Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
07-02-2021
Close Encounters of the Short Wave Radio Kind: Aliens and Channeling
Close Encounters of the Short Wave Radio Kind: Aliens and Channeling
Within the field of “UFO Contactees,” “Space Brothers,” and “Space Sisters,” there are a number that are very well known. They include George Van Tassel, Dana Howard, Truman Bethurum, Mollie Thompson, Orfeo Angelucci, George King and Margit Mustapa. And they were just the tip of the iceberg. Then there are the far lesser-known experiences of a young man named Bob Renaud. On one particular night in July 1961 (just two months before the Betty and Barney Hill abduction), Renaud picked up an extraordinary message while “browsing around the shortwave bands” in his small, Massachusetts town. It began with a series of bleeps but was soon replaced by a female voice, which later identified herself as one Linn-Erri. So the story goes, the eighteen-year-old Renaud was told: “I am called Linn-Erri, and my associates and I come from the planet Korendor. We are speaking to you from our spaceship many miles above earth.”
As was the case in so many Contactee-themed cases of the 1950s and 1960s, Renaud had repeated and extensive chats with his newfound alien friends, many of which were focused on the aliens’ fears that we, the Human Race, were on the verge of destroying ourselves. Also closely following the trend of so many Contactees, Linn-Erri and her comrades took Renaud on trips to secret, alien installations, and taught him to create complex machines, one of which was somewhat akin to an old-style television set. It reportedly allowed Renaud to see Linn-Erri in the flesh, so to speak. She was a ravishing blond, who looked to be about nineteen years of age, but who claimed to be closer to her mid-seventies – in human years.
Greg Bishop and Adam Gorightly brought the story to a new generation in their 2018 book, “A” is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees.” The pair wrote: “…Renaud received instructions on how to adjust his television set to receive visual transmissions from outer space and soon Linn-Erri materialized on the screen, a beautiful, statuesque blonde possessing the all too earthly dimensions of 37-22-36!” The adventures didn’t end there. Still with Gorightly and Bishop: “In the early morning hours of December 22, 1962, an average-looking car carrying some average looking fellows (Korendorians in disguise) picked up Renaud and took him for a ride to an isolated area where he was treated to a demonstration of an anti-gravity device that levitated a huge rock one hundred feet into the air and then disintegrated it with a ray gun.” Not only that, in quick time Renaud channeled no less than twelve books – all of which were focused on the philosophy and science of the Korendorians.
As for the specific appearance of the Korendians, we have this: “They were deep blue, almost indigo, with smaller pupils because of Korendor’s light being about 1/6 brighter at the Korendian surface than our sun’s on Earth. There were no discernible eyebrows (or in fact any hair at all). The skull structure over the eyes protruded more than a Terran’s, perhaps to shade the eyes from overhead sunlight. The ears were smaller in relation to the head than ours, lobeless and distinctly peaked at the top. They were pressed almost flat against the head. The nose was small, with slit nostrils. The mouth was slit-like, with lips that were less pronounced than ours, and slightly narrower in proportion to the jaw. It was curled upward in what on Korendor must pass for a smile.”
It’s not unreasonable to suggest that this could all have been provoked by nothing stranger than the late night, hormone-driven fantasies of a young man run wild. But, there is something that makes Bob Renaud’s story very intriguing. The name, Linn-Erri, is very similar to the Gaelic word, “Lionmhairreacht,” which is pronounced “Lin-errich” and that translates into English as “abundance.” On top of that, even the name of the aliens’ alleged home planet, Korendor, is worth commenting on. It’s a word very similar – if not near-identical – to the Gaelic “Cor-Endor,” which means “mound of Endor,” or as Whitley Strieber described it, “a place of oracle.” For more on the Gaelic angle of the UFO phenomenon, click here.
As I said yesterday: “Today’s article is a bit different to most of my articles. This one is a 2-part feature that is focused on controversial photographs in relation to the UFO mystery. As to why it’s a bit different, it’s because there’s not a UFO in sight. Rather, the pictures I’m going to talk about are from very different angles. You’ll see what I mean.” Indeed, you will. The second-part revolves around photos taken during an alleged alien autopsy – or more than one. It’s a story I was put onto by U.K.-based ufologist Jenny Randles. In 1997 I interviewed Jenny regarding a strange series of events she found herself in, back in late 1986 (you can find the full story in Jenny’s From Out of the Blue book). It was a very curious saga involving allegedly classified documents, dead aliens, crashed flying saucers, and much more. It all began in October 1986, when Randles came into contact with a man who had then recently left his employment with the British Army. According to the man, he had in his possession a large stash of still-classified material on UFOs that he had acquired under very controversial circumstances.
The story that “Robert” told was as remarkable as it was inflammatory. Roughly a year or so earlier, an American individual, employed by the U.S. military and working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, came across the computerized files while engaged in repairing one particular system at the base. And we’re not talking about just a few pages of material. According to what Robert told Randles and ufologist Peter Hough, the number of pages was huge. The man allegedly printed around six hundred pages of material, which wasn’t even anywhere near the overall total. It turns out that – allegedly – the man in question was friends with Robert’s commanding-officer in the British Army; the two having met on an exchange-program. Fearful about what he had got himself into, the computer-specialist gave the hundreds of pages of material on those aforementioned crashed saucers and alien autopsies to the CO. From there, they reached Robert.
One of the papers referenced the autopsy of a strange body. Randles also said: “There was a lot of material about Roswell, including photographs of the UFO and of the aliens. One of the most detailed files was an autopsy report – that ran close to 200 pages in length – of the bodies recovered from the Roswell crash. Robert remembered the name of the doctor who had written it. It was Dr. Frederick Hauser, a name I’d never seen connected with UFOs in any way whatsoever. Robert said that there was a very detailed account that was mostly filled with medical jargon about the autopsy which he didn’t understand, and there was a photograph of this entity with a slit right down the middle from the neck to the navel.”
