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NASA’S OSIRIS REX ARRIVES AT BENNU ASTEROID…

This story was one of the top stories  that people passed along this week. NASA's Osiris-Rex asteroid probe has arrived at the asteroid Bennu, and nothing about this mission seems - to me at least - "normal." Forget all the Egyptian lore-trappings around the mission, Osiris-Rex, standing for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith EXplorer.  It's the strange little asteroid itself, plus the curiously worded beginning of this article, that intrigues:

NASA spacecraft arrives at ancient asteroid, its 1st visitor

BEsides being diamond-shaped (from one angle) with what appears to be a parallel set of "craters" running along its equator, the little rock (it's actually not so little, being a little taller than the Empire State Building) has another set of strange features, including a pyramidal-like "something" sticking up from it:

And it's diamond shape is oddly similar to that of Ryugu, the asteroid that Japan has recently landed on:

And let's not forget the asteroid Stein's with it's very anomalous properties, that the European Space Agency a few years ago singled out (by what means we don't know) for it's own asteroid fly-by, which provoked this intriguing analysis by Richard C. Hoagland:

Rosetta Flies By "Something" Very Strange

Add to all of this the strange Oumuamua comet, the appointment of General Mark Milley of "little green men" speech fame, mix, and stir, and one has a veritable stew of strange "space stuff" going on.

So what is my high octane speculation about Bennu? Well, beyond all the religious-Egyptian trappings surrounding it, the suggestion that the Osiris-Rex mission has something to do with "security" is intriguing, and the article implies that the mission is in part designed to learn how to mount planetary defenses against the wayward asteroid (and perhaps, against anyone with the capability of lobbing them in our direction). For those with ears to hear, this conjures not only overtones of Dr. Carol Rosin's famous affidavit about the "order" that Dr. Wernher von Braun told her, the order in which the elites would proceed to argue for the weaponization of space - Communists, terrorists, nations of concern, asteroids, and finally ET threats - but it also conjures resonances of the Allende annotations to the Varo edition of Dr. Morris Jessup's book on UFOs. (See my book Secrets of the Unified Field). And given all the strange "stuff" on the surface of Bennu in some photographs, I'm sticking with my speculation that "they" are also covertly looking for something for the simple reason that when one considers the Japanese, European, and American missions to asteroids, the asteroids in question all have one odd thing in common: they're all diamond shaped (at least, from one point of view). They also seem to have curious "stuff" on their surfaces, leading one to wonder how these small rocks were actually selected for exploration.

But beyond this, there's that curious statement at the beginning of this particular article:

After a two-year chase, a NASA spacecraft arrived Monday at the ancient asteroid Bennu, its first visitor in billions of years.

First visitor in billions of years? You mean, it had other visitors? When? by whom? And while we're at it, how do you know? Or is this just a bit of bad diction and careless writing? Or is the date of "billions of years" overstated to keep the standard cosmological narrative going?

Taken on its own, I'd opt for "careless writing" for the sake of "dramatization" and a bit of rhetorical melodrama. But in the context of the Japanese mission to Ryugu, of the European mission to Stein's, of Generals making statements about fighting "hybrid armies" and "little green men" being appointed to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the Space Force President, I suspect that the statement may not be, after all, just a bit of careless dramatization.

See you on the slip side...

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REMEMBER THAT GENERAL’S “LITTLE GREEN MEN” ...

Do you remember that US Army General who gave that funny little speech to military graduates to be prepared to "fight little green men"? Well, in case you don't, here's that story from 2016, and patience, because we're getting to today's story by way of it:

Army chief to leaders: Winning is everything in combat

Now, the General in question was General Mark Milley, at the time the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and here's his "little green men" reference in context:

"If the world if 1916 was complex, or the world of 1945 was complex, the world of 2016 is intensely complex, and I can tell you that from personal experience," he said. "You'll be dealing with terrorists, you'll be dealing with hybrid armies, you'll be dealing with little green men, you'll be dealing with tribes, you're going to be dealing with it all, and you're going to be dealing with it simultaneously." (Emphasis added)

At the time, this reference had everyone speculating that the General was referring to some sort of space threat from extraterrestrials. But, "not to worry," we were reassured; the reference was simply "US Army code-speak" for "foreign troops (See, for example, the Faux News article US Army's top general: Be prepared to fight 'little green men'):

Military officials told The Army Times that “little green men” is typically used to refer to foreign troops who dress in green attire instead of military uniforms.

“It does not mean fighting troops from outer space,” an official said.

Nothing to see here, nothing unusual, it's just "code". Move along.

But, back in 2016, I pointed out the following:

Ok guys, sorry, but once again: while it may or may not be code to the US Army, it is also a phrase with a popular colloquial meaning, and no US Army General is going to be ignorant of that fact. And in the light of yesterday's and today's blogs, the statement does take on disturbingly multi-layered interpretive possibilities. (See: TIDBIT: US ARMY GENERAL AND FIGHTING LITTLE GREEN MEN)

In fact, we could go so far as to say that speeches by generals to graduating classes of military cadets are a fairly common occurrence, and are not likely to be picked up or covered by major lamestream media outlets, unless one drops in an odd reference or two to "hybrid armies" and "little green men." And when such references are coming from the Chief of Staff of the Army himself, such references coming out of the mouths of four-star generals are probably going to attract attention, because they're meant to do so.

All of this is background to this story shared by Ms. K.C.:

Trump Appoints Gen. Mark Milley Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff

Yes, you read that correctly, General "Little Green Men" Mark Milley has been appointed by President Trump to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Coming from a President who makes statements about the USA needing another "space force" (really? You mean, we already have one and now we need another one? What for?) I find this more than just odd, I find it downright compelling. "Hybrid armies" doesn't take much imagination, especially when DARPA wants to create super soldiers, robots, and so on. The really high octane speculative question is: hybrids of what? Humans and machines? Humans and animals? (Don't forget, folks, that the Diabolically Apocalyptic Research Projects Agency is researching dolphins to find out how they can literally have half their brain sleeping, while the other half is wide awake, for the purposes of creating soldiers who need little to no sleep. The idea even made its appearance in an old X Files episode.) Or Humans and "someone else" ala Genesis Nephilim and Mesopotamian Annunaki fame? We don't know, but when that part of General Milley's speech is viewed in that way, the following reference of hybrid armies to "little green men" has a context altogether not suggestive of just being a coded reference to foreign soldiers dressing in "green attire."

