Space Exploration and Humanity’s Struggle for Open System Economics

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture

The 50^th anniversary of mankind’s first landing on the moon on July 20, 1969 has created an opportunity to rethink some of the fateful decisions that set western society onto a trajectory of zero-technological growth and mindless consumerism in the early 1970s. Rather than speed up the momentum of ambitious goals for a permanent lunar settlement, nuclear rockets, terraforming and Mars colonization which leading NASA administrators had promoted after the successful landing of 1968, the very opposite occurred.

First the dollar was floated onto the international speculative markets on August 15, 1971 followed by the destruction of the Apollo program in 1975 and cancellation of most of the cutting edge projects that were meant to break humanity out of the closed system of geopolitics and finiteness of the earth’s limits for the first time in history.

Today, America has not only lost the capability to place a man on the moon, but cannot even send an astronaut into orbit without hitching a ride on a Russian Soyuz shuttle. While certain forces within America led by current NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the sitting President earnestly do wish to revive those capabilities, America’s 50 year visionless dance with monetarism have annihilated the memory of how such funding and long term planning occurred in the post war decades. Ironically, nations like China, Russia and India have discovered these modes of thought and economic practice to such an extent that China has quickly become a leader in Space technology, being the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon while all three Eurasian nations have unveiled ambitious programs for lunar-Mars development.

The fact that America put itself onto a course of action that has hollowed out its technological capabilities, and brought about the creation of the largest speculative bubble in history, can be largely accounted for by recognizing the existence of two worldviews at war. Only one of which will win.

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The Race to Develop the Moon

Rivka Galchen
The New Yorker

n January, the China National Space Administration landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the side we can’t see from Earth. Chang’e-4 was named for a goddess in Chinese mythology, who lives on the moon for reasons connected to her husband’s problematic immortality drink. The story has many versions. In one, Chang’e has been banished to the moon for elixir theft and turned into an ugly toad. In another, she has saved humanity from a tyrannical emperor by stealing the drink. In many versions, she is a luminous beauty and has as a companion a pure-white rabbit.

Chang’e-4 is the first vehicle to alight on the far side of the moon. From that side, the moon blocks radio communication with Earth, which makes landing difficult, and the surface there is craggy and rough, with a mountain taller than anything on Earth. Older geologies are exposed, from which billions of years of history can be deduced. Chang’e-4 landed in a nearly four-mile-deep hole that was formed when an ancient meteor crashed into the moon—one of the largest known impact craters in our solar system.

You may have watched the near-operatic progress of Chang’e-4’s graceful landing. Or the uncannily cute robotic amblings of the lander’s companion, the Yutu-2 rover, named for the moon goddess’s white rabbit. You may have read that, aboard the lander, seeds germinated (cotton, rapeseed, and potato; the Chinese are also trying to grow a flowering plant known as mouse-ear cress), and that the rover survived the fourteen-day lunar night, when temperatures drop to negative two hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Chang’e-4 is a step in China’s long-term plan to build a base on the moon, a goal toward which the country has rapidly been advancing since it first orbited the moon, in 2007.

If you missed the Chinese mission, maybe it’s because you were focussed on the remarkably inexpensive spacecraft from SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit organization, which crash-landed into the moon on April 11th, soon after taking a selfie while hovering above the lunar surface. The crash was not the original plan, and SpaceIL has already announced its intention of going to the moon again. But maybe you weren’t paying attention to SpaceIL, either, because you were anticipating India’s Chandrayaan-2 moon lander, expected to take off later this year. Or you were waiting for Japan’s first lunar-lander-and-rover mission, scheduled to take place next year. Perhaps you’ve been distracted by the announcement, in January, on the night of the super blood wolf moon, that the European Space Agency plans to mine lunar ice by 2025. Or by Vice-President Mike Pence’s statement, in March, that the United States intends “to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years.”

Fifty years ago, three men journeyed from a small Florida peninsula to a dry crater some two hundred and forty thousand miles away called the Sea of Tranquillity. Hundreds of millions of people watched on black-and-white TVs as a man from Wapakoneta, Ohio, climbed slowly down a short ladder and reported in a steady voice that his footprint had depressed the soil only a fraction of an inch, that “the surface appears to be very fine-grained as you get close to it, it’s almost like a powder down there, it’s very fine.”

