Congratulations to Yuri Gargarin’s family and friends, and the Russians for their magnificent achievement on April 12, 1961, when Gargarin (1934 -1968) became the first human to venture beyond Earth’s armosphere into outer space.

Cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin was the first human to go into space, and so began the Modern Age in the early 1960s.
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It’s hard to overstate its significance. The Wall Street Journal (4/12/11) called it

the start of the modern age … that astonished the world.

In the framework of 21stCenturyWaves.com, this transformative event is a spectacular slam dunk: It kicked off the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window in grand style. Indeed, its singular importance and precise timing was one of the key factors that initially suggested to us the existence of Maslow Windows.

As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window — by analogy with Gargarin’s start of the “Modern Age” almost one long wave ago, and similar rhythmic, twice-per-century epochal events over the last 200+ years — we expect to enter a new Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology at least comparable to the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

In addition to a Grand Alliance for Space , the new Space Age may also feature a commercial race to space!

For example, Clara Moskowitz (Space.com, 4/11/11) suggests that space tourism may be the ticket.

Fifty years after the Soviet Union beat the United States to send the first human into space, a new space race is heating up. This time, the players are not nations — rather, they’re commercial companies that aim to send the first paying passengers to space on private spaceships.

In an impressive demonstration of early ebullience, George Whitesides of British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic , agrees that we’re approaching a new Golden Age.

I really believe that we’re at the edge of an extraordinary period of innovation which will radically change our world.

For $200 K per person you can join over 400 others who have reserved their suborbital adventure into space (about 100 km up). Virgin Galactic says regular tourist launches will begin in 2012; Branson and his family intend to be on the first one.

If you’d like a career flying tourists to the edge of space as a Pilot – Astronaut during the new Space Age, Branson is hiring right now.

Just finished watching the last episode of The Kennedys on REELZ Channel. It’s an 8-part miniseries that focuses mainly on political and military events related to John F. Kennedy’s presidency, and JFK’s and Robert’s relationships with their father and families.

President John F. Kennedy (right, in 1963 at Cape Canaveral, FL) is the ebullient model for a 21st century “space president” — in 2012 or 2016 — who will lead the U.S. and the world into the large-scale utilization and colonization of space.
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I liked the miniseries.

Although it had little directly to do with space — e.g., there is a fleeting image of an Atlas missile lifting off during the credits (!) — the historical insights provided into related events (e.g., Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis) and the Kennedy’s personal challenges are compelling, although not particularly revealing if you know their family history.

The authors of “Camelot” — the fondly remembered zeitgeist of the 1960s — the Kennedy’s have been called America’s “Royal Family” as well as the “Beatles of the political arena”. And although JFK’s presidency lasted only 1000 days, his legacy has influenced generations.

Here at 21stCenturyWaves.com we’re huge admirers of JFK for his visionary leadership of the Apollo program during the 1960s Space Age. In the context of human exploration, JFK is truly the mid-20th century equivalent of Thomas Jefferson (for Lewis and Clark), and in terms of technology, he’s nothing less than the Theodore Roosevelt (for the Panama Canal) of his generation.

But the question is: Who will be the new JFK — the 21st century “Space President” who will lead global expansion into the cosmos? Long wave timing suggests this individual will be elected either in 2012 or 2016 so he or she should be visible now.

In late 2008, because of her close family association with JFK and his legacy, contributing editor Carol Lane and I suggested Caroline Kennedy might be perfect. Her political timing would have worked too, but she decided not to run for Hillary’s Senate seat.

Earlier in 2008, managing editor Rachel Nishimura and I speculated that — due to his charisma and youth — Barack Obama might be the next JFK-style Space President. But because of the economy and Obama’s space policy, that seems increasingly unlikely — although it still is possible.

Over the last 200+ years, one thing becomes clear,

As we approach a Maslow Window (such as the one expected in 2015), the leader who can best manifest prosperity and model ebullience wins. In the early 1800s it was Jefferson, in the mid-1840s it was James Polk (of all people), in the early 20th century it was Theodore Roosevelt, and in the 1960s John F. Kennedy. It appears that long-term economic circumstances do more to determine our leaders than the reverse.

History shows that someone who strongly “models ebullience” and “manifests prosperity” will soon emerge on the political scene. For example, take Donald Trump; his business success and financial resources are reminiscent of JFK’s father (e.g., both are billionaires in 2011 dollars), and Trump’s charisma and media presence are obvious.

However unlike JFK in 1960, Trump has no political or military experience. Whether or not Trump can achieve political support for 2012, it’s likely that someone with his ebullient characteristics will lead the U.S. and the world into the next Space Age.

