Horton Posts Library 5

by Jeff Hortonon Posted on

Blog Post #1193

March 2, 2023

Free Flow Thinking: Would you to review a copy of Eternity.

Would you to review a copy of Eternity?      

Greetings!

Just a brief reminder that you have between now and March 20 if you’d like to receive a free copy of Eternity in exchange for a review. Simply follow the link below to Booksprout to get your free copy today!

Time’s running out so get your free review copy today!

I hope you enjoy it!

Jeff W. Horton

Link to Booksprout link: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/107440/eternity

 More links for Eternity:

See the Book Trailer for Eternity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBYkdHUrah8

To Claim a Review Copy on Booksprout:  https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/107440/eternity

Find Eternity:

Goodreads:   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108515604-eternity

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVBZLCWH

Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eternity-jeff-w-horton/1143051737?ean=2940185689967

Audio Book:  https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAEDCXywf_M&pli=1

 

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1192

February 26, 2023

Free Flow Thinking: Can we Reverse the Aging Process in People in 2023?

When I first became interested in aging and the progress scientists have made in finding a way to stop and even reverse the effects of aging several years ago, I suppose I must have found something like five maybe ten articles at the most online about the topic. Today, when performing a similar search immediately came up with twenty-eight pages of links in Google about the topic. It’s a testament to how a once obscure area of scientific study has become mainstream. I can only imagine what family, friends, and acquaintances must have thought when I shared some of what I had learned at the time with them. Most likely wrote it off as nonsense I’d picked-up on the Internet and had been gullible enough to believe, ha, ha.

It’s easy to understand I suppose. After all, some of the claims seemed outlandish at the time. For example, I recall one article at the time centered around an experiment done a decade ago, in which two mice were used as part of an experiment. In the experiment one of the mice was treated while the other was not. The “treated” mouse began looking and behaving as any young mouse would, while the other mouse, still racked with arthritis and other ravages of extreme old age moved slowly and only with great difficulty. Both mice were of the same age.

So as I prepare for the release of my novel, Eternity, which releases on March 20th and deals with this very subject, I thought it a fitting time to check back on progress and where science stands today, in 2023. I’m no scientist, I’m only a layman, but I have learned a few things.

First-We are getting closer and closer to the point where doctors will be able to prescribe a medication specifically to extend either lifespan, healthspan, or both. Healthspan refers to “the period of life spent in good health, free from the chronic diseases and disabilities of aging.”

Second- Scientists are getting closer to understanding how to not only slow or even stop the aging process, they are also getting closer to being able to reverse it.

Third- It seems more and more that two primary factors will drive a “cure to aging.”

    • Eliminating senescent cells (a.k.a. zombie cells) from the body.
    • Manipulation of the Yamanaka factors -As defined by the Salk Institute below:

Scientists know that adding a mixture of four reprogramming molecules—Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and cMyc, also known as “Yamanaka factors”—to cells can reset these epigenetic marks to their original patterns. This approach is how researchers can dial back adult cells, developmentally speaking, into stem cells.

https://www.salk.edu/news-release/cellular-rejuvenation-therapy-safely-reverses-signs-of-aging-in-mice/

Fourth- There are some medications available today that scientists suggest appear to extend the lifespan and healthspan of human beings, namely metformin and rapamycin.

Epigenetics, age-reversal, and the exciting, groundbreaking work being done is fascinating and is very exciting stuff.

Look, I don’t know where this is going much less the implications for those of us of faith, the impact on world resources, etc. I do know, however, that the exciting news over at SpaceX and humanity’s stepping out into the cosmos couldn’t have happened at a much better time.

There is more to come!

Want to know more now? Click on the links below, or search for “age-reversal” on the Internet!

Scientists reversed aging in mice. Is it possible in humans?

By Corrie Pelc on January 24, 2023 — Fact checked by Rita Ponce, P

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/rheumatoid-arthritis-drug-may-help-slow-the-effects-of-aging-on-blood-production

Brief exposure to rapamycin has the same anti-aging effects as lifelong treatment, shows study in fruit flies and mice

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220829112829.htm

Is reverse aging already possible? Drugs that could treat aging might already be on the pharmacy shelves

https://fortune.com/well/2023/02/23/reverse-aging-breakthroughs-in-science/

A Drug to Treat Aging May Not Be a Pipe Dream

New approaches to the biology of senescence can make lives longer and healthier.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aging-disease-biology

The Launch of my Latest Novel, Eternity

Here’s the vital info:

Frontmatter:

David Winters’ intellect is the greatest the modern world has ever known. He snatched fully functioning nanites right off the pages of science-fiction and made them a reality. His latest discovery, however, will make the nanites pale in comparison, and he’s going to give this one to the world. With such a powerful impact on civilization and on the Earth itself, will Winters’ latest discovery lead to an incredible new beginning for humanity, or will it usher in its downfall?

Below are links to Eternity in case you decide you’d like to give it a try. I hope you enjoy it!

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBYkdHUrah8

To Claim a Review Copy: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/107440/eternity

Goodreads: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108515604-eternity

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Starship Watch Update

The wet dress rehearsal was successful. The test-fire of 31 raptor engines was successful. Now, if only SpaceX’s efforts to obtain an FAA license to launch could prove to be just as successful!

Actually, it sounds as if the FAA license is expected to be forthcoming any day now, and that a March launch is still expected to take place. It could happen any day now, so keep a watchful eye out, or you’ll miss a test flight that could appear in history books for centuries to come!

Starship Set to Receive FAA Launch License Soon, Ship-25 @ Masseys, SpaceX Crew-6 Launch, Soyuz MS23

Scientia Plus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0jDO9WN0jA

SpaceX test-fires 31 engines on Starship’s gigantic Super Heavy booster

Spaceflight Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28lw-s32RSQ&t=2s

https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/09/spacex-test-fires-31-engines-on-starships-gigantic-super-heavy-booster/

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1191

February 13, 2023

Free Flow Thinking: The Launch of my Latest Novel, Eternity

Hello Everyone.

I’d like to begin by asking for your indulgence. This post does indeed include some shameless marketing and self-promotion. But in keeping with the theme of my blogs, I think you’ll find it rich and informative as well, In fact, I truly hope that you find my novel itself to be not only a stimulating and entertaining read, but also informative and thought-provoking. After doing my research, I wrote Eternity fully expecting a scientist somewhere to discover a means of turning the aging process “off” in human beings and better yet, reversing the aging process until we are at our healthiest tie of life. I expected this to become a reality in my of my children’s lifetime, and I still believe that will be the case. What concerns me the most, however, is that if we’re not careful it will become the tool of only the wealthiest among us. In either case we best be prepared.

The Launch of my Latest Novel, Eternity

Here’s the vital info:

Blurb:

David Winters’ intellect is the greatest the modern world has ever known. He snatched fully functioning nanites right off the pages of science-fiction and made them a reality. His latest discovery, however, will make the nanites pale in comparison, and he’s going to give this one to the world. With such a powerful impact on civilization and on the Earth itself, will Winters’ latest discovery lead to an incredible new beginning for humanity, or will it usher in its downfall?

Below are links to Eternity in case you decide you’d like to give it a try. I hope you enjoy it!

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBYkdHUrah8

To Claim a Review Copy: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/107440/eternity

Goodreads: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108515604-eternity

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVBZLCWH

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eternity-jeff-w-horton/1143051737?ean=2940185689967

Audio Book: https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAEDCXywf_M&pli=1

I am proud to announce the release of my tenth and most recent novel, Eternity.

The book centers around the discovery of a cure for aging. I wrote Eternity after doing extensive research on the topic of epigenetics, gene-editing, and progress over the last decade on not only towards deepening our understanding of the aging process and even reversing it, but also on vastly improving the quality of life as well.

It’s all really exciting stuff, and it really is where science-fiction meets reality.

I learned about terms like CRISPR-CAS9, senescent cells, & Yamanaka factors. Here are a few definitions to get you started on your epigenetic journey…

CRISPR-CAS9-

What it is: CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

It is a component of bacterial immune systems that can cut DNA, and has been repurposed as a gene editing tool. It acts as a precise pair of molecular scissors that can cut a target DNA sequence, directed by a customizable guide. (See https://www.synthego.com/learn/crispr)

SENESCENT CELLS (a.k.a. Zombie cells)

What it is: They’re called zombie cells, because they are damaged and refuse to die.

As we age, these damaged cells start to accumulate and cause sterile inflammation which can alter metabolism and stem cell function, promoting aging and the conditions that are often associated with it, like Alzheimer’s disease. These zombie cells are formally called, senescent cells. Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School are now helping define just what those cells are and do.

Laura Niedernhofer, PhD, and Paul Robbins, PhD, director and associate director, respectively, for the Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism (iBAM) are contributing authors of, “Cellular Senescence: Defining a Path Forward,” which was published in the leading journal “Cell” on Halloween.

As people age, they accumulate damaged cells. When the cells get to a certain level of damage, they go through an aging process of their own called cellular senescence. When cells become damaged or if they replicate too many times, they undergo a process of irreversible removal from the cell cycle and start releasing inflammatory factors that stimulate the immune response to clear the damaged cells. A younger person’s immune system is healthy and is able to clear the damaged cells, but as people age, they aren’t cleared as effectively and they accumulate causing potential problems.

https://med.umn.edu/news/defining-zombie-cells

YAMANAKA FACTORS-

What it is: The Yamanaka factors (Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, c-Myc) are a group of protein transcription factors that play a vital role in the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells (cells that have the ability to become any cell in the body), often called iPSCs. They control how DNA is copied for translation into other proteins.

These are topics I deal with in the novel, where a very bright scientist makes an amazing discovery, how to stop the aging process. Incredibly during my research, I learned of some amazing experiments carried out over the last ten years or so. One such experiment featured a pair of very old mice in the midst of extreme old age, suffering from crippling arthritis’ moving only slowly and with considerable pain. One of the mice had its senescent or “zombie cells removed. Soon after it begins showing traits and characteristics belonging to a much younger mouse.

In yet another experiment various physical attributes of mice being tested showed a remarkable rejuvenation when the mice were given the Yamanaka factors over a period of months

.

Yamanaka factors

https://longevity.technology/yamanaka-factors/

mTOR is a key modulator of ageing and age-related disease

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23325216/

Signs of aging safely reversed in mice

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/immune-aging-and-how-to-combat-it

Yamanaka Factors And Aging

https://hello100.com/yamanaka-factors/

Yamanaka Factors and Partial Cellular Reprogramming

https://www.lifespan.io/topic/yamanaka-factors/

Starship Watch Update

As has been the case with nearly every SpaceX update over the last couple of years, we still don’t know exactly when the orbital flight will be. That said, with the successful wet dress rehearsal behind them, as well as the successful static fire of some 30 raptor engines on the Super Heavy thruster, all SpaceX needs now is the Launch license and green light from the FAA before making history, launching the world’s largest rocket into space.

It could happen any day now, so keep a watchful eye out!

SpaceX test-fires 31 engines on Starship’s gigantic Super Heavy booster

Test Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28lw-s32RSQ&t=2s

https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/09/spacex-test-fires-31-engines-on-starships-gigantic-super-heavy-booster/

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1188

October 25, 2022

Free Flow Thinking: Cuba, Washington DC, and Human Longevity

Human beings. As a species we suffer from collective amnesia. Just consider the following as an example.

Between October 16 and October 29, 1962, the world came closer than we ever had before and ever have since to effectively destroying ourselves and all other life on Earth. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S.S.R. sent ships carrying missiles with nuclear warheads to the island of Cuba where they planned to install missile launch sytems just twenty miles off the coast of the United States.

In response the United States blockaded the island of Cuba, and the subsequent standoff lowered the level of military readiness to its lowest level; before or since, Defcon-2; the next lowest level is Defcon-1, War. Based on correspondence between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev made available in the years since through the Freedom of Information Act it has become painfully clear how so very, very close we came to a nuclear Armageddon. One would think there would be college courses, colleges even, perhaps even branches of government, dedicated to ensuring never forget the lessons we learned from nearly destroying our planet, We should be reminding enemies as well as allies of that fateful time in history so that perhaps, we can avoid ever taking such an unthinkable risk with our entire species, with any and ALL future generations!

The sad truth is I’d be surprised if you were to ask random people off the street under the age of 30 what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, if more than 20% of them could tell you with any reasonable degree of accuracy and/or completeness. If I’m correct, over 80% graduated from high school and some from college, without ever having learned how the world very nearly ended in 1962. It seems only us old timers seem to know or care about what happened; the rest of the world has forgotten the event and moved on.

There is another topic I’d like to shift to now, still related to the collective memory of the American people and indeed, humanity overall.

How many times have you heard it said that the only way to convince someone that aliens had been to Earth was for E.T. to land his spaceship on the White House lawn for all to see? But did you know that just before midnight on July 19th, 1952, not one but seven UFOs were seen flying over the nations’ capital, buzzing just past the White House and the Capital building? They may not have landed but they brought six more ships with them and whirred by the president’s house multiple times before taking off at high speed as fighter jets arrived.

Seven UFOs hanging in the air the White House makes a pretty good case to me. Had the aliens tried for much more than that and they’d be likely have eaten a missile or a mess of bullets, especially back during that time. And it’s certain no nation on Earth possessed the technology these alien ships displayed.