Shortly before NASA launched Apollo 11, it received a letter from the Union of Persian Storytellers, begging NASA to change the plan: a moon landing would rob the world of its illusions, and rob the union’s members of their livelihood. During the spacecraft’s flight, the Mission Control Center, in Houston, asked the crew to look out for Chang’e, and for her bunny, too. Houston said that the bunny would be “easy to spot, since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree.” Buzz Aldrin responded, “We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.” 

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NASA shares incredible VIDEO showing the raw vastness of space

RT
 

NASA has clocked up numerous amazing technological feats of engineering and ingenuity for decades, but a recent video from the space agency shows just how much work they have cut out for them. 

In just the last few years, NASA has provided some incredible perspectives on our own planet, including stunning images of some of the Earth’s most majesticnatural phenomena.


Not content with studying our own backyard, the agency has beamed back photos and videos from Mars thanks to its now-deceased rover, not to mention orbiting far-flung asteroids to try and understand the origins of the universe itself.

In an attempt to explain the vastness of their field of study, NASA helpfully put together a short explainer video showcasing the mindblowing scale of the Milky Way galaxy.

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Ghost particle sent from deep in space could change our understanding of the universe, scientists reveal

The Independent

A single strange particle sent from deep in space might solve some of the strangest mysteries of the universe.

The tiny, ghost-like subatomic particle was ejected from an incredibly energetic galaxy four billion light years away. It could solve a century-old mystery of where mysterious cosmic rays come from, and provide an entirely new way of looking at the cosmos.

The mysterious particle made its way to scientists from the most extreme environments in the universe, and will give them an unparalleled look at those intriguing and intense regions.

Like the discovery of gravitational waves in 2016, the discovery could give scientists an entirely new way of peering into the vast depth of the universe. And just like that detection, it relied on scientists spotting the tiniest disturbance down on Earth and tracking it down to a mysterious black hole billions of light years away. 

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Colossal US rocket loaded with classified snooper satellite cargo shot into space

RT

 

The world’s largest rocket has successfully blasted into space from Florida’s Cape Canaveral for all to see, but the exact details of its intelligence agency cargo is something that the US government is keeping a closely guarded secret.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint space delivery service by aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Company, carried out the launch of a Delta IV Heavy rocket on Saturday afternoon.

It saw the triple engine craft roar from its launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, traveling at the speed of sound before soaring beyond the atmosphere.

 While much is known about the rocket’s early movements, the Delta IV’s final destination is being kept under wraps.

A statement from ULA is scant on detail, simply explaining that the 32nd Delta IV mission is for the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to support “national defense.”

The NRO is perhaps one of the lesser-known US intelligence agencies, the function of which were only made known to the public back in 1992. The office is largely responsible for producing spy satellites and improving hardware sent out to space.

“When the United States needs eyes and ears in critical place where no human can reach - be it over the most rugged terrain or through the most hostile territory - it turns to the National Reconnaissance Office,” a mission statement on the NRO website reads.

It is believed that the latest Delta IV rocket launch is again part of that bid to have “eyes and ears” in difficult to reach places, although the exact purpose or location of the satellite is unknown.

Goldman Sachs Rep Discusses Militarizing the Moon

American Intelligence Report

The idea of colonizing Earth’s moon and creating a whole world from scratch has always been a notion of science-fiction, until now NBC reports. The European Space Agency has put in motion a plan to build a ‘moon village‘ accessible to ESA member states and other nations globally. The village will offer fresh business, leisure and community opportunities. “A village is something where different people are gathering with different capabilities, different opportunities, and then they build a community,” Johann-Dietrich Wörner, director general of the ESA, said during this years 32nd Space Symposium. “It’s not one village with some houses, a church.”

As space technology is advancing, the amount of time to reach local planets and moons is decreasing. Forget witnessing a sunset, how about an Earthset? The moon has also been slated to be a tourist and vacationing spot, and the aspirations do not stop  there.

“I think we should go first to the moon and then further on,” Wörner said.

“I would not call Mars the ultimate goal. I am quite sure humans will go further,” he added.
The mission will also make use of state-of-the-art robot and 3-d printing technology .

Robots will land on the moon prior and use 3D printers to construct a safe environment, including daily life-support requirements for travelers and permanent residents.

It’s unsure of what type of government will be established on the moon in the early phases of development, if any.

However, it would not be to far-fetched to believe that the moon would be run by corporate policies, rather than a community run system. Majority of the colony will be employed by big investors to accomplish work on the Earth’s moon.

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Nasa approves 'impossible' space engine design that apparently violates the laws of physics

The Independent

Engineers from the space agency managed to produce tiny amounts of thrust using a microwave engine design that could turn space travel on its head 

In a quiet announcement that has sent shockwaves through the scientific world, Nasa has cautiously given its seal of approval to a new type of “impossible” engine that could revolutionize space travel. 

