Ice on the Moon

No Joy Today

No SLS launch today.

While the Trump Force gets funding close to NASA’s entire budget next year to weaponize Earth orbit with megaconstellations in a new cold war money scam, the spacex fanboys wail and gnash their teeth over SLS. While the Navy gets their new missile submarine and the Air Force gets their new stealth bomber, and the Army is offering a 20,000 dollar enlistment bonus to privates because they can’t find enough people who can pass the drug and physical fitness tests.

But somehow the SLS has to make “economic sense” and be “sustainable” and provide a “ROI.”

The damage done to the public perception of space by NewSpace fanboys, who are not really about space, but about an ideology, is profound.

There is no cheap. The way to keep corporations from making too much profit off cost-plus is the same way they did after the Apollo 1 fire, with draconian oversight. The way to lower the cost of the SLS per flight is to fly it more. The scam by the NewSpace Mob has been in progress for a decade. To make space “pay for itself”, which had already killed two shuttle crews. For-profit is the opposite of what Human Space Flight does. It does not generate revenue or sell anything. The small rockets used to launch satellites are useless for Beyond Earth Orbit Human Space Flight.
The death-to-SLS comments, literally libraries of them, and the NASA-bashing, is about a cult of personality and a pernicious right-wing libertarian ideology.

Why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

NewSpace is mostly about spacex, as most people can clearly see. I know you see that. Rocket jesus built a small rocket to start with, essentially a redux of the 1961 rocket NASA called “clusters last stand” because they knew it had too many engines, which violated a fundamental design principle. Musk’s manic groupies screamed bloody murder at any hint of the hobby rocket being deficient in any way. I remember it well. Even ten years ago they were shouting the miracle of Musk from the mountaintop and calling for the dismantling of NASA so it could all be handed over to the magic entrepreneur. Elon called Mars the second home of humankind…when it is not suitable for colonization. And there is the divide between the true prophet of space colonization, Gerard K. O’Neill, and the false prophet Elon Musk.

The far-right libertarian whackjobs that have taken up the torch for this billionaire grifter have influenced the public perception of space much like Trumpists have now driven democracy to the edge of the cliff. It is crazy. It is ALL 50 year old technology. That we never built any engines in the same class as the F1 after Saturn is clear proof that Human Space Flight has been at a near standstill for that long. If Human Space Flight and space colonization had been a national goal then we would have engines an order of magnitude more powerful than the F1 and would have been landing them back by the early 90’s.

So, I don’t understand how you can say the SLS has “no redeeming virtues.” It will get us out there and nothing else will. And it has an excellent escape system. And that is more than we have had since 1972. “Commercial” rockets are sized to make money with satellites, not send human-crewed spacecraft to the Moon. It is a case of go big or stay home and the SLS is the only big thing going.

Well, the difference is that I understand that humans require a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity environment to thrive. Not visit. To live there. But the price tag exposes who wants to exploit space and make a buck and who wants an insurance policy for our species.

Orbital assembly and refueling is incredibly inefficient and this can be seen by looking at a single example- the Saturn V. If von Braun had been given a couple million more dollars to make Skylab a true wet workshop instead of a dry one, that first space station would have had more interior space than the ISS. It went up on one rocket. We landed on the Moon with one rocket and dozens of orbital refuelings were not required.

Monday SLS Launches

With the Artemis program years behind schedule and billions over budget, and derided as a wasteful and ponderous boondoggle by the NewSpace crowd, NASA has a lot to prove.

Actually, it is “the NewSpace crowd” that has proved what a bunch of toxic cyberthugs they are…for years. The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

They have flooded these forums with death-to-SLS propaganda from the beginning of the program, literally libraries of it. Screaming bloody murder and cost plus atrocity and proclaiming the end of the world. All for one purpose of course; to try and get that money for Musk. Transparent.

That it is a NASA rocket made to fly U.S. astronauts to the Moon makes this effort on behalf of a narcissist billionaire hobbyist and an anti-government libertarian ideology disgusting. Hiding it behind some kind of concerned citizen fiscal responsibility facade is absolutely disgusting.

Before I am silenced again, I will continue to state Musk committed three unforgivable sins:

1. He diverted NASA from a lunar return after ice had been discovered, setting human space flight back a decade.

2. He promoted a fantastical scam of colonizing Mars while also embarking on a megaconstellation program that will essentially strip mine Earth orbit.

3. Worst of all, with a single sentence, he contributed to the unfolding climate change catastrophe by branding the greatest hope of solving climate change and saving billions of lives, “the stupidest idea ever.”

Americans who visit these forums, unless they are a certain type of gullible and close-minded personality type and have already been sucked into the cults of Musk and Trump, read a few comments from Ayn-Rand-in-Space libertarian whackjobs and never come back.

A decade of NewSpace cyberthugs hijacking these forums have driven any real space enthusiasts away and replaced them with neoliberal cheerleaders. This has done tremendous damage to the public perception of space.
The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

These “long duration” ISS missions cause permanent damage to the astronauts and raise their risk of cancer. The tours should at least be shortened, and the best path is decommissioning and directing the funding at a new shielded space station with artificial gravity, using lunar water and tether systems.

This is actually how space exploration should have logically progressed:

1. The Saturn V made reusable piece by piece, evolving into a mostly reusable vehicle for continued lunar exploration, which might have found ice in 1978 instead of 2008.

2. Semi-expendable robot Lunar Landers processing propellants and transporting water derived from lunar ice to Super Heavy Lift Vehicle wet workshops.

3. “Fat Workshop” double-hulled upper stages facilitating cosmic ray water shields for Space Stations in Lunar and Earth Orbits, especially GEO, and Lunar Cyclers.

With Tether Generated Artificial Gravity systems, combined with water shielding, Near Sea Level Radiation One gravity (NSLR1G) crew compartments would then allow human crews to stay in space indefinitely without Dosing or Debilitation, and eventually enable true Atomic Spaceships.

3.6 Million is not bad….but we have to do better. The environmental effects are problematic but new propellent mixes may soon be available that minimize harmful chemical byproducts while improving Isp. Then those 6 million pound thrust submarine-hulled reloadable Aerojet monsters might actually get built (AJ-260). And then there is the 325 inch model:

Notional solid rocket engine. Study 1963. Recoverable motors; separation at 1,972 m/s at 53,000 m altitude; splashdown using retrorockets under 3 61 m diameter parachutes 610 km downrange. Solid propellant rocket stage. Massed estimated based on tank volumes, total thrust, and first stage burnout conditions. Recoverable stage; separation at 1,972 m/s at 53,000 m altitude; splashdown using retrorockets under 3 61 m diameter parachutes 610 km downrange.
AKA: Nova GD-S. Status: Study 1963. Thrust: 69,047.00 kN (15,522,383 lbf). Specific impulse: 263 s. Specific impulse sea level: 238 s. Burn time: 116 s. Height: 60.40 m (198.10 ft). Diameter: 8.30 m (27.20 ft).