“Okay,’ you say, “big deal. UFOs flew near the White House once in 1952. That could have been anything, a fluke with the radar, swamp gas combined with the light of Venus!” you hard core critics might say in response It would be a stretch, given the details of the encounter, how the jets scrambled to engage the crafts and as they neared them the UFOs mysteriously took off at incredible speeds. Besides, it happened again nearly a week later on a Saturday; when the UFOs mysteriously came back for a second look at the home of the President of the United States and the United States Congress, perhaps to bid farewell, who knows? The point is E.T. was here and he was going out of his way to let us know it, but no one seems to remember it outside the UFO enthusiast community. What’s up with that?

Now, fast forward some 52 years to 2007 and the Nimitz Battlegroup, conducting drills in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico and California. Crew members on the Nimitz reported it was “raining” UFOs on radar. Fighter pilots engage what they describe as “tic-tac” looking craft executing maneuvers at speeds that would instantly rip apart any known human build craft, not to mention the passengers. They were instantly stopping and starting again, maneuvering far faster than any human-built craft could, with no visible means of propulsion. They seemed to turn visible and invisible, demonstrated trans-medium capability, which means they were capable of seamlessly traversing water, air, and space, seamlessly, and demonstrated anti-gravity capability.

Then, in 2021, the US military confirmed to the US Congress and the world that craft as described above did in fact exist and was interacting with military on a nearly daily basis. Despite confirming that these Unidentified Aerial Vehicles were real they could neither confirm nor deny they were of extraterrestrial origin. The point is, the government acknowledged that these craft are real, that they are present in our skies, and they are demonstrating technologies beyond our current level of technology.

In the event you’ve been living under a rock, or just been too busy living your life, and haven’t heard about this little revelation, you might want to follow this link. There was a fantastic program that came out on the History Channel about it; it’s an amazing story and you’ll find the series quite enlightening.

https://www.history.com/shows/unidentified-inside-americas-ufo-investigation

Now there have been reports by some, claiming to be aids to top military leaders, that these “tic-tac” vehicles described above were human-built spacecraft reverse-engineered from alien spacecraft which had been somehow acquired by the US government, and then flown by members of the US Airforce. The reason? To assess how the US Navy might react to the unprecedented interaction. If true, it would mean that human beings already in possession of technology capable of carrying us to the stars.

Now I will switch gears, and shift to an entirely different direction for just a moment, before tying it all together, In previous I’ve referenced studies and breakthroughs made over the last couple of decades, in the study of senescence, and how scientists have already successfully extended life by twenty-percent or more in mice, and even changed an aged, decrepit mouse back into a younger, more vigorous one.

It is my belief that scientists have either made the breakthrough, or they are very close to making it, that will enable human beings to live very long lives. The problem: how could an already arguably overcrowded world accommodate a population that refused to die off but instead, hung around for many more year even while more and more generations were being born. Yes, the governments of the world would have to move quickly in order to put the freeze on any announcements by the scientists in the name of national security, they’d have to.

Now then, consider this tantalizing thought, what if they didn’t? Turning back to our earlier discussion about reverse engineered interstellar spacecraft, which we seem to already have in our possession. If that is true, we already have the underlying technology needed to carry us to the stars, where we can expand as a species to new world, with new resources. Barring an encounter with an alien species that wiped us all out, it would be the beginning of a very bright future for the human race. Just try to imagine it.

In conclusion:

Alien spacecraft have already been to Washington, DC. The seven alien ships chose back in 1952, however, to hover over the White House, on two separate occasions I might add, rather than to land on the White House Lawn.

In the opinion of this humble author that it is becoming increasingly likely that the persistent rumors that the United States has successfully reverse engineered the alien technology is true, and that we can now build and fly these craft.

Scientists are either very close or have already uncovered the secret to extending human life, possibly for a very long time.

The reverse-engineer spacecraft would enable the now rapidly expanding human race to expand out into the cosmos, settling new worlds and loving to very ripe old ages…think Asgardian.

Starship Watch Update

After over a year of waiting, It looks like the SpaceX Starship Orbital Test launch could happen withing a few weeks from now, sometime in November 2022 according to Mr. Musk. Of course, we have yet to hear that the FAA has given final approval. Here’s hoping we see a successful launch next month.

Good luck Elon and SpaceX!

You can find his novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1180

September 8, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: A new Home on Mars

Starship Watch Update

Yea, it’s finally here|! The FAA’s draft assessment of the Spacex Starship program has finally been submitted for public review and comment. I certainly plan to comment, informing the FAA how important I feel it is for SpaceX to be given as much free rein as possible in development of this program, only reigning them in when they go too far jeopardizing public safety and the like. What these people need to keep in mind however, is that this is a space program, like NASA’s, and carries with it an inherent risk that the airlines, which has been the FAA’s primary responsibility, have not had.

The FAA could easily choke SpaceX’s progress to the point that the fire goes out and they give up and that, would be the most horrific outcome of all. There will be accidents and people will die. Airplanes, which use safe, proven designs, fall out of the sky far too often. How much more a space program, where new technologies are being tested not in the safety of Earths atmosphere, but in space.

Please read through trough the review, as I plan to do, and then join me in commenting in support if SpaceX. If the FAA seeks to limit the number of flights to 10, which is what one person who read the report claimed, we must strongly object to that, offering SpaceX the opportunity to fly 100 flights a year, or even 1000, if necessary. Building a base on the moon and establishing a thriving civilization on Mars is going to require a lot of test flights and then a lot of operational flights to accomplish.

Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment Public Review and Comment Period

Please submit comments by October 18, 2021.

  • Comments should be mailed to Ms. Stacey Zee, SpaceX PEA, c/o ICF, 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA 22031
  • Comments may also be submitted by email to SpaceXBocaChica@icf.com

https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship/

In other news it sounds like SpaceX is preparing for static fires for both the booster and Starship. Since they cannot launch until the end of the 30-day comment period and the final FAA approval, they’re doing everything they can up to but excluding the launch. Elon Musk is an amazing man, and SpaceX is an incredible company. We can only hope they continue operating at a breakneck pace to achieve Musk’s rather ambitious goals.

Moving on…let us proceed to our feature presentation!

I wasn’t aware until today that there is a live feed coming from Mars. Well, it said it was a live feed.

Mars Cam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu4zD-ts7Sw

Whether it is or isn’t it still features a fantastic, sweeping video of the landscape on Mars, unlike anything I’ve ever seen short of high-end sci-fi films. The oddest thing I found about what I saw was how much it reminded me of places here on earth. In some shots I was reminded of the American Southwest, in others some of the more barren regions of South America. For the first time I could really imagine people going to Mars and establishing human settlements there. There are still several real and significant challenges to living on Mars. Let’s look a a few of the briefly before moving on.

Radiation-Mars has no magnetosphere present that can block the dangerous radiation from the sun and space to keep it from reaching the surface of the planet, like we have here on Earth. Mars’ dynamo inside the planet’s core is dead, and the resulting lack of a magnetosphere has resulted in a dangerous amount of radiation for anyone exposed on the planet’s surface.

What can be done?

Kickstart the Dynamo inside Mars’ Core

Some scientists speculate that there may be ways to kick-start the dynamo at the planet’s core, to restart the magnetosphere the Red Planet once had. There is also the possibility that the planet’s core is gradually solidifying anyway, which will generate heat, melting the outer core, and creating the dynamo effect that will create a new magnetosphere on Mars. Can we do something to make that happen a little sooner? Perhaps. Theories ranging from nuclear explosion inside the core to sending powerful electrical currents through it. One thing is certain; necessity is the mother of invention and human beings have a knack for innovation. Just look at Elon Musk.

Create an Artificial Magnetosphere

Using satellites, scientists in Japan have proposed a means of creating an artificial magnetosphere around the Earth in an order to boost a 10% drop over the last 150 years. Some have proposed such a system could be used for Mars as well, until a better, longer-term solution could be found.

Protection from the Radiation

Shielding can be built into vehicles used to travel on Mars and into spacesuits worn by anyone walking around outside. Such exposure would likely have to be limited, however, until something is done to remediate the danger.

A number of proposals for establishing human cities on Mars have included building cities inside of mountains and/or underground, where Martian rock and soil would shield the human inhabitants from radiation.

https://tinyurl.com/fc2ffc3b

https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-map-show-where-humans-will-live-on-mars-2018-3

https://newatlas.com/great-places-to-live-mars/45654/

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/04/07/nuwa-mars-city-cliffside-abiboo/

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1180

September 8, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: A New Hope

Greetings.

I wanted to offer a brief explanation for the recent sporadic blog posting. As I’ve been blogging for the past several years, something I very much enjoy, I find myself spending more and more time researching material for each blog, much as I do my novels. Unfortunately, this leaves me with less and less time to devote to my novels. At the moment, I still hold a day job, so my writing time is somewhat limited.

So, for the moment at least, my blog posts may be cut back a little, and may be less scheduled than before. That said, the blogging WILL continue (sorry to those of you who hoped otherwise, LOL).

Moving right along…

Starship Watch Update:

It appears SpaceX is in a holding pattern for the orbital launch test of Starship SN20. Of course, we have lots of other activity going on lately when it comes to space, so it could be worse.

The NASA Mars Helicopter drone Ingenuity recently made its 13th flight, far surpassing the handful of expected flights it was originally designed for.

Also, SpaceX is about to Inspiration 4, the first launch of civilian astronauts into space, a launch that will include several orbits of the Earth. In addition to this incredible first, Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is funding and leading the mission, is also helping to raise a hefty amount of money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/spacex-flight-st-jude-hospital-cosmic-funding-boost-75642346

When will SN20 launch, and why is it taking so long? I wish I knew. I suspect the FAA is dragging its imperial feet, feeling jilted, perhaps, after SpaceX launched a flight earlier this year (or was it last year?) without authorization, while also building the massive launch tower, which the FAA expressed concern about. It all reeks of some bureaucrats feeling an intoxicated by all the blatant abuse of their perceived power. I wrote to um-ughm, President Biden a few days, urging him to push (or fire) whoever is dragging his or her feet at the FAA when it comes to approving this historic and critical-to-the-human-race-test-flight. Maybe we need more people, especially any Democrats out there, writing to their elected officials to get them to put the squeeze on. Given the recent debacle in Afghanistan, I have to think the administration will jump at the opportunity to look like the heroes here and possibly even change the conversation from historic failures in Afghanistan to historic achievements in space. Time will tell…

Now, for the main event, let’s get ready to rumb…oops, wrong venue. Moving right along…

Mars: A New Hope

Hey, I didn’t say anything about Star Wars in the title, so Lucas can’t sue, right?

I’d like to begin by talking about something I was thinking about over the last few days. Just stop and think about some of the achievements over the last 100 years or so…

-The telephone

-The automobile

-The airplane, jet, and helicopter

-The computer

-The submarine

-The atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, neutron bomb, the cobalt bomb, ……

-The Internet

-Cloning

-The mapping of the human genome

-Gene editing

-Advancements in the research for a “cure” to aging

-The satellite

-The Viking landers and many other subsequent landers on Mars, not just by the United States and Russian now, but also by China.

-Quantum Computing

-Air taxis (coming really soon)

The list goes on. Now add to that list of real-world accomplishments the infinite works of fiction, first by men like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne but later by men like men like Isaac Asimov, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, along with many, many others, and it’s easy to imagine, is it not, that we will develop a means of interstellar travel, whether it be gravity-wave generators, warp drives, or hyperdrives?

Isn’t also easy to conceive that we may also soon develop force fields that can protect humanity as we travel through space, and communities that may settle on worlds like Mars, where radiation poses a constant threat?

I certainly believe it is. Yes, I believe we have access to alien technology but even if we didn’t, I’m confident we would eventually learn how to solve these problems on our own, given enough time. I’m in awe, sometimes, of our species. We human beings, men and women of all races and colors, or all ethnic origins, are capable of such greatness, such awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping achievements, such incredible insight and wisdom. I shall not dwell on the opposite end of that spectrum this evening, where the worst of our species dwell suffice to mention that obviously, they exist as well. Perhaps it is this incredible divide, this vast diversity of character, acuity, and ability, and the great range of human compassion and concern for others that sometimes impresses me, and sometimes saddens me, depending on where on that spectrum I happen to be focusing. But I digress.

Mars. Elon Musk sees it as our most immediate, best hope at survival in the immediate of one of an infinite number of possible extinction-level events that could doom all life on Earth, or at least life as we know it. His contention, as I understand it, is that if some segment of human civilization survives the great cataclysm by colonizing Mars and escapes relatively unscathed, they would be able to come to the aid of those back on Earth. This would help ensure that civilization continued, instead of being setback hundreds, of possibly even thousands of years. I believe Mr. Musk is correct.

Yes, I’m a Christian and yes, I believe God will care for us. Yet I also believe that God works in mysterious ways, and He has chosen not to return before now for the End of Days. I believe we should, therefore, proceed forward as if tomorrow will come, while always watching for the “signs of the times.”