So why General Milley as Joint Chiefs Chairman from the "Space Force President"? Hang on, because I'm going to walk right off the end of the speculation twig on this one. Suppose, for a moment, that you've been funding a secret research and development program for advanced and exotic space technologies for decades, using a hidden system of finance in the hands of the national security establishment, and running to the tune of trillions (if not quadrillions) of dollars since the end of World War Two. Suppose you had even collateralized space assets with strange bearer bonds that everyone says are counterfeits. Suppose, in addition to all of this, you were using pump and dump schemes, mortgage fraud, credit default swaps and other derivatives to fund all of this, in addition to skimming a few trillion that go "missing" that you can't account for. Suppose, over time, that the very corporations that have been doing all of this work have so broken away from any sort of government control or oversight that they've become a major extra-territorial, and perhaps extra-terrestrial, player in their own right, given all their access to all that data and all that secret technology and the secret infrastructure where it's being developed. Suppose you needed to reassert a measure of control over the whole process, budgetary and otherwise.

How would you do that? You'd invoke a threat, and establish a command structure firmly in the hands of the military, and hence of the executive... call it a "space force", and issue regulations and orders appropriately, after having carefully set the stage by references to having to fight hybrid armies and little green men, only these "hybrid armies" and "little green men" might be a reference to that whole infrastructure that has "broken away"...

Enter General Milley, stage right...

See you on the flip side...

 

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CHINA: SEE YOU ON THE FAR SIDE…

...of the Moon, that is.

That's right. That mission of China to land a probe on the far side of the Moon that I have blogged about before, is finally under way according to these stories shared by Mr. E.J. and Mr. H.B.:

Meet you on the dark side of the moon: China launches historic lunar exploration mission

China launches rover for first far side of the moon landing

As one might imagine, this has the high octane speculation part of my mind pondering all sorts of weird "coincidences," but before we get to that, there are a few details from both stories to note. First, there's this from the RT article:

Friday’s successful launch sent China’s Chang'e-4 into orbit, scheduled to make an unprecedented touch down on the dark side of the moon in January of next year, Chinese state media reports. The rover will land in the 3.9 billion year old “Von Kármán” crater, where it will take measurements and conduct experiments with the potential to uncover new information about the moon's formation and history.

The Von Karman crater is in the southern hemisphere on the Moon's far side, close to the southern pole of the Moon, which may or may not be significant, but we'll get back to that:

The Moon's Farside Von Kármán Crater

As the phys.org version of the story notes, should China's Chang-e 4 lander succeed, it will be the first time anyone has landed a probe on the far side of the Moon. The problem is of course that the lander will need to communicate with Earth, and the only way to do this is to place a relay satellite in orbit around the Moon, and this China has already done:

A major challenge for such a mission is communicating with the robotic lander: as the far side of the moon always points away from earth, there is no direct "line of sight" for signals.

As a solution, China in May blasted the Queqiao ("Magpie Bridge") satellite into the moon's orbit, positioning it so that it can relay data and commands between the lander and earth.

Adding to the difficulties, Chang'e-4 is being sent to the Aitken Basin in the lunar south pole region—known for its craggy and complex terrain—state media has said.

Again, it is to be noted that the lander will land toward the southern polar region, and as this article also notes the Chang-e 4 will be followed up by another lander which will collect samples and return them to the Earth.

It's this fascination with the south polar region of the Moon that has me intrigued. Already it is thought that the southern polar region is a good bet for the presence of water in the form of ice, deep in craters or perhaps even subsurface, and China has already expressed an interest in the region for a potential base.
But there's some things that intrigue about this story, not the least of which is the relay satellite China has placed in orbit around the Moon. Little is stated in either article about the expected "shelf life" of this satellite, but I rather suspect, given China's space ambitions and the expense and delicacy of placing a satellite in orbit, that it's meant to be a long-term "investment."
It's the south polar region itself, however, that really intrigues me. A few years ago NASA made a big hullaballoo about its L-CROSS satellite mission to crash a probe into the lunar surface and observe the ejecta. The story was it was looking for evidence of water which it would be able to detect by spectography of the ejecta. The run up to the mission was that everyone would be able to see the crash and explosion from Earth, so more than a few eyes were turned skyward for "the big event," which, when it happened, appeared to be a big nothing burger. But the nothing burger may have been an even bigger event than the originally hyped explosion, for Mr. Richard Hoagland made a strong argument that the reason there was no gigantic explosion was that the L-CROSS crash landing might have penetrated a hollow area (See NASA's Smoking Gun: Part II LCROSS' (and LRO's) Secret NASA Mission to the Moon ....) . One of the more interesting features Mr. Hoagland stressed in his analysis of the L-CROSS "nothing burger" was the presence of numerous rectilinear features near the impact zone which suggested artificiality and structure. In more "out there" analyses, speculation ramped-up, too, over the name "L-CROSS" itself, for it was argued that four "L's" in the shape of a "cross" makes (here it comes) a swastika.
In other words, something caught NASA's eye in the southern polar regions of Luna, and whatever it was, it may have had to be "taken out." Speculation? To be sure, but then came the news that India wanted to take a look "down there" as well, with it's Chandrayaan 2 lander, remember? (See INDIA’S CHANDRAYAAN 2 TO LAND AT LUNAR SOUTH POLE). And what a flood of information has been coming out of that lander, right?
So now China wants to land on the far side of the Moon, in the southern polar region.
So - bottom line - what do I make of all of this? Well, public stories notwithstanding, the presence of the L-CROSS mission in the context of this interest in the lunar southern polar region implies to me at least that they're (1) aware of something and they're not telling, and (2) they're looking for something. And isn't it very interesting that China wants to do it by looking on the far side, and as it controls the relay satellite for the probe-to-Earth communications link, that's a mighty convenient thing to have in case you find something, and don't want to tell...
See you on the flip side...

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ENTANGLEMENT BECOMING MORE MACROCOSMIC…

Mr. P.J. spotted this one, and it's a doozie, because scientists have now demonstrated that entanglement - that strange non-local phenomenon where particles "entangled" with information stay coupled with each other, no matter the distance between them - is no longer an affair to be limited simply to individual particles, but to several, or in this case, billions of them:

Synopsis: Quantum Entanglement With 10 Billion Atoms

Before we get to this article, in my most recent book Microcosm and Medium I noted how the physicist Wheeler, one of the "inventors" of the multi-verse theory of quantum mechanics, was fascinated by the question of whether or not the observer principle of quantum mechanics was operative at a much more macrocosmic level, not just at the level of particles, but in the larger universe; he was spurred to this question by a consideration of group observers, and whether they could, so to speak, bend the fabric of reality by an agreed-upon group intention. The implications of his speculations are such that the idea of entanglement of information between two particles could be extended to whole systems.