A still from the “Alien Autopsy” video
And there was still more to come. Jenny said of those elusive photos: “One of the first things Robert said was that the aliens were very human-looking. He said that the head was completely bald, but the most unusual feature of the face was the nose, which was almost flush into the face, almost unnoticeable. He couldn’t tell from the photographs, but the autopsy report made it clear that the beings were slightly smaller than average human size – about five feet in height.” Randles also told me: “Bearing in mind, 1986 was years before the autopsy film [from Ray Santilli] surfaced. In fact, the connections with the autopsy film and with what Robert told me are chillingly similar. One of the impressions that you get from the alien autopsy footage is that the body is very human-like; and is around five foot in height. I have to say it struck me as soon as I saw the footage that this was very similar to what Robert had described.” And, as Ross Condit told me: “Not sure if this will ultimately bear fruit, but I did some internet research and dug up a Captain Frederick V. Hauser who was the CO of the 450th Medical General Dispensary Unit in Vienna in Feb. 1946. He was University of Michigan class of 1940, so the timing is tight but works.”
I’ve heard the “ice crystals” explanation for different NASA UFO sightings and while it’s valid, I don’t think we should rely on it. Especially when accompanied by other interesting UFOs…
Another Monolith Appears In Turkey, Guarded By Military! UFO Sighting News, 2-5-2021.
Another Monolith Appears In Turkey, Guarded By Military! UFO Sighting News, 2-5-2021.
Date of discovery: February 4, 2021
Location of discovery: Gobeklitepe, Turkey
This just in, a monolith was discovered in an ancient 12,000 years old archeological site that was once the site of a holy temple. The object is seen in the video surrounded by four poles with warning tape wrapped around it to keep people from touching the object. But the most bewildering thing of all...is that there is Turkish military soldiers holding assault rifles guarding the monolith. Now if this was just art, there would be no soldiers. The only reasons that the Turkish government would send soldiers is if they thought this object could actually be an alien relic that landed in this location. They see the monolith as a possible alien artifact and that if it falls into the wrong hands...it could pose a risk to Turkish national security. So they protect it until its looked at by scientific experts and a they settle on what this unknown artifact really is.
Rod UFO Shoots Past Door Cam In Texas! Jan 31, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Rod UFO Shoots Past Door Cam In Texas!Jan 31, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 31, 2021 Location of sighting: Texas, USA
Wow! Just watch as this rod shoots past a door cam two weeks ago. The object shoots fast a whole 2 seconds and its gone, but I slowed it down in the video so you can get a good look at it. Strangely enough the UFO also makes an odd noise that sounds like a electrical power line humming sound. Its been a long time since I have seen a rod in public places like this in Texas. I have reported them shooting into volcanos in Mexico, but not often over neighborhoods. A very rare rod sighting. Absolute proof that rods do exist and are flying low and over the homes of Texas.
Orange Spheres Over Maricopa, Arizona On Feb 4, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Orange Spheres Over Maricopa, Arizona On Feb 4, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Feb 4, 2021 Location of sighting: Maricopa, Arizona, USA
The eyewitness Jasmine Montenegro was talking with a friend when she noticed some glowing lights in the sky. She began recording them and they faded in and out with almost a pulsing action. You can hear the excitement in her and her friends voice as they try to figure out what these lights could possibly be. Similar lights have been seen world wide always described as large, orange, glowing, some over the ocean off the coast of Florida with over 10 minutes of footage. This is absolutely real footage with two real UFOs about to shoot off so fast...that the human eye could not see them go.
Imagine, most sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are not reported, because many witnesses do not want to talk about it or they do not know where to report their sighting.
Whether man-made or of alien origin, a lot of strange objects flying through our sky. The following footage of reported UFO sightings from around the world is just the tip of the iceberg.
Four UFOs disappearing into the Moon's Aristarchus Crater
Four UFOs disappearing into the Moon's Aristarchus Crater
Sky-watcher UFOvni2012 has been observing the Moon's Aristarchus crater for years, which is often hazy, but on January 26, 2021, the vision was clear and to his surprise he saw 4 UFOs looming above the crater's surface.
Then it looks like the UFOs are lining up to disappear into some sort of entrance inside the crater.
It is suggested that there are several secret underground lunar bases on the moon once set up by the earth's super powers and this footage of the four UFOs disappearing into the crater, which starts at 4.04 seconds in the video, could be proof that underground operational bases on the moons are real of which one such a base is located inside the Aristarchus Crater.
VIDEO: UFOs witnessed over Kearney, Missouri 6-Feb-2021
VIDEO: UFOs witnessed over Kearney, Missouri 6-Feb-2021
This triangular formation of lights was filmed over Kearney, MO on 6th February 2021.
Witness report:
We leaving my mother in law’s house and driving out of her subdivision when I saw them and pointed them out to my wife. We live within 20 miles of Kansas City International and see planes coming for approach on a regular basis and know what a plane looks like, These were just read glowing and no distinguishable marks. Lead 3 were in a rigid never changing triangle shape 2 following one merged with the triangle and the other just faded away. This was all to the southeast of our location and they were traveling south to southwest. The Triangle eventually faded out. or turn away so that we could no longer see it. Very brief visually. I am a trained observer from my time in the US Navy and never seen anything like this ever, Not Chinese lanterns or anything else. I have a very short video from my phone but it is not good quality
A study out of the University of Washington sheds interesting light on the human capability to communicate between brain and brain without words. Also known as telepathy.
Reflect On:
If emerging science begins to change our knowledge of who we truly are, might this new understanding of what it means to be human change the way we live our lives?
Fascinating research out of the University of Washington successfully replicates a direct brain-to-brain connection between multiple pairs of people in a scientific study, following-up on the teams initial demonstration.
The study involved six people who were engaged with each other in pairs from different areas of campus. Researchers sent signals from one person’s brain over the internet to another person in an attempt to control the other’s hand motions with thought.
Study Method
In order to properly conduct the study researchers needed to separate the subjects and close off certain perceptions of the study method. Each sender of thought was placed in front of a computer game where he or she had to defend a city by firing a cannon and intercepting rockets launched by a pirate ship. But, the senders were not able to interact with the game physically. The only way they could properly defend their city was through thought. When a rocket was coming or when they wanted to fire a cannon, they had to think about doing that intentionally.