I also believe that our best hope lies in developing a means a of interstellar travel, like warping space or creating wormholes, in order to cross vast distances of space without that nasty penalty of time dilation, which causes time to move so much faster back home while you travel the universe, causing you to age much, much slower than the folks back home. When you return home after a trip to another star system, using conventional sub-light travel, everyone you knew, even your children and grandchildren, will likely be long-dead and buried by the time you return.

No, interstellar travel means we can use some exotic means, like warping space, to cross vast distances without the impact of time dilation. This is our best hope for true commerce and travel between star systems.

Until the time comes when that technology is available to humanity, Mars does, perhaps, offer an alternative, if not a pleasant one. It is my fervent hope that if we must rely on Mars as something more than a waystation, that someone a lot smarter than I can find a very practical, sensible way of kick-starting the molten core inside of Mars in such a way that it creates a powerful magnetic field, like Earth’s, capable of blocking harmful radiation from the sun. Afterwards, perhaps these same, brilliant scientists will develop a quick and efficient way of terraforming Mars, of releasing oxygen and one day creating a breathable atmosphere on Mars. Of, warming it up a bit wouldn’t hurt either.

Look for more on Mars: A New Hope, on my next blog post!

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

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Blog Post #1179

August 14, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: On our Way Back to the Future

Starship Watch Update:

I don’t have any specific updates. Just waiting for the test launch to happen, like the rest of the world, which I’m guessing will likely be sometime before Labor Day, IF, the FAA clears it for launch.

In the meantime, I came across this video with commentary, of the first stacking of Starship on Super Heavy BN4. I think you’ll like it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B2_dfvRZ4M

Now, for our future presentation!

The American civil war ended just sixteen years ago.

Only five years have passed years since General Armstrong Custer and 260 of his brave soldiers died in the ill-fated Battle of the Little Big horn at the hands of the Cheyenne and the Sioux, led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

And just four years ago, Wild Bill Hickock was shot in the back of the head while holding his infamous “dead-man’s hand” of “aces and eights,” a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights.

It is 3:00 PM on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in the town of Tombstone, Arizona.

A battle is brewing between two warring factions in the town. The first includes three brothers, lawmen, and their deputized friend, who are about to have a little showdown of their own near a little place in Tombstone called the OK Corral.

Wyatt Earp, His brothers Virgil and Morgan, ae soon joined by their friend Doc Holiday on their way to meet the McLaury brothers and the Clantons, in a confrontation that has been brewing for some time.

We’ve all heard the story, it’s one of the most popular of the stories out of the old west. But there is something else I find to be just as remarkable as the martial skill and bravery of these young men. The incredible and indelible fact that the automobile is invented just five years after the legendary battle at the O.K. Corral. The automobile, first envisioned by Leonardo DaVinci as far back as the 15th century, will prove to be a harbinger of the great technological revolution that historians will forever refer to as the 20th Century.

Only 22 years after the O.K. Corral, the Wright Brothers would take the first powered flight of an airplane at Kitty Hawk, NC. What a remarkable achievement. To come out of the Civil War, the westward expansion, the battles with the native Americans, and some of the last of the great gunslingers of the Old West, to the advent of the airplane and all that entailed in such a brief amount of time. From the Gunfight at the OK Corral to the airplane in less than 22 years. Even more remarkable, is the fact that the wife Wyatt Earp, who had been with him since Tombstone, Josephine Sarah ‘Sadie’ Marcus, died sometime in 1944, near the end of WW II. Had Josephine lived only one year longer, the woman who likely witnessed many of the events in Tombstone would also have witnessed the birth of the Atomic bomb, and she would have read in the newspapers how it had been used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. From the gun-slinging Wild West to battleships, aircraft carriers, Corsairs, and the atomic bombs of WW II, she just about saw it all in her lifetime. What a remarkable life she must have had.

What a contrast, and what an advancement in technology that took place in the years between the late 1800s and the early 20th Century. From horse and buggy to jets and atomic bombs, all in the span of 64 years. Within 82 years humanity would land the first man on the moon; imagine that. From the O.K. Corral to the moon in a human lifetime.

The 1950’s and 60’s brought the advent of the fighter jets, satellites, and the space race, culminating with the Apollo Program and the moon landing in 1969. The 70s, 80s, and 90s gave us personal computers, Apple Computer, Microsoft, the Internet, the Space Shuttle, the cloned sheep Dolly, and the International Space Station, but little in terms of human space exploration, and little to replace the airplane/jet.

So it should be of little surprise that well over a century after the invention of the airplane, we are finally once again seeing a sophisticated level of innovation in both space and aeronautical engineering, with the flying car now finally becoming a reality. Oh, they may not be as nifty as the antigravity-touting Tic-Tac UFOs encountered by the U.S. Navy nearly two decades ago and seen by observers all over the world, but these new flying cars are still a step forward regardless. The new vehicles may not be capable of traveling in water, air, and space like the Tic-Tac UFOs can but one day, perhaps we too will have such technology. It will be sci-fi come to life; actually, it already is.

As some of you are likely to recall, I’ve done a few posts on the future rise of the flying taxis, most of which resemble oversized drones with vectoring propellers and vertical takeoff and lift.

Two of the more recent vertical takeoff and lift vehicles (aka VTOL). I’ve come across, which are also two of the more interesting and exciting are the Jetoptera’s J-2000 Flying Car, and the Lilium Jet.

It seems inevitable that VTOLs, this revolutionary class of new aerial vehicles, is going to be a significant step forward in the constant evolution in the way people travel.

The Jetoptera’s J-2000 Flying Car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVit6uPdHfk

You might also want to watch the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG50_Mk9Iso

The Lilium Jet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_NC4dA-Pyo

Interested in more Vertical and Takeoff and Landing Aircraft?

A VTOL Bakeoff

Comparison Between Lilium vs Joby vs Archer

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1178

August 14, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: Wake-up America: We’re Already in A Cold War With China

Starship Watch Update:

Good evening my cerebral and incisive readers.

Good evening my cerebral and incisive readers.

As far as I know there is still no official word, as to a specific launch date. I thought I’d seen a tweet from Visionary and billionaire Elon Musk that indicated a launch two weeks from the stacking of SN20 atop SH, which occurred on Friday, August 6th. I cannot, however, locate that tweet now so perhaps, I attributed a tweet from someone else to Elon. In any event, launch should be happening soon.

Have any of you been curious what prompted Mr. Musk, and I’m assuming his team of scientists and engineers as well, to want to shift to a water landing for SN20? I’ve been very curious. The answer turns out to be the only one I’d been able to come up with that made any sense and he has my respect for making the call.

As for the booster, Super Heavy, speculation seems to be now that Super Heavy will land on an ocean-based, floating platform. It will certainly be a momentous occasion I very much hope I’m able to watch live, wherever it occurs!

Below is a great link to a site where I found the info on the reason for the water landing. I recommend you bookmark this site if you’re following Starship even remotely as much as I.

https://complexob7.com/starship-sn20-will-splash-into-water-instead-of-landing/

This is

I was having dinner recently with my 15-year-old son, when he suddenly asked me if I’d seen a recent advertisement on television for the United States army. I shook my head, and he went on to tell me about recruitment ads from Russia and from China that someone had pulled together along with the recent U.S. ad for comparison. I have to tell you, while I have no clue what the Chinese or the Russian narrators were saying, I found the soldiers I saw in both to be in unbelievable physical condition, demonstrated extraordinary discipline, and were very intimidating. If any of these men saw the American ad, however, I feel certain without understanding the language whatsoever, they would be rolling with laughter, unable to contain themselves in less than thirty seconds into the commercial.

The American ad is a “woke” ad, chocked full of woke far-left ideology and political correctness, and has absolutely nothing to do with fighting, the military, or winning battles. Regardless of the fact that the United States Government has no business telling Americans what to believe or how to live their lives, this ad is demeaning to America, it will certainly weaken our country, emboldening our enemies while weakening the resolve of our allies. It is yet another example of what is wrong with the ridiculous, “woke” culture, which has so infected our nation and if it is not excised from the very fabric of our society soon, it will certainly lead to death, suffering, and if we’re not careful, perhaps even the collapse of America herself.

Please, watch the three ads and decide for yourself. I must warn you however, that the host of the website where my son found these ads uses a lot of salty language and is probably not suitable for younger viewers. I regret my son heard it but like I told him, while the host could have said the same thing without the profanity, I agree wholeheartedly with the points he was making.

http://republicbroadcasting.org/news/us-armys-woke-ads-vs-russian-and-chinese-military-recruitment-commercials/

As strong and prosperous as our country is still only one generation away from ruin. Civilizations rise and their fall, with some falling never to arise again. America is not immune to the forces that have ended so many empires, nations, and promising cultures. If we want to keep America around, to hold onto our freedom, we will have to fight for it, and sometimes that means against forces within our own borders, like this “Woke” culture, which threatens to destroy everything so many of us hold dear. You can fight for freedom, or you can lose it my fellow Americans, that is your choice. The same applies to all freedom-loving peoples all over the planet. If you and I continue taking it for granted, I’m telling you one day we’ll wake up and some Chinese official will be telling us what to do. In fact, it’s already happening. Just look at the recent problems the NBA has had with China, and how they’ve had to take positions favorable to the Chinese or risk losing access to the valuable Chinese market. The same can be said for Hollywood, where an alarming number of film companies are owned in-part or in-total by China. Once again, films from such companies will always take positions that China agrees to, or the film will never be made. Even film companies not owned by China have been kowtowing to the Chinese, fearful of losing access to that lucrative market.

We had all better grow backbones people, now, and remember who, and what we are; we are Americans. We need only look back on how many of us have already died in order to preserve freedom in this great nation so we, if necessary, must be prepared to lose everything, even our lives, if necessary, to protect that freedom, for our children, and our children’s children. Besides, we Americans have never been very good at bowing down to kings and emperors, be they British, German, Russian, or Chinese.

Many of us grew up living in fear during the Cold War, teetering on the edge of a nuclear Armageddon that threatened to end all life on earth. I was a child when many marched to protest the war in Vietnam, and I still recall the daily counts of the number of U.S. soldiers who had died that day being read on NBC Nightly News, back when they merely reported the news instead of making it up as they go. Back then, of course, there was only NBC, CBS, and ABC, and those three channels were about all that anyone could pick up on their televisions back in those days before cable, and the Internet.

I recall Jane Fonda going over to the North Vietnam, posing for photos with the enemy, the Viet Cong, who were sending so many young Americans back home in body bags. Later, I would sometimes wonder, while watching Fonda being interviewed in her beautiful California home about an upcoming film, why she’d never been tried as a traitor for providing aid and comfort to the enemy. It turns out since America had never formally declared war on the North Vietnamese, she could not be tried for treason. It seems to me she had the same mindset as many in our “woke” culture today.

  • America is bad.
  • Our enemies are better.
  • We should dismantle America and give the country back to the Native Americans.

I have often wondered why those, who seemingly hate America, viewing it as the cause of all of the world’s problems, choose to remain here, rather than to go live somewhere like Vietnam, China, Russia, or Cuba. Why do they want to continue their lives here, in the United States, if the country is so terrible? Could it be because America IS the greatest nation on the planet? Maybe it’s because they’ve enjoyed their freedoms, particular their freedom of speech, and they realize how they would lose that freedom in every one of these other countries.

What do you think would have happened to Kathy Griffin if she had pulled the same stunt in China, holding-up the likeness of the severed head of Chinese Xi Jinping, that she pulled in the United States with the likeness of the head of President Trump?

What if she’d been in Russia and held up a likeness of the head severed head of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Do you believe for one moment that such a person would go on living for much longer? I guarantee they would meet an unfortunate ending and in very short order.

For nearly my entire life I’ve always believed that despite the occasional difference we may have amongst ourselves, that America’s blood runs red, white, and blue; if always has, and it always will, as long as we remain a free and democratic society.

I feel the need, however, raise the alarm, to issue this wake-up call to you, my fellow Americans, as well as to our friends, our allies, and to all freedom-loving peoples everywhere. Whether you’re aware of it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not, or whether you choose to ignore it and just go on about your daily business pretending it doesn’t exist, we are locked in a new cold war with China and it’s not about to get here, it arrived several years ago. And please, make no mistake about it, we can no more afford to lose this war, than we could the one we fought so long with the former Soviet Union.

There are, however, three key and extremely important differences in these two cold wars:

  1. Our enemy, (China) is a far better liar:

This time, our enemy is even better at lies, deception, and manipulation than their Soviet counterparts ever were. They have successfully extended their reach into the heartland of America’s geographical and political landscape, peddling influence and influencing American politics and culture as it best suits their stated and unstated goals, and they have caught all but a few of us, and our leaders, woefully unprepared.

  1. America has lost its Edge:

The People’s Republic of China has been doing a masterful job in recent years at identifying and exploiting the greatest weaknesses and vulnerabilities in America, causing us to focus on fighting one another while virtually ignoring the threat posed to our great country by their explosive economic and military power, which they have been successfully exploiting all over the world.

The highly structured campaign launched by the Chinese Communist Party seeks to undermine and bring down America as the world’s sole superpower, exploiting each and every opportunity that presented itself to cause Americans to turn their focus inward and, when possible, to weaken America.

