Extraterrestrial Life: AI Technology Predicts Probability Of Life On Other Planets

Alien PROOF: Buzz Aldrin and three other astronauts PASS lie detector on 'UFO encounters'

BUZZ Aldrin who was the second man to walk on the moon and three other astronauts have passed lie detector tests over claims they experienced alien encounters while in orbit, it has been claimed.

Canada Presents Radioactive Physical Evidence Of A Real UFO

Does new alien Canadian coin suggest that extra-terrestrial revelation is imminent?

Last week, the Royal Canadian Mint announced the release of a new coin depicting a man being borne over by an unidentified flying object. The inspiration behind this unusual coin is the so-called Falcon Lake Incident, the most sensational UFO story in Canadian history and one of the most inexplicable close encounter stories of all time. The release of the coin has naturally led to a great deal of chatter about the evidence behind contact with extra-terrestrial beings and whether it stands up to scrutiny.

The Falcon Lake incident in itself has provided UFO researchers with fairly robust evidence of extra-terrestrial involvement including fragments of the bizarre material used to forge the craft and the severe burn marks suffered by the man who encountered the vessel which was described as smelling very strongly of sulfur.

“If it does indeed turn out that there is relevant physical evidence, if this evidence is carefully collected and analyzed, and if this analysis leads to the identification of several facts concerning the UFO phenomenon, then will be the time for scientists to step back and ask, what are these facts trying to tell us? If those facts are strong enough to lead to a firm conclusion, then will be the time to confront the more bizarre questions. If, for instance, it turns out that all physical evidence is consistent with a mundane interpretation of the causes of UFO reports, there will be little reason to continue to speculate about the role of extraterrestrial beings. If, on the other hand, the analysis of physical evidence turns up very strong evidence that objects related with UFO reports were manufactured outside the solar system, then one must obviously consider very seriously that the phenomenon involves not only extraterrestrial vehicles but probably also extraterrestrial beings.”

books.google.ca/...

Of course, the Falcon Lake incident is not the only event in recent decades which have confounded skeptics. In addition to various fragments of supposed alien crafts, there has also been a huge amount of electrooptical data, video footage and eye witness testimonies over the years. This vast sum of evidence led Luis Elizondo, the former director of the ATTIP study which focused on unidentified flying objects, to say, “If this was a court of law, we are beyond reasonable doubt.”

Now that the evidence is becoming all the more overwhelming, it has been suggested that those in positions of authority have decided to slowly create a process of normalization before revealing that extra-terrestrial visitors to Earth are real. Why this process is beginning at this current time and why it has taken so long for the powers that be to admit to the world that the hundreds of UFO sightings the world over are real are questions which still have to be answered. However, it is very unlikely that the reason has anything to do with the threat of an impending alien invasion as it appears that these beings have been visiting this world for quite some time.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/}

Video – Do Extraterrestrials lived in Mexico before 7000 Years ago?

ANCIENT treasure including artefacts which are said to to depict alien beings “found in a historic cave” have added to claims ancient civilisations on Earth were visited by advanced species from outer space.

The ancient aliens theory claims there is evidence in historical records of a race of advanced astronauts arriving on Earth and helping our forefathers build monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

It is based on supposed depictions of flying saucers and alien-like beings in thousands of year old arts and crafts, coupled with the mysteries of how structures like the pyramids and Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, which were constructed with technology of the time.

Now, a video has gone viral online claims to have produced further evidence to support the alien myth.

In the video, you see a number of what appears to be Klaus Dona artefacts, which are known to date back thousands of years.

Some of the figures display alien-like figures, with long faces and round eyes.

And more sculptures appear to show spaceships floating above the ground, Dailystar.co.uk reports.

Others are said to be completely unexplainable and some claim it could its proof several other races co-existed thousands of years ago.

The clip was captured in Mexico and uploaded to YouTube channel UFOmania before going viral.

Viewers have tried to get to the bottom of the mystery.

One posted: “Haven’t seen these artefacts before, but none of this surprises me. There’s a lot more to come.”

And another added: “Incredible evidence to support that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race for a very long time.”

A third believed: “They lived on Earth for over 7,000 years and they created man.”

Others were not as convinced, stating they may not be entirely real.