In a paper published by the agency’s experimental Eagleworks Laboratories, Nasa engineers confirmed that they had produced tiny amounts of thrust from an engine without propellant  – an apparent violation of the conservation of momentum; the law of physics that states that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.

Traditional spacecraft carry vast amounts of fuel with them into orbit in order to move about, using the thrust created by this fuel to move in zero gravity like a swimmer in a pool pushing off against a wall. This method works fine but it's costly - both in terms of obtaining the fuel and then launching all that extra weight into space.

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NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?: New NASA model gives glimpse into the invisible world of electric asteroids

phys.org

Space may appear empty - a soundless vacuum, but it's not an absolute void. It flows with electric activity that is not visible to our eyes. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A solar wind blown from the surface of the sun at about a million miles per hour flows around all solar system objects, forming swirling eddies and vortices in its wake. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind warp, twist, and snap as they slam into the magnetic fields around other objects in our solar system, blasting particles to millions of miles per hour and sending electric currents surging in magnetic storms that, around Earth, can damage sensitive technology like satellites and power grids.

On airless objects like moons and asteroids, sunlight ejects negatively charged electrons from matter, giving sunlit areas a strong positive electric charge. The solar wind is an electrically conducting gas called plasma where matter has been torn apart into electrons, which are relatively light, and positively charged ions, which are thousands of times more massive. While areas in sunlight can charge positive, areas in shadow get a strong negative charge when electrons in the solar wind rush in ahead of heavier ions to fill voids created as the solar wind flows by.

The surface of Earth is shielded from the direct effects of this activity by our planet's magnetic field, but airless objects without strong repelling magnetic fields, like small asteroids, have no protection from electrical activity in space.

NASA-sponsored researchers funded by the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) (formerly the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)) have developed a new computer model that can predict and visualize the interaction between the solar wind, solar radiation, and the surface of asteroids in unprecedented detail.

"Our model is the first to provide detailed, two-dimensional views of the complex interaction between solar activity and small objects like asteroids, using an adaptive computational technique that makes these simulations highly efficient," said Michael Zimmerman, project lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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The Truthseeker: US plans 'first strike' on Russia

Russia targets space station project in retaliation for U.S. sanctions

Reuters

* Senior official says U.S. sanctions hurt Russian space industry

* Wants guarantee Russian engine imports not be used for U.S. military

* Says it not satisfied by talks will close GPS sites in Russia (Adds comment from United Launch Alliance)

MOSCOW, May 13 (Reuters) - Russia cast doubt on the long-term future of the International Space Station, a showcase of post-Cold War cooperation, as it retaliated on Tuesday against U.S. sanctions over Ukraine.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Moscow would reject a U.S. request to prolong the orbiting station's use beyond 2020. It will also bar Washington from using Russian-made rocket engines to launch military satellites.

Moscow took the action, which also included suspending operation of GPS satellite navigation system sites on its territory from June, in response to U.S. plans to deny export licences for high-technology items that could help the Russian military.

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Sun Goes Wild - NOAA Issues Alert: Earth Directed X-Class Flare On Its Way; Chance Of More

Marc Slavo
SHTFplan.com 

[Yesterday morning] The Daily Sheeple reported that the biggest sun spot in recent history had been identified, and that it had moved into position facing earth. The spot is so large that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it could swallow three earths.

(Photo by Rocky Raybell : Sun spot AR1944 is so big it can be seen with amateur telescopes)

The spot was mostly quiet for the last few days and wasn’t directly facing earth, though a smaller Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) glanced the planet in the early hours of January 7th.

Then at 12:32 Central Time it went wild:

Massive sunspot AR1944 has erupted. The X1 flare has sent a coronal mass ejection into space, and it’s heading towards Earth. 

[…]

NOAA has upped the risk from further X-class flares to 50% for the next 24 hours. Risk of M-class up to 80%

The NASA-ESA Heliophysics Fleet is monitoring the sunspot and CME. Depending on its speed it could take anywhere from a day to three days to hit earth. NBC News reports that the flare is already responsible for radio traffic disruptions.

(Pictured: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory 

shows a blast of activity originating from the center of the sun’s disk on Tuesday)

Though an X-1 Class flare is not going to cause widespread power outages across earth, the possibility of increased activity on the sun has been noted by NASA and other researchers, as the sunspot destabilizes further.