The inexplicable, visceral hatred of Donald Trump by so many on the left (a man many of the elites knew and respected before he ran for political office), benefited the Chinese directly is without question. President Donald Trump made America considerably stronger by making us energy independent, by requiring the Chinese to play fair in trade practices or by placing tariffs if they didn’t, and by turning around and using business and trade as a weapon just as they’d been doing for decades, to the detriment of nearly every western, democratic nation.

The multiple impeachment hearings, the protests, and helped fuel the riots that raged and burned all across America leading up to the 2020 election, the many problems found with the very questionable integrity of the 2020 election itself, and the deliberate incitement of racial strife at every opportunity over the last couple of years by groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, which has its roots not in the Civil Rights movement, but in the advancement of socialism. It seems that fighting for racial injustice is a cause they recently took up because it benefited someone for them to do so, namely, the Chinese Communist Party. They benefited far more than the Democratic party, just do the math.

Now, lest you think I’m a right-wing nut, please take a look at what publications like Bloomberg and USA Today are saying about the Chinese threat:

“Barrasso: China’s goal is domination, not cooperation. It’s playing Biden and America for fools. (USA Today)

China pretends it’s a developing country, steals technology, uses forced labor and manipulates markets to its advantage. It’s a grand deception.

John Barrasso, Opinion contributor

China has a well-deserved reputation for deceit. “

There is a bi-partisan awakening in America, and I suspect that many of those willing to work with the CCP in toppling President Trump might now be getting a little worried they opened Pandora’s Box.

Now, perhaps someone you know, perhaps a distant relative or an uninformed coworker (certainly not you, my elucidated compatriots), may think that it’s not a big deal. After all, when America won the cold war with the Soviet Union, nothing bad happened then, right?

Yeah, well, that’s because the United States won it. Imagine the world under an absolute Soviet rule, or worse-yet, a world ruled by the China CCP. Just take a look at how quickly freedom fell in Hing Kong and let that be a lesson to those thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad if China were in charge. Remember, despite everything the far-left socialists have been teaching our children, America is a GREAT country, and while we’re not perfect, I challenge you to name any country, in the history of the world, that came close to being as magnificent as the United States of America or, as John F. Kennedy once put it, a “shining city on a hill.”

Wake up America. You can try to sleep through it, and you can choose to ignore it. If something isn’t done soon to stop this “woke” movement, to restore America to her greatness, and to stop the Chinese from taking over the world (perhaps by re-implementing the very steps President Trump was starting to put in place before the rug was jerked out from under him), then one day, maybe soon, a Chinese CCP official will be showing up at your door with CCP soldiers, and he will tell you exactly what you may, and may not do, for the rest of your life. Believe me now or believe me later.

 

China’s Grand Plan To Take Over The World (Forbes)

“Grand dreams of world domination are part and parcel of communist ideologies, going all the way back to Karl Marx. For the Chinese, this blends with the country’s own long history.

It isn’t always clear to Western minds whether they actually believe the rhetoric or simply use it to keep the peasantry in line. Pillsbury says Xi Jinping really sees this as China’s destiny, and himself as the leader who will deliver it….”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2019/11/12/chinas-grand-plan-to-take-over-the-world/?sh=250f7295ab5d

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

 

Starship Watch Update:

Blog Post #1177

July 21, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: Unidentified

Starship Watch Update:

SpaceX test fire massive Super Heavy booster for Starship for 1st time (video)

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy-rocket-booster-engine-test

Edging ever-so-closer to everyone’s dream of a human being landing on another planet, Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully test fired the behemoth called Super Heavy, the launch system for SpaceX’s flagship spacecraft, Starship, which SpaceX has hinted will launch for its first orbital test sometime withing the next couple of months.

While the Super Heavy rochet booster was undergoing its static fire test at Boca Chica, Starship 20 is still being assembled in preparation for the pair’s maiden test flight, which will not only be Super Heavy’s first launch into space, but it will be the re-designed Starship’s first flight also. This version of the Starship spacecraft will be covered in tiles that will protect the craft from the heat of re-entry, something we’re all familiar with having seen the Space Shuttle returning to earth so many times in the past.

This will also be the first test flight with Super Heavy and Starship together, something that is certain to not only be a truly historical event, but a magnificent sight to behold as well.

Super Heavy on the launchpad in SpaceX Boca Chica spaceport, as if waiting patiently for its first passenger, Starship SN20, and the inaugural orbital test flight for both components. Courtesy of Lab Padre’s Starship Cam, which I encourage you SpaceX enthusiasts out there to check-out.

https://www.webcamtaxi.com/en/usa/texas/boca-chica-starship-cam.htmljoke

It won’t be long folks; just hang in there. I believe this is the millennium, the century, the decade, in which humanity will finally crawl out of its earthly crib, and explore for itself the big, vast universe that lay outside.

Unidentified:

Most of us have served in the military, or we have a family member who has served, or maybe a friend, or a co-worker. So now try to imagine going to work one day, let’s say you’re a fighter pilot in the United States Navy, and you’re flying a routine training mission off the coast of the United States. It’s a beautiful day, you have great visibility for miles and miles, and you’ve just spent the first few minutes of flying time joking with your RIO (Radar Information Officer) and the crews from several other fast movers, the slang in the Navy for fighter jets.

You’re still laughing from your RIO’s last joke when suddenly, literally as if suddenly popping into existence you see it, a white, roughly rectangular object with rounded ages, whose closest analog is a Tic Tac. It just sits there, unmoving, suspended in the air, a thousand feet above the surface of the ocean. Then, suddenly, it’s no longer there, but it is now still visible, but only barely, miles away. There are no wings, no propellers, and no exhaust of any kind. There seems to be no explanation whatsoever for what is keeping this object aloft.

Amidst the frantic chatter with the other pilots in your squadron and their crew members, everyone seems to be repeating themselves, completely overwhelmed by how fast and how quickly these strange craft are able to move.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9945018/us-navy-confirm-ufo-videos-real/

The name of the television program is Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

I came across it on the History Channel. What makes it unique are the individuals featured on the program.

It features former military counter-intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program before resigning to take the fight public in the interest of national security, Christopher Mellon, former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and U.S., and Steve Justice, the former director of Advanced Systems Development at Lockheed Martin’s mysterious Skunk Works division.

You can find it here: https://play.history.com/shows/unidentified-inside-americas-ufo-investigation/season-1

What really impressed me about this program was this group of men, who came together with the expressed intent to raise the alarm about the increasing presence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAPs), otherwise known as Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs. Take Luis Elizondo (https://luiselizondo-official.com/) for example, he resigned from the head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (ATTIP), the secretive Pentagon unit that studied UFOs, which was commissioned by former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who also had a concern about the potential threat to national security.

Here’s a decent Newsweek article about the group. https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-compelling-evidence-former-pentagon-expert-1591995

In regard to national security, I should probably take a moment to make a point that these men are trying to make but often gets drowned out by the assorted UFO noise; the concern around national security is not only around these crafts, which are, by the way, technologically far, far, far, far, far, far superior to our own (think pulling 600Gs instead of say, 9Gs). Human beings cannot survive 9G for long and conventional aircraft tear apart around 30Gs. Not only can these craft fly 600Gs, bank at sharp right-angles, suddenly stop, before accelerating at mind-boggling speeds, but they can fly at high-speed whether in the air, in space, or under water! Oh, and by the way, they have no wings, no exhaust, and no obvious means of lift that we can identify. What that means to me, (and I believe everyone else is thinking but not necessarily saying) is that these craft are utilizing exotic technologies including some sort of inertia dampening, likely some sort of energy shield, and possibly something like a gravity-wave generator to create propulsion. But in a manner completely different than anything ever developed on earth (that we know of.)

By the way, if you’ve read previous posts of mine, you already know that there are two correlating events that share something in common with these technologies. Folks, I am not some nutjob, conspiracy theorist here, I’m merely trying to connect the dots and believe me, they seem to be lining up nicely.

The two correlating events I’m referring to are:

The first event I’m referring to is the recent (public) filing by the United States Navy for patents on several very exotic technologies including gravity wave generators for propulsion, inertia dampeners (or something like it) etc. technologies very much resembling what we see from these UAPs or UFOs, whichever you want to call them.

The second event I’d like to call your attention to is the television interview of Bob Lazar, who claimed to have not only seen, but to have been inside an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Lazar claimed as far back as the 1980s that he was hired as a contractor to work on the propulsion systems of several spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin at a secret base called S-4, a secret military base adjacent Area 51 at Groom Lake, Nevada. Lazar, a scientist, claimed his job was to reverse-engineer the alien technology used to propel the spacecraft. His description of what he saw includes gravity-wave generators, antimatter, inertia-dampeners (of sorts), and he claims have seen and touched an alien force field generator. He’s offered detailed descriptions and evidence to back up his claims, including identifying Element 115 as the key to the antimatter drive that powered the alien ships. The gravity-wave generator’s operation explains the craft’s bizarre behavior. It would seem this tech is at work in most of the UFOs I’ve ever heard described.

Yeah, I know this may all sound a bit over-the-top, and that’s okay, because this is a big deal. The United States Government has been covering up UFOs for at least seventy years now, if not longer. Perhaps they felt they had good reason at one time.

After all, widespread panic had been generated during Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater’s radio production of War of the Worlds, which was broadcast on October 30, 1938 just some nine years earlier

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-legend-of-the-war-of-the-worlds, and a new Cold War with Stalin’s Soviet Union had just started after a long, bitter World War. And of course, we had also just entered the beginning of The Nuclear Age after dropping two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki, effectively ending the World War II.

Whatever their reason, the day following a public announcement by Jesse Marcel (a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force who helped administer Operation Crossroads, the 1946 atom bomb tests at the Bikini atoll), that a crashed flying saucer had been found in Roswell, New Mexico, a general retracted the statement, claiming it was a weather balloon that had crashed. This, apparently, was the beginning of the UFO cover-up in the United States.

Maybe technology has finally reached the point, in today’s world, with nearly everyone owning a cell phone with a camera, that the presence of UFOs in our skies became undeniable. One thing is certain, however; if we continue to ignore the existence of these incredible craft and the incredible technology that enables them to do such extraordinary things, I can guarantee you the Russians and the Chinese will not.

We really do need to know who is visiting our planet and ascertain why they are here. Are they a threat? If not, why haven’t they approached us regarding trade and the establishment of diplomatic relations. If they are, how can we counter such a threat. Can we develop such technology ourselves? Is that what the Navy is trying to do with the patents on the exotic technology patents they applied for, and received, a few years ago? Is that why the military has been silently trying their best to ignore these craft after having once had the policy of trying to shoot them down, because they’ve been fervently working on reverse-engineering them? Have they had any success?

Many questions, yes. But the answers are coming my friends, they are coming. We have former senators like Senator Harry Reid from Nevada who helped establish the funding for AATIP, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who fought insert into a stimulus relief bill a stipulation requiring the Department of Defense to provide a report to Congress within 120 days

The Black Vault spoke with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence back in May, wherein a DNI spokesperson offered the following:

“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report attached to the fiscal 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act, which was part of the omnibus spending bill signed on Dec. 27, 2020, tasked the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, with submitting an unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) report to Congress within 180 days of enactment.”

A full copy of the unclassified report is available here: https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-official-u-s-government-ufo-uap-report-has-been-released/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Senate%20Select%20Committee%20on%20Intelligence%20report%20attached,report%20to%20Congress%20within%20180%20days%20of%20enactment.%E2%80%9D

elow is a video, and a post, by UFO researcher Richard Dolan, that supposedly summarizes what was secretly presented to Congress. Please note that this matches up with something that you’ll find later in this post. I think if you’ll listen, the man sounds extraordinarily lucid, intelligent, and rational. Say what you will, he seems to have done his homework.

Richard Dolan’s Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJNbCeE110A’???/

Were the Tic-Tacks Operated by United States Air Force personnel?

I read a fascinating post about a former member of the United States Air Force, who claimed to have met someone who had prepared a presentation for a very high-level meeting between senior officials of the United States Navy, Air Force, and a civilian contractor. Something I found quite remarkable was that he said that Salvatore Pais, the man behind the strange UFP patents the Navy applied for and received a few years ago, had attended the meeting.

Tic Tac UFOs Revealed in 2005 Briefing to be Secret USAF Spacecraft

https://exopolitics.org/tic-tac-ufos-revealed-in-2005-briefing/

This all makes for a complex and potentially volatile mixture of highly advanced technology, the highest levels of the military during what is, in essence, a new “cold war” with the Chinese, a lot of government intelligence, counter-intelligence agencies, and oh, right, the presence of extraterrestrials on Earth (remember, these craft have been seen since at least WWII- when military pilots still flew planes with propellers instead of jet engines). Separating fact from fiction will almost certainly be something left for future historians to sort out some decades, if not centuries from now, to sort out. What is clear however is that everything is changing. Humanity is finally growing up.