Not really a fan of solids but I am a firm believer in “Super Rockets” and boosters that put out 15 million pounds of thrust appeal to me. We build large jetliner engines and so I imagine turbopumps an order of magnitude larger could be built to feed “full flow” liquid hydrogen/oxygen engines in thrust ranges also an order of magnitude larger. In the case of the F-1 that would be 18 million pounds of thrust. Four of those, and a central variable thrust engine sized to land back the empty stage, is, in my view, what is needed for the ideal launch vehicle fist stage. Around 80 million pounds of thrust would likely require a small lake sized mass of water to soak up launch vibration. Would have to launch it in a remote location and it might put a thousand tons into LEO.

Only the state can undertake projects like that. Which is yet another reason why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

Not even a mention of the heavy nuclei component of cosmic radiation. The real problem for long duration missions, the elephant in the room nobody will talk about, is permanent damage. There is a set amount of shielding required to stop heavy nuclei; “The Parker Minimum.”

The ice on the Moon is the key to Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO). The only solution to Dosing and Debilitation is a massive water shield and tether-generated-artificial-gravity. The water also enabling life support providing years of air and drinking water.

Until NASA starts telling the truth there will be no progress. They might think they can get away with sending a pair or two of astronauts to a Gateway for a month or two at a time and leave it vacant the rest of the year but that is even more of a money hole than the ISS.

There is a logical sequence that reveals itself if the administration goes by Feynman’s dictum: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

The first step is getting that water off the Moon using 20 to 23 times less energy than from Earth.
The second step is to put it in double-hulled “Fat Workshops” in space.
The third step is to connect these crew compartments with a tether system.

The result is a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity (NSLR1G) environment where astronauts are protected from dosing and elevated cancer risk (especially young females) and tissue loss due to microgravity debilitation. Crews can stay in space indefinitely with no damage.

The necessary hardware is Super Heavy Lift Vehicles to loft the workshops and semi-expendable Robot Lunar Landers able to process ice into propellants and carry water into space repeatedly.

Depends on the solar event. I would guess if they are profoundly dosed for several days then it won’t matter. If it is a lesser event and only lasts a couple hours, the vest may be significant.

For any long duration missions Beyond Earth Orbit it is the combination of cosmic ray dosing and debilitation that causes permanent damage, and the only solution is a whole new paradigm that nobody seems willing to accept. Even Eugene Parker was skeptical about his minimum requirement of 400 tons of plastic for a small capsule. Parker is a radiation scientist though and was only thinking in terms of Space Shuttle payloads.

The ice on the Moon and nuclear energy are the solutions to Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit. Water can be lifted into space from the Moon with 20 to 23 times less energy than from Earth, which means for every 20 tons of shielding that can be lifted from the Earth 400 tons can be lifted from the Moon. Water equates to 500 tons for a capsule and for any practical living space for long missions very likely well over a thousand will be required. The upside is that much water makes closed loop life support providing years of air and drinking water far easier to effect. I call this a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity (NSLR1G) environment.

Artificial gravity requires structures strong enough to contain the water while being spun at a couple hundred miles an hour on the ends of a mile or so of tether system. Upper stage wet workshops of a double hull configuration, what I call “Fat Workshops”, are the likely solution. Only nuclear propulsion, and NOT nucear thermal, is going to push that much mass around the solar system. Either Nuclear Pulse (Bombs) or some new development of Nuclear Electric will work. New advances in TPV cells would allow Spaceship nuclear reactors to produce electricity straight from heat and might be the answer. Plenty of water for radiators and dampening tether oscillation.

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With no water a Moonbase will require bringing ice from the asteroid belt and establishing a permanent presence is many years away. With ice on the Moon it is not many years away at all. With even one lava tube we can move right into with inflatable structures it could happen very quickly. With even one of the very large lava tubes likely to exist available then….an incredible opportunity to establish a cislunar industrial infrastructure based on Space Solar Power component manufacture.

I see only the Gateway for many years, and it will not even be permanently occupied. But when Robot Landers find ice and maybe lava tubes on the Moon this will generate incredible excitement and funding for a more appropriate lander will be found. That 14 story office building is never going to land on the Moon. The number of shiny refuels required alone make it a farce.

As for “Orbital Reef”, the likelihood of the government subsidizing a multi-billion dollar a year “commercial” LEO space station is nil. Not going to happen. LEO is a dead end.

Ceres, then Callisto, are the forward bases for scientific exploration of the subsurface oceans of icy bodies and the moons of the gas and ice giants. With human-crewed submarines transported by human-crewed Spaceships.

Same old NewSpace dogma. Yet Musk dumped it for a Super Heavy. It was always absurd, taking stuff up a bucket or armful at a time and saying you are going to the Moon or, even more ridiculous- Mars. Like saying a cargo vessel line across the North Atlantic with boy scout canoes is the way to go.

NewSpace has set space exploration back at least a decade.

“Off Earth” manufacturing is not necessarily the criteria. Asteroids are not a “better resource” than the Moon. SPS will not “evolve.”

Space Solar Power will be a multi-trillion dollar international commitment soon enough. The Climate Change catastrophe is looming.

Hydrogen Oxygen SHLV’s can lift Space Solar Power components with minimal damage to the atmosphere. Certainly less than kerosene or methane exhaust.

BO New Glenn first stages look like they could replace the SLS solid rocket boosters. They are in the same thrust range. Might even try what spacex failed at: cross feeding liquid oxygen into the SLS core. LEO space stations are a dead end.

I strongly doubt there will ever be a “commercial” LEO space station.

Not enough billionaires in the world willing to blow the billions it would take to enable them to enjoy floating in a radiation bath and vomiting while looking out a window.
Faux astronaut wings are just not worth it.

“Invaluable” is not really accurate.

No ocean.
Too much gravity to land on easily.
Not enough solar energy.
Three strikes you are out.

Mars is a dead end.

When we finally have “true” Spaceships (cosmic ray shielding, artificial gravity, nuclear propulsion) then Ceres becomes the best first mission Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO).