With that idea of "whole systems" in mind, ponder these two paragraphs from the above story at phys.org:

While certain quantum behaviors are currently limited to atomic systems, researchers keep searching for hints of quantum physics in more massive objects. Now Simon Gröblacher, of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and colleagues have pushed the boundaries of quantum weirdness to macroscopic scales. They demonstrated quantum entanglement and violations of Bell’s inequality—a canonical test of the principle that all influences on a particle are local and that particle states exist independently of the observer. They used two mechanical resonators, each containing roughly 10 billion atoms.

In their experiments, the team placed two 10-μm -long resonators, made of strips of silicon, 20 cm apart in separate arms of an optical interferometer. A laser pulse shot through a beam splitter mechanically excited one of the two resonators, but there was no way to tell which one. The excited resonator emitted a photon, which passed through a second beam splitter and registered at one of two detectors. The emission of this photon signaled entanglement of the mechanical states of the two resonators. A second laser pulse verified the entanglement by converting the excited resonator’s excitation into a second photon, which was also recorded by the detectors. (Emphasis added)

Let that one sink in for a moment: the experiment involved the entanglement not of two particles, but two whole mechanical resonators, two systems of a much more macrocosmic scale, consisting of billions of atoms. With a little "tweaking" such a system could be used to create networks of entangled resonators - think of it like a complex hyper-dimensional artificial set of neurons - which would be beneficial for quantum computing:

The team hopes to test quantum mechanics on an even larger scale by creating more complex quantum states of optomechanical systems. Also, by improving the lifetime of the mechanical excitations of the resonators—currently limited to just a few microseconds—the team says that this setup could operate as a memory node in a quantum network.

Add some nano-technology engineering of the materials of such resonators themselves to improve (presumably) the efficiency of the entanglement of such resonators or their life-time of operability, and you get the idea. Nano-engineering, in other words, is the key to "creating more complex quantum states" of such "optomechanical systems."

Now let's walk off the end of the twig of high octane speculation and scale the idea up even more: imagine creating such resonators with a regularity of construction on the size, say, of whole buildings (think pyramids, folks), and one has a system of entangled analogue optomehcanical resonators that are, gee whiz, lookie lookie, piezo-electric in nature, and they're spread all over the surface of the planet to boot (and, if some suggestive photographs of our celestial neighbors are any indication, "elsewhere" as well). And if those resonators are coupled oscillators to their home planet(s) and other bodies as well, then one might be looking at a gigantic celestial machine...

Kardashev anyone?

See you on the flip side...

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BILLIONS MISSING FROM RUSSIAN SPACE AGENCY

There's an old adage: once is unusual, twice is a coincidence (or perhaps, a "synchronicity") but three or more is a pattern. Well, this story was shared by Catherine Austin Fitts, and Mr. T.M., and as one might imagine, it has my high octane speculation motor running in overdrive. Why? Well, there has been (finally) an acknowledgement in the lamestream media that there is a lot of missing money in the US Federal budget, trillions of dollars' worth of missing money. Now, this is not news for those who've been following Ms. Fitts' regular blogs, interviews and articles over the years. Recently Dr. Mark Scidmore also has chimed in. And of course, let's not forget former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who revealed that about two trillion dollars could not be accounted for, on September 10th, 2001. Of course, that story was quickly forgotten in the aftermath of 9/11. Nor is it news for those who've been following my speculations about hidden systems of finance, obfuscated amounts of gold and so on, over the years in connection to the bearer bonds scandals.

What is different about this story is that this missing money is not dollars, but rubles - 785.5 billion of them - missing from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos:

Russia space agency targeted over "stolen" billions

Now, as the article notes, 785.5 billion rubles is a "mere" 11.9 billion dollars, a veritable drop in the bucket compared to the trillions mentioned by Mr. Rumsfeld, or tracked by Ms. Fitts or Dr. Scidmore. Nonetheless, the article contains some intriguing statements, and more interestingly, does not contain other statements:

The Russian space agency Roscosmos, whose reputation has already been hit by the failure of a Soyuz rocket last month, was on Sunday targeted by the country's audit court over financial irregularities including "stolen" billions.

"We have serious problems with Roscosmos," the Accounts Chamber chairman Alexe� Kudrin said in televised comments.

"Procurement procedures are bad, prices are too high, many projects are unfinished or halted, and funds stand unused for months, and several billion have been lost - stolen - and investigations are ongoing, " the former finance minister added.

A 2017 report by the court signalled(sic) a total of 151 irregularities within the space agency accounts, totalling(sic) 785.5 billion rubles ($11.9 billion), Russian news agency reported.

What's interesting in what it does say is that the explanations given for the lost money have been placed on the usual culprits in the former Communist nation: bad procurement procedures, inflated prices, unused funds, and just plain good old fashioned theft. Well, if "bad procurement procedures" are to blame, then Russia is a bastion of fiscal responsibility and efficiency, compared to Rumsfeld's Pentagon or the federal budgetary "process" in America.

But I find much more interesting the things that are not being said. The impression given in the article is that this loss was just for 2017, yet that is not explicit. We're left with a mere impression. We don't really know how many years the investigation covered, nor are we given any indication of who supposedly stole some of the money, and what percentage of this 785.5 billion rubles was thought to be stolen, not simply missing or gobbled up in "bad procurement procedures".

It's the absence of explanation of that stolen money that intrigues me, and as one might guess, has my high octane speculation running in overdrive. A mere 785.5 billion rubles, or a mere 11.9 billion dollars in missing and/or stolen money might not seem like much in the context of American missing money stories, but as I've pointed out in other contexts, while Russia spends far less than the USA on military and space matters, it gets more bang for the ruble, for one of the consequences of a hidden system of finance, lots of missing money, and reserve currency status, is that prices inflate, corruption dominates the system, and comparative technologies becomes higher priced in the one context that might cost a fraction of that in the other.

So with that somewhat simplistic idea in mind, I turn to my high octane speculation of the day:

Recently in one of this website's members' vidchats, the question was asked if I thought there was a similar hidden financial system, and "breakaway civilization" or "secret space program" in other countries, particularly Russia. My answer was yes, and then the observation was made that one never hears about massive amounts of missing money from Russia, which is why I find this story so interesting. Recently I observed that the amounts of missing money in the US federal budget were now so astronomically huge, that the old explanation of $20,000 toilet seats and $10,000 wrenches and coffee makers were no longer an adequate cover for inflating ledger prices of supplies to cover the diversion of money into classified and deep projects. Thus the possibility emerges that Russia - with its smaller economy - might still be in the era of cooking the books to divert funds into deeper classified projects. And the fact that this is occurring within Roscosmos is suggestive enough that one possibility for that diversion of funds is into classified secret space projects.