A viewer pointed out: “All in mint condition, I reckon they are fake.”

Others said that just because objects in the shape of no human creatures were created, it did not mean these creatures ever truly existed.

One posted: “So, the fact that an ancient culture drew pictures and made sculptures of creatures that don’t look like any known life form on Earth proves their existence?

“Ok, so by the same logic, Centaurs, Minotaurs, Dragons, Unicorns, Satyrs, and Gryphons must all exist.”

Attribution:JON AUSTIN

{ http://www.etupdates.com/ }

This Week's Top Space Stories

Photo Credit: Ken Crawford

Photo Credit: Virgin Galactic/www.MarsScientific.com & Trumbull Studios

Photo Credit: Bhattacharyya et al., JGR 2018

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: Fraunhofer FHR

Photo Credit: Amy Thompson/Space.com

5. 60 years in the making, solar mission begins next step

On Sunday (April 1) NASA's Parker Solar Probe finished final checks and began its journey to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The final assembly of this mission will then pick up where scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center left off, to prep the sun-studying mission for a July 31 launch. A solar mission like the Parker Solar Probe is 60 years in the making, and it's designed to observe the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona, up close like never before.

[Full Story: So Hot, It's Cool: Record-Breaking Sun Probe Nearly Ready for Launch]

Photo Credit: Ken Crawford

Photo Credit: ISRO

Photo Credit: ESO/UltraVISTA team/TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU

Photo Credit: Steve Scanlon

Photo Credit: F. Baganoff et al./NASA/CXC/MIT

Photo Credit: Paul E. Alers/NASA

Secretive X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 200 Days in Orbit

The X-37B space plane has a payload bay about the size of a pickup-truck bed, which can be outfitted with a robotic arm.

Credit: Boeing

Dual-use tech

"The X-37B has been and remains a technology demonstrator," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. 

"Given that most space technology is dual-use, with the ever-increasing sway toward warfare in space, it's likely that the more militaristic uses of the space plane will be pursued more vigorously, and likely openly given the [presidential] administration's proclivity toward chest thumping," she told Space.com, expressing her personal view.

How long the unpiloted, reusable craft will stay aloft is not known, but experts have said it's likely to land at KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility, as the OTV-4 mission did back on May 7, 2017. That was a first for the program, as all prior missions had ended with a tarmac touchdown at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

These seafaring robots will search for life across the solar system

This rover is an early version of a vehicle that will one day be sent to Jupiter’s moon Europa

NASA/JPL-Caltech

We recognize Earth as the blue planet, but it’s not the only ocean world in our neighborhood. Oceans may be concealed beneath thick crusts of ice on moons orbiting Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, and on the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris. Saturn’s moon Titan even boasts liquid seas right on its surface, although they are full of methane rather than water.

All those tiny bubbles could cause two big problems. Firstly, they might get in the way of the submarine’s scientific equipment, making it more difficult to measure depth and other conditions. Even more worrying, the bubbles might prevent the submarine’s propellers from working properly.

“If we’re trying to move from one location in the seas to another, are all those bubbles going to coalesce at the back end of the submarine?” Hartwig says. “You try to spin the propellers and the vehicle won’t move, it will just sit and spin."

“This whole effervescence issue is a non-factor for submersibles on Earth because the amount of air that can get dissolved in water is very, very low,” Hartwig continues. “The pressure is higher on Titan and because the liquid is colder more gas is dissolved in the liquid, which means more gas can come out.”

Since we don’t know the exact chemical composition of Titan’s seas, it’s not certain how much nitrogen they hold. To get a better sense of what a submarine might encounter, Hartwig and his colleagues at Washington State University have recreated Titan’s seas here on Earth. They filled a test chamber with different mixtures of methane, ethane, and dissolved nitrogen at temperatures and pressures similar to those on Titan, then added a little heater in to mimic the heat that would radiate from an actual submarine.

The good news: if a submarine has stopped moving in order to collect samples, it might not have to worry. It probably wouldn’t emit enough heat to create the amount of fizz needed to stymie its instruments, the team reported in February in the journal Fluid Phase Equilibria. However, “We still haven’t ruled out the propeller issue,” Hartwig says. He intends to repeat the experiment with a propeller instead of a heater to find out how much bubbling the vessel might face as it journeys through Titan’s seas.