Across campus, each receiver sat in a dark room with headphones on and no ability to see the computer game. Their right hand was positioned overtop the touchpad that would fire the cannon when tapped. If brain-to-brain connection was successful between the two pairs, the send would effectively be able to get the receiver to tap the touchpad and fire the cannon.
From a technology standpoint, researchers used two types of noninvasive instruments that can connect with human brains in real-time. One participant was hooked up to a electroencephalography machine that reads brain activity and sends electrical pulses via the web to the receiver. The receiver is wearing a swim cap with a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil placed near the area of the brain that controls hand movements.
This setup effectively allows one person to send a command that would in theory move the hand of another person simply through thought.
“The new study brings our brain-to-brain interfacing paradigm from an initial demonstration to something that is closer to a deliverable technology,” said co-author Andrea Stocco, a research assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “Now we have replicated our methods and know that they can work reliably with walk-in participants.”
UW students Darby Losey, left, and Jose Ceballos are positioned in two different buildings on campus as they would be during a brain-to-brain interface demonstration. The sender, left, thinks about firing a cannon at various points throughout a computer game. That signal is sent over the Web directly to the brain of the receiver, right, whose hand hits a touchpad to fire the cannon.
Credit Mary Levin.
The Results
It was found that accuracy varied depending on each pairing. The accuracy range was from 25 to 83 percent. Misses were mostly found to be caused by the sender failing to accurately execute the thought to send the “fire” command. The researchers also were able to quantify the exact amount of information that was transferred between the two brains.
Interestingly the degree of accuracy being low in subjects who couldn’t properly extend intention to the receiver also indicates that it isn’y simply just thoughts that affect our reality but actually the intention. Therefore during study of the phenomenon accuracy in whether or not subjects are truly intending vs just thinking is crucial.
For me personally, this brings interesting insight to my theory that thoughts don’t create reality, but that there needs to be a power behind that thought. A strong intention, emotion, feeling, etc. Further to that, it takes deep practice and a level of mastery to truly train yourself to impact physical reality with thought and intention.
This isn’t the first time brain-to-brain communication has been demonstrated scientifically. Another research team from the company Starlab in Barcelona, Spain, recently published a study with very similar results to the one above. Direct communication between two human brains was demonstrated but this one only featured two subjects.
Also, a study was done that demonstrated telepathy between humans during dreams.
The research team from the University of Washington has been granted a new $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation so they can take their work to the next level. This clearly illustrates the validity and impressive potential implications of their work.
“Imagine someone who’s a brilliant scientist but not a brilliant teacher. Complex knowledge is hard to explain – we’re limited by language,” said co-author Chantel Prat, a faculty member at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and a UW assistant professor of psychology.
Keeping An Open Mind
It feels like we are living in a time where new discoveries are truly making us question what it means to e human. Who are we? What are our capabilities? If the story of who we truly are changes, would that change how we choose to create our society and life?
Thankfully there are many brilliant people out there not only doing this work to bring forth cutting edge science. Of course this new science does come with opposition and controversy as paradigms are challenged by these ideas. It’s my feeling that there is little value in simply calling this work “pseudoscience” as it often is called, as it only seeks to cast off this work without truly looking into it and remembering to stay curious and playful.
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
Making air from Moon dust: Scientists create a prototype oxygen plant
Making air from Moon dust: Scientists create a prototype oxygen plant
Scientists have created a prototype "lunar oxygen plant" by testing a method for extracting oxygen from imitation Moon rocks that could be invaluable for lunar settlements.
The European Space Agency has created an experimental “oxygen plant” in the Netherlands that can extract oxygen trapped within simulated Moon dust.
Not only does the process extract up to 96 percent of the oxygen in the imitation lunar soil, it also leaves behind metals that might be valuable to future crewed missions that venture to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
Oxygen on the Moon
Based on lunar rock samples returned to Earth during the Apollo missions, scientists know that the Moon's soil, or regolith, contains about 40 to 45 percent oxygen by weight. This makes oxygen the most abundant element on the Moon's surface. But harvesting it is difficult.
“Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel,” said Beth Lomax, a University of Glasgow researcher involved in the project, in an ESA press release.
We all know the importance of breathable oxygen, but oxygen in liquid form is also used as a propellant in many rockets. So by taking oxygen directly from the Moon — a process called in-situ resource utilization — future missions wouldn't have to bog down their rockets with a massive surplus of heavy liquid propellants. This would allow us to essentially use the Moon as a cosmic gas station, helping drastically drive down the cost of far-reaching space missions to Mars and beyond.
On the left is a pile of simulated lunar soil, or regolith; on the right is the same pile after essentially all the oxygen has been extracted from it, leaving a mixture of metal alloys.
Beth Lomax/University of Glasgow
Liquid oxygen could also be extremely useful for maintaining satellites around Earth. According to a paper published by Lomax and other researchers in the journal Planetary and Space Science, it's more energy efficient to transport liquid oxygen from the Moon to Earth-orbiting satellites than it is to launch oxygen from Earth's surface while fighting our planet's strong gravity.
The problem with plucking oxygen from lunar rocks, however, is that it's tied up in chemical compounds, and it takes energy to tear it away. This calls for special methods of separating oxygen from the other elements in lunar regolith.
Splitting Rocks
To separate the oxygen from other components in faux Moon rocks, the researchers use a technique called molten salt electrolysis.
By first placing the powdery Moon dust into a hot batch of molten calcium chloride salt, then running an electrical current through the mixture, the researchers can let chemistry and physics do the heavy lifting. The oxygen previously trapped in the simulated rocks migrates to an electrode (specifically, an anode), where the researchers can then capture it.
With this technique, the researchers report, they have been able to pull 96 percent of the oxygen out of their imitation Moon rocks in the course of just 50 hours. Alternatively, they can extract 75 percent of the oxygen in just the first 15 hours. Plus, as an added bonus, the process leaves behind a mixture of metal alloys that researchers suggest could be useful as well.
And just in case you're wondering, according to a press release published last August, researchers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are also working on a technique for harvesting oxygen from Moon rocks. So stay tuned, because in the not-too-distant future, we might have an old-fashioned gas station bidding war break out on the Moon.