See you on the flip side...

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PORTUGAL’S SPACEPORT IN THE AZORES

This story that was shared by Mr. T.M. (who deserves a big thank you for spotting it) really grabbed my attention. Portugal, it seems, has now joined the very small but growing list of countries planning space ports, but this one, in the Azores, has some very unusual features that form the context for today's high octane speculation. Here's the story:

Portugal builds spaceport in the Azores

Here's the part that made my suspicion meter flip all the way into the red zone:

One of the islands of the Azores archipelago, Santa Maria, may soon become a base for launching small satellites, unique in Europe (the spaceport will deal with launching only small satellites, unlike the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana). Currently, companies from eight countries are competing for the right to use the port.

Fourteen enterprises from the US, Russia, Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal have submitted applications for the first stage of Atlantic International Satellite Launch Programme.

...

For example, in July the Portuguese sent a recent study to the agency outlining the reasons for building a spaceport on the Azores. The document mentions that the location of the island of Santa Maria is well suited for launching such objects.

Messina explained: "The island is in the middle of the Atlantic, far from other populated territories, which provides greater security of launches."

Now why did all this make my suspicion meter go into the red zone? From the standpoint of rocket launches, having a base as close to the equator as possible makes some physics sense, as the angular velocity of the Earth can be used to enhance the lift of the rockets. But that's not what the article focuses on. Rather, it focuses on two things: (1) the international nature of the spaceport facility, with corporations and various nations vying for a spot, and (2) the fact that the island is isolated, and can provide "greater security of launches." Given that yesterday I blogged about the possibility of some sort of covert international coordination of the early American and Soviet space programs, this little bit about "security for launches" has me once again entertaining similar suspicions...

... and not just because of the international aspect of the project, but also because of the presumed technology (rockets), versus the possibility that some other, more exotic methods might be envisioned, and that "people" would want to keep such "more exotic methods" far from the prying eyes of the public, especially if such "exotic methods" were part of some international consortium.

And while we're entertaining such high octane speculations, there's another possibility, namely, that such a remote place could also be used, not just for launches, but for "return flights", so to speak...

So, yes, I'm suspicious that we're not being told the whole story here, and part of that suspicion comes from the fact that while this is billed as a Portuguese project, that government appears to be but the cover for this deeper international activity, as it's only putting up a mere five million euros to the project, mere blue chicken feed by space program standards.

 

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ROSCOSMOS: WHEN WE GO TO THE MOON, WE’LL CHECK IF THE AMERICANS ...

Just a short time ago I blogged about Russia's Moon plans, and as a follow-up, Mr. N.P. and Mr. B (and a few others), noticed this curious story: It seems that Mr. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia's Roscosmos, joked to reporters about Russia's plans to verify if the USA actually went to the Moon during the Apollo program, or not. Here's two versions of the story:

Russia's top space official says their mission to the moon will help verify conspiracy theory

Russia will check if Americans really went to the Moon – Roscosmos chief

And here's the Business Insider's (the first link above) version:

The head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency has said that a proposed Russian mission to the moon will be tasked with verifying that the American moon landings were real.

"We have set this objective to fly and verify whether they've been there or not," said Dmitry Rogozin in a video posted Saturday on Twitter.

Rogozin was responding to a question about whether or not NASA actually landed on the moon nearly 50 years ago. He appeared to be joking, as he smirked and shrugged while answering. But conspiracies surrounding NASA's moon missions are common in Russia.

The Soviet Union abandoned its lunar program in the mid-1970s after four experimental moon rockets exploded.

In 2015, a former spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee called for an investigation into NASA moon landings. (Emphasis added)

And here's RT's version (the second link above):

Have the Americans been on the Moon or it’s just a hoax as conspiracy theorists claim? All questions will be answered when the Russian cosmonauts visit the Earth’s satellite, Russia’s space boss, promised.

“We’ve set such a task – to go there and check if they were there or not,” Dmitry Rogozin joked in response to the popular question about the moon exploration. “The Americans say – they’ve been there. We’ll verify that.”

Switching to a more serious tone, he said that no country is currently capable of fulfilling a successful lunar program on its own. Russia (is) expecting to cooperate with the US in exploring the Earth’s satellite, Rogozin said as he visited a Russian spacecraft engine manufacturer in Moscow. (Boldface emphasis added)

Now, if you're like me, you like to read between the lines a bit, especially when it's coming from Russia, and especially when it's coming from the head of its space program, and especially if the head of said Russian space program appears to be joking. Uh huh.... nod nod, wink wink, elbow jab. Now, just for the record, I'm not an Apollo hoaxer, i.e., I'm not one of those who believe we didn't go at all, and that the whole thing was hoaxed on a movie set, in some versions, courtesy of Stanley Kubrick. But on the other hand, I'm not one of those entirely dismissive of the "problems" that the hoaxers have spotted, some of which to my mind are not real problems, and others which honestly are. So I'm one of those who questions certain details in the overall narrative. One of my chiefest problems with the "complete hoax" scenario has always been why the Soviet Union didn't blow the lid off of it right away, which they could easily have done. Why remain silent about it? After all, the Cold War was in full swing, Richard Nixon was in the White House, Leonid Brezhnev was in the Kremlin.

The upshot of it is, when the head of Russia's space program gets asked a question about the Apollo missions, and jokes about Russia finding out for certain whether or not it actually did happen (or, for those of you who are in my position that it happened, but not like we've been told it happened), then I sit up and pay attention, because of course it gets my high octane speculation juices flowing. In this case, I have a few crock pots of various suspicion casseroles simmering as well.

Suspicion One: Rogozin is sending messages, mainly to NASA, but also to "other interested parties." The other interested parties are, of course, all those other nations that have sent probes to, or around, the Moon: China, Japan, India, Europe (aka Germany-France). The problem here is: what's the message? If you know, keep quiet about it, let us be the point men? But as far as NASA goes, Rogozin has already indicated that the Russian mission will be heavily reliant upon robots to do the initial scouting, and preparations, for a human lunar base. Certainly those robots could be landed close to the Apollo sites, and meander on over for a closer look at... what? Nothing? or at some sort of technology that changes the whole narrative (including the possibility of technology that the USA did not bring there, but found there)?