One thing is certain, however, and we can’t say it loud enough, or often enough. If we already have this technology, it is incumbent on those with access to such technology to find a way to separate what must truly be protected in the interest of our national security, from that technology that can and should be shared with humanity for the benefit of us all. The ability to travel far and safely say, to another star system, without experiencing the time dilation associated with near-speed-of-light travel, offers tremendous opportunity for our species. Whether it’s force fields to protect ships during space travel, or even the entire Earth, or whether it’s clean, cheap, limitless energy, the list of benefits for humanity go on and on. What a terrible, tragedy it would be if the world were needlessly destroyed because, when we had such incredible technology at our disposal, we needlessly hoarded it when we could have shared it with the world without jeopardizing our national security. What if humanity is wiped-out in an instant when the Earth is struck by an enormous asteroid, comet, solar flare, or perhaps even more frightening, a deadly Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) that wipes the entire surface of the planet clean of life?

If we have the technology, we should share what we can, we must find a way. Try introducing it through a corporation, through the government, or through a non-profit. Maybe even try creating something new if you have to, an international organization dedicated to the correct, safe way to explore space, to work, and settle worlds throughout the galaxy, while forming positive, diplomatic relations with other sentient life whenever possible.

Think humanity isn’t ready? We lived for over half-a-century under the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War with the Soviets, never knowing when the world might end in nuclear fire- remember a little thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis? I think we can handle it.

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

 

Blog Post #1176

July 21, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: On Momentous Occasions and My Take on His Dark Materials

Good evening, my most cerebral, magnanimous, judicial, and most steadfast of readers. Welcome to another edition of The Horton Post. My deepest and most sincere apologies for the inconsistency of my posts as of late. Like many of you, I find myself subject to external forces beyond my control and as a result, have been irregular in my posts. When given the choice between a brief, fluffy, sugary post and a discussion of some weighty topic that merits your time and effort, I choose the weightier topic, though it might force some delay until my next post.

Starship Watch Update:

Preparations continue for the launch of launch of Starship on its first orbital flight. This will also be the inaugural flight of the Super Heavy Booster as well. Hopefully the launch will occur either later this month (July) or sometime in August. While they are still waiting on FAA approval, I’m not particularly worried here, as both parties have a stake in a successful launch.

Below is a link to Space.com. a great site for all things space-related!

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-orbital-flight-possible-july-2021

Congratulations Blue Origin!

Congratulations to now-astronauts Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen, the crew of New Shepherd! What a picture-perfect launch it was Tuesday morning.

I celebrate not only what has been, but what is to come. With construction planned to begin in space on a hotel/space station within the next few years, and with a base on the moon being planned, I expect Jeff Bezos may end-up getting involved in that little venture himself. Who knows, Bezos may open many new business ventures in space. Once humanity goes interstellar, we will need men like Bezos, Branson, and Elon Musk to help humanity colonize new worlds.

And now, for our Feature Presentation…

Okay, I want to be up-front with you, my most noble, esteemed, and judicious readers. Today’s post is an outlier for me, brought on by a recent, and rather unpleasant experience in which I invested many hours watching what I thought would be an interesting, wholesome, youth-oriented television series, which I also allowed my teenage child to watch, only to find it was of a most despicable and unsavory disposition, and most offensive to my deeply held beliefs.

I will understand should you prefer not to read today’s post; I hope, however, that I’ve piqued your interest.

I’ve never been one to go along with the crowd just to get along. I value truth, and I value the faith and traditions so many of us hold dear. Never in my life have I seen such disdain in America of all things good. Christianity, patriotism, rugged individualism, they’re all being supplanted by…division, self-loathing and shame. I wonder who, and what, exactly, is behind it all, and why now?

Perhaps it’s another country, an adversary like China or Russia, seeking to destabilize us from within. Certainly, that would make sense. Maybe it’s a group of select, but extremely wealthy individuals, pushing their own agenda, whatever it may be. Perhaps, it’s the Devil himself stirring up all the strife, given how badly our society has deteriorated in just the last few years. Someone is behind it, funding it, paying groups like Antifa to stir-up trouble whenever and wherever they can. I’m thinking maybe the paid protester who arrives onsite and gets on the camera the most, collects a bonus check at the end of the week. There is certainly something out there paying for everything you see happening across our great land.

I’m thinking maybe it’s my generation’s fault, and that of my parents.

We caused a lot of the apathy, confusion, and complete absence or morality so many of our young people feel, when we failed to teach these things to our children, believing our way of child-rearing to be far more superior and enlightened than our parents. We didn’t need to raise up little Johnny or discipline him in any way, or to teach him to believe anything in particular, we decided we should let him decide for himself.

We (and our parents’ generation) ousted God out of Public schools. Now we’re trying to evict him from our homes, from our hearts, and even from our churches as well. And our culture is paying a heavy price for it. Our young people are growing up with no clear sense of right or wrong, because they’ve been taught the Bible was a crutch, believed only by the ignorant and the weak-minded.

With God and the Bible out of the picture, we’ve had a lot of difficulty agreeing to what is right and wrong, what is criminal and what is not, what is despicable and what is acceptable and, interestingly and ironically enough, what is good, and what is evil. It seems few of us can agree on any of this.

Now don’t get me wrong, God has been and always will be much more than the set of laws he set down for people to live by. He’s also the redeemer, who died on the Cross to save any who would come to Him, to restore a proper relationship with God, like the one which sin had so thoroughly severed. And God is the Creator, the maker of all things. And just like the big truck barreling down the highway, He is real whether we believe it or not and one day, we’re all going to find that out. But I digress….

So, what happens once we’ve evicted God and His Word from our culture, who always gives us the choice to reject or to follow Him? Nature abhors the vacuum, scientists tell us, and so too does human nature it would seem.

There are those who not only believe God exists, they know he exists, but they do not follow Him. Instead, they have chosen to join with the Devil and his fallen angels in their rebellion against God. The demons know God exists, of course, because they’ve been with Him, in Heaven, before their Fall. They made, it seems, an irrevocable decision long ago to rebel against the Almighty. Why some human beings knowingly join in their rebellion just for a short taste of power here is beyond me.

You may have guessed by now that I never cared much for Nietzsche and his whole “God is dead,” spiel. But at least Nietzsche seemed to be honest about it, he was an atheist, and simply did not believe in God. Some people, however, know He exists but they hold contempt for Him; they dislike Him and everything good he stands for, and seek to deceive others.

One such person who would seem to fit this mold is Author Phillip Pullman, the author of the fantasy novel series, His Dark Materials, a series in which one of the main characters leads a rebellion against God, whom Pullman calls “The Authority,” in his series. The author depicts God, a.k.a. “The Authority,” as an angel who, having been the first angel to pop into existence out of dark matter, lies to the subsequent angels who follow by telling them that he created them and the rest of the universe, which he did not. By the time Pullman’s story takes place The Authority is essentially a decrepit old man who is too weak to do anything and dies before the end of the series, of old age, after having been imprisoned in a crystal prison by one of his trusted lieutenants. w that has become an HBO/BBC television series.

I started watching this series thinking it to just be another fanciful tale about adventures in another world, but it was more, much more. There were telltale signs early one, like the clear antagonist attitude toward the clergy, but in truth it’s easy to understand why some are bitter towards some in the church. But when one of the lead characters began railing against God (a.k.a. The Authority), and wanted a “war in Heaven,” well, knowing the Bible as well as I do, it made my stomach turn.

Wikipedia lists several revealing paragraphs about the author, Pullman, who has managed to receive some rather impressive literary awards for His Dark Materials.

“Pullman has identified three major literary influences on His Dark Materials: the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist,[13] the works of William Blake, and, most important, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy derives its title.[14] In his introduction, he (Pullman) adapts a famous description of Milton by Blake to quip that he (Pullman) “is of the Devil’s party and does know it”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials

Beyond being ridiculous he goes on to berate the beloved Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. Only a twisted, bitter man could say the following about the Chronicles of Narnia:

“Pullman however has characterised the Narnia series as “blatantly racist”, “monumentally disparaging of women”, “immoral”, and “evil”.

I seem to remember something in the Bible about the wicked calling good evil and evil good.

Now I haven’t read the novel series, but I did (regrettably) watch the full first two seasons of the HBO Series, and I’ve read what others have written about what is to come in the series. When I realized where the series was headed, that is a war with God in Heaven to overthrow God (the Authority”) I swore off the remainder of the series, regretting having ever watched any of it to begin with. There was a Narnia or Lord of the Rings feel to part of it, but the insidious railings against God and the overabundance of hypocrisy and duplicity I found in the second season was just too much.

Now I went into this completely oblivious to who Phillip Pullman was, and what his series was about.

“Pullman expressed surprise over what he considered to be a relatively low level of criticism for His Dark Materials on religious grounds, saying “I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak… Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God”. Others support this interpretation, arguing that the series, while clearly anticlerical, is also anti-theological because the death of god is represented as a fundamentally unimportant question.”

[In italics from Wikipedia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials

I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch the series or read the books, only that I regret I now learning where it was going. I found myself feeling slightly nauseous as it got worse. It was, in fact, the “War in Heaven against God (the Authority)” a declaration by one of the main characters, Lord Asriel Belacqua, played by James McAvoy, that led me to research the novels and the author. Since we’re talking about God, by the way, where have I heard that phrase before, “and there was war in Heaven….”

7Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power

and the kingdom of our God,

and the authority of his Messiah.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,

who accuses them before our God day and night,

has been hurled down.

Revelation 12: 7-10

In an interesting turn of events, James McAvoy also played Mr. Tumnus in Disney’s Chronicles of Narnia film.

https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZLBR&pc=MOZI&q=Mr.+Tumnus

It’s definitely a thumbs down for me. If you’re a Christian or even if you’re not I highly recommend you look deeply into this novel series and into Pullman’s background before allowing your Children to immerse themselves into it.

Look, I love science, I really do, it’s cool, it’s fantastic, but I love God more, and clearly Mr. Pullman does not.

Below are two of my now favorite quotes from Blaise Pascal:

“If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.”

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

 

Blog Post #1174

June 29, 2021

Technical Discussion: Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device

Starship Watch Update:

Preparations continue for the launch of launch of Starship on its first orbital flight. This will also be the inaugural flight of the Super Heavy Booster as well. If all goes according to plan, the launch will occur sometime in July. While they are still waiting on FAA approval, I’m not particularly worried here, as both parties have a stake in a successful launch.

Below is a link to Space.com. a great site for all things space-related!

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-orbital-flight-possible-july-2021

And now, for our Feature Presentation…

Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device

US [Patent #]US20170313446A1 Salvatore Pais United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary Of The Navy

A craft using an inertial mass reduction device comprises of an inner resonant cavity wall, an outer resonant cavity, and microwave emitters. The electrically charged outer resonant cavity wall and the electrically insulated inner resonant cavity wall form a resonant cavity. The microwave emitters …

This is the first of the so-called “UFO-Patents” filed on behalf of the United States Navy by an enigmatic yet verified scientist named Salvatore Pais. https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

There has been much speculation as to the filing of such unusual patents by the United States Navy. Following on the heels of recent announcements by the Navy that leaked fighter-aircraft footage depicting an encounter with UFOs seem a little too coincidental to ignore. Below are some of the more prevalent theories about possible reasons these patents were filed. I will list them, before listing my own. Then we will delve into this particular patent and examine what Inertial Mass Reduction is and why it is necessary.

Possible reasons for US Navy Patent filings

(And, just as important, why they made them public instead of classifying them)

Possible Reason 1- Misinformation and Misdirection for our Enemies

It’s all a misinformation and misdirection campaign, designed to get the Chinese to spend their economy into collapse, like the Soviets did with the US’ Star Wars or SDI initiative.

While this is possible, and it would explain the strong similarity to Bob Lazar’s recounting of his time in Area 51, it seems unlikely the Pentagon would expect the Chinese to fall into the same trap as the Soviets. Besides, SDI WAS NOT all smoke and mirrors. Some solid, and arguably, useful defensive technology came out of the program; it was real.

Possible Reason #2- The U.S. Military Has The Technology

The military already possesses this technology and, perhaps, the recent UFO sightings are military aircraft using the incredibly advanced technology. In all likelihood this is reverse-engineered alien technology. The public disclosures are to let the public, and perhaps even more importantly the Chinese and Russians know, that we have successfully reverse-engineered the tech and have working ships and tech to prove it.

Possible Reason #3- Future Tech

Perhaps, having experienced concurrent breakthroughs at the same time in several related branches of physics, and having developed ideas around the technology that doesn’t even exist yet, the Navy filed these patents because they believe they will one day, perhaps soon, become reality.

It’s also possible that scientists have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and have finally been able to successfully reproduce key elements of it.

So, to sum things up, it would seem that our government, the United States government, has:

    • Contrived one of the greatest hoaxes of all times to confound our enemy or
    • We have the technology today and we’re using it or
    • We believe we understand how to create the technology defined in the patents and expect to be successful at doing at some point in the future.

The Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of the Naval Aviation Enterprise mentions in one of the patents that the Chinese are also working on developing the same technologies and that these patents would keep us from owing Beijing when we build ships using “their” technology should they develop the technology first.

What is Inertial Mass Reduction?

As defined in Wikipedia…
In physics, the reduced mass is the “effective” inertial mass appearing in the two-body problem of Newtonian mechanics. It is a quantity which allows the two-body problem to be solved as if it were a one-body problem. Note, however, that the mass determining the gravitational force is not reduced.

