http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php Copyright 2012, JH JH en-US SPHPBLOG 0.5.1 http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120404-223316

http://www.nss.org/resources/library/sp ... awking.htm

Why should we go into space? What is the justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of Moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth?

In a way, the situation is like that in Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old. If nothing else, we wouldn’t have had a Big Mac or KFC.

Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all. It won’t solve any of our immediate problems on planet Earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them, and cause us to look outwards rather than inwards. Hopefully it would unite us to face a common challenge.

This would be a long-term strategy, and by long-term I mean hundreds or thousands of years. We could have a base on the Moon within 30 years, reach Mars in 50 years, and explore the moons of the outer planets in 200 years. By “reach” I mean with manned, or should I say “personed,” space flight. We have already driven rovers on Mars and landed a probe on Titan, a moon of Saturn, but if one is considering the future of the human race we have to go there ourselves.

Going into space won’t be cheap, but it would take only a small proportion of world resources. NASA’s budget has remained roughly constant in real terms since the time of the Apollo landings, but it has decreased from 0.3% of US GDP in 1970 to 0.12% now. Even if we were to increase the international budget 20 times to make a serious effort to go into space it would only be a small fraction of world GDP.

There will be those who argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet like climate change and pollution rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, but we can do that and still spare a quarter of a percent of world GDP for space. Isn’t our future worth a quarter of a percent?

We thought space was worth a big effort in the 60s. In 1962 President Kennedy committed the U.S. to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. This was achieved on time by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. The space race helped to create a fascination with science and led to great advances in technology, including the first large-scale integrated circuits which are the basis of all modern computers.

However, after the last Moon landing in 1972, with no future plans for further manned space flight, public interest in space declined. This went along with a general disenchantment with science in the West because although it had brought great benefits it had not solved the social problems that increasingly occupied public attention.

A new manned spaceflight program would do a lot to restore public enthusiasm for space and for science generally. Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information but they don’t catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don’t spread the human race into space, which I am arguing should be our long-term strategy.

A goal of a base on the Moon by 2020 and of a manned landing on Mars by 2025 would re-ignite the space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy’s Moon target did in the 1960s. A new interest in space would also increase the public standing of science generally. The low esteem in which science and scientists are held is having serious consequences. We live in a society that is increasingly governed by science and technology, yet fewer and fewer young people want to go into science. As a small step towards curing this, my daughter, Lucy, and I have written a children's book.

What will we find when we go into space? Is there alien life out there, or are we alone in the Universe? We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth, so it must be possible for life to appear on other suitable planets, of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy.

But we don’t know how life first appeared. The probability of something as complicated as the DNA molecule being formed by random collisions of atoms in the primeval ocean is incredibly small. However, there might have been some simpler macromolecule which then built up the DNA or some other macromolecule capable of reproducing itself.

Still, even if the probability of life appearing on a suitable planet is very small, since the Universe is infinite, life would have appeared somewhere. If the probability is very low, the distance between two independent occurrences of life would be very large.

However, there is a possibility, known as panspermia, that life could spread from planet to planet, or from stellar system to stellar system, carried on meteors. We know that Earth has been hit by meteors that came from Mars, and others may have come from further afield. We have no evidence that any meteors carried life, but it remains a possibility. An important feature of life spread by panspermia is that it would have the same basis, which would be DNA for life in the neighborhood of the Earth. On the other hand, an independent occurrence of life would be extremely unlikely to be DNA based. So watch out if you meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease against which you have no resistance.

One piece of observational evidence on the probability of life appearing is that we have fossils of algae from 3.5 billion years ago. The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and was probably too hot for about the first half billion years. So life appeared on Earth within half a billion years of it being possible, which is short compared to the 10 billion year lifetime of an Earth-like planet. This would suggest either panspermia or that the probability of life appearing independently is reasonably high. If it was very low, one would have expected it to take most of the 10 billion years available. If it is panspermia, any life in the solar system or in nearby stellar systems will also be DNA based.