Suspicion Two: After Rogozin had his little "joke," he then goes on, according to the RT article, to state that no one country is now capable of "fulfilling a successful lunar program on its own." Ok, I thought, tell that to China, Japan, and India, which seem to be doing pretty good so far. But then, after his joke, the real bombshell comes with his statement that Russia is "expecting to cooperate with the US in exploring the Earth's satellite." Say what? I thought we were supposed to be mad at each other, and that there were sanctions and all that. The remark is made all the more curious, in that the USA has no heavy lift vehicles capable of lunar missions, and is currently reliant upon private contractors (and Russia) to get anything from "down here" to "up there." So what's going on here? Did President Trump pull a leaf from President Kennedy's playbook, and quietly offer to have a joint lunar mission with Mr. Khrushche....er... I mean... Mr. Putin? Is this another subtle but tacit admission that there may be, and may have been, other technologies besides big bottle rockets in play? Or, conversely, is this another admission that there is a "deep fix in" to keep whatever happened(or didn't happen) with Project Apollo under firm Russo-American wraps?

Suspicion Three: That "deep fix" idea may not sound entirely plausible, until one recalls that curious circumstance that I mentioned back in 2006 in my book The SS Brotherhood of the Bell, namely, that when one looked at a table of Soviet and American lunar probe launches prior to Apollo, the one thing that becomes immediately apparent is the pattern: first the Soviets would launch a few probes, then go quiet. Then the Americans would launch a few probes, then go quiet, as the Soviets took their turn again, and so on. Back in the day, this was presented by American (and Soviet) media as a "space race." The coincidental pattern was just that: a coincidental pattern that resulted from the "race."  In short, we were provided a narrative by which to interpret the data. But turn off the narrative being blocked and rathered by SeeBS News and Walter Concrete and Dan Blather for a moment, and just look at the pattern itself, and there's two basic ways, and not just one, to interpret that pattern: (1) it's a coincidence resulting from the "race," or (2) it's the result of deeper coordination between the two programs. And if we really want to cook this particular suspicion casserole, throw in a little sauce de Alternative Three, where that idea of hidden coordination was first broached in the late 1970s by a major western television outlet: Britain's East Anglia television. That idea may not qualify as a secret space program as such, but it is at least a "secret international coordination of public space programs" that's worth entertaining over a plate of blue chicken wings. As I put it in the book, that hypothesis would have required the presence in both countries of people that could pull off such coordination, and there was only one group of people with such a heavy presence (at least, initially) in both countries' space programs...

Suspicion Four: The Business Insider version of this story adds that the Soviet Union abandoned its manned lunar missions after four of its enormous Saturn-V-sized boosters exploded on their test launches, and that a 2015 investigation on the lunar landings was called for. I've no doubt that such an investigation was probably underway throughout the entire Apollo program, and probably reached a very fevered pitch from Apollo 8 onwards, and that those investigations might have included investigations of the Soviet launch failures, which could very well have been sabotage. So what, exactly, was the 2015 call within Russia for an investigation? More message sending, perhaps, that they were going to reveal the results of those classified KGB studies and analyses under the guise of a new investigation?

The bottom line here, for me at least, is that messages are definitely being sent. The difficulty is, what is the message, and to whom is it being sent?

See you on the flip side...

 

 

 

 

NASA’S AUDIT OF HISTORICAL PROPERTY

Every now and then I get not an article, but a document that someone has found, and today is one of those times, and I simply have to blog about it, because it is, in a word (or two words), a whopper doozie. It was shared by Mr. G.P., and ... well, there's nothing for it but to let you see it:

NASA Office of Inspector General Office of Audits Report No. IG - 19 - 002 A UDIT OF NASA’ S H ISTORIC P ROPERTY

Now, there's a paragraph towards the beginning of this document that leapt out at me, but first, a little context. You might recall a few years ago, Mr. Richard Hoagland broke the story that NASA had actually destroyed some of its Apollo program films and photographs. A NASA insider managed, quite literally, to save some of this. Other films and photos have curiously "gone missing" to the extent that it has fueled justifiable speculations that NASA was "hiding" something by tinkering and tampering with its archival record. With that in mind, consider this paragraph from page three:

NASA’s processes for loaning and disposing of historic personal property have improved over the past 6 decades, but a significant amount of historic personal property has been lost, misplaced, or taken by former employees and contractors due to the Agency’s lack of adequate procedures. Reclaiming this historic property has proven challenging because of the significant effort required to find the property as well as the Agency’s reluctance at times to assert an ownership claim over the items. In addition, past efforts to recover historic personal property have been thwarted by NASA’s poor record keeping and a lack of established processes for timely coordination of recovery efforts. for example, poor record
keeping contributed to the Agency losing possession of a n Apollo 11 lunar collection bag that contained lunar dust particles. In other cases, NASA’s delay or reluctance in asserting ownership of an item has led to missed opportunities to retrieve historical property. For example, a U.S. Air Force historian noticed what he thought was a NASA prototype
Lunar Rover Vehicle in a residential neighborhood in Alabama and reported his sighting to NASA, who then referred the information to the OIG . The OIG contacted the individual in possession of the rover, who expressed interest in returning the vehicle to NASA . The OIG requested NASA assert ownership of the rover and, if appropriate, make plans to accept it
as a donation; however, after waiting more than 4 months for a decision from the Agency , the individual sold the rover to a scrap metal company. NASA officials subsequently offered to buy the rover, but the scrap yard owner refused and, realizing its historical value, sold the vehicle at auction for an undisclosed sum.(Emphasis added)
Now, this may seem the most obvious thing in the world: if one is going to do space exploration, having a thoroughly thought-out archival procedure for identification, and tracking, of "space stuff" would simply seem to be common sense. Yet, the implication of this one paragraph is that in all the meticulous preparation for Apollo and the lead-ups to it - Projects Mercury and Gemini - NASA simply forgot to do so! There simply is no system. At all.
Nothing. Zilch. Nodda.
If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap. No checks, no credit cards, no electronic blips or crypto-currencies. Cash and carry only.
As you might imagine, I have some high octane speculation about this, and it's regarding that statement that things were simply taken by former employees and contractors. That speculation can be stated in the form of a simple question: What if the lack of a system was deliberate? A policy designed to allow the archiving of artifacts privately, and corporately, by not having a policy? I suspect, in other words, that what we might be looking at is the ultimate system of hiding things; I've said it before, and I'll say it again: what better way to keep secrets, than to make them proprietary, to make them "intellectual property" by hiding them in corporations?
Let's crawl out further toward the end of the speculation twig: What if this non-system system was not only deliberate, but a quid pro quo with the very contractors that built all the equipment for those programs, both manned and unmanned? "You build this for us, and we'll give you special and exclusive rights to what is found." Indeed, if you followed the controversy surrounding Malin space science systems and the Mars probes of the 1990s, you'll recall that Michael Malin seemed to occupy a curious position: both as a NASA scientist involving the Mars probe (the Mars Orbiter and camera system) and  the Mars Pathfinder project, and the CEO of a company that designed and built the imaging systems. Indeed, during that episode, it was Malin's dual role that gave him and his corporation a virtual monopoly on what to photograph, and what to share with the public.
The bottom line? If you think getting a straight answer from NASA about what is "out there" is difficult, just wait until the space corporations have complete control. In that respect, perhaps the NASA study is a realization - perhaps to late - that contractors are just that, contractors, and that the government needs to reestablish control over its own space archive. Perhaps, in a sense, the study is an admission that things are being hidden, even from it, and its public space program. It's an admission, perhaps, that an essential component of any secret space program is an archive... a secret one.
See you on the flip side.