The Drake Equation was humanity’s first serious attempt to think systematically about advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our Galaxy. Devised by Cornell astronomer Frank Drake during the early 1960s Apollo Maslow Window, it was his ebullient goal to estimate their number and use radio telescopes to achieve contact.

Will interstellar probes, such as the one discovered on the Moon in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” ever really be found?
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The number (N) of high-tech (e.g., communicative) civilizations in our Galaxy is traditionally estimated by considering 7 factors requiring stellar, planetary, biological, social, and technological information.

In 1961, Drake had good guesses about the astronomical factors, but little else. His surprisingly conservative estimate for N was 10 — hardly significant motivation for a radio search for ETs in a galaxy 100,000 light years across. But Carl Sagan made up for it; by 1974 his estimate for N was one million!

Today there are new data and ideas that illuminate the 3 biggest lingering mysteries involving N: 1) the abundance of Earth-like planets, 2) the origin of life and intelligence, and 3) the typical lifetime of high-tech civilizations.

This new information makes N seem more consistent with the Rare Earth Hypothesis of Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee (University of Washington).

Not only intelligent life, but even the simplest of animal life, is exceedingly rare in our galaxy and in the Universe … (However) life in the form of microbes or their equivalents is very common…

Earth-like Planets
Two JPL scientists recently calculated that only about 2% of Sun-like stars have Earth-analog planets. The first four months of data on planet transits of 153,000 FGK stars, as observed by the NASA Kepler spacecraft, indicate that Earths are “relatively scarce.” (See: “Latest Data from NASA’s Kepler Mission Suggests Earths are ‘Relatively Scarce’.”)

High Intelligence
Andrew Watson’s 2008 Astrobiology paper expands the anthopic model of Carter (1983) which assumed that an unknown number n of “critical steps” affect the timing and development of complex life and intelligence; the critical steps are

… defined as being intrinsically unlikely to occur in the time available.

Watson’s best guess is n=4 — i.e., appearance of prokaryotes, eukaryotes, cell differentiation, and homo sapiens — and that each event is separated by about 1 Gyr. If the probability for each step to occur either at or before the observed time (on Earth) is ~0.1, the cumulative probability of high intelligence developing on an Earth-like planet would be < 0.0001. This is consistent with Lineweaver and Davis (2002) who estimated that 13% of Earthilke planets older than 1 Gyr will experience biogenesis, based on the rapid appearance of life on Earth. The probability of 10(-4) seems optimistic considering biologist Ernst Mayr’s 1995 comment.

There have been perhaps as many as 50 billion species since the origin of life. Only one of these achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization.

Longevity of High-Tech Civilizations
Princeton astrophysicist Richard Gott’s well-known and hotly-debated Copernican formula — aka the “Doomsday Argument” — was originally published in Nature in 1993. According to the New York Times (7/17/2007; J. Tierney) Gott has successfully used his technique to forecast the longevity of “Broadway plays, newspapers, dogs, … the tenure of hundreds of political leaders around the world.”.

In 2006 Gott’s approach received a vote of confidence from philosophers Bradley Monton and Brian Kierland in The Philosophical Quarterly who concluded that Gott’s technique is Bayesian and is a “useful tool for difficult situations” including those where little empirical data exists.

Gott can predict the future using only one piece of information: how long something has existed up to now. And he needs to be assured that there are no observational selection effects; i.e., there is nothing special about your location in time or space (the Copernican Principle). For example, using only the information that Homo sapiens has existed for 200,000 years, Gott predicted at the 95% confidence level that our species’ future duration is “between 1/39 and 39 times 200,000 years,” (5100 yrs and 7.8 Myrs).

A nuclear doomsday has only been possible since 1945 (66 yrs) so, at the 95% confidence level, it is unlikely to arrive in less than 1.7 yrs but most likely by 2574 yrs from now. An even shorter high-tech human civilization duration is suggested by the AI Singularity, described by Kurzweil and others, projected to arrive by 2045; this would give humans a total high-technology lifetime of only around 100 yrs. Note that the nuclear and singularity timeframes are less than the species lower limit, suggesting that our species will continue but possibly not with our nuclear or technological capability (at least under human control).

Estimating a 21st Century Value for N
We’ll use L — the longevity of a high-tech civilization in the Galaxy — as a parameter:
Using the values above, N = 1.4 x 10(-5) x L
(This assumes that the fraction of intelligent civilizations in the Galaxy that develop high technology is 100%.)