While there may be primitive life in our region of the galaxy, there don’t seem to be any advanced intelligent beings. We don’t appear to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdoes? If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens bring, it seems to have been a singularly ineffective policy so far. Furthermore, despite an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven’t heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within a radius of a few hundred light years. Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet.

Why haven’t we heard from anyone out there? One view is expressed in this Calvin cartoon. The caption reads “Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.”

More seriously, there could be three possible explanations of why we haven’t heard from aliens. First, it may be that the probability of primitive life appearing on a suitable planet is very low. Second, the probability of primitive life appearing may be reasonably high, but the probability of that life developing intelligence like ours may be very low. Just because evolution led to intelligence in our case, we shouldn’t assume that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of Darwinian natural selection.

It is not clear that intelligence confers a long-term survival advantage. Bacteria and insects will survive quite happily even if our so-called intelligence leads us to destroy ourselves. This is the third possibility: Life appears and in some cases develops into intelligent beings, but when it reaches the stage of sending radio signals it will also have the technology to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. It would therefore be in danger of destroying itself before long. Let’s hope this is not the reason we have not heard from anyone.

Personally, I favor the second possibility, that primitive life is relatively common but that intelligent life is very rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.

Can we exist for a long time away from here? Our experience with the ISS, the International Space Station, shows that it is possible for human beings to survive for many months away from planet Earth. However, the zero gravity of orbit causes a number of undesirable physiological changes, a weakening of the bones, as well as creating practical problems with liquids, etc. One would therefore want any long-term base for human beings to be on a planet or moon. By digging into the surface, one would get thermal insulation and protection from meteors and cosmic rays. The planet or moon could also serve as a source of the raw materials that would be needed if the extraterrestrial community was to be self-sustaining, independently of Earth.

What are the possible sites of a human colony in the solar system? The most obvious is the Moon. It is close by and relatively easy to reach. We have already landed on it and driven across it in a buggy. On the other hand, the Moon is small and without atmosphere or a magnetic field to deflect the solar radiation particles like on Earth. There is no liquid water, but there may be ice in the craters at the north and south poles. A colony on the Moon could use this as a source of oxygen, with power provided by nuclear energy or solar panels. The Moon could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system.

Mars is the obvious next target. It is half as far again as the Earth from the Sun, and so receives half of the warmth. It once had a magnetic field but it decayed 4 billion years ago, leaving Mars without protection from solar radiation. This stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, leaving it with only one percent of the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere. However, the pressure must have been higher in the past because we see what appear to be runoff channels and dried up lakes. Liquid water cannot exist on Mars now. It would vaporize in the near vacuum. This suggests that Mars had a warm wet period during which life might have appeared either spontaneously or through panspermia. There is no sign of life on Mars now, but if we found evidence that life had once existed that would indicate that the probability of life developing on a suitable planet was fairly high.

NASA has sent a large number of spacecraft to Mars, starting with Mariner 4 in 1964. It has surveyed the planet with a number of orbiters, the latest being the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These orbiters have revealed deep gullies and the highest mountains in the solar system. NASA has also landed a number of probes on the surface of Mars, most recently the two Mars rovers, which have sent back pictures of the dry desert landscape. However, there is a large quantity of water in the form of ice in the polar regions. A colony on Mars could use this as a source of oxygen. There has been volcanic activity on Mars. This would have brought minerals and metals to the surface which a colony could use.

The Moon and Mars are the most suitable sites for space colonies in the solar system. Mercury and Venus are too hot, while Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants with no solid surface. The moons of Mars are very small and have no advantages over Mars itself. Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might be possible, in particular Titan, a moon of Saturn that’s slightly more massive than our Moon and has a dense atmosphere. The Cassini-Huygens mission of NASA and ESA has landed a probe on Titan which has sent back pictures of the surface. However, it is very cold, being so far from the Sun, and I wouldn’t fancy living next to a lake of liquid methane.

