Space-Age Enlightenment
Mission Statement
Have you ever been consciously motivated to complete something or risk dire consequences? It could be worrying about whether to get a vaccination shot. You see others around you getting sick, so you have this continued conscious awareness that makes you stress more and more until you feel motivated to get the shot. It is like the fight or flight response which activates the sympathetic nervous system with the sudden release of hormones. It happened to me when I realized my college, NCSU, well known for engineering, didn't have a planetarium. It started with this nagging voice or idea itching my brain, and the more I ignored it, the more it would itch.
Space-Age Enlightenment is a non-profit organization founded on the principle of inspiring change and advancement within our education system, promoting space-exploratory and space-habitation studies throughout all levels of education. There are several conceivable ways life on Earth could become extinct, such as disasters caused by man or a duplicate event like what killed the dinosaurs. It is easy to ignore the urgency and not care. People often say, "It won't happen in my lifetime, so why should I have to worry about it?" Or, they might say, "We have government and space agencies to worry about that." Unfortunately, these are small agencies with their own goals and little funding, and they use that funding for world security, not for advancing space education in all our institutions. It is in our nature to explore and our duty to save humanity. If we knew when an extinction-level event would occur, would I need to be wasting my time warning you about it? Would you act any differently? What I can tell you, and should be enough, is that one day it will occur. No stocked tunnels on Earth will protect you. Likely sooner than later, when such an event does occur, you will suddenly realize how pointless your games, leisure activities, and hoarded riches are.
Harvesting animals and crops for nourishment will be much different in space. It is more likely that we will be using some type of synthetic blood or recombination of molecules to provide our protein and nourishment in space. Getting the right amount of nourishment while producing the least amount of waste product is a lacking study that we need more focus on. Unfortunately, much like many things, this lack of study is likely driven by money, wealth, and job creation. If you could live for 200 years by changing to a healthy liquid diet, one you can produce in your own home or order through Amazon, then all the farmers and grocery stores would suddenly be out of business, not to mention transportation, fuel, etc. We already see this with the continued use of fossil fuels. We may always need some type of synthetic or petroleum-based lube products for our machines, but if we suddenly switched to vehicles able to run on a tank of water in a closed-burn situation, reusing much of the hydrogen and oxygen created for the combustion, we would have no further need for gas stations, fuel refineries, etc. I read that they employ approximately 1.5 million workers in the USA, but that doesn't include all the jobs and businesses that are created in addition to the production and distribution of fossil fuels. In other words, this doesn't include the paper pusher businesses and other companies funded, created, or purchased by the fossil fuel wealth. One thing is for certain, all matter, except what we can harvest from planets, etc., will have to be recycled and reused.
Did you ever read, listen to, or watch the movie about the story of Noah? If you have, then you will understand. If we wait, it will be too late. Please, don't give in to the idea that it isn't your job, nor that other people are responsible for it. We are all required for this duty. We all have abilities we can contribute to this space-age enlightenment. The more we focus our education on surviving in space, the easier living on Earth will be. You will soon realize how quickly we could have built ships and space stations if we had been diligent and willing to share our knowledge, abilities, and resources to save humanity. This lifetime is your only opportunity to serve God (if you have monotheistic beliefs) or your children and the Human Race before it is too late.
Our schools need planetariums and educational systems that provide space-related studies. These studies should include how to build our IESS (Intergalactic Earth Space Station) capable of docking hundreds of ships. It should be self-sustaining. We should transport more than enough water to store in the center of the station and nearby in remote-controlled thruster tanks. We can do the same for cold storage of processed Hydrogen and Oxygen. Ice stored in space will help alleviate flooding caused by ice melting at the poles. The IESS will require nuclear power to be self-sufficient and not dependent on the sun for internal electrical power. If we can learn how to mine Venus, we can use the sulfuric acid harvested from the atmosphere to refine metals. We can also use Carbon scrubbers to capture breathable Oxygen from the CO2 atmosphere. High temperature-resistant shuttlecraft will be necessary for transport to and from the planet. If we can locate active volcanic flows, we can use the heat to smelt metals and the energy for electricity. The temperature of an active lava flow ranges from 570°F to 1,200°F, but fresh lava can range between 1,300°F and 2,200°F. Despite these extreme temperature levels, we will still have to increase the highest of these temperatures by as much as 3x to smelt harder metals such as Carbon Steel: 2597°F - 2800°F, Stainless Steel: 2500°F - 2785°F, Titanium: 3038°F, or Tungsten: 6152°F.
Does all this sound familiar? It should. I am positive this is where George Lucas got his idea for the final transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. Like the droids in George Lucas's space movies, androids with artificial intelligence can improve the safety conditions for mining Venus and interaction with nuclear reactors. Doctors will also have to expand their training for the complications that arise in space.