Therefore, N as a function of L (high-tech lifetime) is:
1) For the species UL (8 Myr), N = 112 (closest ETs are ~10,000 light years away)
2) For the species LL (205 Kyr), N = 2.8
3) For the Nuclear DD (2640 yr), N = 0.037
4) For the Singularity (100 yr), N = 0.0014

Summary
Initial Kepler results plus the Watson/Carter model of intelligence appear to preclude other intelligent ETs in our Galaxy unless their L’s are in the millions of years. This was attained only by our species upper limit, using Gott’s technique; the closest ETs would be ~10,000 light years away. Other high-tech civilization timescales — species LL, nuclear doomsday, and singularity — are consistent with the Rare Earth Hypothesis.

Jet Propulsion Lab scientists recently released calculations indicating that about 2% of Sun-like stars are expected to have “Earth-analog” planets. Joseph Catanzarite and Michael Shao base their estimate on the first 4 months of data (released February, 2011) on planetary transits of 150,000 FGK stars from observations by NASA’s Kepler mission. This is much lower than previous estimates.

Super-Earths like this one discovered around Gliese 876 probably have active plate tectonics and more volcanism than Earth, but are relatively scarce.
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The authors’ analysis informs planning for future missions that will study nearby Earth-analog planets, and it also highlights an important trend noticed by 21stCenturyWaves.com that is typical of approaches to 1960s-style golden ages of prosperity, exploration, and technology — e.g., the 2015 Maslow Window — over the last century+:

As we ascend toward another crescendo in human achievement — the 2015 Maslow Window … UFOs are being seen in China and around the world, potentially habitable planets are being discovered around nearby stars, and even the Vatican and the Royal Society are openly planning to properly greet intelligent interstellar visitors. One of the most important NASA missions ever flown — the Kepler spacecraft — will accelerate this ebullient trend in 2011.

Although a habitable zone (HZ) refers to the region where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface, the fraction of Sun-like stars with Earth-analog planets is a strong function of the adopted HZ boundaries. Catanzarite and Shao define the scaled semimajor axis (mean planetary distance scaled to the square root of its star’s luminosity relative to the Sun) as between 0.95 AU to 1.37 AU (AU is Astronomical Unit = 1 Earth-Sun distance) from Kasting et al. (1993). Because Kasting et al. did not consider clouds (which can cool interior planets) and CO2 (which can warm distant worlds), the authors also consider the more optimistic scaled HZ boundaries of the Exoplanet Task Force Report (2008): 0.8 AU to 1.6 AU.

In addition to HZ boundaries, the JPL scientists’ Earth Analog region is defined by a scaled planetary radius (i.e., relative to Earth’s radius) from 0.8 to 2. The lower value corresponds to a mass of about 50% of Earth’s; the lower limit for retention of an Oxygen atmosphere. The upper value is adopted by the Kepler scientists and, assuming Earth-like parameters, implies a planet with twice the surface heat flow of Earth and half Earth’s lithospheric thickness. Active plate tectonics and volcanism is expected in these super-Earths.

Catanzarite and Shao fit the Kepler transit data to power laws for both the planet radius and the scaled planet distance; they judge that the power laws are excellent fits to the data for distances from 0.2 AU to 0.5 AU (inside the HZ limits) and planetary radii from 2 to 4 (just larger than the EA range). Using the power laws, the Kepler data set is then extrapolated into the Earth analog region defined above.

After removing probable false detections and correcting for the observational effect that not all planets’ orbit planes are in Kepler’s line of site (to produce an observable transit), the authors obtain their surprisingly low value of 2%, +1.6%/- 1.1%, for the fraction of Sun-like stars with an Earth-analog planet.

Although their estimate will become more accurate when the full 3.5 to 6 year Kepler data set is obtained, the authors comment on its surprising implications for planning future missions that will image and take spectra of Earth-analog planets,

Our result that Earths are relatively scarce means that a substantial effort will be needed to identify suitable target stars prior to these future missions.

Merry Christmas everyone! (You might also enjoy reading last year’s Christmas message.)

Forty-two years ago — on Christmas Eve in 1968 — the first humans arrived in orbit around the Moon.
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The Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders chose to celebrate by reading the first 10 verses of Genesis during their live television broadcast.

Bill Anders
“We are now approaching lunar sunrise and, for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.”

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman

And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

After this world-altering start on the Moon, the fact that we — as a society — chose not to return during the last ~40 years (not since 1972) is impressive testimony to the power of the long economic wave in human affairs — mostly because we were unaware of it. (See: “State of the Wave: Why No One’s Been to the Moon in 40 years — How Soon We’ll Go Again“)

But current global trends indicate the wave has turned. Both long- and short-term indicators point to many future human Christmases at the Moon and beyond as the new international Space Age gains momentum after 2015.

Merry Christmas!

What Makes a Planet “Earth-like”? Are there really billions of Earth-like planets strewn across the Galaxy?
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These are challenging scientific questions, but my real concern here is the pop culture use of the term “Earth-like,” especially by the media and bloggers, and its potential confusing effect on the public.

