seen from the air. Popular belief is that they can only be seen from the air, but “more reasoned” analysis asserts they can be seen from the surrounding hills.

Monkey image, part of the Nazca plateau lines, Peru

The designs are shallow lines made by removing reddish pebbles from the surface to uncover the whitish/grayish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are zoomorphic designs of animals, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Who made them, and why? Theories abound, but every one of them is just that – a theory. No one really knows.

How were Egypt’s pyramids built? I don’t know, I wasn’t there at the time. Opinions differ, but I have a hard time swallowing some of the “scientifically acceptable” ones. Those stones are just too big and there are too many of them for the technology level that was supposed to have built the pyramids. There are also assertions that the Sphynx was thousands of years old when the pyramids were built. If that is true, who made the Sphynx? While we’re on it, where did the technology come from that was used to build Machu Picchu, nearly 8000 feet above sea level? A lot of those stones are so big we’d have a hard time moving them today, let alone placing them well enough that you can’t fit a piece of paper between them – yet there they are, built up for us to look at. How did that happen? Again, I wasn’t there at the time, so I can’t express anything more than an opinion on the matter – and my opinion is that we don’t have all of the answers.

If humanity and its civilization were to disappear (e.g., through nuclear war at the end of the oil supply, a disaster I’m trying to avert through Space Power Now), the pyramids would most likely still be there on the Cairo plain, even though effectively all of the other signs of our existence would be gone. The pyramids would probably be eroded, but their form would be easily distinguishable from space if the lighting and viewing angle were right, even in a low resolution image. If, for some reason, Earth’s atmosphere leaked away in the mean time, as has apparently happened to Mars, the recognizable life expectency of the pyramids would grow rapidly.

When a bullet hits a ball, different outcomes will occur, depending on the speed and size of the bullet, and the composition of the ball. A high speed bullet hitting a solid, brittle ball will cause the ball to shatter, for example. A slower projectile, such as a BB, will make a crater and embed itself in a softer ball. Somewhere between those extremes there’s a class of collisions with bizarre results: If a bullet going just the right speed, fast enough to tear through but slow enough to not completely explode it, hits a ball with a relatively soft center and a tough skin (think of an orange), a “mountain” will form at the entry point, and the skin on the opposite site will be torn off. The center of mass will change, conceivably to the point where the now-rough side that lost its skin is farther from the center of mass – at a “higher elevation” even though it just had its face blown off. The surface of Mars is remarkably close to this description: Olympus Mons, the tallest known mountain in the solar system, is in the smooth northern hemisphere, nearly diametrically opposite the giant Hellas crater situated in the southern highlands that have some of the roughest terrain on any planet in orbit around the Sun. I haven’t done an extensive analysis, but I have to wonder – was Mars hit by a cosmic bullet some time in the past that almost destroyed it?

Let’s consider for a moment a situation where our astronomers found a comet whose orbit was going to intersect the Earth’s in, say, ten years, and that the nucleus of the comet was big enough so there’d be no way to divert it: The Earth was going to die in ten years, and there’s nothing we could do about it. What would we do, in that case? I, for one, would be pushing real hard to build spaceships to carry at least some people to another planet. When they got to their destination, it could be thousands of years before the refugees would be able to start exploring out into the universe again: Chances are that something critical would be missing at their new home, and although humanity would survive, civilization would collapse. Recognizing that, what would be the best thing for the rest of us to do, so that once the survivors did get back on their feet, they could find their way home to see if anything was left of the world they came from? Put up a sign they could recognize from a long ways away, something to say “Hey you – come look here!” A face looking out into space would do the trick, I think. If there was uncertainty about which direction the comet was going to hit from, I’d even go as far as building four faces at the apexes of a regular tetrahedron, 120 degrees from each other in any direction, to improve the chances at least one would survive the impact.

It would probably be tens or hundreds of thousands of years, millions even, before the expatriats might come back, looking for something they couldn’t define. Over that time, anything smaller than the great pyramid of Cheops would probably erode away – it would take carving a mountain into the shape of a face to have any real hope of keeping the sign up long enough for it to be found. Before actually landing on the planet, our distant relatives, while initially startled by finding the Face, would probably get a closer look then dismiss it as “a natural looking … hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination.”

Wait a minute. What was that the NASA analysis decided?

Maybe it’s time we went and took a closer look – time for humans to go and look, not just our robots.

An interesting coincidence is that in 1958, almost two decades prior to the first images of the Face from the Viking probes, comic book artist Jack Kirby wrote a story entitled “The Face on Mars” for Harvey Comics (Race for the Moon Number 2, September 1958), in which a large face served as a monument to an extinct humanoid race from Mars. While Mr. Kirby’s face was standing vertically, and much smaller than the one found by Viking 1, his tale is eerily prescient of the discovery – something to make you go “hmm…”

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

While checking to see if Space Power Now has started appearing in search engines, I came across an article in which the author implied that nuclear power supplies for satellites are inherently evil and dangerous. I have to disagree.