A possible design for a submarine that would explore Titan’s seas

NASA Glenn Research Center

The submarine we send to Titan could have the same long, slender shape we are used to seeing on Earth. This kind of vehicle would weigh around 2,600 pounds and be about 20 feet long, Hartwig says. However, it would have to return to the sea surface in order to communicate with Earth. It would also have to wait until the 2040s to arrive, when Earth will be high enough above Titan’s horizons to give the submarine a direct line of sight (and communication) back to our planet.

NASA is also considering sending a smaller, turtle-shaped submarine. This “Titan Turtle” would be paired with an orbiter to relay information to Earth. It could communicate while submerged and could potentially launch a few years earlier because it wouldn’t need to rely on Earth’s position in the sky.

Titan is unique among ocean worlds, Hartwig says. Nowhere else in the solar system are liquid seas so easy to reach. But a Titan submarine could inspire designs for future vessels that will explore seas hidden beneath the ice crust on other bodies. “I’ve always looked at Titan as a pathfinder,” Hartwig says.

Under the ice

One of these less accessible seas can be found on Europa. While the moon’s surface is lashed with radiation from Jupiter’s magnetic field and is a bleak -280 degrees Fahrenheit, the ocean underneath is protected by a wall of ice that averages 5 to 15 miles thick. Because this ocean is made of water, it’s a tantalizing place look for life and study what chemical conditions might be needed for it to form.

To get through Europa’s icy barricade, scientists are testing robots that would melt or cut their way down to the ocean. These robots could carry submarines, rovers to drive along the underside of the ice, or even landers that would sink to the seafloor. Once they hit the water, these probes would likely encounter balmy temperatures around 32 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s actually a fairly comfortable environment for our electronics,” says Andy Klesh, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “What is a little bit more troublesome is the saltwater.”

Europa’s seas could be as briny as or own and may even be significantly saltier, says Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “As an added challenge, there is likely some sulfuric acid in the mix,” he says. This means a probe’s electronics will be in danger of corrosion. The robot would also face formidable pressures as it ventured deeper into the ocean. On the seafloor, the pressure would be akin to that at the bottom of the Mariana Trench on Earth.

All in all, a journey to Europa’s seas is going to be a pretty rough ride. “We have the challenges of deep space exploration along with the challenges of deep ocean exploration,” Klesh says. “We have a vacuum in space; we have high pressure under the ice. And we have radiation on the way out there…we’re protected from that underneath the ice but then the environment’s trying to corrode us along the way.”

The easiest place to visit will be the underside of Europa’s ice shelf, he says. Klesh, Hand, and their colleagues are working on a rover that would drive around on the bottom of the ice. A rover or deep-sea probe wouldn’t be buffeted by currents, as would likely happen with a submarine. “These rovers [and] these landers may be the best way to explore in a very controlled matter and not be tossed about or knocked into other things,” Klesh says. The underside of the ice is also a particularly good place to search for life. On Earth, algae and microbes like to anchor themselves beneath the ice. If life exists on Europa, it may be drawn to this kind of terrain as well.

Klesh and his team are eager to begin the hunt. They’ve been testing their rover—currently known as BRUIE (Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration)—in Alaska’s freezing lakes. Its wheels sport both circular sawblades and little panels that act like snowshoes, distributing the rover’s weight across the ice. This prevents BRUIE from cutting into the ice and getting stuck in place.

The version of BRUIE that will eventually visit Europa will likely be carried through the ice by the robot responsible for digging down to the sea. That means it has to be pretty small, likely 18 inches or less in length, Klesh says. In two weeks, he plans to test collapsible wheels on BRUIE, which would allow it to become more compact and portable. The team also hopes to send BRUIE on its most ambitious mission yet—a trip nearly 1,000 feet beneath sea ice without a tether.

Ideally, a rover on Europa would also be untethered. “We have had a tendency to end up slicing the tether at least once during almost every trip when we’ve been out there,” Klesh says. But despite the risk of tangling it represents, a cord may be needed to provide power and communicate with equipment on the surface.