Mars will be bypassed as a rock. The qualifier is nuclear propulsion to push the necessary mass but nuclear thermal, which is getting some money thrown at it again, is also a dead end. For fantastic expense, only about twice the Isp of chemical rockets. Either nuclear pulse (bombs) or possibly some new form of nuclear electric will enable interplanetary human spaceflight.

“So far the cost/benefit ratios are negative.”

Not according to the British and German studies. You either did not even look at the executive summaries, or you are lying.

“SPS will happen when it is time for it to happen. That time will be when it makes engineering, economic, and political sense.”

It will happen when fossil fuels are legislated out of existence and decarbonization becomes international policy….and that is happening very quickly. If preventing a Climate Change catastrophe that will kill billions does not make sense then what does? Starlink for rural video gamers? You are uninformed and your comment is the worst kind of disinformation.

The spacex fanboys parroting their cult leader is disgusting.
The stupidest creeps ever.

Nothing of value has ever been returned from LEO space stations that could for a fraction of the cost have been done on automated laboratory satellites. Half a century wasted in LEO is enough! Time to drop that money hole into the ocean and move Beyond Earth Orbit.
Long past time.

“The company has launched 3,108 Starlink satellites with 2,809 spacecraft working,”

Only 38,000 to go. Not counting the ones that go bad of course. What a mess.

Trump robbed you and the rest of us by pouring hundreds of billions of more dollars into billionaire pockets with his tax cuts.
Crying about NASA is hilarious….and transparent.

Donald Bren donated 100 million for Space Solar Power research. Not invested, donated. Europe, China, the Air Force, the Navy, they are all looking at it as the future. And the Moon is the place to build that cislunar power infrastructure. A recent study showed that while a much larger initial investment, building Space Solar Power components in lunar factories would power our entire civilization faster and at far less cost than building and launching them from Earth. Global utilities are a 6 trillion dollar a year market. Climate Change is going to be a catastrophe and wreck the planet if action is not taken. I believe a sea change is coming.

Of course the spacex fanboys smirk and parrot rocket jesus;
“the stupidest idea ever.”

I am certainly interested in Callisto as the second destination after Ceres for human missions. Outside those nasty radiation belts and it might have an ocean even though no tidal heating. Like Ceres.
Mars is the “never going to happen”; too much gravity to land easily and no ocean makes it a dead end.

True, no tubes at the poles but likely elsewhere. Can drive water trucks to the poles and do some exploring with them also since they carry their own shielding- I commented about that a couple times- about having them lower themselves down around a small area the astronauts could explore without being dosed.

As for the program needing something to do….space is the next step for humankind so it is far more than just something to do.f they were to find a nice big lava tube then the money would flow. If not for any other reason than to keep the Chinese from moving in. We found ice and that is the only reason we are trying to go back now so it could happen.

Far superior to the toxic dragon. The spacex capsule has an “escape system” that is more likely to kill the crew than anything else that could go wrong. The exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.

The Orion escape tower is awesome.

So….space elevators are not a good idea. They are like Helium 3 and cold fusion and several other pseudoscience favorites. People say they are serious about them being practical but…they are not (either not serious or not practical). What is practical is what we can actually build in various time frames like ten years. That’s how long it took to dig the Suez and Panama Canals. For something like powering the planet with Space Solar Power, go with a quarter century from landing on the Moon with the first construction equipment to actually beginning to get useful power from antennae fields on Earth. That would be with trillions of dollars sending Super Heavy Lift Vehicles from various nations every week. We can actually do that right now to stop Climate Change. I would be in my 90’s if that happened. I might live to see it if tomorrow they decided to do it.

Gerard K. O’Neill was a visionary that understood you can build megastructures in space because it is zero gravity and you have plenty of energy. Somewhat like glass blowing on a very large scale. His ultimate goal was space colonies, miles-in-diameter-artificial-spinning-hollow-moons, heading and trailing Earth in orbit around the sun, in solar orbit.

The following paragraph from the article is B.S. so I am not ready to give it a try. While Ceres is of great interest to me as the best first destination for human missions Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit, because it is easy to land on (unlike Mars) and might have an ocean (unlike Mars), more solar energy is needed for space colonies. Any semi-permanent science base on Ceres would likely have a circular “sleeper train” under the ice providing artificial gravity sleeping and exercise spaces for inhabitants. Not practical for large populations.

“This would be logistically awful, too. If the population grows too large for one settlement, multiple settlements may be required. If multiple colonies are in orbit around the Sun, they could drift apart, creating other problems, such as inter-settlement travel. If they’re orbiting a common body, collision avoidance becomes a problem.”

You can say the Shuttle never missed a landing in 133 missions but….if this “misses” then what happens? It crashes with enough fuel left to blow it into pieces. If they move operations offshore maybe not such a big deal. It will bounce off the rig and into the ocean I guess. Without an escape system to get the crew clear it will NEVER carry humans.

This lack of escape system seems to tell the whole story- the shiny is about one thing; Starlink. And if Starlink fails, which I hope it does as those 41,000 pieces of space junk are something that NEVER should have been allowed, the shiny fails.

Spacex will still have their mediocre satelite launcher, the F9, but I doubt they will have rocket jesus in charge. We can only hope.

Robotic Rovers for “excavation missions that must operate in remote permanently shadowed regions of the Moon and survive multiple lunar nights” and “enable in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) missions on the Moon-“.

These Robotic Rovers and semi-expendable Robot Lunar Landers are needed to exploit ice resources. The Ice on the Moon is the key to Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit by providing the thousands and then hundreds of thousands of tons of cosmic ray water shielding for Space Station, Lunar Cycler, and Spaceship crew compartments.

SLS Countdown Comments

Oh yes…we are going. The deluded spacex fan club fantasizes that America loves spacex and hates NASA when it is them, a small slice of libertarian manic obsession, that hates NASA and by extension America, and LOVES spacex. Bizarre and strange that since they have hijacked all these public space forums for going on ten years, they live in their own little Muskworld bubble.

Over 100,000 people are showing up for the SLS launch.

“NASA will hold a prelaunch media briefing on the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration plans-“

They will not stop blathering about Mars….pathetic.

We are only going to Mars with something nuclear propelled (NOT nuclear thermal) and loaded with at least a thousand tons of water. That is not going to happen for a long time and when we do have such true Spaceships they will most likely not go to Mars. It has too much gravity and no ocean and is a dead end. Ceres is the best first destination for any Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO).

The spacex fanboys have to trivialize radiation, as they are doing in their comments here. It is dogma to them and in their NewSpace bubble they know nothing else. What they are missing when they claim NASA is OK with radiation is that if you listen carefully to the way NASA words it, NASA officials are “managing” short stays on the Moon and Gateway (by saying Gateway will not be permanently manned, which translates to short stays). When they talk about radiation and Mars they always mention “fast trips” of around 3 months. They are waffling.