U.S. Navy holds patents for enigmatic inventions by aerospace engineer Dr. Salvatore Pais.
He came up with technology that can "engineer" reality, devising an ultrafast craft, a fusion reactor and more.
While mostly theoretical at this point, the inventions could transform energy, space, and military sectors.
The U.S. Navy controls patents for some futuristic and outlandish technologies, some of which, dubbed "the UFO patents," came to life recently. Of particular note are inventions by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, whose tech claims to be able to "engineer reality". His slate of highly-ambitious, borderline sci-fi designs meant for use by the U.S. government range from gravitational wave generators and compact fusion reactors to next-gen hybrid aerospace-underwater crafts with revolutionary propulsion systems, and beyond.
Of course, the existence of patents does not mean these technologies have actually been created but there is evidence that some demonstrations of operability have been successfully carried out. As investigated and reported by The War Zone, a possible reason why some of the patents may have been taken on by the Navy is that the Chinese military might also be developing similar advanced gadgets.
Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve so by being able to create a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically reduce any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.
Not only that, if the vacuum-creating technology can be engineered, we'd also be able to "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," states the patent. This would lead to major advancements in aerospace propulsion and generating power. Not to mention other reality-changing outcomes that come to mind.
Among Pais's other patents are inventions that stem from similar thinking, outlining pieces of technology necessary to make his creations come to fruition. His paper presented in 2019, titled "Room Temperature Superconducting System for Use on a Hybrid Aerospace Undersea Craft," presents a system that can achieve superconductivity at room temperatures. This would become "a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology," conveys Pais.
High frequency gravitational wave generator.
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
Another invention devised by Pais is an electromagnetic field generator that could generate "an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets". This shield could protect from threats like anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles that evade radar, coronal mass ejections, military satellites, and even asteroids.
Dr. Pais's ideas center around the phenomenon he dubbed "The Pais Effect". He referred to it in his writings as the "controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma) via accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration under rapid (yet smooth) acceleration-deceleration-acceleration transients." In less jargon-heavy terms, Pais claims to have figured out how to spin electromagnetic fields in order to contain a fusion reaction – an accomplishment that would lead to a tremendous change in power consumption and an abundance of energy.
According to his bio in a recently published paper on a new Plasma Compression Fusion Device, which could transform energy production, Dr. Pais is a mechanical and aerospace engineer working at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), which is headquartered in Patuxent River, Maryland. Holding a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Pais was a NASA Research Fellow and worked with Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. His current Department of Defense work involves his "advanced knowledge of theory, analysis, and modern experimental and computational methods in aerodynamics, along with an understanding of air-vehicle and missile design, especially in the domain of hypersonic power plant and vehicle design." He also has expert knowledge of electrooptics, emerging quantum technologies (laser power generation in particular), high-energy electromagnetic field generation, and the "breakthrough field of room temperature superconductivity, as related to advanced field propulsion."
Suffice it to say, with such a list of research credentials that would make Nikola Tesla proud, Dr. Pais seems well-positioned to carry out groundbreaking work.
A craft using an inertial mass reduction device.
Credit: Salvatore Pais
The patents won't necessarily lead to these technologies ever seeing the light of day. The research has its share of detractors and nonbelievers among other scientists, who think the amount of energy required for the fields described by Pais and his ideas on electromagnetic propulsions are well beyond the scope of current tech and are nearly impossible. Yet investigators at The War Zone found comments from Navy officials that indicate the inventions are being looked at seriously enough, and some tests are taking place.
An unclassified image that’s reportedly been circulated among U.S. intelligence agencies shows what appears to be unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the Pentagon’s term for unidentified flying objects. The object in the photo has been described by U.S. officials as silver and “cube-shaped,” according to a report from The Debrief, which first shared the image.
The leaked photo dates back to 2018, when it materialized in an intelligence report from the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), the Department of Defense’s (DoD) official unit that investigates UAP sightings.
In August, the Pentagon approved the establishment of the task force as the first on-the-books government UFO program since a 2000s-era unit lost its funding in 2012. However, multiple sources confirmed with Popular Mechanics earlier this year that the unit remained active in secrecy after its shuttering. According to The Debrief, the UATPF has briefed government and military officials on UAP matters for the last two years; the newly surfaced image appeared in a report issued by the task force during that time.
The Debrief’s Tim McMillan, a contributor toPopular Mechanics, learned of the photo’s existence from a “defense official who has been verified as being in a position to have access to the UAPTF’s intelligence reports,” he writes. Three other government officials confirmed with McMillan that the photo, which was shared on a secure network used by the U.S. Intelligence Community, comes from a 2018 task force report.
A military pilot reportedly encountered the object while flying over the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast of the U.S. in 2018 and captured it with their personal cell phone. It’s likely that a backseat weapons system operator on an F/A-18F Super Hornet took the photo of the object, which McMillan calls “inverted” and “bell-shaped,” and describes it having “ridges or other protrusions along its lateral edges, extending toward its base.”
It’s possible the object may be a GPS dropsonde, a sensor on a parachute that provides info on the vertical profile of a storm. But as McMillan points out (and confirms with an atmospheric researcher), the actual dropsonde doesn’t appear in the photo—just the potential square-cone parachute. And there would obviously have to be an aircraft above the object to drop it, and no such craft is visible in the image.
UAPTF/THE DEBRIEF
Is the object a research balloon? Probably not, two defense officials tell McMillan. “Pilots who encountered the object described that, unlike a balloon under similar conditions, the object was completely motionless and seemingly unaffected by ambient air currents,” he writes.
While we await further details about the mysterious object in the photo, it continues to be a busy time for the advancement and disclosure of UAP research.
In a July New York Times article, Harry Reid, the former Nevada senator who was instrumental in funding the government’s original UFO program, said he believes “crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied.” Reid said he came to the conclusion that “there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” according to reports.
In the same Times article, the astrophysicist Eric Davis, who consulted with the Pentagon’s original UFO program and now works for the defense contractor Aerospace Corporation, said that after he examined certain materials, he came to the conclusion that “we couldn’t make [them] ourselves.” In fact, Davis briefed a DoD agency as recently as March about retrieving materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.”