INDIA’S LUNAR LANDERS AND CHINA’S ARTIFICIAL MOONS

This short article that was shared by Mr. K.B. is such a whopper doozie that it went right to the top of my "finals folder" for this week's blogs. It's one of those typically curt, but head spinning press releases from India's Defence Research Wing. For those wanting an analogy, think of it as India's version of the Diabolically Apocalyptic Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.(Ok, it may not be exactly DARPA, but you get the idea.) But back to the article:  it's not very long, but it manages to say a lot. And what it manages to say is this:

As India gears up for Chandrayaan 2, China moots artificial moons in space

Now, you might have noticed that Chandrayaan-2 will be India's second satellite mission to the Moon, and its first to incorporate a soft lander and an automated rover. Coincidentally, India is not saying (at least, as far as I know) where it plans to land it nor what its rover will be roving around looking for, but I suspect that we all know. It is India, after all, whose lore contains the occasional "odd little thing" like statements to the effect that "the old Moon broke," and various other tantalizing suggestions. I don't know about you, but I cannot envision the rich Vedic culture of the Ramayana and Mahabharata with all their extraordinarily suggestive references to ancient weapons of mass destruction, flying ships, and so on, not having as a covert component of its space program an element designed to go looking for confirmation of it.

Now, if suddenly the Chandrayaan-2 turns up with tiny holes drilled into it, preventing a proper launch, or proper functioning after launch because "someone" might not want the Indians to find out what they (possibly) want to find out, then that's probably the same "someone" who seems to be drilling holes in Russia's spacecraft and possibly sabotaging its launchers.

But that's not today's high octane speculation. It may seem like it, but it's not.

And it's perfectly clear that India probably is in a space race with China (Japan too), even though it says it's not. Think of it rather like Britain and Germany both denying they were in a battleship race before World War One.

None of that is what really caught my eye. What caught my eye was the fact that the already short article said precious little about Chandrayaan-2 and a great deal about this:

...China, according to reports in the official media, is planning to put man-made moons in spade by 2022.

As per reports in the Chinese media, Beijing has already conceived a man-made moon, which is expected to be realized in 2022. The Science and Technology Daily reported that China has plans for at least three man-made moons, which can reflect sunlight on to the pre-decided areas any time of the day.

Reports quoted Wu Chunfeng, head of Tianfu New District System Science Research Institute in Chengdu... as saying "These three huge mirrors will divide the 360-degree orbital plane, realizing illuminating an area for 24 hours continuously."

He allayed fears of such a technology affecting the natural day-night cycle by saying that the illumination from these mirrors can be controlled. (Emphasis added)

I don't know about you, but gosh, my fears are certainly allayed by this reassurance that the mirrors can be "controlled" and that the "areas" can be "pre-decided."

NOT!

I'm sorry Mr. Wu, but "pre-decided" sounds like a euphemism for "targeted," and the idea of building "controllable" mirrors in space sounds a little too much like that World War Two Nazi fantasy of building a large mirror in space to use sunlight as a weapon... sort of like that experiment we used to do as kids, taking a magnifying glass and focusing the sun's rays to burn holes in leaves and start fires in a "pre-decided area" like... oh, say, California maybe? Or are you planning to melt the ice sheet on Antarctica and have a closer look at all that strange stuff down there? And golly, could "controllable" here be another euphemism for "optical phase conjugation" that is able to focus sunlight and minimize atmospheric dispersion effects? (Sunspot, NM anyone?)

In short, I don't think this has anything to do with providing more "sunlight" for vitamin-d deficient populations, nor with daylight savings time. This isn't a gift.

I fear this is a weapon.

And I suspect, strongly, that India, home of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and their strange reference to ancient exotic weapons (not to mention China's own native tradition of the dreaded "yin-yang mirror"), is entertaining similar thoughts as I.

Quietly, of course...

See you on the flip side...

THE MOUSE ROARS AGAIN…

Mr. S.D. spotted this story(for which a big "thank you"), and I have to warn you now, this story is deliberately following yesterday's story about the Chinese hacking, and the geopolitical consequences following therefrom. The hypothesis that I will be advancing is, of course, all high octane speculation.

That speculation concerns the Mouse that Roared (see https://gizadeathstar.com/2018/02/space-x-launches-military-satellite-grand-duchy-luxembourg/). That's right, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is in the space news again, having previously drawn our attention when Elon Musk's Space X launched a military satellite for the Grand Duchy. And that, I averred last February when I blogged about it, meant that Luxembourg intended to become a "space power" or "space player." The question is why is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg emerging as a "space player"? One can understand France, Germany, China, Russia, India, Japan &c, but Luxembourg? Back in February, I wrote the following about Space X's launch of the satellite, a military surveillance satellite:

My high octane speculation and intuition is that this is a first practical step on the build-out of redundancy into the financial clearing system, but with a unique twist: a surveillance capacity-for-hire comes with it, and this capacity could thus signal that non-territorial actors are being deliberately courted as the "target market" for the capability. Hence, the relationship with Musk's Space X is significant, for it presages more such launches of similar payloads in the future. Indeed, if certain of the satellite's capabilities are "reserved for governments and institions", one wonders exactly what those institutions are: banks, foundations, corporations come to mind, as also more salacious organizations.

In effect, Wibberly's fictitious Cold War scenario of the Mouse that Roared and The Mouse on the Moon is, in a way, becoming reality: Luxembourg means to be a player in the emerging space-based financial, communications, surveillance system.

And that means, more significantly, that Luxembourg will have to develop the means to defend those assets, and that, to my mind, is where those unnamed "institutions" and organizations come in. It will, in short, have to learn how to roar, and to acquire the means to do so.