What is Inertia?

Newton’s First Law of Motion is the Law of Inertia: An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

For example. if you were to throw a baseball in the vacuum of space, since there is no air to create friction, the baseball would continue forever, unless it runs into something, enters the gravitational field of a planet, moon, etc.

Inertial Mass Reduction then seems to provide much the same benefit as the fictional “Inertial Dampeners” in Star Trek, reducing the excessive G-forces felt by the passengers of a starship, and enabling a craft t change direction at high-speed without coming apart, by dramatically reducing the impact of inertia on the craft.

In any event each of these patents indicate such an incredible leap in technological advancement that it screams to me that this technology has either been reverse-engineered from alien ships or it was given to us.

Considering the fact that a number of seasoned, experienced military pilots reported seeing crafts matching not only the same physical description, but also the same flight characteristics as described in Salvatore Pais’ patents, one cannot help but believe that either one or both nations currently possessing working models of such craft.

Inertial Mass Reduction is one of a handful of critical components needed to achieve interstellar travel. It appears it may be happening before our eyes folks, so don’t blink! Humanity will indeed soon have the ability to explore the universe, in our lifetime! It is indeed a brave new world! Just as the pilgrims traveled to America and settled this land, so too will we spread into the cosmos. We can only hope we are befriended by a friendly alien species, like the pilgrims were by the Naive Americans.

The future is here folks, and it’s both frightening, and terribly exciting!

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

 

Blog Post #1172

June 16, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: King of the Hill, First Contact, and Government Patents

From the day that Cain slew his brother Abel until now, human beings have murdered and butchered one another. War has been with us every step of the way as Man discovered fire, as he moved from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from farmer to merchant. War was with us when we invented the trireme, the galley, the steamship, the battleship, and the aircraft carrier. And it was with us when we first discovered the atomic bomb and used it, to help bring about the end OF World War II.

And that should have been the end of it, the end of war on planet Earth. By creating a weapon with such incredible destructive power humanity had, for the first time, literally created the means of its own destruction. We had taken war to its logical conclusion, the end of life on earth if we weren’t oh-so-careful and of course, we were not.

Rather than pausing and charting a new course for itself, the way I imagine most sentient species would at this point in their development, we kept going down the old, familiar path of war. 1950 brought us yet another major war, the Korean War, followed in 1962 by the closest we’ve ever come to global nuclear Armageddon, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The placement of Jupiter Missiles in Turkey, a NATO country that borders Russia, the previous year by the United States was perceived by the Soviets to be a serious threat to their country. As was standard operating procedure for both sides during The Cold War, in a game of tit-for-tat the Soviets responded to the Jupiter missiles by placing their own nuclear missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy, unwilling to allow this to continue, ordered a naval blockade, which the Soviets were determined to break. Thus, it was that it would be a back-channel deal, brokered by someone both sides knew and trusted, an arrangement in which the Jupiter missiles would be removed from Turkey six months later if the Soviet Missiles were pulled out of Cuba immediately. The world had been standing on the very brink of a nuclear holocaust, a nuclear winter that would, when combined with the radiation and nuclear, have spelled the end of human civilization for thousands of years, and the deaths of billions of human beings. It was pure, unadulterated madness; and it was only sixty years ago.

Since the Cuban Missile Crisis our renowned world leaders have gone on to bring us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the first Gulf War, 9/11, the War on Terror, the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia’s brief tryst with democracy before returning to a communist-lite government more like the USSR, and the and the War in Iraq.

During the same period, however, we have also sent men to the moon, we have flown helicopter drones on Mars, and we’ve visited (using robots, cameras, and scientific instruments) every planet in the Solar system. We have mapped the human genome and very well may stand on the cusp of forever ending human aging as we know it. Most recently we were able to develop anti-viral vaccines in record time that likely saved millions of lives worldwide.

Yet we just can’t help ourselves when it comes to playing “King of the Hill,” or in some cases “Queen of the Hill, as women do not seem in any way immune to this particular mental disorder.

We seem to be stuck, with world leaders constantly locked into an endless cycle of a medievalesque Game of Thrones, a constant power struggle, jockeying for control of the world’s resources. But why?

Listen, I grew up poor, so I get the concept of the power struggle for control of limited resources. But don’t you see, that’s just it. In the age of SpaceX, The Gateway Foundation, Blue Origins, and multiple missions to Mars, plans to establish a permanent base on the moon, and much more, we’re moving out into space folks, modern-day pioneers seeking to settle the galaxy. And like they say in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, space is big, really big. Nations with a long history of hostility must learn to set aside mistrust and suspicions and start working to find a way to work together on overcoming the technological hurdles we will face getting there.

Remember, there are many, many threats facing humanity, ALL OF HUMANITY, that threaten to destroy the entire planet, including the United States, Russia, and China. Whether the threat emerges in the form of an asteroid, a comet, a nuclear apocalypse, an airborne hemorrhagic fever like Ebola Zaire (lookup Ebola Reston) or any one of the many other possible apocalyptic events that could end humanity. It is my assessment that Elon Musk, is right, we need to do something now to better our odds of survival. Perhaps a Mars colony would be able to help Earth in the event of a disaster, or vice versa.

For the first time in human history, we are nearing the point where we can begin to explore, settle, and then colonize new worlds. Who knows what, or perhaps who, we will find out there?

 

Sometimes I find myself a little despondent about where we are as a civilization. With world leaders constantly posturing, threatening nuclear fire, trying to take over the world, what might an alien visitor think of humanity if he (or she) were to visit our planet, or even just pick-up our television broadcasts? How might they react to the news that we could be visiting a planet near them soon? Would they be pleased to make our acquaintance, or would they be pleased to wipe us out of existence?

Now then, let’s move on.

United States Navy’s so-called UFO patents

It seems that something is really going on, and I’m beginning to think it’s even bigger than I originally thought. Any why shouldn’t it be? I mean we’re talking extraterrestrials, UFOs, interstellar travel, and this may all be coming to a planet near you a LOT sooner than you or most anyone else on Earth could have imagined, except for those in the know, of course.

So, let’s just take a step-back for a moment before proceeding to the Navy patents.

1-UFOs have been seen for much of human history

2- On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Airfield issued a press release stating that they had recovered a “flying disc” from a ranch near Roswell.

3-UFOs have been spotted with increasing frequency worldwide since WWII.

4-The United States Government denied any knowledge of the existence of UFOs, until recently.

5-In 2019 the United States Space Force was established.

6- Last year the US Navy acknowledged the flight recordings and radar of jets chasing a UFO performing “impossible” maneuvers was confirmed to be legitimate.

7-In 2020 The United States Navy also made public the existence of several patents based on incredible, exotic, some would say even alien technology. These patents are considered reality-changing technologies.

The US Government has acknowledged the existence of UFOs, and has confirmed the filing of patents on technology that seems eerily similar to the alien tech specified by Bob Lazar, a scientist who claims to have worked at the S-4 base at Groom Lake (Area 51) in the 1980s, where he worked on reverse-engineering the propulsion system of UFOs.

Here is some info on Bob Lazar. There’s been a lot of misinformation spread about poor Bob over the last few decades, but based on what I’m seeing, he may soon be vindicated and proven correct, and that he was telling the truth the entire time.

Check out this website: www.boblazar.com

Watch this trailer for a film about Lazar’s experiences then find it on Amazon or wherever

Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bob+lazar+area+51+%26+flying+saucers+2018&docid=608036033419809160&mid=51AA55E0692D26CD266451AA55E0692D26CD2664&view=detail&FORM=VIREHT

I’m going to talk more about these incredible patents, and where I think we’re going with this, next week.

But for now, below is a list of the patents that I found and that I believe to be relevant.

Google Patents:

https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Pais&oq=Salvatore+Pais+

15/141,270 Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device

https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device

US US20170313446A1 Salvatore Pais United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary Of The Navy

Priority 2016-04-28 • Filed 2016-04-28 • Published 2017-11-02

A craft using an inertial mass reduction device comprises of an inner resonant cavity wall, an outer resonant cavity, and microwave emitters. The electrically charged outer resonant cavity wall and the electrically insulated inner resonant cavity wall form a resonant cavity. The microwave emitters …

Electromagnetic field generator and method to generate an electromagnetic field

US US10135366B2 Salvatore Pais The United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary Of The Navy

Priority 2015-07-24 • Filed 2015-07-24 • Granted 2018-11-20 • Published 2018-11-20

The electromagnetic field generator includes a shell, an electrostatic generator, a power plant, a thermoelectric generator, and an electric motor. The shell has embedded polycrystalline ferroelectric ceramic material which is polarized such that the ceramic material exhibits strong Piezoelectric …

Piezoelectricity-induced High Temperature Superconductor

US US20190348597A1 Salvatore Cezar Pais United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary Of The Navy

Priority 2017-08-16 • Filed 2019-07-23 • Published 2019-11-14

The present invention is a high temperature superconductor comprising of a wire, which comprises of an insulator core and a metal coating. The metal coating is disposed around the insulator core, and the metal is coating deposited on the core. When a pulsed current is passed through the wire, …

High frequency gravitational wave generator

US US10322827B2 Salvatore Cezar Pais The United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary Of The Navy

Priority 2017-02-14 • Filed 2017-02-14 • Granted 2019-06-18 • Published 2019-06-18

A high frequency gravitational wave generator including a gas filled shell with an outer shell surface, microwave emitters, sound generators, and acoustic vibration resonant gas-filled cavities. The outer shell surface is electrically charged and vibrated by the microwave emitters to generate a …

Plasma Compression Fusion Device

US US20190295733A1 Salvatore Pais United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary Of The Navy

Priority 2018-03-22 • Filed 2018-03-22 • Published 2019-09-26

A plasma compression fusion device which includes a hollow duct and at least one pair of opposing counter-spinning dynamic fusors. The hollow duct includes a vacuum chamber disposed within the hollow duct. Each dynamic fusor has a plurality of orifices and an outer surface which is electrically …

 

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

 

Blog Post #1171

June 10, 2021

Technical Discussion: BETTER WAKE-UP AMERICA! While we fight with each other over dresses and pronouns, Russia & China Plan our Imminent Destruction.

I love America. It is the greatest country, bar none, to have ever existed on Planet Earth; at least that I’m aware of. Perhaps some great civilization, lost from the pages of history, once existed and flourished, that offered more freedom and opportunity than America, but of there was, I’ve never heard of it.

But we have to be very, very careful not to take it for granted, because we are and forever will be (until Our Lord’s Second Coming at least) only one generation away from the end. Even more important, is that in my opinion, in order for freedom to continue to exist and thrive in the world, America must live and thrive. But sadly, as a species we human beings have short memories, often don’t learn from the past, and we do a rather poor job at separating factual world history from fiction when teaching our children. Revisionists have been very busy over the last few decades, trying to revise, reshape, and heavily influence and poison young minds against America, against their own country, to what end remains uncertain, unless it is the country’s downfall. Of course, wrongs have been committed, but they pale in comparison to the many more great rights that have also been committed, often at great personal sacrifice.

When Memorial Day rolls around have you ever taken a moment to reflect on how you are enjoying the fruits of another man’s labor, namely the soldier who died on the battlefield protecting the freedom you enjoy each and every day?

Each generation must take up, that fight, each man, woman, and child, each in their own way, to protect that freedom, to fight for it, and, if necessary, to die for it. When the day comes that a generation in America refuses to do that is the beginning of the end of the Great American Experiment. And mark my words, there will always be a China or a Russia waiting just outside our door, waiting for the day when we are weak, too weak, to defend ourselves any longer, and on that day they will pounce, and devour us.

Lyndon Johnson was in the Oval Office when I was born, so I’ve been around for a few years, and I can tell you that never, in my entire life have I seen our country tearing itself apart as badly as it is now. Never have I seen the media fabricate news, lying and often twisting facts so often in order to fir their worldview and to manipulate the public or to influence elections. Never have I seen so…. much corruption, and so little integrity, so little honesty, so little faithfulness.

Politicians and people in the media were planning President Trump’s impeachment even before he was sworn into office! His ability to lead, to fulfill his duties and obligations as president, and to accomplish great things for America was severely hampered and degraded, intentionally so, by the democrats, without any regard whatsoever for the impact it would have on the country.

The way things are going, the only thing our enemies need to do is be patient. They don’t need to fire missiles, send armies, or drop bombs. We’re destroying ourselves, from the inside. And yes, I’m certain Russia, and especially China, are both doing everything they can to help us along in that effort by flooding social media, by funneling money and support though back-channels and through what they call “useful idiots,” their term for describing Americans who will do their bidding for them because of financial investments in China, etc.

Yes, we are most definitely helping our enemies when we tear our country apart. They have been playing us against one another, blacks against whites, democrats against republicans, etc., fostering unrest in the United States while they work on plans for ending our country once and for all. Hypersonic missiles that we cannot intercept, cyber-attacks, like the recent attack on an oil pipeline that was either blatantly or tacitly supported by Putin. Do you seriously think cyber-attackers could operate in Putin’s Russia and attack the United States without his knowledge? China too has been launching cyber-attacks against our national infrastructure for decades. Who’s to say they haven’t already planted software in our nuclear power plants so that nuclear power plants across the country meltdown simultaneously, killing tens of millions of Americans without ever leaving the comfort of their office chairs in Moscow? Given how often they’ve launched cyber-attacks against us, how do we know whether China has placed software across our power grid that will take-down the national grid?