What about beyond the solar system? Our observations indicate that a significant fraction of stars have planets around them. So far, we can detect only giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn but it is reasonable to assume that they will be accompanied by smaller, Earth-like planets. Some of these will lie in the “Goldilocks” zone where the distance from the star is in the right region for liquid water to exist on their surface.

There are around a thousand stars within 30 light years of Earth. If one percent of these have Earth-sized planets in the Goldilocks zone, we have 10 candidate new worlds. We can’t envisage visiting them with current technology, but we should make interstellar travel a long-term aim. By long-term, I mean over the next 200 to 500 years.

The human race has existed as a separate species for about 2 million years. Civilization began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Thank you for listening.]]> http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120404-223316 JH Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:33:16 GMT http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/comments.php?y=12&m=04&entry=entry120404-223316 http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120321-153401
When private / consumer space travel starts to become a new emerging industry, it makes me happy to be living on this planet!


http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/el ... st-500000/


http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

]]> http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120321-153401 JH Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:34:01 GMT http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/comments.php?y=12&m=03&entry=entry120321-153401 http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120308-143555

The sun has a 11 year sun storm cycle, seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle

Here is an interesting article from National Geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ce-aurora/

We're currently experiencing the solar flare in Canada with geomagnetic disturbance, altered shortwave radio reception, and an increased activity of Northern Lights.]]> http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120308-143555 JH Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:35:55 GMT http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/comments.php?y=12&m=03&entry=entry120308-143555 http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110718-123645
]]> http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110718-123645 JH Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:36:45 GMT http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/comments.php?y=11&m=07&entry=entry110718-123645 http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110718-114139
It's all over the moon, which would make nuclear power a reality on the moon, day or night.



Thorium and Molten Salt, new keywords for the next generation of green nuclear reactors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
]]> http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110718-114139 JH Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:41:39 GMT http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/comments.php?y=11&m=07&entry=entry110718-114139 http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110504-000459

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=44640
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A Free People Since 1997

Wednesday, May 4, 2011


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PREMEDITATED MERGER

North American Union
'a couple years away'
Bilderberg author who 1st exposed plot
in 1996 sees EU replication as imminent

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Posted: November 19, 2007
10:00 pm Eastern

© 2011 WorldNetDaily.com






WASHINGTON – The next giant step toward world government will be integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in European Union-style merger in the next few years, says the author of a best-selling book on the power of shadowy international organizations promoting the move.

"I would say [it's just] a couple of years away," reports Daniel Estulin, author of "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group."

Estulin, a Canadian now living in Europe, says the original plans for a North American Union involved the U.S. and Canada as the prime participants. It was motivated primarily by the desire to harvest Canada's abundant natural resources.

In his new book, Estulin reveals the first efforts in this plan date back to 1996 when the elite Bilderberg Group first discussed plans for the dismantlement of Canada as an independent nation and proposed its merger – minus Quebec – with the United States into a Greater North America.

"Actually, the North American Union, or rather a Canada-U.S. merger, was initially discussed shortly after the Reagan-Bush candidacy won the White House," he says in an interview with WND. "Upon taking over the reins of the country, George Bush and Ronald Reagan called in the presidents of the key trans-national companies and asked them for the real picture. The money people told them that if the United States were a corporation it would have to be shut down immediately. It was bankrupt."

(Story continues below)
The solution proposed then, according to Estulin, was merger between the U.S. and Canada.

"Canada is virgin country with a multitude of natural resources, water, mines, oil, gas, etc.," he explains. "They decided that it was going to take 14 or 15 years to put the whole project together. In the interval, the economies, social programs and laws of the two countries would be quietly harmonized as much as possible."

Back then, part of that harmonization plan involved the separation of Quebec as an independent state, he says.

"Actually, when all is said and done, it all comes down to money," Estulin says. "Money makes its own rules. If your goal is to make the most money possible using Canada's natural resources, what would you ask for? Number one, give me control over the sun. Number two, give me control over the air. Number three, give me control over water. Now, we know we cannot control the sun, nor can we control the air. But we can control water. Water, after all, is the most important element that can be controlled."

