Buzz's Plan

The following appeared on the Coast to Coast Am website..

Aldrin's Space Vision

May 31, 2010

Howard Bloom and Jason Louv share this graphic (click on to view larger) & description which outlines Buzz Aldrin's Unified Space Vision (recently discussed on our Space Roundtable Show):

America's future is in the skies. So is the future of all mankind. Here, says Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, is where we will make humanity multi-planetary. Step one is to develop a private sector space taxi that can take humans to the International Space Station and bring them back – inexpensively. Step two is a permanent exploration vehicle that stays in space, a vehicle we can use to shuttle back and forth from moon orbit to earth orbit, or that we can use to reach the resources of the sky – the trillions of dollars worth of platinum, lithium, gallium and more in asteroids, or in the massive flying snowballs of potential rocket fuel called comets.

Step three is to develop a heavy lift vehicle that can get large amounts of cargo into space for a lower cost than the $14,000/lb we've spent in the past. Step four is to lead an international effort with China, India, Russia, Japan and Europe to develop the raw materials for steel, glass, microchips, tourism and energy on the moon.

Step five, use our deep space exploration vehicle for a new first for the human race – landing on asteroids and comets. Step six, we build a habitat on Mars' moon Phobos. A base from which we can explore and build on the Martian surface. And finally, we create man's first presence on Mars. All of Buzz Aldrin’s Unified Space Vision is doable within the president's new space program. The goal? Take the resource load off of earth. Bring space to life by bringing life to space. On behalf of the entire human race.

I am starting to have serious doubts about our country and if we have what it takes to stick with a program - any program now that deals with manned spaceflight. Buzz Aldrin's plan sounds great - but do the American people now have what it takes to FORCE their politicians to follow their will or not? Maybe that answer can be discovered in November, 2010!

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Ref. Coast to Coast Am website. May 31, 2010.

Phobos is Ancient Spaceship in Orbit of Mars.

Phobos is an ancient spaceship in orbit around the planet Mars. Basically this is what some scientists and even former astronaut Buzz Aldrin appear to be say. In fact, Buzz takes any opening he can get to push the need for a trip to Phobos.

From Richard C. Hoagland's Enterprise Mission, the latest theory about Mars's moon Phobos being a hollow out asteroid due to two separate observations from two different government spacecraft.

Its impression that is why President Obama kinda reverse himself and says that the US will still go out into the solar system, but in baby steps.

Image of Phobos is from his website. And please read both parts of this story on the Enterprise Mission website.

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Ref. "For the World is Hollow.. And I have Touched the Sky" parts 1 & 2 (http://www.enterprisemission.com/Phobos.html) & (http://www.enterprisemission.com/Phobos2.html).

Buzz Asks Prez Obama for Space Leadership

Found this article on the Huffington Post today. It was orginally posted there on October 21st.

The Special committee lead by Chairman Norm Augustine (aka the Augustine Panel), put forward several options to President Obama recently.

This article by Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon and the biggest space promotor around is asking President to go along with Option 5 that the Augustine Panel put forth.

Bottom line of course is "No bucks, then No Buck Rogers!"

One can read the article on Huffington Post to read about options one thru four. Option Five known as the "Flexible Path" seems to get everyone who supports manned space exploration a tiggly senstion down their leg to modify a famous quote of Chris Matthews(ie reguarding his support for then candiate Barrack H. Obama).

Basically - Option Five uses as much shuttle hardware and ground support equipment as possible. And the mission makeup is very different than just returning to the moon. Such as visits to the Lagrane points, near-Earth objects, lunar fly-bys, and possible rendezvous with Mars's moons. There are still plans for a lunar landing by 2020.

Please use the url below to read the full article on the Huffington Post. Image is of President Obama at NASA's White House star party to view the LCROSS impact. Wife Michelle Obama is nearby.


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REf. Huffington Post, Oct 21, 2009 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/buzz-aldrin/mr-president-will-you-lea_b_328975.html)

Monolith on Mars Claims Buzz Aldrin

Second man to step out on the moon, "Buzz" Aldrin, claims that there is a "Monument" or "Monolith" (aka shades of the movie "2001 A Space Odyssey"), in a recent photograph release by NASA. One of the reasons Buzz Aldrin is now saying we need to skip the moon and go straight for Mars now.