I had yearly sexual harassment assault response and prevention training in the military. And out of the 8 or 10 I attended while I was in, in all except one or two, there was always one guy that had to stand up and angrily inform everyone that “sometimes it is the females fault.” That is not really what they were saying. Most of us understood that anyway. When Trumpists get upset about this or that and blather their coded language, most people know what they are really saying. No different.

When people get upset about a female and person of color landing on the Moon….they are self-identifying. Believe it.

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Trumpism, a whole new kind of fascism based on white grievance, gullibility, self-deception, and lack of education, will burn this country down by way of his minions if we let them. It is coming, or, as the Q-crazies say, the storm is coming, or, as the neo-nazis say, the day of the rope, or as the evangelicals say, the rapture, or, as the…..and the list goes on. They are all under one flag now and it is not the stars and stripes.

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“That was brought home to me fairly early in life when I was a county attorney and every month I had to go down the list of welfare recipients and sign ‘Robert J. Dole, approved.’ And every month I found my grandparents on that list. And they weren’t lazy, but they’d been farmers, tenant farmers. And they didn’t make it. And they didn’t have anywhere else to go but the welfare office.”

Pretty soon Americans will have no place left to go except into the streets to stop the Trumpists from disappearing their “enemies.” Watch.

The way the Musk Cultists place loyalty to their bizarro Ayn-Rand-in-space demi-god above loyalty to their country, as in their space program, makes what is going to happen soon fairly obvious.

The only “countermeasure” to Dosing and Debilitation is massive shielding and artificial gravity.

The Moon is the only practical place to get the shielding, using 20 times less energy to lift water derived from lunar ice into space than water lifted from Earth. Though plastic is approximately a quarter less massive, the most utilitarian shielding is water. Some form of Nuclear Propulsion (NOT nuclear thermal which provides, at fantastic expense, only twice the Isp) will be required to go anywhere Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO).

To spin a structure with a tether system and provide artificial gravity by far the most efficient option is the wet workshop, an SHLV upper stage already stressed for multiple G forces. Configuring workshops with an inner and outer hull to contain a cosmic ray water shield, a “Fat Workshop”, is the best path to Space Station, Spaceship, and Lunar Cycler crew compartments.

These are the realities and most logical solutions to the problems of Human Space Flight.

As I have described in other comments, the logical course is to first place “Fat Workshops” in frozen lunar orbit and deploy Robot Landers to fill the workshops with cosmic ray water shielding derived from lunar ice.

Those two pieces of hardware (and the SHLV to loft them) can provide radiation sanctuaries within ten years. Spinning these constructs with a tether system will eventually provide a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity environment. Then a permanent presence in Cislunar Space is enabled.

Hundreds and then thousands of tons of water available in lunar orbit in larger and larger space stations will enable regular human landings. Of course, as above so below and some form of sanctuary will be required for astronauts when they descend to the surface. Either roofed-over regolith covered craters or, ideally, lava tubes. In other words, a Moonbase.

When Apollo 8 went around the Moon they moved the goalposts and Earth orbit stopped being space. Somewhat like the difference between balloons and heavier than air flight. Not the greatest analogy of course.

It is the difference between the Montgolfiers and the Wrights. Some may cite the first successful V2 rocket launch as the beginning, others Sputnik, others Gagarin. In my view, the first space age, from when we actually escaped Earth gravity, lasted just short of 4 years and then ended. When humans again leave Earth’s gravitational field the second space age will begin.

In reality GEO is the best demarcation line regarding where orbital flight ends and “space” begins. The difference between a duck pond and the North Atlantic. Again, not the best analogy when I also sometimes characterize Cislunar Space as the Mediterranean and missions to icy bodies starting with Ceres in the Asteroid Belt and beyond as the Pacific.

The point is that human beings going farther than in circles a couple hundred miles up is Human Space Flight. Beyond Earth Orbit is Human Space Flight.

The last astronauts returned from the Moon in 1972 on Apollo 17 and that was the end of the first space age. NewSpace is THE END of the dream as its proponents seek to end “government employees” from getting “free rides” in favor of handing it all over to “commercial interests” and pinning faux astronaut wings on billionauts. The obscene spending displays of the uber-rich on space tourist trips are the worst thing that could happen to space exploration. And the disgusting sycophants worshiping Rocket jesus idiotically clap and spew spam. There is no ROI in Human Space Flight. The last bunch of tourists were unhappy about having to work so hard and it did not go well. The novelty of floating in a radiation bath and throwing up while looking out a window will wear off. Musk is all about taking over the internet with Starlink and that is going to fail when he can’t get any more free billion tax-dollar grants. He did not get the last one. His Mars fantasy was always just a scam.

The Cult of Musk, like the Cult of Trump, is a corrosive pernicious force ruining everything it touches.

The American space program has been attacked by this legion of Ayn-Rand-in-space-libertarian-whackjobs for going on ten years. The Musk Cult is anti-American in every way and made up of individuals attracted to the bizarre and autocratic character of a narcissist billionaire hobbyist. They are the worst of the worst on the internet, gullible, toxic, cyberthugs.

The SLS is going…to the Moon. And the spacex fanboys, despite years and literally libraries of death-to-SLS propaganda, have not stopped NASA, mostly thanks to Jim Bridenstine, from returning to that prize we never should have taken our eyes off of- the Moon. That place Musk made verboten because his hobby rocket was far too little to go there. Now the shiny, that space shuttle redux that has blown up more times than any other rocket this century, with no escape system, is going nowhere while the SLS goes to the Moon.

“The Redwire Greenhouse is being developed through an award from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, manager of the ISS U.S. National Laboratory.“

Like almost all progress, paid for by taxpayers and the government. As forces prepare to try and replace that government with a fascist autocracy.

BNNT material would not be that much of an improvement on simple plastic. As the actual structure of the spacecraft it might reduce secondary somewhat but likely at great expense. Might save some mass in a storm shelter but….no effect at all on heavy nuclei from Cosmic Rays. Really. You would still not go in there unless it was during a solar storm because the radiation from secondaries would normally make it the highest dose area in the spacecraft. It may work on SEP but is not really going to help with secondaries much and claiming so is misleading.

No mass means no secondaries but a thin skin space craft is not a great idea. More mass to soak it ALL up is best plan. Near Sea Level Radiation is the ideal. Along with a tether system this level of shielding would provide what I call a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity (NSLR1G) environment. I strongly suggest the article by Parker. It is available online by googling “Shielding Space Travelers” UCLA.