The rapid formation of sunspot AR1944 and the earth-facing ejections highlight how quickly life on earth could change if the right conditions are met.

In the summer of 2012 a massive solar flare was ejected by the sun and narrowly missed earth.

Had it occurred just a week prior, the highly charged particles would have struck earth and, according to CU-Boulder Professor Daniel Baker, would have led to nothing short of a technological disaster across the globe. 

The CME itself was massive… and its speed was unprecedented, clocking in at 7 million miles per hour. 

While typical coronal mass ejections from the sun take two or three days to reach Earth, the 2012 event traveled from the sun’s surface to Earth in just 18 hours. 

“The speed of this event was as fast or faster than anything that has been seen in the modern space age,” said Baker. 

[…] 

Had it hit Earth, the July 2012 event likely would have created a technological disaster by short-circuiting satellites, power grids, ground communication equipment and even threatening the health of astronauts and aircraft crews. 

Source: Scientists Warn of Worst Case Scenario

But that flare wasn’t a once-in-a-million-years event.

A decade ago in 2003 NASA identified the most powerful flare in recorded observational history:

In 2003 a solar flare emitted by the sun was the most powerful in recorded observational history, measuring in at levels so high that had it hit earth it would have likely disabled everything from the internet and mobile phones, to water utility plants and the whole of the U.S. electricity infrastructure.

That event was originally thought to have been an X-28 class flare, more powerful than necessary to take out modern electronics across earth. It was later revised to a “whopping” x-45.

These events occur quite regularly in the grand scheme. Recent observations suggest at least several occurrences in a lifetime. For the last hundred years since electronics made their way into our society we’ve been lucky, having experienced just minor disturbances.

But as the last decade shows, it can happen at any time and the after-effects would be catastrophic.

This is what prompted Senior Member of the House Homeland Security Committee Congresswoman Yvette Clarke to warn that the likelihood of a severe geo-magnetic event capable of crippling our electric grid is 100%.

Despite the various earthbound threats that exist, a solar flare is arguably the most probable threat we face as a civilization.

As Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has noted in the documentary Urban Danger, if an event of this magnitude hit earth we’d revert back to the stone age overnight:

We could have events in the future where the power grid will go down and it’s not, in any reasonable time, coming back up. For instance, if when the power grid went down some of our large transformers were destroyed, damaged beyond use, we don’t make any of those in this country. They’re made overseas and you order one and 18 months to two years later they will deliver it. Our power grid is very vulnerable. It’s very much on edge. Our military knows that.

So how does one survive such an event, where pretty much everything we have come to expect in our just-in-time modern society comes to a screeching halt within seconds of the disaster striking?

It won’t be easy, but it is certainly survivable, and if you’ve developed a broad preparedness plan you would fair much better then the 90% of people who studies say wouldn’t make it in such a scenario.

Imagine for just a moment what would be going through your mind and the minds of those with whom you share this report if sunspot AR1944 had emitted an X-25+ Class solar flare that was heading for earth right now and that it would be here within 48 hours.

Would you be prepared for what happens when the national power grid collapses? Would you be ready for the catastrophe that would follow within a matter of hours?

Preparedness for such an event starts with a simple grid-down supply. Once those basics are covered and you have enough to keep your family afloat for two weeks, you could broaden your preparedness horizons with long-term food storage, emergency medical supplies, gold and silver as bartering currencies, and self defense strategies to protect against the inevitable hordes that would follow.

The threat is real. Countless officials and experts have warned of the possibility in our lifetimes.

What if tomorrow was the day?

There's no resting place for the human race

New Scientist
19 December 2013

This year, many fixed points in the human condition have begun to look distinctly movable
 

THE Chinese robot now roving the moon's surface – Yutu, the Jade Rabbit – is humanity's first emissary there for nearly 40 years. It is named after the companion of the moon goddess Chang'e. More such explorers will follow over the next decade, but few, if any, will bear names from the Greek and Russian traditions associated with the first space race.

Rather, they are beginning a new tradition. As one scientist puts it, the moon is "the eighth continent", a chunk torn off Earth aeons ago. That's not just a hypothesis for our satellite's origins: the latest space racers want to build a lunar staging post for exploration, and settlement, of the solar system (see "China lands on moon, kicks off next lunar space race").

This is not a new dream, but the urge to leave Earth is getting easier to envisage in a world of limited resources and ambitious billionaires. But do we have the right to spread to other worlds before putting our own in order? How will humanity define and locate itself when it lives on more than one planet?