Check out the article on the British newspaper/website The Sun for more details. There was a special picture taken by the super high resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and a closeup image of the reportedly five meter tall object on the surface of Mars is convincing.

NASA wanted to downplay the report. It is a boulder that has weather and craked in such a way as to appear as the 2001 monolith is basically their take on it.

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Ref. article from The Sun by Vince Soodin, Aug. 5, 2009. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2572537/Mars-monument-proof-of-life.html)

40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing!

When I signed up to do this national blog posting on the 20th of July, I thought I would only stick with the

Colonies in Space book. But so much has come out this past week that I cannot just ignore it for a "simple book report." I decided to combine the original article I was working on with all the expanded news of the day. The LRO, the death of Walter Cronkite on July 17, 2009 at the age of 92.

I view Colonies in Space by T.S. Heppenheimer as a book of dreams. As a young man, I was totally behind the idea of the L-5 Society back then, now the

National Space Society; for colonizing outer space. And for me, that book and the one by Gerald K. O'Neill was the blueprint on how to do it. And yet, we didn't act on any of it. Words and more money dropped down going nowhere very fast studies. And the government just keeps on rolling along ignoring the majority of the people and paying attention only to those who can lobby Congress and get our so called representatives reelected once again.

Colonies in Space had bases on the moon to mine minerals, process them, then ship them up out of the lunar gravity well to the L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5 building sites. Super size spinning wheel space stations capable of holding thousands of people and the even bigger O'Neill class space colonies (the spinning cylinder Ala "Babylon 5").

Since the publication of that book, the concept of the Space Elevator has been better fleshed out. Easier to get payloads out of Earth's gravity well up to low or high earth orbit or even up to geostationary orbit. Space tourism is taking shape now.

Since the publication of that book, we think we have discovered water on the Moon, Mars, Europa, the moons of Saturn and beyond. Settlements for colonization on Mars has a better chance of making it now. Back then - it was just theory, now, we are getting some hard factors from our robot rovers.

Since the publication of that book, we have discovered a way to detect planets beyond our own solar system.

Bases on the Moon and on Mars could be built by robots and as Buzz Aldrin proposed recently, we should consider one way travel to Mars - i.e start colonizing Mars from the very first landing. Using Phobos as a staging base and a launch point to venture down to the planet's surface instead of trying to do it straight from Earth.

On a more personal note. I was nine years old when Neil Armstrong took that first step on the moon. I am 49 and a half years old as I write this post. Here is one of the Sunday comics that struck me as being just right for this posting.

So, what is wrong with this picture?

Nothing but symbolic. The death of our dreams I think.

What I consider to be a back stabbing Congress - laying flat on its back for anybody just to get themselves reelected and not care for the greater good of America (and by extension, the rest of humanity) by cutting back on funding for NASA in the 1970s. Making compromises with the shuttle craft and a space truck that went nowhere but up and down. Towards the end of its service life, two shuttles have bitten the dust (the last one taking a former Air Force ROTC classmate of mine from Texas Tech - Rick Husband).

I remembered when there was talk (and as it turned out, nothing but talk) of being on our way to Mars by the end of the 1980s. Surely by the early 1990s we would have been able to reach Mars. America was SO screwed by the idiots we keep on sending back to Washington DC.

And Finally, the biggest news this weekend leading up to the 20th is the following news item:

"LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites"

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules' locations evident.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, was able to image five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks.

The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill -- and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."

"Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the moon."

The spacecraft's current elliptical orbit resulted in image resolutions that were slightly different for each site but were all around four feet per pixel. Because the deck of the descent stage is about 12 feet in diameter, the Apollo relics themselves fill an area of about nine pixels. However, because the sun was low to the horizon when the images were made, even subtle variations in topography create long shadows. Standing slightly more than ten feet above the surface, each Apollo descent stage creates a distinct shadow that fills roughly 20 pixels.