Late last month an international 10-person group of planet hunters led by Andrew Howard of UC Berkeley announced in Science (Vol. 330, 29 October, 2010) magazine that about 23% of Sun-like stars in our Galaxy probably have “Earth-mass” planets in close orbits (<50 day orbits). And they speculated that Earth-mass planets at 1 AU (one Earth-Sun distance in a 365 day orbit) should be even more abundant.

Because it’s an exciting discovery it got major, well-deserved attention. The headlines included: “Galaxy Rich in Earth-Like Planets” … and CNN says “Galaxy may be full of ‘Earths,’ alien life” … “The galaxy (probably) abounds in Earth-like planets” … and the BBC quotes scientists who assert “there could be a billion Earth-like planets in our own galaxy…

Wow!

While there is reason to believe that planets with some similarities to Earth may exist in the nearby Cosmos, the headlines are — shall we say — misleading.

This is important because, to the public, the two most enticing drivers of human expansion into the Cosmos during the approaching new International Space Age are: 1) Earth-like worlds, and 2) extraterrestrial life, especially with intelligence.

So it’s important to clarify what we know at this point, and most importantly, what is meant by an “Earth-like” planet.

Is One Earth-Mass Enough?
The answer is no. Just having one Earth mass does not make an Earth-like planet, because the Earth is a very complex, only party understood body, as we’ll sketch more below. To Howard et al.’s credit, in their article’s abstract, they begin by speaking of “how common Earth-like planets are” and subsequently refer to “close-in Earth-mass planet(s).” Really two quite different things. And fortunately, the expression “Earth-like” is not used again.

However, it’s not clear how many journalists or casual readers will notice the distinction, because it’s not the point of the article and is not explained.

The previous headlines suggest not many.

Is One Earth Mass at One AU Enough?
Again the answer is probably not, although it should give you surface liquid oceans and plate tectonics.

Ten years ago Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee explained why plate tectonics is essential to habitability in Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. In addition to promoting global “environmental complexity,” subduction-related volcanism recycles CO2 back into the atmosphere maintaining above-freezing surface temperatures so abundant liquid water can exist.

But even plate tectonics probably isn’t enough to guarantee Earth-like.

For example, the Moon acts as an essential gravitational anchor to Earth’s axial tilt. Without our Moon, the axial tilt would experience chaotic swings between 0 and almost 90 degrees — as the other terrestrial planets apparently have — which would cause extreme climate variations.

We owe our present climate stability to an exceptional event: the presence of the Moon.

Climate stability and habitability are also influenced by impact rates throughout Earth’s history, and Jupiter — with its 300+ Earth masses — has played a major role. Recent results of Horner and Jones (International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 9) have confirmed earlier results from the 1990s that Jupiter significantly reduces the Earth impact probability of Oort Cloud comets, although its effects on asteroids and short-period comets appear mixed.

What Can We Realistically Say Now About Earth-Like Planets in the Galaxy?
According to NASA’s numbers, “smaller planets outnumber larger ones.” But their data only goes down to 3 Earth masses; anything smaller than that can’t yet be detected. So they have to do a mass extrapolation, and that’s where the 23% number of Sun-like stars with Earth-mass planets in close orbits (<50 days) comes from. However, their extrapolation is based on a 2008 study of Jupiter-style planets around Sun-like stars that they apply to much smaller Earth-like planets, which they admit “probably differ.”

But Earth-mass planets in close orbits (well inside Mercury) cannot be Earth-like, so we need another extrapolation — this time based on distance. Using the same 2008 study for Jupiter-style planets we can also estimate the occurrence of Earth-mass planets at 1 AU: I get 38% of Sun-like stars with Earth-mass planets at 1 AU, although the fraction could be larger.

While both extrapolations are uncertain, the second one was mentioned only speculatively in the Howard et al. article — although “billions” came out in the media. Caution is also suggested by their admission that planetary formation models predict a “planet desert” in close orbits due to rapid inward migration of Jupiter-size planets and their gravitational interactions with inner planets. While the planet desert is inconsistent with close orbit planets, it may be correct farther out near 1 AU. This is still an area of active research.

A Few Summary Questions:
1) Are there billions of Earth-like planets in our Galaxy where you could live like you do here? Currently, given the complexity of Earth systems, we have no reason to believe that; all we know of is one.