The UAPTF will investigate matters like these—as long as President Donald Trump doesn’t veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) the annual bill that sets the budget and policies for the U.S. military.
The NDAA, which must be passed and signed before Congress adjourns on January 3, includes appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for the UAPTF and supports its efforts to reveal any links that UAP “have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations.” But a Trump veto of the NDAA may stall the momentum of the task force.
As for other UAP-related events this year, in April, the U.S. Navy officially released three previously leaked videos taken by Navy pilots that indeed show UAP—but the service also said the footage should have never been released to the public in the first place.
The Pentagon released the videos in order to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” a spokesperson told Popular Mechanics at the time.
The great saucer invasion: The day six 'spaceships' landed in England
The great saucer invasion: The day six 'spaceships' landed in England
By Tanya Gupta - BBC News
They had big metal domes, emitted a strange, ominous hum and appeared one morning in a straight line across southern England. For a few hours, members of the public, police and the Army really believed alien spaceships had landed - until it was revealed to be a stunt by students. But how was the hoax so successful?
They had metal domes, emitted a strange and ominous hum and appeared in a straight line one morning in the south of England. The public, the police, and the Army believed they had landed extraterrestrial spaceships until it was revealed that it was a student joke. But how did they make the deception so successful?
The apparently extra-terrestrial vessels prompted a major police and military response, witnessed by Ray Seager who was with other children playing outside when one of the six saucers was found in the Isle of Sheppey on 4 September 1967.
"We all came running over, and there it was," he said. "There were no two ways about it. It was there.
"It was the old flying saucer shape. It was a silver, big dome with the thing round the outside. Yes, it was a flying saucer."
While the children were excited, he recalls there was also real fear as the police arrived.
"They started coming up the hill, and as they started getting close, they started gesturing to us, all the kids, to move away. And they were frightened I think, just as much as we were."
Newspapers reported how the saucers were watched, listened to and weighed at police stations and one RAF base throughout the day.
The Sheppey saucer was removed by RAF helicopter, while satellite experts were called to a "landing" site in Berkshire amid reports the object found there was bleeping and hissing and full of a mysterious liquid.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTJOHN KEELING - image caption
The saucers were taken away and examined before it emerged that hoaxers were responsible
From the moment apprentices at Farnborough's Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) came up with the idea for the hoax, there was a determination it should be convincing, said engineer Chris Southall.
All of them were interested in sci-fi, and they set out to create a design that would not be recognisably human.
There could be no giveaway features on the saucers, such as portholes or aerials, nor anything that might be seen on terrestrial inventions such as a plane or a boat.
First they made the metal-coated, fibreglass saucers by forming plaster moulds to build them in two halves, and then they sandwiched them together with electronic sound equipment inside.
"When you turned the saucers upside down, it flicked a switch and started a battery," Mr Southall said.
"We were putting them out in secret, in the middle of the night, in the early hours, and we didn't want them to make a noise until then. Only when we left, we turned them upside down and the noise started - and then we got away quick."
The saucers were also filled with a flour and water mix that fermented inside and turned into foul-smelling slime.
"We wanted to make something that looked really alien," he said.
They were placed in six locations in a straight line from east to west - Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey, Bromley in south London, Ascot, the village of Welford, near Newbury, in Berkshire, Chippenham in Wiltshire and Clevedon in Somerset.
Engineer Rog Palmer, who was also on the committee, organised teams of two or three apprentices to take the saucers to each location and briefed each group about how to carry out the task, including what to say if stopped by the police - that they had stayed out late at a party.
And by the time the saucers were discovered, the pranksters were back in their hostel - where 500 apprentices lived - bleary-eyed over breakfast after being up all night, but very excited.
They had risen to the task of planting the "spaceships" without detection, but were they prepared for the extraordinary success of their hoax?
Mr Southall, now 72 and an environmental campaigner who runs an eco-house in Clacton, Essex, remembers it was the era of Sputnik and space exploration - and says the whole point of the hoax was for it to be taken seriously.
"We thought the government should have some sort of plan if aliens did land," he said.
"So we gave them a chance to try out whatever plan they had - but they didn't have one."
He recalls the surprise of the apprentices when police and Army responders blew one saucer up and dropped another.
David Clarke, media law expert at Sheffield Hallam University and a consultant and curator for the National Archives UFO project, believes the response to the hoax was flawed.
"One of the saucers when they actually drilled into it, because it was full of this compacted, sort of papier-maché mess, actually exploded and showered the police officers with this stuff.
"If it had been some kind of radiation hazard, how would they have dealt with that? It would have been a disaster area.
"And what did they do? Just washed it down the drains."
Dr Clarke and Mr Southall agree that in 1967 the public imagination was already gripped by UFO fever - at the time the Ministry of Defence was receiving near-daily reports of sightings.
But despite this climate, the apprentices did not expect the huge media response, which included international coverage and double-page spreads.
"It was more than we hoped for," Mr Southall said.
The events of that day remain something of a blur for him, but he remembers trekking to a TV studio in the evening after the hoax had been exposed.
By the time the papers went to press, journalists had been told about the prank, but it didn't deter them from reporting it as an alien invasion, Mr Southall said.
Press cuttings from the time reveal official sources "tended to be snappy" when questioned about the hoax.
But police confirmed no action was to be taken against the pranksters, with one Bromley officer quoted as saying: "We are taking it like gentlemen."
Mr Southall admits that to put the police and Army to such an inconvenience today would have entirely different consequences.
"Those were hippie days," he said. "We were apprentices from the RAE and people had a kinder attitude to us because of who we were, and in those days it was different."
Now, he says, the saucers would be treated as explosive devices and detonated - and the hoaxers could end up in jail.
"That's one of the interesting things looking back at this, 50 years on.
"The times we live in now are much harsher, and I don't think we could do it now. We would end up in trouble."
As far as a student pranks go, creating an incident which received worldwide coverage is fairly good going. But that is exactly what happened back in 1967 when an "alien invasion" took place.
The extraordinary events happened on September 4 that year.
Christopher Lever, then a worker in the city who lived in Winkfield, found a mysterious silver saucer in a paddock at his home in the village on the outskirts of Bracknell.