Hydrogen-powered vehicles are another area of study for this space-age enlightenment. Hydrogen-fueled combustion engines can power the station until nuclear reactors are available. Propulsion systems need to be improved to be more efficient, more powerful, cooler running, and able to ignite and shut off at will. We can accomplish this by mounting smaller engines around cone-shaped saucer-type (round or oval) ships with outer engine bay doors that can close and seal for reentry. These engines can be mounted to a superstructure of heat-resistant carbon fiber frames, mounted on a slant with the dome roof. Slant mounting the engines to a dome frame allows for a 45-degree gimbal, or less if necessary for exhaust port heat control, in both directions. All engines will point downward and slightly outward for launch from a center retractable landing gear. Slanting the engines slightly outward for launch prevents melting the landing gear. Some, if not all, engines will be able to gimbal upward, 90 degrees or slightly more from the vertical alignment, for space flight and heavy thrust maneuverability. Smaller satellite thrusters can be used for docking and technical maneuvers.
Localized gravity-producing devices will be one of the most complicated problems to overcome, yet they will be one of the most rewarding achievements. Long-term survival in space without a proper level of gravity would be impossible unless our bodies evolved to avoid atrophy and odd growth patterns. This and other organic and mechanical needs, such as the need for low-gravity outer docking stations, require a method of creating localized gravity as a top priority to survive long-term in space. With the discovery of electromagnetism, we have partially accomplished this goal already. If we all work together to achieve this next stage of enlightenment, we can complete our duties before the next extinction-level event occurs. I call this final phase of space-age enlightenment "Humanity's Ark." Learn More!
The Message
The message I would like to share with you gives us directions on how to get started building "Humanity's Ark." An arduous task like this one can't be completed alone. Unlike the wooden ship in Noah's story, this era of space-age enlightenment requires everyone's involvement. One person or agency alone will never get the job done in time.
During phase one, we should begin adding planetariums to all levels of the education system. The least expensive planetariums can be converted from classrooms or built separately at elementary schools, providing an introductory knowledge of star systems. Keeping private industry adjoined to college institutions, we will spare no expense. These planetariums will have all the basic astronomy features of standard planetariums, but they will also have unique star projectors that allow 3D CAD projections. These 3D CAD projections will come from the engineering stations in the adjoining research rooms. These projects can be enlarged to room size within the planetariums, giving them a more lifelike representable view.
In the next phase, we need to train educators, develop educational programs, and train software engineers who can work with our mechanical and electrical engineers to develop and update 3D CAD programs specific to our engineers' needs. Since our initial source of funds will come from donations, loans, students, and visitors, our next goal should be to place the most effective representation possible in government to appropriate funds for our mission. We will have to discuss, without complete government funding, ways to sell some of our engineers' designs to private industry. Another option would be to form mutualistic relationships with existing companies that have excellent international reputations, such as Microsoft. Microsoft, for example, could provide mixed-reality headsets for our holographic 3D CAD engineering stations. In return, our software engineers would be able to provide usage details, upgrade requests, and other discovered software and hardware enhancements. This mutualistic partnership will lead to quicker developments in technology such as interaction with 3D holographic images without the need for headsets. We will be able to make use of this new technology in our engineering stations and planetariums, and Microsoft will be able to benefit from future sales which they can reinvest back into their company.
We don't want to lose our engineers, so we should work on providing family housing near the research institutions. We should also provide a way for them to earn extra spending cash for things not provided by the institution. We want them to remain focused on their research, so we should develop incentives and free variety meal plans at the institution. We can send out welcome letters with meal plan requests. Having professional chefs able to train students for elective credits and free meals is better than using minimum-wage food companies supplying a fast-food diet plan. With professional cooks supplying requested meal plans, we can keep our professional-level engineers safe at the institution, rather than forcing them to rush in traffic just to get a meal they like.
In the final phase, planning expansion, will we all go in our own direction, or will we need each other more than we ever have before? We will no longer have the terrors of Earth: earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, drought, tornados, volcanos, landslides, avalanches, rockslides, automobile accidents (an average of 3,287 deaths per day), hailstorms, lightning, insects (insects destroy 40 percent of the world’s crop every year and mosquitoes are considered the deadliest insects in the world, killing more than 700,000 people every year while accounting for 17% of infectious diseases), etc., etc., etc. Though there are a few major complications to overcome when colonizing space, once we have the knowledge and tech to overcome them, we will have a much higher survival rate than we do on Earth. At that point, landing on planets to obtain and build new material will be more dangerous than living in space, unless we have enough well-trained droids to do that for us. When we can colonize space, travel to other planets, and safely obtain supplies for continued expansion, we will have completed the final stage, "Humanity's Ark." It is at this point that we will have no Earthbound limits and can finally "be fruitful and multiply." Limited only by our labor and wisdom, we can borrow what we need from our endowment of infinite supply.
Be part of the future, not a barrier. Join Space-Age Enlightenment, and help us build Humanity's Ark.