2) Are there billions of Earth-mass planets in close orbits (or at 1 AU) around Sun-like stars in the Galaxy?
To the ebullient planet hunters the answer is ‘Yes’. But this is clearly an opinion that awaits observational confirmation.
and
3) Are lots of Earth-mass (but not Earth-like) worlds, even without complex forms of life, still good news for us? Obviously yes, as we begin the colonization of space during the coming Maslow Window. It’s an ebullient, Star Trek-like vision to imagine numerous, untouched, Earth-mass worlds — some even at the right stellar distance — patiently awaiting us later in this century and beyond.

In reality, large numbers of Earth-mass planets, but only a few truly Earth-like worlds, are what we would expect from Ward and Brownlee’s Rare Earth Hypothesis. And it would explain our preliminary observation that “complex life is uncommon in the Universe.”

Since I planned to be in Sacramento last weekend, I decided to enjoy some of the key historical sites — e.g., of the extraordinary California Gold Rush — associated with the ebullient mid-19th century Maslow Window.

Typical of America’s exceptional mid-19th Century ebullience was the California Gold Rush (1848-1855); gold was first discovered here at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, CA by James Marshall.
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(All images by Bruce Cordell, 2010)

Maslow Windows over the last 200 years are usually preceded by a financial panic and major recession (much like the Panic of 2008 and our current global recession), and the Dr. Livingstone/James Polk Maslow Window (~1847-60) was no exception.

The Panic of 1837 was a monster — in 1960 Nobel winner Milton Friedman compared it to the 1930s Great Depression — but in 6 long years it finally gave way to an early-1840s recovery and boom that triggered the ebullience of “Manifest Destiny.” This Panic/Great Recession/Boom/Maslow Window sequence repeated one long wave later starting with the Panic of 1893 and culminating with perhaps the most ebullient decade in U.S. history: the Peary/Panama/T.Roosevelt Maslow Window.

For more background on Mainfest Destiny please see, “How the West Was Won — The Expansionist Effects of Ebullience,” and on the CA Gold Rush see #1 of “10 Lessons Lewis and Clark Teach Us About the Human Future in Space.”

I’ve written about this period a lot lately because it appears that we began reliving major elements of the 1893-to-1913 chronology two long waves later starting with the Panic of 2008. If this trend continues, as it has repeatedly over the last 200+ years, we should expect a new 1960s-style golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology triggered by a major economic boom, to emerge by 2015.

Shortly after the discovery of gold there, Sutter’s Mill was closed. The flood of 1862 destroyed the structure and the current replica (shown here from the river side) was constructed on the original site in 1967 — fittingly during the ebullient Apollo Maslow Window.

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The image below is not a cannon. It was used during “hydraulicking” to dislodge sediment and gold from rock walls. The jets of water were environmentally destructive. A realistic depiction of this technique is seen in Clint Eastwood’s popular 1985 movie “Pale Rider”.

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The Gold Discovery Museum of the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma has a number of captivating exhibits.

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I was originally headed up 80 to Tahoe to take a peek at the Donner Museum and the famous snow monument, but ran into an electronic sign announcing the need for chains at the summit. Since Hertz had rented me a red Mustang convertable (not my choice!), I was unequipped for the trip so I headed first to Coloma and then back to Sacramento to see Sutter’s Fort.

Proof of the macho Sierra storm was provided by this car’s snowy roof (and many others). It was fleeing westward down the hill Sunday afternoon on highway 50 just west of Placerville.

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The famous, ebullient John Sutter who owned Sutter’s Mill also founded Sutter’s Fort in 1839 (he called it “New Helvetia”) that eventually grew into Sacramento. This interior view was taken looking southeast. I was in front of the Blacksmith Shop (doors on the right) in the West Yard looking toward the fort’s main entrance (near the left edge). Sutter would have been fascinated by the modern Sutter Medical Center in the distance.

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Here’s the Blacksmith Shop. State-of-the-art for its time. In terms of the craftsmen and technologists required to support early 19th century frontier life, the fort was essentially self-contained. It was the first non-native American outpost in the Central Valley. Except for the more benign environment and the native inhabitants, Sutter’s Fort was the 19th century analog to a first lunar base.

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Cannons stationed in the second-floor bastion at the southeast corner made sure that anyone not invited to the party wouldn’t crash it.

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Sutter founded his fort only 2 years after the Panic of 1837 (see above). Relative to the long wave, that’s what we call — bad timing. And although he was the quintessential entrepreneur, Sutter was increasingly plagued by debt. Here we see the Central Building — the only original structure still standing in the rebuilt fort — including the 2nd floor offices of the doctor, clerk, and Sutter himself. It would have provided the last line of defense if necessary.

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It’s clear that everyone at Sutter’s Fort feasted well. This view — from the Clerk’s 2nd floor office — shows the northeast corner of the East Yard. Here are the Bakery and Bakery Storeage areas, and the outdoor Beehive Oven.