He didn't know at the time, but five other similar "spacecraft" were found around the country, which sparked fears of an Independence Day-style alien invasion.
Some of the devices that landed elsewhere in the country bleeped when they were touched, and others emitted a foul-smelling liquid. The saucer in Winkfield did neither.
The police were called and the "flying saucer" was taken to the police station in Ascot.
An investigation was carried out and gradually it was revealed the "alien invasion" was an elaborate hoax by engineer apprentices at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough.
Another of the "saucers" was found in the wilds of West Berkshire in Welford near Newbury.
He said: “There used to be a satellite tracking station nearby so Christopher contacted them.
“They passed it to their station engineer Roger Kenyon, who thought the best part of valour was to stand at a distance and throw pennies at it – he thought it might blow up or angry little green men might emerge.
“When he ran out of change he went closer. Eventually the police were called and officers from Bracknell came and took the saucer to the station in Ascot.”
The papers revealed they were fitted with a motion sensitive alarm that went off if they were moved. They were also filled with a foul-smelling green gunge.
People were so scared by the crafts that in some areas the army was called in.
While the incident was debunked as a hoax, a recent report has revealed Berkshire as a hotspot for UFO sightings. And the area has a long history of mysterious activity in the skies.
Astronomers announced this month that a new deep-field survey called JADES will be carried out with the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s much-anticipated successor. The Webb is due to launch later this year.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (in its eXtreme version) is the deepest view of the universe yet obtained … and will be, until JADES takes over. It stretches approximately 13 billion light-years and includes approximately 10,000 galaxies. It took 11.3 days for the Hubble Space Telescope to collect these ancient photons. Try downloading the largest version and zoom in on different sections. We’re seeing these galaxies as they were billions of years ago. How might they look today?
Image via NASA/ ESA/ S. Beckwith (STSci)/ HUDF team.
Astronomers announced a new deeper-than-ever sky survey this month (January 15, 2021), to be conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble telescope’s successor, scheduled for launch in October of this year. The new survey is abbreviated JADES, which is short for James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey. The survey will be like the Hubble Deep Fields, but deeper still. Its main goal is to see far away in space – and thus far back into the very young universe – and image it just at the end of the so-called Cosmic Dark Ages, that is, at the time when gas in the universe went from being opaque to transparent. This is also the time when the very first stars were forming – very large, massive and bright stars – in a veritable firestorm of star birth when the young universe was less than 5% of its current age.
The Webb telescope will be located near the second Lagrange point – a relatively stable region of space, gravitationally speaking, known as L2 – some 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. To conduct the new survey, the Webb telescope will be staring at a small point of space for nearly 800 hours (approximately 33 days) to be able to see fainter objects than those ever seen before and thus to find the first generation of galaxies. Astronomers want to know, among other things, how fast did these galaxies form, and how fast did their stars form? They also want to look for the very first supermassive black holes, which are thought to lie at the hearts of nearly all large galaxies, including our Milky Way.
The long-anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been postponed a number of times for a variety of reasons, most recently because of effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the formal successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but is equipped with instrumentation able to image further into the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum than Hubble could.
This capability also makes it a worthy successor to the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope which recently went into retirement.
What makes the infrared part of the spectrum so important for surveys like JADES? If you look really deep, you will also look back in time, and the farther back in time you look, the more redshifted the galaxies are (the farther away they are, the faster they move away from us, and the more their light has been shifted towards the red part of the spectrum). This means that the light we want to observe, originally in the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum, might not even show much in the optical part anymore. Instead, it’s been shifted to longer wavelengths, into the infrared regime.
In other words, the use of infrared cameras is necessary to be able to see the light from the first generation of galaxies. Daniel Eisenstein, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University, said:
Galaxies, we think, begin building up in the first billion years after the Big Bang, and sort of reach adolescence at 1 to 2 billion years. We’re trying to investigate those early periods. We must do this with an infrared-optimized telescope because the expansion of the universe causes light to increase in wavelength as it traverses the vast distance to reach us. So even though the stars are emitting light primarily in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, that light is shifted quite relentlessly out into the infrared. Only Webb can get to the depth and sensitivity that’s needed to study these early galaxies.
In fact, the James Webb Space Telescope was built specifically for this purpose. Up to now, infrared images are much less resolved – less clear – than optical images, because of their longer wavelength. With its much larger collecting area, the Webb will be able to image, in infrared, at the same resolution – detail – that Hubble could obtain in the optical part of the spectrum.
Get ready for a whole new set of mind-blowing images of the universe, this time in the infrared, from Webb!
After having successfully deployed its solar panels – precisely as it’s supposed to do once it’s in space – the Webb telescope is shown here ready for the final tests on December 17, 2020, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Then it will be packed up and transported to French Guyana, to be launched on October 31, 2021, via an Ariane V rocket.
The use of deep field surveys is a young science, for two reasons. First, astronomers didn’t have the right instrumentation before Hubble to do them. Second, it’s also because no one initially knew the result of staring into a piece of empty space for a long time. Such a long stare into the unknown would require valuable observation time, and if this long observation didn’t produce any results, it would be considered a waste.
But in 1995, Robert Williams, then the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci), which administrates the Hubble telescope, decided to use his “director’s discretionary time” to point the Hubble toward a very small and absolutely empty-looking part of the sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major the Great Bear. There were no stars visible from our Milky Way (or extremely few), no nearby galaxies visible in the field, and no visible gas clouds. Hubble collected photons for 10 consecutive days, and the result, the Hubble Deep Field, was a success and a paradigm changer: A patch of sky about as small as the eye of George Washington on an American quarter (25-cent coin) held out at arm’s length, showed a 10 billion-light-years-long tunnel back in time with a plethora of galaxies – around 3,000 of them – at different evolutionary stages along the way. The field of observational cosmology was born.
This was done again in 1998 with the Hubble telescope pointed to the southern sky (Hubble Deep Field South), and the result was the same. Thus we learned that the universe is uniform over large scales.