But the plot for a North American Union, as exposed in detail in Jerome Corsi's new bestselling book, "The Late Great USA," is but a prelude, Estulin says, to the ultimate merger – one-world government.

"Everything is in place," he says. "Europe is now one country, one currency and one constitution. North America is about to become one. The African Union has had its working model going for over a decade. Asia is openly discussing the near-future Asian Union, being sold to us as an economic inevitability beneficial to all its citizens."

Estulin sees the current focus in the U.S. on the presidential election of 2008 as something of a farce in light of this trend.

"Does it really matter who wins?" he asks. "As I make very clear in 'The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,' every politician of note and promise belongs to the Bilderbergers, CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) or the Trilateral Commission. Unless you are one of them, you can hardly hope to win the presidency. If we vote for the lesser evil, forced upon us by the secret oligarchies and the powerful men behind the curtain, we end up playing the game imposed upon us by them. Democracy, I guess what I really want to say, is a fallacy, an unattainable dream, a useless label trotted out and dusted off by the rulers every four years for the benefit of the great unwashed – us. There are two sides in this equation – the powerful elite who control the world's wealth and the rest of humanity."

Estulin "guarantees" today's Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani will not get the nomination of his party. With less certitude, he speculates the current mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, could still be positioned to head the GOP ticket.

"Bloomberg, according to my sources within Bilderberg, will emerge as a credible candidate of consensus for the discredited American political establishment, your virtual "People's Choice" candidate," he says.

What is the agenda behind these groups, which Estulin says are comprised of "self-interested elitists protecting their wealth and the investments of multinational banks and corporations in the growing world economy at the expense of developing nations and Third World countries"?

"The policies they develop," he writes, "benefit them as well as move us towards a one-world government."

Those questioning Estulin's conclusion as mere speculation need only recall organizational financer David Rockefeller's own words as recorded in his "Memoirs."

"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will," he wrote. "If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Estulin's book, first written in 2005 in Spain, has been translated into 24 languages, most recently this English edition. He has covered the Bilderberg Group as a journalist for more than 15 years.

Why does he singularly devote so much attention to exposing their activities?

"They cannot survive the light, and they know it," he says. "This is why the powerful people have long insulated themselves from that possibility. You see, the greatest form of control is when you think you are free while you are being manipulated and dictated to. People have been disarmed through the greatest hypnotist the world has ever known – the oblong box almost everyone has in the corner of their living rooms known as the television. By persuading ordinary people that what they can see with their eyes is what is there to see, the men behind the curtain have ensured their own survival, because people will laugh in your face when you explain to them that there is a bigger picture they are not seeing."

What is his personal prescription for fighting back? He offers a five-point program:


1. Understanding that governments do not represent the people nor have their best interests at heart.
2. Understanding that corporate media's main job is to hide the transgressions of the most powerful people in the world not shine the light of truth on it.

3. Understanding that the corporate media forms part of the world's elite societies such as the Bilderbergers, the CFR and the Trilateral Commission.

4. Understanding how money works and how through intelligent use of money we can destroy the Bilderbergers of this world.

5. Getting out of debt now.



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Related offers:

Get "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group" by Daniel Estulin

For more on the master plan to rule the world and the groups behind it, get "Brotherhood of Darkness" and "Hope of the Wicked" at a special discount package price



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Previous stories:

Will secret clubs pick next prez?

Trilateralists hear of Kosovo independence

U.N. troops accused of abetting genocide

Secretive Bilderberg meeting set for Turkey

Bilderbergers meet secretly in Ottawa

Guess who's at super-secret Bilderberg meeting today

The next Bilderberg meeting

Clinton, Pope join Bilderbergers




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Read more: North American Union 'a couple years away' http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=44640#ixzz1LLyJ1CkP]]> http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110504-000459 JH Wed, 04 May 2011 04:04:59 GMT http://www.terraformthemoon.com/blog/comments.php?y=11&m=05&entry=entry110504-000459