This must have been of great interest to the last survivors of the Donner party who were brought here in April, 1848, as the mid-19th century Maslow Window was gaining steam. Sutter’s Fort was near the end of the famed California Trail and welcomed many an ebullient pilgrim who came seeking their fortune in gold, agirculture, etc.

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In this image (pardon the screen) we are peering into Sutter’s 2nd floor business office in the Central Building. This is where Sutter planned his new enterprises, worked with his Clerk to monitor operations and finances, and sadly, watched his fortune dissolve.

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Sutter’s empire was short-lived. According to William Dillinger (The Gold Discovery, 2006), within only a decade of its founding, and …

After the gold discovery, Sutter’s heavily mortgaged fort and lands were overrun by gold-seekers and squatters until he was finally driven to take refuge at his “Hock Farm” on the Feather River.

In the Museum there is a revealing quote from Sutter to the effect that he would have become very rich if the gold discovery had happened only a couple of years later (~1850), but the ensuing chaos caused him to lose almost everything. In effect, if the normal major mid-19th century economic boom had not been temporarily subverted by gold fever, his under-capitalized (i.e., debt-ridden) businesses would have flourished — if his timing had been better.

Sutter’s experience reminds us that the long wave is very formidable — especially when you are unaware of it. Or if you don’t plan for it. This key lesson — gleaned from transformative Maslow Windows over the last 200+ years — still applies in the 21st century to those who aspire to grow with human expansion into the cosmos, when it re-ignites by 2015.

I highly recommend Buzz Aldrin’s recent, compelling book Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (2009). After describing their monumental Moon landing in 1969, Buzz highlights the challenges (depression, alcohol) he faced upon return to Earth, and how he overcame them. Of particular interest is his re-emergence as a major force in NASA space planning in recent times.

Buzz Aldrin’s United Space Vision features Phobos as the key to Mars system colonization by 2025.
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(by C. Wm. House)

The “best scientific mind in space”
That’s what Life magazine once called Buzz, and he proved it again in the 1980s when he re-emerged as one of America’s foremost space visionaries. He initially focused on developing his concept for “cyclers” that travel in repetitive, trolley-like orbits between the Earth and Moon.

In 1982 Buzz attended meetings at the California Space Institute in La Jolla (then led by UCSD chemist Jim Arnold) as well as at General Dynamics in San Diego. Although I joined GD a couple of years later, I assume Buzz’s initial GD adventures involved Ed Bock, who had led a pivotal, 1979 study for NASA on lunar resources for construction in space.

Can Your Lunar Cycler Go to Mars?
A couple of years later Buzz visited legendary, former NASA Administrator Tom Paine in Santa Monica, who counseled him that the Moon …

… will never motivate the American people again. We need something bigger, something beyond the Moon.”

That was of course Mars. And by June, 1985 the Aldrin Mars Cycler was born.

I met Buzz about this time during one of his Friday trips from SAIC down to GD in San Diego. He’d chat with us about how to use cyclers to get to Mars. The stimulating morning meetings were usually followed by even more stimulating lunches at a local Kearny Mesa restaurant.

In July, 1987 the Case for Mars III Conference in Boulder featured Buzz, Tom Paine (the conference general chair), Cornell’s Carl Sagan, and over 400 other scientists and engineers who explored the intriguing potential of going to Mars “together” with the Soviets. CFM III was my second Case for Mars conference and I was involved in the Phobos/Deimos Workshop (chaired by Fred Singer).

We Need a “comprehensive vision, a master plan” for Space
By the 1990s Buzz began advocating an “integrated”, “evolutionary” plan for the human exploration and settlement of space. Although his powerful 2009 book does not mention Phobos, the larger moon of Mars, his current website features a human outpost on Phobos and the use of Mars cyclers as the centerpiece of his long-term strategy for the exploration and colonization of Mars.

Recently I had the pleasure of lunch with Buzz in Westwood, not far from UCLA where I had been a graduate student. He explained his current plans for a “think tank” on space futures as well as his new Phobos/Mars initiative.

The Smart, Safe Road to Mars Goes Through Phobos
Buzz’ exciting “United Space Vision” (USV) is a “comprehensive step-by-step plan for America’s future in space, for mankind’s permanent footprint on Mars.” It features establishment of a manned outpost on Phobos as the key step toward early Mars colonization for many of the same reasons I identified in my recent Space News commentary.

According to Buzz,

To reach Mars, we should use comets, asteroids and Mars’s moon Phobos as intermediate destinations … For these long-duration missions, we need an entirely new spacecraft that I call the Exploration Module, or XM … the XM would contain the radiation shields, artificial gravity and food-production and recycling facilities necessary for a spaceflight of up to three years. Once launched, it would remain in space. The XM would carry attached landers designed for Phobos or Mars and an Orion capsule for astronauts returning to Earth.