Next was the installation of a new, powerful camera on Hubble (the Advanced Camera for Surveys) in 2002. The incredible Hubble Ultra Deep Field was acquired in 2004, in a similarly small patch of sky near the constellation Orion, about 1/10 of a full moon diameter (2.4 x 3.4 arc minutes, in contrast to the original Hubble Deep Fields north and south, which were 2.6 x 2.6 arc minutes). And so our reach was extended even deeper into space, and even further back in time, showing light from 10 thousand galaxies along a 13-billion-light-years-long tunnel of space. If you’ll remember that the universe is about 13.77 billion years old, you’ll see this is getting us really close to the beginning!
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field was the most sensitive astronomical image ever made at wavelengths of visible (optical) light until 2012, when an even more refined version was released, called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, which reached even farther: 13.2 billion years back in time.
The JADES survey will be observed in two batches, one on the northern sky and one on the southern in two famous fields called GOODS North and South (abbreviated from Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey).
Marcia Rieke, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona who co-leads the JADES Team with Pierre Ferruit of the European Space Agency (ESA), explained:
We chose these fields because they have such a great wealth of supporting information. They’ve been studied at many other wavelengths, so they were the logical ones to do.
View larger. | Look closely. Every single speck of light in this image is a distant galaxy (except for the very few ones with spikes which are foreground stars). This telescopic field of view is part of the GOODS South field. It’s one of the directions in space that’ll be observed in JADES, a new survey that aims to study the very first galaxies to appear in the infancy of the universe.
The GOODS fields have been observed with several of the most famous telescopes, covering a great wavelength range from infrared through optical to X-ray. They are not fully as deep (the observations don’t reach as far back) as the Ultra Deep Field, but cover a larger area of the sky (4-5 times larger) and are the most data-rich areas of the sky in terms of depth combined with wavelength coverage. By the way, the first deep field, HDF-N, is located in the GOODS north image, and the Ultra deep field/eXtreme (don’t you love these names?) is located in the GOODS south field.
There are a large number of ambitious science goals for the JADES program pertaining to the composition of the first galaxies, including the first generation of supermassive black holes. How these came about at such an early time is a mystery. As well, the transition of gas from neutral and opaque to transparent and ionized, something astronomers call the epoch of reionization, is not well understood. JADES team member Andrew Bunker, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who is also part of the ESA team behind the Webb telescope, said:
This transition is a fundamental phase change in the nature of the universe. We want to understand what caused it. It could be that it’s the light from very early galaxies and the first burst of star formation … It is kind of one of the Holy Grails, to find the so-called Population III stars that formed from the hydrogen and helium of the Big Bang.
People have been trying to do this for many decades and results have been inconclusive so far.
But, hopefully, not for much longer!
Bottom line: JADES is an ambitious new deep sky survey to be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope, once launched. It will reach further back in time and space than any survey before, to study the very first generation of galaxies after the universe transitioned from opaque to transparent.
The Aztec’s Hueteocalli, otherwise known as the Templo Mayor (which translates into “Great Temple”) stood at the center of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), the capital city of the Aztec world in Mexico. With its twin temples dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli and to the rain god Tlaloc, archaeologists from the Templo Mayor Project ( PTM) of the National Institute of Anthropology and History ( INAH) have discovered a sculptured stone displaying a golden eagle.
It is at the foot of this architectural wonder of the Aztec religious world in modern-day Mexico City, on the central axis of the temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtl and the monumental sculpture of the goddess Coyolxauhqui, that archaeologists have unearthed the giant obsidian eagle. And this is no ordinary carved eagle, for it represents the largest of its type ever discovered.
The golden eagle bas-relief was discovered during excavations at the Templo Mayor in the center of Mexico City.
Dating to the rule of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, between 1440 and 1469 AD, Mexico’s Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, said the carved itzcuauhtli (obsidian eagle) was discovered in February 2020. The representation of a golden eagle ( Aquila chrysaetos canadensis ) measures 1.06 meters (3.47 ft) long and 0.7 meters (2.26 ft) wide. The ancient bas-relief is “the largest in a set of 67 similar elements discovered in the Templo Mayor .
The stone was discovered near the circular Cuauhxicalco, or “place of the eagle's gourd,” where 16th century accounts say the Tenochca rulers were ritually cremated. Lead archaeologist Professor Leonardo López Luján says the eagle was carved on “red tezontle,” which is a porous, highly oxidized, volcanic rock used extensively in construction in both ancient and modern Mexico.
The golden eagle bas-relief, measuring 1.06 meters (3.47 ft) long and 0.7 meters (2.26 ft) wide, was discovered on the south side of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City
Dr. López Luján added that the plaza floor in the Templo Mayor had been covered since pre-Hispanic time and that it is unique because its bas-reliefs “alluding to the dual conception of the building.” The eagle was discovered on the south side of the temple which is associated with the mythical birth cycle of Huitzilopochtli; while to the north, the bas-reliefs are associated with Tláloc, “the water cycle and the regeneration of corn.” Dr. López Luján’s team originally believed the floor was built by the government of Ahuítzotl between 1486 and 1502 AD, but now it is thought to date to the government of Motecuhzoma I in the 1440s.
Aztec boys were taught about weaponry and warfare until the age of 17 when the best students progressed to become “eagle warriors” and earned nobility in Aztec society . However, to achieve adult status young men had to capture their first prisoner and after they had captured 20 a young man was eligible to become either a jaguar or eagle warrior. Either way, both paths meant a life spent in constant battle to capture prisoners for sacrificing to the gods.
The Mexican coat of arms depicts a golden eagle perched on a prickly pear cactus devouring a rattlesnake.
The golden eagle exists today in the Mexican coat of arms , that depicts the bird of prey perched on a prickly pear cactus devouring a rattlesnake. This image reflects the ancient Aztec legend that their capital city was located where an eagle was seen eating a snake on top of a lake. For the people of Tenochtitlan the eagle symbol had strong and positive religious connotations, but for the European invaders it was the serpent from the Garden of Eden representing the sinister voice of temptation.
The eagle was not only symbolic in ancient Mexico but across the entirety of South America from Brazil in the east to Ecuador in the west, and Peru in the south: where it was incorporated in mythology with the condor. According to the the Pachamama Alliance “The Eagle and the Condor” is an ancient Inca prophecy that speaks of humans splitting and following two paths, that of the eagle or the condor. The path of the condor is the path of heart, of intuition, and as such it represents feminine universal aspects. On the other hand, the path of the eagle is the path of the mind: the masculine way.