BRUIE’s razor-sharp wheels are equipped with panels to prevent it getting stuck as it drives on the underside of the ice

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Klesh and his team are also looking for easier ways to reach the ocean. They have used submersibles to explore moulins—steep, flooded shafts that form inside glaciers—in Alaska. Last summer, their robot traveled about 160 feet deep beneath the ice, and was able to find connecting points between different tunnels. It’s possible that Europa also has moulins in its ice shell that a rover or submersible could use to travel part of the way down to the water.

There’s still a long way to go before a rover is ready to make the jaunt to Jupiter’s moons or beyond. Hopefully, Klesh says, the planned Europa Clipper and Europa Lander missions will pave the way for a probe to be sent beneath the ice.

In the meantime, the rovers that will one day explore Europa could teach us a few things about our own planet. BRUIE is already being used to scope out how thawing permafrost is releasing methane in Arctic lakes. And this fall, the intrepid rover will take a three or four-month-long sojourn in those chilly waters.

“The scientific goal is to leave the rover underneath the lake ice to watch the seasonal changes as the ice forms and thickens above these methane-rich lakes as the sun sets and the winter goes dark,” Hand says. This could reveal how a rover might become frozen in place as the ice around it thickens. It’s also a chance to learn more about an environment too punishing for humans to observe on our own.

“The largest ocean world of all is right here on Earth,” Klesh says. “The techniques we’re using to start to look at exploring Europa, we’re applying here to explore…regions we have never been able to go to before.”

{ https://www.popsci.com/}

Exclusive: Massive Ancient Drawings Found in Peruvian Desert

Etats-Unis : quand deux pilotes expérimentés croisent... Un ovni !

Publié par Julie Cohen-Heurton

Le 24 février dernier, un premier pilote survole l'Arizona et voit soudainement apparaître un objet volant qu'il n'arrive, à aucun moment, à identifier. Quelques minutes plus tard, c'est un autre pilote sur un autre vol qui voit surgir le même objet. Une drôle d'histoire dont Paris-Match se fait l'écho et qui, certes, laisse perplexe mais génère surtout un certain nombre d'interrogations.

• A lire aussi : Deux pilotes de ligne croisent un ovni

Que s'est-il vraiment passé ?

Compte tenu de cette curieuse apparition au dessus du désert de l'Arizona, les deux pilotes décident de contacter, chacun de leur côté, la tour de contrôle d’Albuquerque. Leurs appels ont été rendus public la semaine dernière par un site de référence spécialisé dans l'actualité de la défense répondant au nom de The War Zone.

Le premier avion aurait, semble-t-il, contacté les contrôleurs aériens de ladite tour et demandé : "Est-ce que quelqu’un est passé au-dessus de nous il y a environ 30 secondes ?". Réponse du contrôleur alors en place : "Négatif". Et le dialogue de se poursuivre : "OK, mais quelqu’un l’a fait"."C’est un OVNI !". Quelques minutes plus tard, même son de cloche. Un vol d'American Airlines contacté par la tour de contrôle répond à la question suivante : "Que je vous prévienne si quelque chose nous passe au-dessus ?"... "Ici America 1905. Oui, quelque chose vient juste de nous survoler. Je ne sais pas ce que c’était mais ça se trouvait environ 2000 ou 3000 pieds (entre 600 et 900 mètres) au-dessus de nous".

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WakondaEn@WakondaEn

#UFO caught between Jerome and Sedona, Arizona #ovni https://goo.gl/F8hBkQ 

11:08 PM - Mar 25, 2018

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Mais alors de quoi s'agit-il ?

Pour l'heure, le pilote oeuvrant au sein d'American Airline ne semble pas convaincu par le fait qu'il puisse s'agir d'un ballon lancé par Google dans le cadre de son projet Loon. Lequel projet consiste, tel que le rapporte le géant de l'Internet sur son site, en "un réseau de ballons stratosphériques conçu pour apporter une connectivité Internet aux communautés rurales et reculées".

A cela, s'ajoute le fait que, dans l'absolu, rien ne justifie le fait qu'un avion vole en plein jour sans s'être signalé auprès du contrôle du trafic aérien, poursuit le site The War Zone. Le mystère demeure donc entier. A moins, s'interroge le site spécialisé, qu'il puisse s'agir d'un ballon sonde dont le lancer n'est, pour l'heure, pas particulièrement bien réglementé.