People may cite Parkers article regarding “magnetic shields” but he is actually describing at length why it is impractical. He calls a water or plastic shield “impractical” only in regards to the space shuttle payload, which is also misquoted by NewSpace fanboys. All they know how to do is trivialize radiation and will lie and mislead as a standard practice to defend that dogma.

A water shield is heavier than a plastic shield but far more desirable because it can of course be used in a life support system and for other things like dampening out oscillations in a tether-generated artificial gravity system. Both systems are massive and would require Nuclear Propulsion and NOT nuclear thermal, which is just not good enough. Only Nuclear Pulse (bombs) now, or possibly some new form of Nuclear Electric may soon be available.

Space radiation shielding is not something like a computer or rocket engine that can be improved upon. The blabbering spacex fans do about this or that “new thing” is about very small increases in ability to block radiation from solar events or “solar storms” and these are often called “storm shelters.” What most people do not understand is that crews stay out of those shelters unless they are bombarded by solar radiation. Why? Because the 24/7 radiation constantly penetrating spacecraft and astronauts is COSMIC RADIATION and is very different. When the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic radiation hits these storm shelters they actually produce “secondaries” and generate more radiation. Only when a solar storm hits do they save the astronauts from profound dosing but normally they have the highest level of radiation in the spacecraft. See how that works?

Unless you stop almost all the cosmic radiation you get no benefit and end up with more or less the same dosing as no shielding at all, except when Solar Energetic Particle levels go up. What does it take to stop cosmic rays and the secondary radiation effects? From “Shielding Space Travelers” by Eugene Parker (the guy they named the solar probe after):

“To match the protection offered by Earth’s atmosphere takes the – equivalent to the air mass above an altitude of 5,500 meters. Any less would begin to be counterproductive, because the shielding material would fail to absorb the shrapnel. If the material is water, it has to be five meters deep. So a spherical water tank encasing a small capsule would have a mass of about 500 tons.”

THAT…is “state of the art.” For any practical living space for long duration missions at least, at the very least, double that figure to a thousand tons.

A couple thousand cubic foot greenhouse or a couple thousand cubic feet of storage is the choice on a Spaceship.

Some rough calculations show you can store about 10 years of food for 8 people in that space (about 60 tons). A greenhouse can supposedly provide for the same number of people. For missions under ten years it would probably be far more efficient to carry the food instead of growing it. A mix of stored dehydrated food and a smaller greenhouse and whatever product can be had from water grown plants/organisms in the radiation shielding might be the best solution.

The critical problem is Climate Change….and all resources should be focused on a solution.
And there appears to be only one solution: Space Solar Power by way of Lunar factories.

The more “renewable” energy that is manufactured on Earth presently creates carbon because ironically fossil fuels are used to make wind turbines and solar panels. Because demand continually increases as third world countries seek a western standard of living, we will never be able to meet demand while decreasing greenhouse gases to any meaningful degree.

Hydrogen/Oxygen Super Heavy Lift Vehicles sending refinery and manufacturing tooling to a Lunar Industrial infrastructure project is the only way to produce Space Solar Energy components Off-world relatively carbon-free and eventually power civilization from orbit.

A robotic Lunar Lander that can exploit ice deposits and repeatedly carry water up to “Fat Workshops” and create radiation sanctuaries for astronauts is, in my view, the key to human expansion into Cislunar Space and beyond. If not for the corrosive influence of NewSpace such a program would likely have been started in 2008 after strong evidence for ice at the poles was found. One of the reasons NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

“Growing full crops in space will be critical to future space exploration missions as plants provide food, oxygen and water reclamation. Increasing the throughput of crop production research in space, through commercially developed capabilities, will be important to deliver critical insights for NASA’s Artemis missions and beyond.”

Multi-year missions to the outer solar system will of course require a closed-loop life support system to provide air and water. Growing enough calories is problematic in the confines of a Spaceship so radiation resistant algae (thousand ton plus cosmic ray water shields facilitate this) is the most likely feature. Not radishes. Some kind of algal product may supplement food supplies but most of the calories will likely come from storage.

Complaining about going to the Moon instead of DOD waste. LOL. Transparent: it is all about supporting the Cult Leader instead of the nation of birth.

And that is what is happening in this country; populism, treason, insurrection. All of it can be traced back to one thing- the rich evading taxes and regulation. Their faux think tanks have pushed free-market ideology decade after decade. Our post-depression mixed economy is now failing because of that. It all goes back to that, which is likely going to end as badly for them as it does for the rest of us.

Truth

Thank you Charles Blow.

SLS is GOING!

Rocket jesus is slowly spiraling toward disaster. From a recent Time Magazine article:

“Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.”

“In crafting his future visions, Musk draws on the libertarian tendencies of Robert Heinlein and a technocratic longtermism inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, not to mention the dreams of Nazi-turned-NASA rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Future visions cribbed from the pages of science fiction—often of the dystopian variety—and reshaped to fit the desires of the richest man in the world don’t serve the broader public.”

“That’s exactly where we find ourselves now: having our future dictated by powerful people who seek to recreate the space colonies or dystopian virtual reality worlds they read about as kids without considering the consequences.”

“Kim Stanley Robinson- has called Musk’s plan “the 1920s science-fiction cliché of the boy who builds a rocket to the moon in his backyard” and one that’s dangerously distracting us from the real problems we face here on Earth.”

“The tech industry enjoys casting itself as our savior, delivering empowerment and convenience, but along with it has come an unprecedented expansion of surveillance, an erosion of workers’ rights, and the empowerment of white nationalist and fascist groups.
For years, Elon Musk sold us fantasies to distract from the reality of the future he’s trying to build, and to get people to accept his growing belligerence.“

-complaining about going to the Moon instead of DOD waste. LOL. Transparent: it is all about supporting the Cult Leader instead of the nation of birth.

Through Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone to send astronauts to Mars.

They ALWAYS mention Mars. Pathetic. Mars is a dead end. Ceres is a far better destination for the first human mission Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit.

Landing on the Moon is a fantasy until they have a lander other than that bizarro version of the shiny, which was absurd. It reminded me of when they killed Sidemount. It was hard to believe they could do something so stupid. If they had built Sidemount we might actually be landing back on the Moon by now, or close.