The image of the Apollo 14 landing site had a particularly desirable lighting condition that allowed visibility of additional details. The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site, is discernible, as are the faint trails between the module and instrument package left by the astronauts' footprints.

(All images credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University).

The LRO, for me; puts to reset the nonsense that the United States of America never did travel to the moon much less land on it. so for all of you conspiracy lovers out there -

Happy 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Landing on the Moon!

UPDATE: July 20, 2009. 11:44am. Last night on Coast to Coast AM, hosted by George Knapp this time, a caller claimed that the Apollo moon landings were (still) all fake. IN fact, Buzz Aldrin supposedly told his mother that his Apollo 11 landing was fake and she ended up committed suicide. Its these wackos (is the kindest word I can come up with at this time) that have poisoned not just the spirit of American space exploration, but basic (I think) civility.

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Ref NASA webpage.(http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html)

Moon Landing Hoax Claims Tackled by TV series Mythbusters!

I am 48 years old as I write this article. I was nine years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The moon landings came to an end with Apollo 17 – when I was in the 6th grade. And as a young boy, I felt betrayed by my country when the news came out that there would be no more moon landings. Skylab came and went – the Russians were back to racking up long endurance space records with their space station program. Then came the long stand down from Apollo program to the Space Shuttle program which re-launched American's Manned Space Program.

Then came the two space shuttle disasters. The last one – the Columbia's commander, Rick D. Husband, was a former Texas Tech University Air Force ROTC classmate of mine. My one and only claim to infamy I can make.

The turn of the century takes place and it seems to me that more and more people are claiming that the United States of America never did land on the moon. That it was filmed on a sound stage (ala “Capricorn One” – the movie), or that it was filmed out in the desert near what is now known as Area 51! Or that... well, insert possible claim here to try and explain how it could be done without actually traveling to the moon.

I don't know how else to explain it, but that I was born before the age of Watergate, etc. The baby boomer generation of which I was born at the tail end thereof, and Generation X which came after, have been 'programmed' from the mass media to disbelieve EVERYTHING that the US government does or says.

Being a avid listener to Coast to Coast Am radio with George Noory, every now and then he would invite Dr. Phil Plait who goes by the name of “The Bad Astronomer.” His website, Bad Astronomy, would every now and then take on the folks who claim that the moon landings were hoaxes. Well one day, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage who both worked as special effects people for the movies and now are hosts to the Discovery Channel's popular TV series “MythBusters,” decided that now was the time to try and take on that project – to dispel the dispellers. I don't have access to cable or satellite TV anymore and thus unable to view the program when it aired. I only heard about it on Coast to Coast AM when Noory was interviewing Dr. Plait. But on http://www.collectspace.com/ posted there dated August 26, 2008 that went into some detail. The program itself aired on August 27, 2008 on the Discovery Channel.

They went about determining which myths that needed and could be tested here on earth. Hyneman and Savage settled on three major subject areas that the hoaxers claim support their argument. One – How light reflects off the lunar surface. Two – How the astronauts appeared to move in the low gravity of the moon. Finally, how items behaved in an vacuum.
The part of the article that I liked the most was about the American Flag and how it was “able” to wave in the airless vacuum. First off, I actually remember the TV coverage of the moon flights and the experts who came on for every mission. For Apollo 11, I remember one man who explained how there was a tiny cross wire that stuck into the top of the mast that allowed the flag to be stretched out to full as if it was flying in a full breeze back on earth. MythBusters went to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. And at Marshall, they were able to obtained copies of the original plans for making the lunar flag and how to assemble it.

I had fun looking at the offical government website with the Apollo 11 images and chose one of the few images that show Neil Armstrong in it to go along with this article. It shows him working near the Lunar Module's desent stage and the American Flag out on the surface of the moon. Remember, almost all of the other Apollo 11 pictures that were shown to the public were the ones that Armstrong took of his companion Buzz Aldrin.

Other Reference websites:
( http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/apollo.html )All photographs on this website are courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, specifically the NASA History Office and the NASA JSC Media Services Center.
Photograph AS11-40-5886 (Neil Armstrong works at the LM )