{ http://www.planet.fr/ }

VIDÉO: UN ÉNORME OVNI VAISSEAU MÈRE A ÉTÉ FILMÉ AU-DESSUS D’UN CHAMP PAR UN CAMERAMAN SOUS LE CHOC

PAR VINCENT DEROY

Un « énorme OVNI vaisseau mère » a été filmé au-dessus du ciel nocturne en Caroline du Nord. Les images partagées sur YouTube par The UFO Institute montrent l’engin, composé de six lumières dans un champ proche de Columbus.

Les lumières sont restées statiques pendant toute la durée de la vidéo, tandis qu’un vrombissement de type moteur à réaction étrange remplissait l’air. Il a été filmé par un cameraman mystérieux le 3 avril, que l’on entend dire : « J’aimerais bien savoir ce que sont ces lumières », pendant la mystérieuse rencontre.

Le commentateur Chris Lo a ajouté un commentaire plus hostile sous la séquence, écrivant : « J’habite en Caroline du Nord près de là-bas. »

« Si je l’avais vu je lui aurais tiré dessus. Je ne viens pas en paix. »

L’observation est l’une des 20 observations enregistrées en Caroline du Nord jusqu’à présent en 2018.

C’est l’un des dix meilleurs états d’Amérique pour les observations d’OVNIs.

La semaine dernière, des séquences audio de deux pilotes de jet faisant état d’un OVNI en train de voler au-dessus d’eux dans l’Arizona ont été diffusées.

Les théoriciens de la conspiration ont suggéré que la dernière observation pourrait être celle d’un avion militaire expérimental connu sous le nom de TR-3B, qui pourrait se trouver sur les bases voisines de Fort Bragg ou de la Pope Air Force.

On dit que l’avion, qui n’a jamais été officiellement reconnu, utilise la technologie « anti-gravité » pour planer dans le ciel.

Sources: Le nouvel ordre mondial, Metro.co.uk, le 6 avril 2018.

{ http://paranormalqc.com/ }

‘I saw a UFO’ Buzz Aldrin PASSES lie detector test revealing truth about aliens

by Saurabh Bohora

GETTY/GRANGER/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

TESTED: Moon walk legend Buzz claims he saw a UFO

The space travellers’ accounts of strange space sightings were examined under laboratory conditions.

All four astronauts taking part passed the test, carried out using the latest technology.

Experts say the results prove they were “completely convinced” signs of alien life they claimed to have witnessed during historic missions were genuine.

Aldrin, Al Worden, Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper all took part in the study.

GETTY

APOLLO 11: Buzz Aldrin, now 88 was the second human to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969

“There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped”

Buzz Aldrin

The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology in Albany, Ohio, carried out complex computer analyses of the astronauts’ voice patterns as they told of their close encounters.

Although the technology is still top-secret, these studies are claimed to be more reliable than current lie detector tests and could soon replace those used by the FBI and police.

One of the first tested was Apollo 11 pilot Buzz Aldrin, now 88 – the second human to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969.

Aldrin has always maintained he spotted a UFO on the way to the moon, saying: “There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped.”

BioAcoustic’s Sharry Edwards said tests reveal Aldrin is sure he saw the UFO even though his logical mind “cannot explain it”.

Apollo 15 pilot Al Worden, 86, stunned Good Morning Britain viewers when he claimed to have seen extra-terrestrials.

He believes we are all descended from ancient aliens. Voice recordings of fellow Nasa pioneers Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, both now dead, were also analysed.

Apollo 14’s Mitchell claimed to have seen several UFOs, while Cooper actually described trying to chase a cluster of objects. The tests revealed both men believed they were telling the whole truth.

{ https://general-talk.blogspot.be/ }

Paucity of phosphorus hints at precarious path for extraterrestrial life

Greaves has been searching for phosphorus in the universe, because of its link to life on Earth. If this element—with the chemical code P—is lacking in other parts of the cosmos, then it could be difficult for extra-terrestrial life to exist.