“Through Artemis”, as in the SLS, is not a fantasy because they have a working Moon rocket. However, the original goal of the boosters/core/engines Shuttle design was a Saturn V class launch vehicle that expends everything except a tank, and expending it all has thrown that baby out with the bathwater. Fortunately, that can also change. Future iterations of the SLS can be made partially reusable. Because of spacex propaganda people will not acknowledge the Shuttle was actually more reusable than the F9 because it did not expend engines.

A “long-term lunar presence” is a fantasy until they have a way to exploit those ice resources at the poles. My best recommendation is large semi-expendable robot landers to process lunar ice onsite and ferry water shielding up to “Fat Workshops” and when a radiation sanctuary is complete, only then send astronauts.

Mars is absolutely a fantasy. Too much gravity and no ocean makes it a dead end. Even when we finally have “true” spaceships with a kiloton range cosmic ray water shield, tether-generated artificial gravity, closed loop life support, and Nuclear Propulsion, Ceres becomes the place to go, and Mars will likely be bypassed.

Nuclear Thermal is another dead end and while Nuclear Pulse is the only viable option right now, technology is emerging that may soon make some form of Nuclear-Electric Propulsion practical.

Starship is in many ways a Shuttle redux. And we know that “airliner” philosophy killed two crews. No escape system is unacceptable.

Jimmy Carter signed the check after being convinced it was a good deal. They went cheap on everything, and it ended up costing as much per launch as the Saturn V but instead of going a quarter million miles up it went a couple hundred.

Reaganomics pushed NASA to make good on their promise to “make space pay for itself.” Instead, Challenger destroyed itself.

There is no cheap.

The RL10 is about as simple, powerful, efficient, and dependable, as a small rocket engine can get. All the work to make it variable thrust was done long ago and the technology put on the shelf. So I think…..it could be the key to getting a lander built very very quickly. Almost all the work has already been done.

Well, we disagreed/agreed on that before (because of radiation) if you recall.

It is just more of the permanent damage the astronauts suffer on the ISS and is unacceptable in my view. We know all we need to know about that.

The only other possibility I can see is….a lava tube find. That would solve so many problems it would make a Moonbase almost a sure thing. We could actually just move right in with inflatable structures. Getting water would be a problem because there are no geologically likely lava tubes anywhere near the poles but that could be solved in a couple ways.

Just need a lava tube….and a lander.

The new stealth bomber program will cost at least 203 billion.
The Ohio submarine replacement fleet has a life-cycle cost of 347 billion.
The Space Force yearly budget for satellites is now 24.5 billion and that will go up and up.
And every year the ISS is in operation is another 4 billion.

No solid reasons for cold war toys anymore. Not in the age of drones and hypersonic missiles. Bombers are targeted on the ground and they can’t buy enough to keep them in the air 24/7, Submarines are being tracked by sea gliders now and cannot hide….it is all just Military Industrial Complex robbery. And the Trump Force weaponizing Earth orbit? The new money machine. Might as well build spaceships and put the nukes in deep space. Cost about the same. It’s true. .

Boomers used to disappear into the depths but that is not happening. They are constantly tracked due to the oceans of the world being infested with cheap sea glider drones. They can be destroyed at any time now and are no longer a viable deterrent. And with a 347 billion dollar life cycle cost that is as bizarre as it gets.

Space is the answer to most of the world’s problems. Nuclear deterrence, asteroid and comet defense, Climate Change, and we can even create new worlds to live inside of instead of on the surface of. Vast oceans for submarines to explore beneath the surface of a dozen or more icy bodies. It is all out there waiting. The biggest obstacle is NewSpace, which is not about space at all, but only about filthy lucre. They see no money to be made with a Moonbase but gazillions from rural video gamers and megaconstellations of space junk.

Maybe life is just too stupid to survive in this universe.

The answer to the Fermi Paradox. We do not seem to be truly intelligent.

-my definition of “truly” intelligent would not be that (being able to destroy ourselves). Any aliens observing us would probably categorize us as having a kind of faux cleverness, but not really capable of surviving.

There are no “real” plans to go to Mars with chemical propulsion.

It was studied to exhaustion, and nothing came of that except “Battlestar Galacticas” that were completely impractical. Nuclear Thermal, much in the news lately because they are spending money on it again, is a dead end because for fantastic expense it only doubles Isp. Far better than that is required to enable any missions beyond the Moon.

That is not even considering the problem of cosmic radiation, let alone solar events and zero G debilitation, both of which make permanent damage much worse than that from a 1 year ISS tour a certainty. Cosmic rays are the real showstopper and nobody will take a stand about that except the world authority on space radiation, Eugene Parker. And his view generates shock and outrage among NewSpace fans because it makes a mockery of their standard practice of trivializing radiation.

Spacex is scamming, plain and simple, and the Musk worshipers are either gullible fools or simply disingenuous enough to go with it. I had one argue with me back and forth for dozens of comments until it became obvious he was just playing that toxic creep game they love. Disgusting.

The last I read the career lifetime dose was being reduced and that means it is impossible for a Mars mission astronaut to not exceed it, which would indicate nobody is going until that is addressed.
I doubt they would waive it.

These artist renderings of astronauts on the surface are misleading though.

Very little bunny hopping is going to happen. Maybe a few for P.R. but the astronaut corps will be trying everything they can to limit dosing.

It would be far better to robotically roof over a small crater, dozer regolith on top for radiation shielding, and use an inflatable shelter as a place to immediately go after landing. I don’t see any kind of human mission without a radiation sanctuary. Even a relatively short Apollo length stay is not a good idea due to solar storms.

Hiroshima Day 2022

77 years ago we nuked Japan. On a show I really like, Amanpour and Company, a recent episode tried to argue, on this very liberal program, that dropping the bomb was necessary to force Japan to surrender. Which greatly disappointed me. I had thought that issue had been decided years ago by works examining Japanese discussions in the last days of the war which clearly indicated the bomb was consider just another weapon while Russia declaring war was a far more frightening development.

We can remove Nuclear Weapons from planet Earth only by building human-crewed “space-boomers” that take them months away into deep space. Interestingly, these true atomic spaceships would be propelled by nuclear explosions using Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. Fissile material production would be removed to the Moon and the weapons only assembled far, far, from Earth. Spaceships are the only workable solution as getting rid of all Nuclear Weapons would once again immerse civilization in a new cycle of world wars.

Too Bitter to Contemplate

Listening to On Point and an interview with co-authors on a book about democracy. One of them talked about Trump as “the great persuader” and it was very enlightening. He ended by saying that this sub-literate whose only guide is Hitler’s speeches could be the greatest persuader in history is too bitter to contemplate.