The prophecy of the eagle and condor says that beginning in the 1490s a 500-year cycle would begin in which the Eagle people would become so powerful that they would nearly drive the Condor people out of existence. This prophecy is believed to have become manifest in the subsequent Spanish conquest of South America, and according to most indigenous communities in South America today is still unfolding in the shape of old giants ripping apart their indigenous lands for liquid gold.
Top image: The giant bas-relief of a golden eagle has been discovered during excavations at the Templo Mayor in Mexico City.
Gareth Dorrian, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science, University of Birmingham
Ian Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University
No-one has visited the moon since 1972. But with the advent of commercial human spaceflight, the urge to return is resurgent and generating a new space race. Nasa has selected the private company SpaceX to be part of its commercial spaceflight operations, but the firm is also pursuing its own space exploration agenda.
To enable flights to the moon and beyond, both NASA and SpaceX are developing new heavy lift rockets: SpaceX's Starship and Nasa’s Space Launch System.
But how do they differ and which one is more powerful?
Discover the story of how and why NASA was created, its greatest triumphs, darkest days, and of the times it exceeded all possible hopes. A tale of adventure, heroism and resourcefulness, learn of the space agency's greatest achievements and how — over six decades — the organization has consistently and tirelessly devoted itself to its founding principle: that "activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humankind". VIEW DEAL
Starship
Rockets go through multiple stages to get into orbit. By discarding spent fuel tanks while in flight, the rocket becomes lighter and therefore easier to accelerate. Once in operation, SpaceX's launch system will be comprised of two stages: the launch vehicle known as Super Heavy and the Starship.
Super Heavy is powered by the Raptor rocket engine, burning a combination of liquid methane and liquid oxygen. The basic principle of a liquid fuel rocket engine is that two propellants – a fuel such as kerosene and an oxidiser such as liquid oxygen – are brought together in a combustion chamber and ignited. The flame produces hot gas under high pressure which is expelled at high speed through the engine nozzle to produce thrust.
The rocket will provide 15 million pounds of thrust at launch, which is approximately twice as much as the rockets of the Apollo era. Atop the launcher sits the Starship, itself powered by another six Raptor engines and equipped with a large mission bay for accommodating satellites, compartments for up to 100 crew and even extra fuel tanks for refuelling in space, which is critical to long duration interplanetary human spaceflight.
The Starship is designed to operate both in the vacuum of space and within the atmospheres of Earth and Mars, using small moveable wings to glide to a desired landing zone.
Once over the landing area, the Starship flips into a vertical position and uses its on-board Raptor engines to make a powered descent and landing. It will have sufficient thrust to lift itself off the surface of Mars or the moon, overcoming the weaker gravity of these worlds, and return to Earth – again making a powered soft landing. The Starship and Super Heavy are both fully reusable and the entire system is designed to lift more than 100 tons of payload to the surface of the Moon or Mars.
The spacecraft is maturing rapidly. A recent test flight of the Starship prototype, the SN8, successfully demonstrated a number of the manoeuvres required to make this work. Unfortunately, there was a malfunction in one of the Raptor engines and the SN8 crashed on landing. Another test flight is expected in the coming days.
NASA's Space Launch System
The Space Launch System (SLS) from Nasa will be taking the crown from the discontinued Saturn V as the most powerful rocket the agency has ever used. The current incarnation (SLS block 1) stands at almost 100 metres tall.
The SLS core stage, containing more than 3.3 million litres of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (equivalent to one-and-a-half Olympic size swimming pools), is powered by four RS-25 engines, three of which were used on the previous Space Shuttle. Their main difference from the Raptors is that they burn liquid hydrogen instead of methane.
The core stage of the rocket is augmented by two solid rocket boosters, attached to its sides, providing a total combined thrust of 8.2 million pounds at launch - about 5% more than the Saturn V at launch. This will lift the spacecraft to low Earth orbit. The upper stage is intended to lift the attached payload – the astronaut capsule – out of Earth’s orbit and is a smaller liquid fuel stage powered by a single RL-10 engine (already in use by ATLAS and DELTA rockets) which is smaller and lighter than the RS-25.
The Space Launch System will send the Orion crew capsule, which can support up to six crew for 21 days, to the Moon as part of the Artemis-1 mission – a task that current Nasa rockets are currently not capable of performing.
It is intended to have large acrylic windows so astronauts can watch the journey. It will also have its own engine and fuel supply, as well as secondary propulsion systems for returning to the Earth. Future space stations, such as the Lunar Gateway, will serve as a logistical hub, which may include refuelling.
The core stage and booster rockets are unlikely to be reusable (instead of landing they will drop in the ocean), so there is a higher cost with the SLS system, both in materials and environmentally. It is designed to evolve to larger stages capable of carrying crew or cargo weighing up to 120 tonnes, which is potentially more than Starship.
A lot of the technology being used in SLS is so-called "legacy equipment" in that it is adapted from previous missions, cutting down the research and development time. However, earlier this month, a test fire of the SLS core stage was stopped a minute into the eight-minute test due to a suspected component failure. No significant damage occurred, and the SLS program manager, John Honeycutt, stated: "I don't think we're looking at a significant design change."
And the winner is...
So which spacecraft likely to reach carry a crew to the moon first? Artemis 2 is planned as the first crewed mission using SLS to perform a flyby of the moon and is expected to launch in August 2023. Whereas SpaceX has no specific date planned for crewed launch, they are running #dearMoon – a project involving lunar space tourism planned for 2023. Musk has also stated that a crewed Martian mission could take place as early as 2024, also using Starship.
Ultimately it is a competition between an agency that has had years of testing and experience but is limited by a fluctuating taxpayer budget and administration policy changes, and a company relatively new to the game but which has already launched 109 Falcon 9 rockets with a 98% success rate and has a dedicated long-term cash flow.
Whoever reaches the moon first will inaugurate a new era of exploration of a world which still has much scientific value.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.