This is just one of many developments challenging how we see our place in the universe. It is customary at this time of year to reflect on the past 12 months. In that spirit, let's consider a couple more advances and see if we can get a sense of where we might soon find ourselves.

Consider humanity itself. Sequencing the genome of the Denisovans, a mysterious group of prehistoric hominins, suggests that interbreeding between Neanderthals, Denisovans and humans seems to have been common, rather than the rarity previously assumed – which further drives home the idea that we are the sole survivors of a precarious evolutionary process, rather than the end of a neat line of descent. That deals yet another blow to the hubristic assumption that humanity's place is at the apex of the natural world.

Intriguingly, here at our end of the human timeline, we are beginning to engineer our own genome. Next year is likely to see the conception of a child with DNA from three parents (see "2014 Preview: Three-parent babies close to conception"). The modification is life-changing – it will prevent certain inherited diseases – but minor. Nonetheless, the introduction of genetic material that could be passed down the generations represents a watershed. How far should we go in compensating for shortcomings in our genetic inheritance? What conditions would merit such tinkering?

We need not journey into space, or history, to find ourselves rethinking our place in the world. 

Smartphones provide us with unprecedented context about our surroundings, allowing us to seek out everything from a cold drink to a hot date. They also let us detach ourselves from those around us, as we look at screens rather than our neighbours' faces.

So the line between physical here and online there is becoming increasingly blurred. Devices such as Glass, Google's augmented reality spectacles, and advances in robotics and remote control will only accelerate that trend (see "Mind-reading light helps you stay in the zone" and "The mystery behind Google's sudden robotics splurge"). Our experiences of the world, and our sense of our place in it, may soon be very different – not just from how we perceive it now, but also from how our neighbours do. Will sharing our thoughts and experiences bring us together? Or will we end up living in worlds of our own?

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Many fields, from climatology to neuroscience, raise questions about who we are and where we fit in. But that's nothing new.

Science and technology have always posed challenges, and we have always assimilated them – eventually. That drive has got us where we are today. Perhaps that's the only real constant here: to be human is to continually seek out a new place in the world.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Perpetual motion"

 Read more: "2014 preview: 10 ideas that will matter next year"

Meet Valkyrie: The Superhero She-Bot On Her Way To Mars

Business Insider

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting its 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials December 21-23 in Homestead, Florida.

Six teams will go head-to-head to build the ultimate disaster relief robot. The challenge: to compete in eight different tasks for the chance at a $2 million prize.

This is Valkyrie, built by the NASA Johnson Space Center.

Produced by Alana Kakoyiannis. Follow us on YouTube >

SEE ALSO:  How THOR The Robot Could Save The World
 
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Catastrophe looms as toxic 13-tonne Mars probe falls to Earth

Independent

The heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever launched is about to become one of the most dangerous man-made objects to fall from space when it crashes to the ground early in the new year.

The Russian Phobos-Ground probe was destined to land on a moon of Mars but problems soon after launch in November meant that it was stuck in an unstable, low-Earth orbit.

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said yesterday that the lorry-sized probe weighing 13.2 tonnes and laden with 11 tonnes of toxic rocket fuel and 10kg of radioactive cobalt-57 will fall to Earth between 6 and 19 January.

The agency told the Associated Press that it will not be possible to calculate the precise crash site until a few days before the £120m probe re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.

However, it insisted that much of the dangerous material will be incinerated during re-entry and any remaining fragments will pose little danger to people on the ground.

Phobos-Ground, which was designed to bring back rock samples from Phobos, one of two Martian moons, was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

It separated from its booster rocket 11 minutes after launch but its engines subsequently failed to fire it out of Earth's orbit.

Roscosmos said that between 20 and 30 fragments of the probe are expected to fall to Earth somewhere between 51.4 degrees north of the Equator and 51.4 degrees south, which covers much of the most densely populated areas on Earth.

Some experts said soon after the probe failed to leave the Earth's orbit that the on-board fuel of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine could freeze solid before re-entry, which may make it less liable to burning up during re-entry.

Nasa discovers 'new Earth' Kepler 22b

 
Telegraph

Kepler 22b contains both land and water and has temperatures which average around 72 degrees (22 Celsius). It also contains the right atmosphere to potentially support life.It is, however, 600 light years from Earth.The planet, where a year lasts 290 days, was first spotted two years ago. 
 

However, Nasa scientists using the agency’s Kepler space telescope have now concluded that it offers the best hope yet for future human habitation outside the Solar System.