In that context, consider now the article offered by Mr. S.D.:

Three American space startups to establish offices in Luxembourg

Now consider these details:

Three U.S. companies will set up offices in Luxembourg, the latest sign of an ongoing effort by the small European country to diversify its space economy.

The government of Luxembourg announced Sept. 27 that CubeRover, Hydrosat and Made In Space will all establish facilities in the country, in many cases working with local universities and companies. The work those companies do in Luxembourg will range from development of robotic arms to small planetary rovers.

“The success of our development strategy for the space sector, including the recent launch of the Luxembourg Space Agency, is confirmed once more with the settlement in Luxembourg of three space companies that plan to employ up to 85 people in the Grand-Duchy by 2023,” said Étienne Schneider, deputy prime minister and minister of the economy of the Luxembourg government and the driving force for the country’s recent space initiatives.

The largest agreement, in terms of jobs created, goes to Made In Space. That company, best known for additive manufacturing work on the International Space Station, plans to work on a low-cost modular robotic arm for in-space applications, and will create up to 50 jobs in the country.

“While we believe this product will reduce satellite makers’ barriers to greater capability on orbit, we also see our robotic arms as being integral to constructing space gateways, building lunar habitats and assisting in the in-space construction of future space stations,” said Jason Dunn, the founder of Made In Space, in a statement.

The company said that doing that work in Luxembourg allows it to “effectively partner” with European aerospace companies, although the company did not identify any specific partners.

It's that last sentence, I suspect, that gives away Luxembourg's - and Europe's - game, and that, of course, brings us to today's trademark High Octane Speculation. Luring American companies to the Grand Duchy could, of course, be a way of tying Europe's space industry to the USA in "another tie that binds." But I think not. Consider the recent news: the German finance minister Heiko Maas floated a trial balloon for Europe to create a financial clearing system as an alternative to the American-dominated SWIFT system. This was expanded into a Special Purpose mechanism to continue trade with Iran and by-pass US sanctions. Additionally, lest we forget, the Grand Duchy is Europe's other great international banking center/tax haven, conveniently located between Belgium, France, and Germany. So we have a banking center/tax haven that wants to be a major player in space, via the corporations it lures to Europe and does business with.

Then there's the other story that emerged this week, in my opinion a story that will have massive long-term geopolitical implications, that story being the Chinese hacking of many systems in the West via small computer chips placed in systems sold around the world. That's not just a national security issue for the USA, it's a security issue for Europe and all its component powers and smaller nations with technological capacity and engineering infrastructure (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, &c). All that carefully built-up space technology infrastructure that the European Space Agency has constructed over the past decades is at risk if it is being built on chips from China. So is the military equipment, the railroads, you name it.

In short, Europe needs its own domestic "Silicon Valley," and I strongly suspect that what we're watching is the careful positioning of the Grand Duchy to become just that. I realize that this sounds insane and far-fetched. But again, consider its location, dead center between Europe's two largest economies and most technologically advanced nations.

What we may be watching, in other words, is the creation of a kind of "space version" of the old Republic of Venice: a banking center, fronting for transnational financial and corporate interests, collateralizing loans with trade it conducts all over the Mediterranean and Europe, and which had the money muscle to found a state arsenal and buy the technology to protect its interests with short, sudden, sharp applications of military force if need be; it was The Godfather, with cannons.

Luxembourg is already a banking center, and has now lured companies specializing in robots and space to its borders. Next, if my prediction proves to be correct, will be the computer tech industry itself. It may not happen soon, but given the Chinese hacking story, my bet is it will happen eventually.

See you on the flip side...

 

A WARP DRIVE PAPER

I've occasionally blogged over the years about the USA's interest and desire to achieve some sort of warp drive capability within the next century. One of the advantages of a site such as this, where the subject of blogs is in part community-driven, is that people always send such interesting and important information, and that's the case today with this paper that Mr. A.K. found and sent along, for which we all, I think, are profoundly grateful. The paper purports to be an unclassified report on the subject of warp drives for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA):

https://info.publicintelligence.net/DIA-WarpDrives.pdf

Now, there are a number of very intriguing things about this paper, at least, to my mind, for it clarifies a number of details.

In my previous reviews of this whole project, I've pointed out two crucial pivots in the history of the interest in warp capabilities on the part of the American defense and aerospace establishment: (1) the original paper on space warping by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, and (2) the metric modification of that paper undertaken by NASA's Dr. Harold "Sonny" White. Basically, in Alcubierre's paper, the amount of energy needed to achieve a warp capability would be a mass-energy conversion factor of the size of the planet Jupiter, a capability, obviously, far beyond the reach of humans for any foreseeable future. In Dr. White's reworking of this, the mass-energy conversion factor was much smaller, and within the possible bonds of human capability. It was Dr. White's reworking that spurred the practical interest in the subject on the part of the aerospace and defense establishments.

But there may have been something entirely different percolating in the background of this interest, and the current paper hints at it on page vi:

Until гecently, the warp drive was а concept reseгved for science fiction. However, а 1994 рарег Ьу Miguel AlcuЬierre placed the idea on а more solid theoretical footing. Alcubierre (Reference 1) demonstrated that а specific Lorentzian manifold could Ье chosen that exhibited bubЬle-like featuгes reminiscent of the warp drive from the popular Star Trek television series, The ЬuЬЫе allowed for the surrounding spacetime to move at FTL speeds, and the inhaЬitants of the ЬuЬЫе would feel no acceleration effects because spacetime
itself would Ье in motion instead of the spacecraft and its inhabltants. А number of papers have emerged in recent years that buПd on this original idea. However, these papers do not typically address how one might actually create the necessary spacetime ЬuЬЫе. Our own research directly addresses this question from а new and unique perspective and introduces а novel  paradigm shift in the field of warp drive study (Reference 2). More importantly, our work approaches the physics of warp drive from the perspective of quantum f1eld theory; th1s diverges from the more trad1t1onal approach to wаrp dгives, which utilizes the physics of general relativity. One of the improvements the model introduces is а dramatic reduction in the overall energy required to create such а phenomenon. The roadmap to this new idea was the observation that spacetime is currently known to Ье in а state of accelerated expansion, as demonstrated Ьу the redshifting of galaxies, and the belief ,that if the mechanism for this expansion could Ье understood, then it might ultimately Ье controlled.
In other words, the focus is on dark matter, but then there was something that really grabbed me, and I hope it grabs the "physics-minded" reader out there as much as it did me; here is the summary of the paper:
Section 4 introduces the Casimir energy, which, under certain conditions, may Ье the phenomenon that physically generates the cosmological constant. Section 5 discusses higher dimensiqns in physics and their importance in the context of Casimir energy calculation. Section 6 introduces the formulas that demonstrate that the Casimir energies in higheг dimensions may in fact bе the dark energy that is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Section 7 relates all the previous concepts together and introduces the novel warp drive paгadigm. Section 8 performs original calculations of the energy required to сгеаtе а superluminal warp drive. Finally, the paper speculates about the technological progress that would Ье necessary to turn this model into а reality. (Emphasis added)
Now, for those who don't know what the Casimir Effect is, this is a famous experiment performed by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir in 1948. Two neutrally charged, but conductive, plates were suspended in a vacuum. Regardless of the absence of charge or other forces, the plates moved toward each other, and eventually, touched. This phenomenon Casimir explained in terms of the zero point energy, and this explanation has been popular with some physicists, and indeed is the explanation favored by the authors of the DIA paper:
In its most basic form, the Casimir Effect it is realized through the interaction of а pair of neutral parallel conducting plates (with separation distance d). The presence of the
plates modifies the quantum vacuum, and this modification causes the plates to be pulled toward each other .... This is а profound result in the sense that the origin of this force cannot bе traced back to one of the four fuпdamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and the two nuclear forces), but is а force that is entirely due to а modification of the quantum vacuum. '
In other words, the plates themselves alter the local vacuum geometry, creating the result. Or to put it differently:
The quantum modes оп the iпterior region of the plates .are restricted, and there is а pressure difference when compared to the quantum vacuum on the exterior region of the plates.
It is this pressure difference that causes the plates to attract.
Or to put it differently, the plates cause a modification in the local structure of spacetime; they warp it. The authors conclude, that this Casimir effect may be the way to manipulate the scale of a higher dimension, and depending on the size of that dimension, it would require now more, now less, to achieve. In effect, they are arguing that the Casimir effect is "dark energy." The paper ends with this summary:
Although а practical warp drive could Ье many years away from realization, there are а number of technological developments that may, in fact, bе necessary in order to allow prototype experiments to begin. First; а more complete understanding of dark energy is of paramount importance. As mentioned earlier, dark energy contributes approximately 70 percent of the overall energy density of the universe, and is responsible for the expansion of space. As one acquires deeper understanding of this energy, attempts to generate dark energy in the !аЬ would п о doubt Ье а critical compoлent to а working warp drive. Other crucial developments include determining whether extra dimension are, in fact, real. Once it his has bееп determined with absolute certaiпty, the role of extra dimensions апd their relationship with the universe that we а ге more familiar with will become а more serious focus of scientific research and atteпtion. As has been discussed, the stabllization of the extra dimensions and the accelerated expansion of the remaiпing four dimensions сап bе realized via the Casimir energy. The acceleration of the 3-dimensioпal subspace is а naturally occurring phenomeпon which occurs when the extra dimensions are stabilized. (Emphasis added)
That mention of the quest to determine if extra spatial dimensions exist sort of puts the admissions of CERN in recent years that it is, in fact, looking for them, into a very unique context, and it tends to confirm my suspicions that there are hidden military aspects to the project.
In any case, this paper is unique, and its declassification suggests one of two things to my mind: (1) either preliminary studies of the authors' main thesis of a relationship between the Casimir Effect and Dark Matter were unfruitful, or disproved the hypothesis, or (2) preliminary studies tended to confirm the hypothesis, and perhaps so dramatically that the results may have far exceeded expectations, and hence, the paper is already "outmoded."
Either way, it is a very unique glimpse into the type of thinking going on in the black projects world, and for that alone, it's a gem.
See you on the flip side...

JAPAN JUST TOOK THE NEXT STEP TO ASTEROID MINING

We've been hearing a lot in recent years about the possibility of mining the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. In fact, as I've pointed out on various occasions, the amount of derivatives on the books - various estimates give between  14 and 17 quadrillion dollars, an amount that's a multiple of the entire global domestic product. That's $14,000,000,000,000,000.00 folks. At the rate that Mr. Globaloney invents "financial instruments" to create paper profits, we'll soon have to start writing our checks with exponential notations just to accommodate all those zeros. Seriously though, it intrigues me how, after the 2008 financial crisis, the derivatives problem was mentioned, and then just dropped right off the radar. Have you noticed the various financial advisory sites don't even mention them?

There may be a reason for that. Back in 2014 at the San Mateo Secret Space Program conference I offered the hypothesis that there was a connection between all the "resources" that were "out there," and the possibility that they had already been collateralized in a "secret system of finance." A few years later, estimates about the monetary of certain asteroids began to be circulated in various articles about space mining, and low and behold, one asteroid's total value was estimated to be about - here it comes - sixteen quadrillion dollars. In other words, grabbing those asteroids was a nifty way to rebalance those books and wipe out all that bad paper.

The trouble is, of course, one has to go out and get it. One has to place actual machinery on an actual asteroid, dig it up, and bring it home.

Many people noticed this story and shared it, and it's in the context of space mining and those systems of finance that I believe it should be read:

Japan space robots start asteroid survey

A pair of robot rovers have landed on an asteroid and begun a survey, Japan's space agency said Saturday, as it conducts a mission aiming to shed light on the origins of the solar system.

The mission marks the world's first moving, robotic observation of an asteroid , according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The round, cookie tin-shaped robots successfully reached the Ryugu asteroid a day after they were released from the Hayabusa2 probe, the agency said.

"Each of the rovers is operating normally and has started surveying Ryugu's surface," JAXA said in a statement.

Taking advantage of the asteroid's low gravity, the rovers will jump around on the surface—soaring as high as 15 metres (49 feet) and staying there for as long as 15 minutes—to survey the asteroid's physical features.

"I am so proud that we have established a new method of space exploration for small celestial bodies," said JAXA project manager Yuichi Tsuda.

In other words, Japan has now taken the next necessary step in the technology and capability tree toward the practical use of space resources; in fact, it has taken two steps: (1) perfecting and demonstrating the capability to land a craft on a low-gravity celestial body, and (2) surveying it.

There is of course a wrinkle here: I've been saying all along that chemical rockets are simply not adequate to any sustained human presence in deep space, much less for mining. And the Japanese probes, of course, used rockets to get their probes to the asteroid. But this, in the final analysis, is not a problem: even more exotic methods of propulsion would still require a great deal of engineering finesse and capability to land on an asteroid.
Japan just took that step, and it's a major step with huge implications for the long term development of space.
And that means something else folks: Japan is a player.
See you on the flip side...