Although the Moon is deemphasized in his plan, Buzz envisions missions to comet Wirtanen in 2018, to asteroid Apophis in 2021, and to comet Hartley 3 in 2023 — all prior to the first manned mission to Phobos in 2025. Because the 2015 Maslow Window is likely to close by 2025 or before, I suggested to Buzz that it would be prudent to accelerate the schedule. For example, postponing one (or both) of the comet missions would enhance Mars program viability. On the other hand, Apophis would provide some practice for the very low-g, manned operations that would be required near Phobos.

Are Maslow Windows Fatal?
Although the momumental first manned lunar landing was still 3 years in the future, by 1966 — because of Vietnam — the Apollo Moon program’s days were already numbered. Is it possible to survive closure of a Maslow Window?

This will require: 1) recognition of the Maslow Window challenge, 2) a manned outpost in deep space (i.e., beyond Earth orbit), and 3) program continuity as far beyond 2025 as possible.

One of the important strengths of Buzz’ USV is that it possesses all these attributes, including impressive program milestones culminating in humans actually on the Mars surface itself by 2035. This is the type of bold program that can survive the historically likely crash — in the early-to-mid- 2020s — of the 2015 Maslow Window.

With apologies to Lydia Maria Child (see post title above) — Happy Thanksgiving!

When I was with General Dynamics, Space Systems Division in San Diego studying manned Mars missions for NASA — e.g., see “The Challenge of Mars” — I often thought about the option of becoming a permanent Mars resident, and knew it would appeal to many people.

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Where would you rather live: the Ocean World or the Red Planet? Mars is growing in popularity.
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Professors Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State Univ) and Paul Davies (Arizona State Univ) have recently advocated one-way manned Mars missions on cost and political grounds as a way to jumpstart the colonization of Mars (Journal of Cosmology, Oct-Nov, 2010). This is an admirable goal, but before I get into the details of their vision, I want to explore its real significance.

Mars Colonization Ascends into Pop Culture
I first became aware of their article through the Chronicle of Higher Education (10/22/10; D. Troop), which was a big surprise. The Chronicle is more likely to feature trends in education than the latest thinking in astronautics, which confirmed my suspicion that Mars colonization is again becoming a hot topic, just like it was one long wave ago in the 1960s; in fact it is becoming part of popular culture.

A New International Space Age by 2015
This, of course, is what we would expect as we approach another 1960s-style transformative decade — the 2015 Maslow Window. It is one of several key indicators that point to a new international Space Age igniting by 2015, including: 1) the financial Panic of 2008 and its great recession, 2) a great economic boom by 2015 and political realignments, 3) macroeconomic trends over the last 200 years, 4) expanding interest in extraterrestrials, new Earth-like planets, and UFOs, 5) birth of the space tourist industry, 6) surging international plans for lunar science and development and interest in human Mars exploration, and many others.

In the next 3 to 5 years — based on macroeconomic data and global trends over the last 200+ years — we will rapidly transtition from a multi-decade period of low self organized criticality (SOC) to an ebullient, fractal (high SOC) international environment (i.e., a Maslow Window) where almost anything is possible. Previous Maslow Windows have featured quantum leaps in human exploration (e.g., Lewis and Clark) and technology and management (e.g., Apollo Moon program), and are usually terminated by a major war (e.g., World War I).

True Space Colonization, Not Suicide Missions
One-way Mars missions — not to be confused with suicide missions — could be viewed as a subconscious longing to escape the current financial, environmental, geopolitical and other stresses of Earth. But they are much more than that as the authors show by emphasizing familiar themes of survival of the human race (from asteroid as well as Earth-based threats) and the human spirit to expand and explore the unknown. “A permanent human presence on Mars would open the way to comparative planetology on a scale unimagined by any former generation.”

Although the initial colonists would have estimated life spans on Mars of only about 20 years, in several decades (after numerous followon missions), the total Mars colony population might reach 150 and form a viable gene pool. The authors compare the risks of initial Mars colonists to “the first white settlers of the North American continent who left Europe with little expectation of return.”

Near-Term Mars Strategy Bypasses the Moon
Schulze-Makuch and Davies are focused on Mars colonization, not the buildup of near-Earth space infrastructure. A Moon base is not required, although a “split-mission” strategy is employed to build up necessities on Mars (e.g. energy sources, agriculture tool kits, rovers) prior to the arrival of the colonists.

No advanced propulsion is needed and the moons of Mars — Phobos and Deimos — are not involved, although the cost, safety, and scientific advantages of an early Phobos outpost for Mars colonization have been recognized for over 20 years.