She explains: "Phosphorus is one of just six chemical elements on which Earth organisms depend, and it is crucial to the compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which cells use to store and transfer energy. Astronomers have just started to pay attention to the cosmic origins of phosphorus and found quite a few surprises. In particular, P is created in supernovae—the explosions of massive stars—but the amounts seen so far don't match our computer models. I wondered what the implications were for life on other planets if unpredictable amounts of P are spat out into space and later used in the construction of new planets."

The team used the UK's William Herschel Telescope, sited on La Palma in the Canary islands, to observe infrared light from phosphorus and iron in the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant around 6500 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Taurus.

Cigan, an expert on these stellar remnants, says: "This is only the second such study of phosphorus that has been made. The first looked at the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant, and so we are able to compare two different stellar explosions and see if they ejected different proportions of phosphorus and iron. The first element supports life, while the second is a major part of our planet's core".

The astronomers struggled with foggy nights at the telescope, back in November 2017, and are only just starting to get scientific results from a few hours of data.

Cigan cautions "These are our preliminary results, which we extracted only in the last couple of weeks! But at least for the parts of the Crab Nebula we were able to observe so far, there seems to be much less phosphorus than in Cas A. The two explosions seem to differ from each other, perhaps because Cas A results from the explosion of a rare super-massive star. We've just asked for more telescope time to go back and check, in case we've missed some phosphorus-rich regions in the Crab Nebula."

The preliminary results suggest that material blown out into space could vary dramatically in chemical composition. Greaves remarks: "The route to carrying phosphorus into new-born planets looks rather precarious. We already think that only a few phosphorus-bearing minerals that came to the Earth—probably in meteorites—were reactive enough to get involved in making proto-biomolecules.

'If phosphorus is sourced from supernovae, and then travels across space in meteoritic rocks, I'm wondering if a young planet could find itself lacking in reactive phosphorus because of where it was born? That is, it started off near the wrong kind of supernova? In that case, life might really struggle to get started out of phosphorus-poor chemistry, on another world otherwise similar to our own."

The researchers now plan to continue their search, to establish whether other supernova remnants also lack phosphorus, and whether this element, so important for complex life, is rarer than we thought.

 Explore further: Chandra reveals the elementary nature of Cassiopeia A

Weird Rainbow Shaped Object Appears On Top Of A Cloud Over Colorado

Susie Gomez who has filmed a weird phenomenon in the sky over Colorado on April 6, 2018 wonders why the sky is blinking and why the sun is shaped very weird.

The video shows a rare shaped cloud formation with straight lines but even more strange is an astonishing rainbow colored shape that seems to stick out of the cloud.

The weird phenomenon may come from the sun behind the strange cloud, but it does not explain the strange shape circled by a clear visible rainbow-like object.

Gallery: Private Space Stations of the Future Imagined - PART I

Gallery: Private Space Stations of the Future Imagined - PART II

Boeing's New Spacecraft

Credit: Adrian Mann

SKYLON Concept Starship

Credit: NASA/Boeing

Boeing Unflown ISS Modules Concept

Credit: AMNH\D. Finnin

Bigelow Moon Habitat

Robert Bigelow: Lessons, Visions, Realities...

A

Credit: Bigelow Aerospace

New $50 Million Prize for Private Orbiting Spacecraft

Credit: Boeing

Boeing CST-100 Approaching Bigelow Space Station

Credit: Excalibur Almaz

Soviet-Era Almaz Space Ride

Soviet Union’s Almaz Space Station

{https://www.space.com/ }

A luxury space hotel is now taking reservations — if you’ve got $10 million

Looking for accommodations that are out of this world? Then you’ll be happy to hear that Houston-based startup Orion Span has plans for an extraterrestrial luxury space hotel that it hopes to launch in 2021 and have ready for occupancy the following year. The announcement was made recently at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California.

The modular hotel, dubbed “Aurora Station,” will house six people at a time, as well as two crew members, while orbiting 200 miles high and circling the Earth every 90 minutes. It’s not a destination for the budget traveler, however — wealthy space tourists will need to pony up $9.5 million per person, or about $791,666 per night, for a 12-night stay. Room service and a minibar are probably not included.

“We’re selling the experience of being an astronaut,” CEO Frank Bunger told Bloomberg. “You reckon that there are people who are willing to pay to have that experience.”