The ESA’s Rosetta comet explorer is scheduled to arrive at its target (comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko) Wednesday, 6 August, 10:45-11:45 CEST – about 27-28 hours from now as I’m writing this. (See the rosetta blog for current information.) Among other things, Rosetta has two solar panels, with a combined area of 64 m², each 14 m in length. The total span from tip to tip is 32 m. The solar panels power a suite of 11 science instrument packages, guidance computers, and the radio system for transmitting data back to Earth. They were only generating about 395 W when Rosetta was 5.25 AU (Astronomical Unit, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun) from the Sun. Power output is now up to 850 W at 3.4 AU as the probe is encountering the comet and comet operations begin. According to the ESA, “The solar cells in Rosetta’s solar panels are based on a completely new technology, so-called Low-intensity Low Temperature Cells. Thanks to them, Rosetta is the first space mission to journey beyond the main asteroid belt relying solely on solar cells for power generation. Previous deep-space missions used nuclear RTGs, radioisotope thermal generators. The new solar cells allow Rosetta to operate over 800 million kilometres from the Sun, where levels of sunlight are only 4% those on Earth.”

Rosetta is a fine example of using advanced technology solar cells to operate at a greater distance from the Sun than was previously possible. However, somewhere beyond the orbit of Jupiter, collecting enough solar energy to run a reasonable set of instruments and a radio transmitter will become “difficult” in addition to using an inordinate percentage of the weight of a probe.

Nuclear power has been invented, the only way it could be “disinvented” would be to destroy civilization and any memory of it being used. Personally, I’d rather keep the nuclear power, and use it like a hammer, screwdriver, or other tool for productive purposes: I enjoy civilized life, which is why I’m as anxious as I am to make Space Power Now work.

Since Henri Becquerel discovered uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power in 1896, our understanding – and fear – of radioactive materials and radiation has grown. Radioactive materials, and equipment that utilize the radiation they produce, are potentially very dangerous if they are not properly handled. With due caution, they can be utilized to achieve objectives that would otherwise be impossible – like sending probes to the outer planets with enough instrumentation and radio power to return useful scientific data.

Tools are not evil, and should not be condemned as such: It is only when they are wielded by evil-minded people that tools cause evil results.

          

It’s been forty five years since the Apollo 11 mission first landed humans on another planetary body – the Moon: At 20:17:40 UT (4:17:40 pm EDT) on 20 July 1969, astronauts Neil A. Armstrong (Apollo 11 Commander) and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. (“Eagle” Lunar Module (LM) pilot) landed the LM in Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquility). Meanwhile, the “Columbia” Command and Service Module (CSM) continued in Lunar orbit with CM pilot Michael Collins aboard. During their stay on the Moon, the astronauts set up scientific experiments, took photographs, and collected Lunar samples. The LM took off from the Moon on 21 July for the astronauts’ return to Earth.

NASA photo ID S69-42583, taken by the Apollo Lunar surface camera as Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first step onto another planetary body, the Moon
“One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
From http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/images/a11tvarm.jpg

Apollo 11 Lunar Module on the Moon, NASA photo by Neil Armstrong
From http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1969-059C

NASA’s Viking 1 lander was originally planned to land on Mars coinciding with the US Bicentennial on 4 July 1976, but was delayed until a suitable landing site was located. As it worked out, the landing took place at Chryse Planitia at 11:56:06 UT on 20 July, roughly eight and a third hours less than exactly seven years after Apollo 11 had landed on the Moon. The robotic probe returned the first ever close-up pictures of the Martian surface, collected the first-ever samples taken from the surface Mars, and continued to communicate with ground controllers on Earth until 13 November 1982.

The first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars, obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed
From http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00381

The Apollo missions continued through 14 December 1972 when Apollo 17 Mission Commander Gene Cernan returned to the LM “Challenger” ending the last Extravehicular Activity (EVA) of what would prove to be the final expedition of the program. As yet, No other humans have returned to set foot on the Lunar surface, foisting on Captain Cernan the dubious honor and title of being “The Last Man on the Moon.” As illustrated by the L5 Development Group “Last Man on the Moon” T-shirt, I think it’s (well past) time for us to go back: During the Apollo years, technology and science were advancing rapidly, the economy was booming, and it seemed as though anything was possible. We thought that within a few years there would be people living in space, and by the turn of the century, there would be hundreds, or even thousands, living on the Moon, with human exploration of Mars well under way.