Mars Colonizaton Requires a New Culture
Perhaps their most interesting insight is that a human colony on Mars

would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of Earth exploration, from Columbus to Amundsen, but which has nowadays been replaced with a culture of safety and political correctness.

In addition to Amundsen, they could have also mentioned the exploration spirit of Lewis and Clark, Dr. Livingstone, and the Apollo crews — that captured international admiration during the extraordinary Maslow Windows of the last 200 years.

It takes a Maslow Window to colonize Mars. And Schulze-Makuch and Davies will get their wish sooner than they think … starting by 2015.

Much like the final scene in the cult favorite Dune (1984) where Paul becomes the Kwisatz Haderach by spectacularly making torrential rain and oceans appear on the desert planet, something similar is happening now with Mars. For the first time, the ancient Martian ocean is being directly revealed.

If you want to go deep on Mars, you go to Leighton crater’s central peak; it shows “one of the best exposures of deep crust seen on Mars.”
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(Courtesy the University of Arizona)

Two planetary scientists — Joseph Michalski (Planetary Science Institute, Tucson and Université Paris Sud, France) and Paul Niles (NASA Johnson Space Center) — recently reported (Nature Geoscience, 10/10/10) strong evidence in the form of carbonate rocks and hydrated silicates conveniently excavated by an ancient asteroid impact.

Once upon a time Mars may have had a major liquid water ocean covering a large fraction of its surface. “Oceanus Borealis” could have filled most of the northern hemisphere basin which is 4-5 km below the mean surface level on Mars. Popular proposals for a Martian ocean go back to the early 1990s and are based on geological evidence for shorelines and abundant steam channels, plus evidence for a warmer, more Earth-like Martian climate almost 4 billion years ago.

Key macroeconomic indicators and global trends — both recent and over the last 200 years — point to a new international Space Age igniting by 2015. As the real, science-based Kwisatz Haderaches reveal growing evidence for Mars having an early major ocean, a thick atmosphere, and even habitable environments, Mars may become viewed gobally as Earth II. It will likely become the prime target for a number of major international exploration initiatives as humans surge into the cosmos.

But the major question has always been: Where are the carbonates? A water ocean would have absorbed CO2 from Mars’ atmosphere and precipitated it in the form of carbonate rocks on the ocean bottom.

As the greenhouse weakened and temperatures plummeted on Mars, its oceans froze and were eventually covered by wind-blown dust, volcanic eruptions, and impact ejecta.

However, the carbonates should still exist in some form at depth. And this is why the Michalski/Niles discovery is so important.

Leighton, a 60 km-wide crater on the western flanks of Syrtis Major volcano, presents a plethora of clues for the interplanetary sleuth. When the ancient impact occurred, the deepest rocks exhumed were exposed at the central peak, and based on terrestrial crater analogs, this bedrock was uplifted about 6 km.

New spectral evidence reveals the central peak material consists of carbonates, clays (kaolinites) and hydrated ferromagnesian silicates. The carbonates are identified by specific spectral fingerprints between 2.35 and 3.9 micrometers, and suggest the presence of calcite or siderite.

Michalski/Niles’ preferred model features carbonate sediments – presumably formed in an ancient ocean underlying a thick CO2 atmosphere – and other local materials that are buried and altered by lavas from Syrtis Major, and eventually by hydrothermal circulations…

Heat from the overlying lavas and/or magmatic sources below would have caused liberation of fluids from … hydrated phases, as well as aqueous CO2 from the carbonates.

This cocktail can produce significant methane and is the probable source for telescopically observed CH4 above Syrtis Major. Although their model provides no direct evidence for Martian life, Michalski/Niles speculate that the hydrothermal hotspots are “a high-priority site for future
exobiological exploration.”

The probable existence of ancient hydrothermal systems on Mars brings to mind an early assessment of Mars’ natural resource potential (i.e., ore bodies) that I presented at the 2nd Case for Mars Conference in July, 1984 at CU in Boulder. I identified several possible mechanisms and regions on Mars that might be capable of mineralization, and concluded that…

Nothing we know about the physics and chemistry of mineralization, ore body tectonics, or the geology of Mars precludes the existence of significant ore bodies on Mars …

Terrestrial hydrothermal, dry-magma, and sedimentary mineral concentration processes have been identified which may have operated on Mars. In particular, mineral-rich Africa seems to share many volcanic and tectonic characteristics with portions of Mars and may be suggestive of the potential mineral wealth of Mars …

Assuming that ground ice is, and has been, widespread, and that magma bodies have produced hydrothermal solutions often during the history of Mars, the Martian mining economy should be booming by the middle of the 21st century.