Potential guests will need to undergo a three-month training regimen prior to launch, beginning with online courses and progressing to contingency training in Houston. The company says it has “taken what was historically a 24-month training regimen to prepare travelers to visit a space station and streamlined it to three months, at a fraction of the cost.”

The spacecraft itself will be approximately 34 feet long and 14 feet wide, or about the size of a private jet. Guests will be able to experience zero gravity, watch the sun rise 16 times per day, participate in research experiments, and even kick back in a virtual reality holodeck.

Several companies have expressed interest in plans for space tourism, so hotels in orbit can’t be too far off. Orion Span has no contract yet with a launch provider, leading to questions about the aggressive timeline of the venture. Analysts suggested to Bloomberg that the announcement could be an effort to attract publicity and funding, rather than an outline of a realistic time frame.

Executives at the company are former NASA employees who worked on the International Space Station. Bunger said the Aurora Station design will work with current launch configurations such as those used by SpaceX. He also suggested the possibility of partnering with a government space agency.

The company didn’t disclose how much it’s planning to raise for the Aurora Station project, but Bunger predicted that costs will decline rapidly in the near future. “Everybody’s forecasting that they’re going to fall,” he added. “Almost every week, there’s another rocket launch company that’s starting up with a new way to get to orbit cheaper, faster, better.”

You can reserve your spot now by making a fully refundable $80,000 deposit on the company’s website.

{ https://www.digitaltrends.com/ }

'Evidence of UFOs would count as a big secret' - Mirror writers investigate claims a Deep State is running the UK

With new thriller Deep State starting tonight on FOX, we ask: could a shadowy network be controlling our country from behind the scenes?

Conspiracy theorists love to believe that a highly secretive group called The Deep State is controlling our country.

The term refers to a so-called clandestine network within the government, the intelligence and national security services, the military and major financial institutions.

The concept is about to become far more well-known to the British public, thanks to the new espionage thriller Deep State, which begins on FOX at 9pm on Thursday night.

WHAT IS THE DEEP STATE?

Set in Britain, The U.S., Iran, Lebanon and France, the show has that international secret spy feel, like The Night Manager or McMafia.

Starring Mark Strong, it is based on the very real theory these elite operators are the ones who really control the government from behind the scenes. They’re the man behind the curtain.

The main function of the Deep State is said to be to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of the establishment.

Below, ahead of the first episode of Deep State tonight, two Mirror writers examine the evidence that it exists and draw their own conclusions...

IT must be gruelling being a conspiracy theorist.

Wherever they look they see collusion, subterfuge and deception. No action by a government minister can go unpassed without them wondering if it was part of a deeper plot.

Every headline, every comment by a politician and every statement is analysed down to the last punctuation mark to see if it is part of a wider conspiracy.

Occasionally, the paranoia is justified. But for the most part, when conspiracy theorists see some sinister act orchestrated by a secretive network, the explanation is far more mundane.

There is much to criticise about our political system. The Tory Party is too reliant on a small clique of wealthy donors.

Parliament, the civil service, the corporate world and the media are still too dominated by white, male Oxbridge graduates.

The revolving door of former ministers sailing into business and lobbying spins frenetically. There is, above all, a frightening lack of transparency when it comes to ministers’ conduct.

We are one of the few developed democracies which refuses to force ministers to publish their official diaries and tax returns. Our energy should be directed at fixing these flaws, not attacking institutions which police them.

It is no coincidence concerns about the Deep State/Establishment have become more vociferous in the age of populist politics.

Trump’s call to “drain the swamp” in Washington and the Brexit eers’ attack on the Treasury are from the same playbook. They are trying to undermine the institutions which hold them to account. This not about a Deep State, it is about being anti-state.

They dislike big government because it stops them pushing through plans for a free market economy unburdened by pesky things such as workers’ rights and environmental protections.

By and large Britain has been blessed with its institutions, whether it is our civil service, the BBC or the NHS. All these organisations can be frustrating, stuffy, sclerotic and bureaucratic.

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But at the moment we need a functioning state apparatus, however flawed, more than ever.

It is the only thing standing in the way of the Trumps of this world. When we start spreading conspiracy theories we are conspiring to undermine it.

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