Think I exaggerate? Read this post, follow the links and read the articles, then check it out for yourselves. If we’re not fighting to protect America, we’re going to lose her. Then what kind of world will our children grow up in? What will happen to freedom in the world? No one ever said America was going to be around forever!

FICTIONAL HEADLINE

“June 11, 2021

McAllen, TX

Blended-in among the thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the border between Mexico and the United States today was a small but very well-prepared group of Iranian Republican Guard elements, carrying with them a mobile missile launcher and a single, low-yield nuclear missile.

This small group of Republican Guard were able to smuggle the mobile, Russian-made launcher to Lebanon, Kansas. This small town, situated in the state of Kansas, was chosen by the Iranians because it is the geographic center of the continental United States. Upon reaching a field just outside of Lebanon, the team setup the mobile launcher. Even while surrounded by a sizable force of agents from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, the invaders proceeded to prepare the missile for launch, ignoring increasingly intense orders from the agents to get down on the ground and remain motionless. Eventually, the U.S. government agents opened fire on the Iranians, killing all of them instantly, but not before one of them succeeded in launching the sole missile, which soared straight up before detonating at the pre-defined altitude of 500KM.

The explosion itself caused no immediate damage to life or property, but the resulting electromagnetic pulse generated by the high-altitude blast effectively knocked out power all over the United States, devastating the national power grid, and destroying components in the grid that are no longer manufactured or even available.

Experts say repairs to restore the power grid could take anywhere from two weeks to two years, perhaps even longer. The situation certainly looks dire for our friends in the United States. When asked whether Great Britain was prepared to declare war on the Russian Commonwealth or the People’s Republic of China should either of them make a military move against our largest ally during this time the prime minister would only reply, ‘We will honor all Defence Alliance Agreements, especially with an ally as close as the United States, and we will remind those who would harbor thoughts of such an attack, that the United States, even during this present crisis, remains the most dominant fighting force on the planet.’

Reporting for BBC News, this is Rob Pendergrass.”

The above is a fictional newspaper article I hope never becomes a reality. I just fear that if our national power grid, and our national infrastructure continue to go unattended, while trillions of dollars are being wasted on pork projects all over the country, we will all one-day come to regret it.

As most of you know the United States was recently attacked by Russian cyber-terrorists, holding a critical oil pipeline hostage, and it nearly brought our great country to her knees.

This type of threat is nothing new. In fact, I wrote a book about a similar cyber-attack, only by a cyber-terrorist with more nefarious, and more ambitious plans. In my novel, Cybersp@ce, the attacker uses a cyber-warfare system to penetrate and disable the coolant system at a nuclear power plant, causing it to meltdown and release enough radiation to kill over a hundred-thousand Americans. This is scary stuff, and it can happen, today.

In another frightening scenario, one I wrote about in my first novel The Great Collapse, the electrical grid is completely destroyed during an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP attack. This too is a very real, and very frightening possibility.

While researching The Great Collapse I learned that Congress had commissioned a report, the EMP Report, detailing how vulnerable now-ancient power grid is to an attack, and how difficult it would be to recover, given that many components used are no longer manufactured. It seems an overhaul of our power grid is in order, and that the power grid must be hardened against the risk of an EMP attack, lest a terrorist attack or an attack by an enemy state use such an attack to cripple the United States, as part of a larger, more comprehensive military assault against the U.S.

This week and next, I will reference previous posts and the two novels I mentioned earlier, CyberSp@ce and The Great Collapse, in more detail, while I work on researching material for a series of posts I hope, and believe, will be of great interest to you, my astute and very learned readers.

Jeff W. Horton

Novelist, Blogger, American

 

Russian and Chinese EMP Weapons Threaten Critical US Infrastructure

https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/02/07/russia-china-emp-weapons.html#:~:text=In%20January%202021%2C%20Dr.%20Peter%20Vincent%20Pry%2C%20Executive,Security%2C%20released%20a%20report%20titled%20%E2%80%9CRussia%3A%20EMP%20Threat.%E2%80%9D

The Blackout War: China, Russia And Iran Building Super-EMP Bombs for ‘Blackout Warfare’

https://survivalblog.science.blog/2021/01/13/the-blackout-war/

China revels in US protests, sees unrest as PR opportunity

https://www.france24.com/en/20200605-china-revels-in-us-protests-sees-unrest-as-pr-opportunity

Russia and China target U.S. protests on social media

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/01/russia-and-china-target-us-protests-on-social-media-294315

The Ongoing Threat of an Electromagnetic Pulse Attack Against the United States

In 2008 the United States Congress commissioned a report to study the impact of an electromagnetic attack on the national infrastructure of the United States.

I was completely oblivious to the existence of any such report until came across a mention of it in my research for The Great Collapse. Since this is a public report that you, the American taxpayer paid for, I’m making it available for you to download along with this post. Fair warning, the findings in this report are a bit frightening both because of the relative ease with which such an attack could occur, and the catastrophic damage such an attack could have on our nation. Below is an excerpt from the report. I recommend you read it, and contact your elected officials ASAP, instructing them to pass legislation mandating the upgrade and ongoing maintenance of our national infrastructure to protect it from an EMP attack.

Please note: Such protection could offer potential protection from other potential; threats as well, including solar flares and cyber-attacks.

The below is from the 2008 report. In 2018, however, the Department of Defense release three new reports. They can be found here: https://michaelmabee.info/three-new-emp-commission-reports-released/#:~:text=On%20May%208%2C%202018%20the%20Department%20of%20Defense,the%20electric%20grid%20and%20critical%20infrastructures%20since%202000.

From the 2008 EMP Commission Report:

Preface

“The physical and social fabric of the United States is sustained by a system of systems; a complex and dynamic network of interlocking and interdependent infrastructures (“critical national infrastructures”) whose harmonious functioning enables the myriad actions, transactions, and information flow that undergird the orderly conduct of civil society in this country. The vulnerability of these infrastructures to threats — deliberate, accidental, and acts of nature — is the focus of greatly heightened concern in the current era, a process accelerated by the events of 9/11 and recent hurricanes, including Katrina.

and Rita.

“This report presents the results of the Commission’s assessment of the effects of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on our critical national infrastructures and provides recommendations for their mitigation. The assessment is informed by analytic and test activities executed under commission sponsorship, which are discussed in this volume. An earlier executive report, Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) — Volume 1: Executive Report (2004), provided an overview of the subject.

“The electromagnetic pulse generated by a high-altitude nuclear explosion is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. The increasingly pervasive use of electronics of all forms represents the greatest source of vulnerability to attack by EMP. Electronics are used to control, communicate, compute, store, manage, and implement nearly every aspect of United States (U.S.) civilian systems.  When a nuclear explosion occurs at high altitude, the EMP signal it produces will cover the wide geographic region within the line of sight of the detonation. This broad band, high amplitude EMP, when coupled into sensitive electronics, has the capability to produce widespread and long lasting disruption and damage to the critical infrastructures that underpin the fabric of U.S. society.

“Because of the ubiquitous dependence of U.S. society on the electrical power system,

its vulnerability to an EMP attack, coupled with the EMP’s particular damage mechanisms, creates the possibility of long-term, catastrophic consequences. The implicit invitation to take advantage of this vulnerability, when coupled with increasing proliferation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, is a serious concern. A single EMP attack may seriously degrade or shut down a large part of the electric power grid in the geographic area of EMP exposure effectively instantaneously. There is also a possibility of functional collapse of grids beyond the exposed area, as electrical effects propagate from

one region to another.

“’The time required for full recovery of service would depend on both the disruption and damage to the electrical power infrastructure and to other national infrastructures. Larger affected areas and stronger EMP field strengths will prolong the time to recover. Some critical electrical power infrastructure components are no longer manufactured in the United States, and their acquisition ordinarily requires up to a year of lead time in routine circumstances. Damage to or loss of these components could leave significant parts of the electrical infrastructure out of service for periods measured in months to a year or more. There is a point in time at which the shortage or exhaustion of sustaining backup systems, including emergency power supplies, batteries, standby fuel supplies, communications, and manpower resources that can be mobilized, coordinated, and dispatched, together lead to a continuing degradation of critical infrastructures for a prolonged period of time.

“Electrical power is necessary to support other critical infrastructures, including supply and distribution of water, food, fuel, communications, transport, financial transactions, emergency services, government services, and all other infrastructures supporting the national economy and welfare. Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities. In fact, the Commission is deeply concerned that such impacts are likely in the event of an EMP attack unless practical steps are taken to provide protection for critical elements of the electric system and for rapid restoration of electric power, particularly to essential services. The recovery plans for the individual infrastructures currently in place essentially assume, at worst, limited upsets to the other infrastructures that are important to their operation. Such plans may be of little or no value in the wake of an EMP attack because of its long-duration effects on all infrastructures that rely on electricity or electronics.

“The ability to recover from this situation is an area of great concern. The use of automated control systems has allowed many companies and agencies to operate effectively with small work forces. Thus, while manual control of some systems may be possible, the number of people knowledgeable enough to support manual operations is limited. Repair of physical damage is also constrained by a small work force. Many maintenance crews are sized to perform routine and preventive maintenance of high-reliability equipment. When repair or replacement is required that exceeds routine levels, arrangements are typically in place to augment crews from outside the affected area. However, due to the simultaneous, far-reaching effects from EMP, the anticipated augmenters likely will be occupied in their own areas. Thus, repairs normally requiring weeks of effort may require a much longer time than planned.

“The consequences of an EMP event should be prepared for and protected against to the extent it is reasonably possible. Cold War-style deterrence through mutual assured destruction is not likely to be an effective threat against potential protagonists that are either failing states or trans-national groups. Therefore, making preparations to manage the effects of an EMP attack, including understanding what has happened, maintaining situational awareness, having plans in place to recover, challenging and exercising those plans, and reducing vulnerabilities, is critical to reducing the consequences, and thus

probability, of attack. The appropriate national-level approach should balance prevention, protection, and recovery.

“The Commission requested and received information from a number of Federal agencies and National Laboratories. We received information from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the National Communications System (since absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security), the Federal Reserve Board, and the Department of Homeland Security. Early in this review it became apparent that only limited EMP

vulnerability testing had been accomplished for modern electronic systems and components. To partially remedy this deficit, the Commission sponsored illustrative testing of current systems and infrastructure components. The Commission’s view is that the Federal Government does not today have sufficiently robust capabilities for reliably assessing and managing EMP threats.

“The United States faces a long-term challenge to maintain technical competence for understanding and managing the effects of nuclear weapons, including EMP. The Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration have developed and implemented an extensive Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship Program over the last decade. However, no comparable effort was initiated to understand the effects that nuclear weapons produce on modern systems. The Commission reviewed current national capabilities to understand and to manage the effects of EMP and concluded that the

Country is rapidly losing the technical competence in this area that it needs in the Government, National Laboratories, and Industrial Community.

“An EMP attack on the national civilian infrastructures is a serious problem, but one that can be managed by coordinated and focused efforts between industry and government. It is the view of the Commission that managing the adverse impacts of EMP is feasible in terms of time and resources. A serious national commitment to address the threat of an EMP attack can develop a national posture that would significantly reduce the payoff for such an attack and allow the United States to recover in a timely manner if such an attack were to occur.”

Below is a link to the full 2008 report. These are your tax-dollars at work, so read-on and be informed!

Link to EMP Report:

Next Week: Protecting our infrastructure from cyber-attacks.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1170

June 5, 2021

Technical Discussion: What IS the Big UFO Reveal We Keep Hearing About?

Starship Watch Update:

Preparations continue for Orbital Launch

Looks like preparations continue for a July launch of Starship into orbit! I found a great article (below) that discusses a recent test fire of raptor engines that will be used in the Super Heavy booster that will lift Starship into orbit!

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-raptor-orbital-duration-test-fire/

Meanwhile, SpaceX has purchased at least three oil rigs that are being retrofitted and adapted for use as launchpads for future Starship launches, beginning in 2022 with a launch to Mars. Exciting stuff. Be sure to keep an eye out for news of an orbital test flight sometime in July!

Now, back to our regular programming!

What IS the Big UFO Reveal We Keep Hearing About?

Flying saucers. The term was first used to describe unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, some 74years ago, on June 24, 1947, when salesman and pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects, “flying like a saucer would” in a “V” formation along the crest of the Cascade Range in Washington state.

Since 1947 and even before that, something has been see in the skies above our cities, our homes, and across just about every landscape on earth. There have reports of strange craft, maneuvering in ways that seemed to violate just every known law of physics we have. These unidentified flying objects, UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena, UAPs, as some are calling them now, have also been seen in space by astronauts and they’ve been seen in earth’s oceans.

As far as the public is concerned, we’ve been left in the dark, with governments all over the world doing their utmost to keep these encounters shrouded in secrecy and when that fails, ensuring the truth is so entangled with misinformation and conspiracy theories that the world is left puzzled and perplexed as to what to believe when incredible stories of alien encounters occur.