“Somehow” the dreams got lost: President Nixon cut NASA’s budget because space exploration “wasn’t popular,” just as NBC had canceled Star Trek because of its “poor ratings.” Star Trek went on to become the most widely re-broadcast program in the history of television, and the general public still gets excited about space travel – when the news media lets them know something is going on. Look, for example, at the excitement that was stirred when NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on Mars, and the on-going popularity of the intrepid rover Opportunity as it continues to explore more than ten years later.

Since the six Apollo missions that landed men on the Moon, no one has gone anywhere beyond low Earth orbit. NASA’s Shuttle was supposed to be a “space truck” that would fly hundreds of times each year and drive the cost of access to space down. Instead, only 130 flights were made over the entire life of the program by the five spacecraft that went to orbit, two of which were destroyed in flight. Once they got done building the Shuttle, NASA had to find something to do with it, so they started working on a space station. Initially it was going to be a multi-disciplinary facility with a price tag of just a couple of billion dollars. By the time it was built, the International Space Station had lost most of the capabilities first envisioned. It had also ballooned into a hole in space that will have sucked in between $150 and $200 billion by the time it’s currently planned to be retired in 2028. The ISS is “permanently occupied” by a (constantly changing) crew of 6, but the U.S. doesn’t have a way of its own to get astronauts there now that the Shuttle has been taken out of service. In many ways, the question of “what is it there for?” is still unanswered.

The thing that’s missing from this picture is commercial development. Space programs have been the playthings of governments, subject to the whims of whoever is in power at the moment and their perception of what their subjects (the public) want. Until there’s a profit to be made, nothing else is going to happen. Witness the development of airplanes in the early twentieth century: The first ones were fragile machines cobbled together by experimenters trying out new gadgets, but they weren’t widely available until enterprising types found they could charge passengers for fast travel between distant points and the airline industry evolved. True, the U.S. government helped make those initial airlines more profitable by taking contracts for delivery of mail, but airplanes became ubiquitous by selling something valuable – fast transportation – to private individuals at a relatively low cost.

It’s true there are space business market segments that are already well established and profitable: Satellites in geostationary orbit provide television programming and communication around the globe. The U.S. GPS constellation enables drivers who would otherwise be lost to get to their destinations. Weather satellites let us plan picnics and find out when schools will be closed by snow, and Earth resource data from space is used in a broad range of industries. Robotic satallites have permanently changed the way we live, and the companies behind them are making solid profits, even though their entire staff is still on the ground.

The human space flight industry, however, basically doesn’t exist. There are companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences making “commercial” cargo flights to the ISS, and SpaceX is well along toward developing their Dragon capsule for carrying crews there. Lockheed Martin and Astrium are building the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle for NASA and the ESA, assuming public funding continues throughout the program’s development. Bigelow Aerospace, while still proposing their own network of low-cost space habitats, is now building an inflatable module to be attached to the International Space Station. These are all government projects, though, technology looking for a market, not businesses selling something valuable to private individuals.

This is where Space Power Now fits in – the immediate commercial project of The L5 Development Group space program. Space Power Now is promulgating a constellation of solar power satellites in geostationary orbit. Those satellites will collect solar power in space where the Sun is always shining and cheaply beam it to the ground for consumption by everybody on the planet in lieu of fossil fuels that are both in limited supply and damaging the environment. Simply building those satellites is going to create millions of jobs; operating and maintaining them once they are installed will require a significant permanent human presence in space.

Visionaries in the space travel, exploration and development (space T/E/D) field know there are unimagineable benefits that will come from opening space and the resources “out there” to make them available for the benefit of humanity. We know there’s energy from the Sun that can eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels. There are more resources just within our Solar System than we could use in thousands of years. From the research that’s been done on the International Space Station, we know protein crystals can be grown in microgravity to help cure diseases that would otherwise be intractible. What we don’t – and can’t – know is how much more we’re going to find after we have actually started getting out and exploring a lot beyond Earth.

Once we get to where there’s a critical mass of infrastructure in space, it will be a lot easier for smaller businesses to get a piece of the space pie: Rather than having to figure out how to get to space in the first place, entrepreneurs will be able to focus on what they’re going to do once they are there. That’s another reason why Space Power Now is such an important project: By undertaking a project requiring thousands of launches, it will enable launch companies to develop capabilities that bring costs down, and make travel to space almost as mundane as a flight across the ocean.

Please visit the Space Power Now site, and become part of the project. I really believe our future depends on it!

BTW, I feel sorry for the “22% of Americans in 2009” who don’t believe we ever went to the Moon. I know better – and I am anxious to get us back there…

          

NASA’s Skylab, launched 14 May 1973, was an orbiting space station manned by crews arriving via separate launches. The orbital workshop (OWS) section was a refitted S-IVB second stage of a Saturn IB booster, a leftover from the Apollo program originally intended for one of the canceled Earth orbital missions, modified for long duration manned habitation in orbit. It contained provisions and crew quarters necessary to support three-person crews for periods of up to 84 days each.