Americans believe in exceptionalism, that nothing like what happened to other nations can happen to us. Yet it is happening right now. Right before my eyes. And it is bitter.

“The internet allows the angriest among us to interact, and actually reinforce each other.”

The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg (Author), Sean Illing (Author)

“Democracy as an act of persuasion.”

https://www.wbur.org/radio/programs/onpoint

And in another article citing another book:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinions-tracing-the-republican-party-s-devolution-to-one-man-newt-gingrich/ar-AA10kZ0l?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=e7671e3ac0c54bcbbc2a78e105a32577

“As an exercise, try thinking “Party of Lincoln” (or Reagan) as you recite aloud this partial list of post-1994 GOP leaders, grandees, enablers and influencers: Gingrich, Kenneth Starr, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Ralph Reed, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Lee Atwater, Andrew Breitbart, Ann Coulter, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Karl Rove, Tucker Carlson, Rupert Murdoch, Jack Abramoff, Michael Flynn, Jim Jordan, Steve Bannon, Kevin McCarthy, Ted Cruz, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham, Mo Brooks, Ron Johnson, Lauren Boebert, Elise Stefanik and the 147 members of Congress who on Jan. 6, 2021, voted not to certify Biden’s election, hours after the Capitol was attacked by an insurrectionary mob. Got an ashy taste in your mouth?

The baton that Reagan passed to a new generation became a truncheon in Gingrich’s hands. For those scratching their heads and moaning, “How did this happen?” Milbank has the answer. It all began with the honorable gentleman from Georgia.”

SLS Comments

The Musk fanboys never, NEVER, acknowledge anything except the myth of Musk. So of course they are “satisfied” with their wonderful Ayn-Rand-in-space fantasy.

The truth is this; backroom deals and political influence are the reason spacex exists. Spacex employees generally despise Musk for the nutcase he is. An expendable rocket would do the same thing for about the same price.

That is not to say reusability is not the future, but F9 is likely not breaking even.

Comparing the Falcon and the Shuttle is a sad exercise in that the Shuttle was a Saturn V class launch vehicle based on the concept of reusing everything except a single expendable tank. Unfortunately, it was actually a cheap and nasty design in many ways, and this ruined it. Wasting most of its payload on a 737-size glider, the SRB’s, and other features were failed logic, and instead of making it economical, well…. everybody knows.

The most efficient progression would have been to make the Saturn V reusable one part at a time over a couple decades. The Shuttle was meant to leap ahead and failed. The SLS could reuse liquid side boosters and perhaps crossfeed propellants, reuse the RS-25s with a module, reuse the escape tower and capsule, and this would have been a more conservative configuration for the original Shuttle.

“Its not completely clear to me why SpaceX have not pushed for faster turnarounds; it might be that the Falcon 9 system has reached a technical limit and in most cases its not possible, or at least not cost effective, to do it so quickly.”

Pretty clear to me. Too many engines. Too many technicians required, which is the biggest expense and also what spacex fanboys have always screamed bloody murder at; the thrice-damned “standing army.”

LOL!
We both know who does all the “blowing up on the pad.” (Regarding a comment including the SLS blowing up)
The DOD blows hundreds of billions on worthless projects to enrich defense shareholders….and you cry about NASA. It is so obvious what this NASA-bashing is all about is a cult of personality that wants it all handed over to Musk. Their Howard Roark/John Galt/Tony Stark hero is in reality a freak and his rocket company is the poster child for government subsidy.

“The contractor would be responsible for producing hardware and services for up to 10 Artemis launches beginning with the Artemis V mission, and up to 10 launches for other NASA missions. NASA expects to procure at least one flight per year to the Moon or other deep-space destinations.”

NASA will likely shut down the ISS and “at least” double the launch cadence to the Moon and the other ten missions to FOUR launches a year…which will, as every spacex fan knows, bring the costs down. Considering the years, if ever, it will take to rate the shiny to actually carry a human being (not going to happen without an escape system), it is not going anywhere for a long time.

SLS is here to stay.

And….Debunking Musk – TED talk 2022 Finale debuted on YouTube.

If Space Solar became the solution to climate change then an international effort pouring TRILLIONS of dollars into space might be an economic reason. Setting up an industrial infrastructure beneath the surface of the Moon would require thousands, and more likely tens of thousands, of technicians.

You see Robert, that single sentence that idiot uttered, “-the stupidest thing ever”, may lead to the needless deaths of billions. His BA (not a BS) in physics informed that very influential statement concerning Space Solar Power. Truth. And all these right-wing Ayn-Rand-in-space whackjobs will share the responsibility for promoting him.

The reason these billionaires don’t want anything to do with Space Solar is they cannot own it. It is such a tremendous undertaking only governments can finance it. Much like the Koch’s spending millions (pennies to them) to create climate change denial, Musk and Bezos both could choose NOT to be greedy sociopaths and support Space Solar….but they won’t.

I would say they will try and screw up some people for life. And then stop trying.

The only way it will work IMO is to use semi-expendable robot landers that make their own propellants with ISRU and ferry those hundreds of tons of water shielding into space from the lunar poles to the station.

In my view, just as the rocket equation dictates much about launch vehicles, the “Parker Minimum” is the main limiting factor concerning Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO). And the minimum cosmic ray shielding equates to: “If the material is water, it has to be five meters deep. So a spherical water tank encasing a small capsule would have a mass of about 500 tons.” (from Shielding Space Travelers, by Eugene Parker)
Using Polyethylene drops that figure to 400 tons. Taking a wild guess that the FH could transport perhaps 20 tons at a time to the gateway that would be 20 FH missions carrying nothing but a slab of plastic. But water is a far better choice for many reasons. That much water would first of all provide a medium for a closed loop life support system that could provide air and drinking water for years.

For any practical living space at least double the shielding mass. At least. And then there is the problem of zero G debilitation ….

This is why bringing water up from the lunar poles is so important.

Exactly…it is a rock. (Regarding Mars) Too much gravity, not enough solar energy, no ocean.
The Moon is the gateway, the prize we never should have taken our eyes off of. It is the place to lift cosmic ray water shielding into space using 20 times less energy than from Earth. It is the place to assemble, test, and launch nuclear missions.

The first human missions Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit will be to Ceres, then Callisto, and then even farther out using more and more advanced nuclear propulsion systems. Carrying submarines to the places that have subsurface oceans. Mars is a dead end that will be bypassed.
The spacex plan is a farce.

People, State, Mob

“-An all-white planet achieved through profound violence and assymetric warfare.”

She nailed that one…crystal clear. They all fantasize about “the day of the rope.”