Severe damage was sustained during launch, and the station underwent extensive repair during a spacewalk by the first crew; repairs by crews throughout the manned stays led to virtually all mission objectives being met.

The first Skylab crew was aboard from 25 May to 22 June 1973, the crew of the SL-2 mission (73-032A). Next, it was manned during the period 28 July to 25 September 1973, by the crew of the SL-3 mission (73-050A). The final manned period was from 16 November 1973 to 8 February 1974, when it was inhabited by the SL-4 mission (73-090A) crew.

Skylab orbited Earth 2,476 times during the 171 days and 13 hours of its occupation during the three manned missions; astronauts performed ten spacewalks totalling 42 hours 16 minutes. Skylab logged approximately 2,000 hours of scientific and medical experiments, including eight solar experiments (e.g., the Sun’s coronal holes were discovered); many medical experiments related to astronauts’ adaptation to extended periods of microgravity. Each successive Skylab mission set a duration record for the time the astronauts spent in space.

Following the final manned Skylab mission, ground controllers performed some engineering tests that ground personnel were reluctant to do while astronauts were aboard. Upon completion of those tests, Skylab was positioned into a stable attitude and systems were shut down. It was expected Skylab would remain in orbit an additional eight to ten years. It was to have been visited by an early shuttle mission, reboosted to a higher orbit, and used by space shuttle crews, but delays of the first shuttle flight made this impossible. At the same time, increased solar activity heating the outer layers of the Earth’s atmosphere caused more drag on the station, which led to an early reentry on 11 July 1979. Skylab disintegrated over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia after a worldwide scare over its pending crash, casting large pieces of debris in populated areas.

Of the premature reentry it has been said “Fortunately, the only casualty was a single Australian cow.” However, that quip doesn’t really express the real damage that was incurred by the loss of Skylab: How much further ahead would we have been when the shuttle started flying if there was still a space station in place to go visit?

The total budget for Skylab was approximately $2,147,100,000 in 1970’s dollars (NASA’s figures). The cost in today’s dollars would have been much higher. Skylab fell out of orbit because “an early shuttle mission” failed to get there to reboost it into a higher orbit. How much would it have cost to build an automated expendable launcher and send it to Skylab to take it into a higher orbit when it became obvious that the shuttle wouldn’t get there in time? 300 million dollars? Half a billion, maybe? Certainly a lot less than the US$ 2.15 billion loss NASA imposed on the American public by failing to protect the assets it had been entrusted with.

Skylab was not the first space station – the Soviet Union launched the first one, Salyut 1, in 1971 – but Skylab was one of the first, and the largest at the time. It hosted three crews before it was abandoned in 1974. Russia continued to focus on long-duration space missions and in 1986 launched the first modules of the Mir space station – which grew to be ultimately only 25% larger than Skylab. Meanwhile, NASA poured nearly all of its human space flight budget into the shuttle program.

In his State of the Union address on 25 January 1984, President Ronald Reagan directed NASA to build a space station within the next ten years. The Freedom design was predicted to have a total development cost (including construction in orbit) of US$ 1.5-2 billion dollars in early projections. Partly due to changing political winds, costs escalated, target dates were pushed back, and in 1993, the Clinton administration announced the transformation of Space Station Freedom into the International Space Station (ISS), bringing in Russia as a partner. In 1998, the first two modules were launched and joined together in orbit. Today, the ISS is approximately the size of a football field, a 460-ton platform orbiting fifteen and a half times a day between 205 and 270 miles above Earth. It is about four times as large as Mir and five times as large as Skylab. The ISS is “funded until 2024,” and may operate until 2028. By then the investment will have grown well into the US$ 150-200 billion range – and plans are to “deorbit” the station when funding runs out.

NASA has already set a precedent by letting a US$ 2.15 billion investment fall out of the sky when Skylab came crashing down. The Russians did much the same thing when they took the Mir space station out of orbit, throwing away an estimated US$ 4 billion in 2001 dollars when the project ended. It wouldn’t be any different, philosophically, for NASA and its partners to toss another $175 billion (+/- $25 billion) down the toilet by burning the ISS up in the atmosphere, so why not?

The reason “why not” is because doing so would be robbing taxpayers – now, all over the world – of their investment – AGAIN! It costs a LOT of money to put things into orbit. It’s far cheaper to keep things in orbit that are already there than to send up replacements. If the international partners and NASA want to abandon the ISS when “funding runs out” they should sell it in place for salvage – so that an industrious private enterprise can boost it into a higher, stable orbit for storage until they can get to it economically to recover the investment – even if that “recovery” is nothing more than tearing the thing down to use it for raw materials.

Governments, in general, and space agencies, in particular, need to stop acting like they’ve been given a blank check, and trying to spend every last penny of it.

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.