“I think that it is difficult to be too worried about this at present. In my view there are two major dangers posed to everyone in the United States right now from this movement. One of them is that groups like the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys become a sort of paramilitary shock force of the most extreme parts of the GOP and lead us toward a sort of authoritarian politics that is enforced by violent action, intimidation, and all of the things we would expect from reading the history of those movements. The other is that there will be a contingent of people in those groups like the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys that are not at all interested in the United States or gaining power as part of the GOP but who are actually interested in overthrowing the United States and creating their own ethno-state, which is not at all interested in democracy, or freedom, or voting, or any of the things I think of as patriotic. Both of these are dangerous to our society, and I think that one thing the committee is showing us is that the time to respond is growing short.”

“This is our opportunity to see behind the curtain, and so far, what we are seeing is very alarming and should escalate everybody’s sense of urgency about this problem.”

“We’re talking about huge sorts of “contortions” to make that OK with everybody (Christians and skinheads together) The thing that motivates that ability to be flexible and bring everyone together is an intense sense of emergency that the white race is under attack and will be eradicated without swift action.”

“That sense of emergency is able to pull in all kinds of different social issues into one sort of conspiratorial apocalyptic belief system.”

We cannot say we have not been warned. The storm is coming.

Taxes are “The Secret”

Quoted excerpt by David Klepper AP

“Daniel Charles Wilson believes the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an inside job. The war in Ukraine is “totally scripted” and COVID-19 is “completely fake.” The Boston Marathon bombing? Mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas? “Crisis actors,” he says.

Wilson, a 41-year-old from London, Ontario, has doubts about free elections, vaccines and the Jan. 6 insurrection, too. He accepts little of what has happened in the past 20 years and cheerfully predicts that someday, the internet will make everyone as distrustful as he is.

“It’s the age of information, and the hidden government, the people who control everything, they know they can’t win,” Wilson told The Associated Press. “They’re all lying to us. But we’re going to break through this. It will be a good change for everyone.”

Wilson, who is now working on a book about his views, is not an isolated case of perpetual disbelief. He speaks for a growing number of people in Western nations who have lost faith in democratic governance and a free press, and who have turned to conspiracy theories to fill the void.

Rejecting what they hear from scientists, journalists or public officials, these people instead embrace tales of dark plots and secret explanations. And their beliefs, say experts who study misinformation and extremism, reflect a widespread loss of faith in institutions like government and media.

A poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well. Another 38% said it’s working only somewhat well.

Other surveys reveal how many people in the United States now doubt the media, politicians, science and even each other.

The distrust has gone so deep that even groups that seem ideologically aligned are questioning each others’ motives and intentions.

On the day before Independence Day in Boston this year, a group of about 100 masked men carrying fascist flags marched through the city. Members proudly uploaded videos and photos of the march to online forums popular with supporters of former President Donald Trump and QAnon adherents, who believe a group of satanic, cannibalistic child molesters secretly runs the globe.

Instead of praise, the white supremacists were met with incredulity. Some posters said the marchers were clearly FBI agents or members of antifa — shorthand for anti-fascists — looking to defame Trump supporters. It didn’t matter that the men boasted of their involvement and pleaded to be believed. “Another false flag,” wrote one self-described conservative on Telegram.

Similarly, when an extremist website that sells unregulated ghost guns — firearms without serial numbers — asked its followers about their July 4th plans, several people responded by accusing the group of working for the FBI. When someone claiming to be Q, the figure behind QAnon, reappeared online recently, many conservatives who support the movement speculated that the new Q was actually a government plant.

This past week, when a Georgia monument that some conservative Christians criticized as satanic was bombed, many posters on far-right message boards cheered. But many others said they didn’t believe the news.

“I don’t trust it. I’m still thinking ff,” wrote one woman on Twitter, referencing “false flag,” a term commonly used by conspiracy theorists to describe an event they think was staged.

The global public relations firm Edelman, based in New York City, has conducted surveys about public trust for more than two decades, beginning after the 1999 World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle was marred by anti-globalization riots. Tonia Reis, director of Edelman’s Trust Barometer surveys, said trust is a precious commodity that’s vital for the economy and government to function.

“Trust is absolutely essential to everything in society working well,” Reis said. “It’s one of those things that, like air, people don’t think about it until they realize they don’t have it, or they’ve lost it or damaged it. And then it can be too late.

For experts who study misinformation and human cognition, the fraying of trust is tied to the rise of the internet and the way it can be exploited on contentious issues of social and economic change.

Distrust and suspicion offered obvious advantages to small bands of early humans trying to survive in a dangerous world, and those emotions continue to help people gauge personal risk today. But distrust is not always well suited to the modern world, which requires people to trust the strangers who inspect their food, police their streets and write their news. Democratic institutions, with their regulations and checks and balances, are one way of adding accountability to that trust.

When that trust breaks down, polarization and anxiety increases, creating opportunities for people pushing their own “ alternative facts.”

“People can’t fact check the world,” said Dr. Richard Friedman, a New York City psychiatrist and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College who has written about the psychology of trust and belief. “They’re awash in competing streams of information, both good and bad. They’re anxious about the future, and there are a lot of bad actors with the ability to weaponize that fear and anxiety.”

Those bad actors include grifters selling bad investments or sham remedies for COVID-19, Russian disinformation operatives trying to undermine Western democracies, or even homegrown politicians like Trump, whose lies about the 2020 election spurred the Jan. 6 attack.

Like Wilson, people who believe in one conspiracy theory are likely to believe in others too, even if they are mutually contradictory. A 2012 paper, for instance, looked at beliefs surrounding the death of Princess Diana of Wales in a 1997 car crash. Researchers found that subjects who believed strongly that Diana was murdered said they also felt strongly that she could have faked her own death.

Wilson said his belief in conspiracies began on Sept. 11, 2001, when he couldn’t accept that the towers could be knocked down by airliners. He said he found information on the internet that confirmed his beliefs, and then began to suspect there were conspiracies behind other world events.

“You have to put it all together yourself,” Wilson said. “The hidden reality, what’s really going on, they don’t want you to know.”

Everything, EVERYTHING, can be traced back to a single thing and that singular truth is…avoiding taxes.

Simple. Except the small number of ultra-rich like the Kochs and others who have invested fortunes (well, fortunes to us but pennies to them) over the decades in think-tank-disinformation and sowing chaos as a distraction, may have done themselves in.

They have destroyed the concept of truth to such an extent that civilization as we know it may soon be burned to the ground.

Once the bloodletting starts, there is no stopping it.