Some have speculated that these were aircraft developed by the Germans in WWII. Now the Germans are a brilliant people, I will give them that, but I believe it’s safe to say that if Germany had ships capable of traveling something like 20,000 Mph before banking at sharp right angles and exiting Earth’s atmosphere, they would have handily won WWII.

Now skeptics are proposing that these are new, enemy hypersonic weapons. Now, while it is remotely possible given today’s technology, it could not have been 50-75, or even 10 years ago.

So, if these strange craft we’ve been seeing ARE piloted by extraterrestrial beings from another world, why are they here, what do they want from us, from our world.?

My guess Is that someone already knows, but they’re not telling. Maybe they have a good reason for keeping secrets so tightly controlled, maybe they do not.

To date, however, the government’s attempts to supposedly investigate UFOs has resulted in the public getting no more answers after the investigation has concluded than they did when it started. Our government, the government of the United States of America, refuses to tell us what’s going on. I sure hope they have a damn good reason.

Below are a few of the United States’ government’s past “investigations” into UFOs.

Project Sign (1947 to 1949)

Project Sign had been active from 1947 to 1949. Some of Sign’s personnel, including director Robert Sneider, favored the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the best explanation for UFO reports. They prepared the Estimate of the Situation arguing their case.

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/AD31102.pdf

Project Grudge (1949-1952)

Project Grudge (1949-1952) Project Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February 1949 and formally ended in December 1949. Project Grudge rejected the extraterrestrial explanation, choosing instead to offer cases of mistaken identity, for example mistaking Venus or swamp gas for a UFO, as the most reasonable explanation for most sightings.

https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/usaf/AFD-110719-005.pdf

Project Blue Book (1952-1969) – Though the longest-lasting of the three, it too provided the public with no greater insight into what lay behind the truth related to UFOs.

https://www.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/bluebook/bluebook.pdf

Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) (2007-2012)

The US confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) – a Pentagon program set up to study UFOs before being disbanded in 2017.

UAP Task Force (2020- ?)

However, it was replaced by the UAP Task Force in June 2020 after a vote by the US Senate Intelligence Committee.

The newly formed International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER) is made up of UFO researchers and scientist from 27 countries.

UFOs – now more commonly referred to in scientific and intelligence circles as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) – have stepped from being fringe conspiracy theories to a genuine security concern.

And with eager UFO enthusiasts eagerly awaiting the US report compiled by the US Congress, ICER was formed to highlight the global implications that these UFOs could be “non-human intelligence”.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/15131605/ufo-pentagon-report-government-aliens-documents-released/

It seems clear that for some reason, after seventy years of lies, cover-ups, and misinformation, the government, and whoever else out there that’s in the know, is slowly opening the raising the curtain to reveal the truth behind the UFO phenomenon.

It is all but certain that the technology we see at work in many of the recently released videos, with craft traveling in excess of 30,000 Mph, traveling 50ft above the ground, underwater, and in space, is extraterrestrial. For me, the real questions are these:

  1. Are we in communication with one or more of these alien civilizations?
  2. If so, how long, how many, and in what capacity?
  3. What kind of a threat, if any, do they pose to humanity?
  4. Are we close to acquiring some of their technologies for ourselves, like interstellar travel, protective force fields, and inertial dampeners, just to name a few?

Then, of course, the biggest question of all.

  1. Why are they here?

So, what IS the big UFO reveal we keep hearing about?

Well, it’s complicated. You see, in part it’s tied to a law that was passed mandating the release of information relating to UFOs. It is also, however, also part of a bigger, more orchestrated campaign to slowly acclimate then reveal that alien civilizations not only exist, but that they’ve been interacting with humanity for centuries.

Thankfully, before leaving office President Trump signed a bill with a provision in it that forced the nation’s intelligence and military to produce an unclassified report stating what they know about UFOs withing 180 days. That time will expire the end of June 2021, which means any day now that report will be released and available to the public.

“President Trump’s signature Sunday on the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief and government funding bill started a 180-day countdown for the Pentagon and spy agencies to say what they know about UFOs.

The provision received very little attention, in part because it wasn’t included in the text of the 5,593-page legislation, but as a “committee comment” attached to the annual intelligence authorization act, which was rolled into the massive bill.”

https://nypost.com/2020/12/29/covid-19-bill-started-a-180-day-countdown-for-ufo-disclosures/

Already we are beginning to get bits and pieces of what is going to be in the report. While it doesn’t appear the government is going to admit ETs are flying these craft, neither are they ruling out that possibility. It will be the first time Jesse Marcel first went on record for a local paper in Roswell, New Mexico, stating that a flying disk had been recovered, that a government report will be released stating that UFOs could be of extraterrestrial origin.

With the incredible advancement in technology over the last few decades, with satellites encircling the globe, and with greater visibility worldwide than ever before, not only are we able to more easily spot such craft now, but we are also able to track them now too, even at such great speeds. With the mandate to discover who and/or what is behind this phenomenon, it is likely only a matter of time now until a great “revelation,” of some sort is made, revealing what many of us already know to be true; ET is here, and has been for some time.

We’d just like to know why.

More links on this topic worth checking out:

https://nypost.com/2021/04/30/feds-cover-up-of-ufos-puts-us-at-risk/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/02/congressional-report-ufos-expected-released-june/7510807002/

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/6/4/22519072/us-report-makes-no-definitive-finding-about-ufos-ap-source

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/15131605/ufo-pentagon-report-government-aliens-documents-released/

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find his novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore my website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit me on the

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1168

May 12, 2021

Technical Discussion: If you could extend your life by another hundred years, would you?

Starship Watch Update:

In a fantastic, historic first on May 5th, SpaceX successfully launched and landed, for the first time (without exploding) a SpaceX Starship, SN15, the company’s top man, Elon Musk, announced the likelihood that SN15 will fly again in coming days. Following some close inspection and, if needed, repairs, SN15 will likely repeat, or perhaps even exceed, the same test again sometime this month. This will, in my opinion, happen sooner than later, given the fact that SpaceX wants to launch Starship on top of Superheavy, the booster, that will eventually carry it out of Earth’s orbit and one day, to destinations throughout the solar system.

I expect that given the opportunity, Mr. Musk might also be the first to attach an interstellar engine to one of his Starships, giving us the opportunity to visit destination that today, would boggle and confound the imagination. In some ways Elon Musk is, in my opinion, the Tony Stark of our time.

Back to our Feature Presentation:

Before I could graduate college (a few years ago now) I had to take something called the Writing Proficiency Exam. Now, I don’t know whether these are still required by that particular university but at the time, you could not graduate without passing.

I still remember the topic the professor wrote on the board, almost as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was, more or less, as follows; “If you could extend your life by another hundred years would you, and why?”

Now, as some of you may have picked up on by now, I’m generally not one to agree with something I genuinely disagree with just because it’s either popular or perhaps expedient to do so. Also, at the time, I was still young and, perhaps, still a bit full of myself, (some things never really change I guess😊). In this instance, however, I was, in truth, not trying to be contrary, because I had what I felt was a heartfelt if unpopular answer to this question. My answer? At the top of my rather lengthy, and now what had become an argumentative essay, I paced something like this. “No, if I could extend my life by another hundred years, I would not extend it.”

Oh, I went on to list reason after reason, beyond my religious beliefs, that included such examples as the pain and suffering we all endure, the evil and horrific violence we’re forced to witness on an almost daily basis on television, online, and in-person, and the bitter suffering and death caused by cancer, etc. I knew, even then, that I’d chosen the “path less traveled,” and that it was full of scary and unapproving academia that go bump in the night, yet I finished my paper, confident that they had no choice but marvel at my sound reasoning and logic, despite the objection they might feel for my uncommon point of view. I mean it was, after all, a pass/fail class and I’d pretty much aced my writing classes. I failed the exam. Needless to say, I learned a very important lesson that day; the tyrannical kingdom of the Great University where the Imperial Faculty ruled with an iron fist was not the place to practice the exercising of free speech, at least not if one wanted to graduate said university. The next time I was scheduled to take a writing proficiency exam, I answered it exactly the way they wanted, I was a good little drone and I passed with flying colors <sigh>. Anyway…moving on…

My point in telling all of that is this; the question itself proved to be somewhat prophetic. To the best of my knowledge no one was, at least publicly, going around seriously talking about extending human life, unless they knew where the Holy Grail was, or perhaps the Fountain of Youth! At that time (and I’m definitely dating myself here) the human genome had not even been mapped yet. Ah, but how things have changed!

A couple of years ago I finished writing my last novel, my as-of-yet-unpublished novel, Eternity. By the way, if you’re friends with any literary agents be sure to send them my way! Eternity is about a scientist who succeeds in unlocking the secret to turning off the aging process in human beings. Does that sound unrealistic, fanciful even? It isn’t. Scientists are probably much farther down that road than you’ve been led to believe.

“Oh, come on, you’ve got to be kidding me!” you might exclaim. “Do you seriously think something like this could be discovered and the public not know about it? Sounds like a real conspiracy theory to me!” you might add, laughing to your friends as you did so. But you’d be making a great point.

Now I never claimed it had been invented, only that scientists were much closer than you might expect. But stop for a second and ask yourself, what if someone had already come across a means of turning off the aging process? Is there any possible reason our government, or any government, might want to keep that a secret? Just think overpopulation, overtaxed hospitals, food shortages, oil shortages, clogged freeways, skyrocketing unemployment…the list goes on. Yeah, it could potentially mean a complete global economic collapse. The again, maybe there are ways of turning off the aging process while also circumventing the aforementioned cataclysm. Then, of course, perhaps I’m wrong, and everything would be fine.

“Oh, any such advance is centuries, or at least decades into the future,” you might then claim, not without some sound reasoning. It may, however, not be so sound. Nearly a decade ago now scientists were successful in extending the life of lab mice by nearly 20%. Do you know what that would mean for a human being, with a generally accepted lifespan of no more than 120 years? Something like 144 years but lets just round up to the closest 10; oh, that happens to be 150. Guess what scientists are now claiming to be working towards when it comes to extending human life. They are saying their “goal” is to extend human life to 150 years of age.

But that’s not all. Scientists have also been busy working to find ways to remove senescent cells from the body. These are, essentially, dead cells, sometimes called zombie cells, that wander aimlessly about then body once their time is over, causing inflammation, contributing to disease, etc. The removal of these cells will, therefore, go a long way of improving the quality of life while other techniques work to improve the quantity of life. This stuff is real folks, just use some of your favorite search engines and try searching for some of the following terms. To aid in your efforts I’m including some terms for you to search on below.

  • Epigenetics
  • Anti-Aging
  • Reversing the Aging Process
  • Latest Anti-Aging Research
  • Senescent cells

‘Extraordinary’ Breakthroughs In Anti-Aging Research ‘Will Happen Faster Than People Think’

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robinseatonjefferson/2019/08/26/how-extraordinary-breakthroughs-in-anti-aging-research-will-happen-faster-than-people-think/?sh=2e3db67733dd

How to Reverse Aging – An overview on the latest anti-aging research

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=latest+anti+aging+research&&view=detail&mid=890864607FA5D7560D53890864607FA5D7560D53&rvsmid=B682088EA141C597A760B682088EA141C597A760&FORM=VDQVAP

Latest Anti-Aging Research

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=latest+anti+aging+research&docid=608021585134099327&mid=B682088EA141C597A760B682088EA141C597A760&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

Great Presentation by A Scientist posted 7-4-2020

Anti-aging drugs in MIT’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2020

https://www.longevity.technology/anti-aging-drugs-in-mits-10-breakthrough-technologies-2020/

Will You Live To 200? Five Levels Of Breakthroughs In Longevity Research You Must Know About

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/05/03/will-you-live-to-200-five-levels-of-breakthroughs-in-longevity-research-you-must-know-about/?sh=5d9b3139263d

So, what can we do to head-off the pending disasters that will befall us once everyone begins to live longer?

Hey, I love you guys, you’re my readers, you’re my people, but come on, I’m a starving writer, I need to make a living, right?

Buy my book, Eternity, when it comes out! I’m not claiming to have all the answers, just my suggestion on how to not only mitigate the effects of living longer, but how we can truly embrace our longer lifespans and live them for a much greater purpose.

“Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you a Christian? If a person lives longer, maybe a LOT longer, what does that mean for the hereafter, for death, for Heaven? How do you deal with that?”

Yeah, that was a bit of a challenge for me, I must admit. Let’s just say…you guessed it…I answer that question in the novel too. 😊

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

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Blog Post #1166

April 28, 2021

Technical Discussion: Success! Congratulations, SpaceX and Starship SN15!

History was made at 5:24 PM Central Daylight Time today in Boca Chica, Texas, when SpaceX launched, flew, and then landed Starship SN15 on the same launchpad from which it took off some six minutes earlier. The prototype rocket, successfully launched, completed its novel “belly-flop” maneuver, intended to help slow down the ship when reentering a planet’s atmosphere and then landed, vertically, on its concrete launchpad.

The SN15 Starship succeeded where its four predecessors failed. Starships Sn8, SN9, and SN11 all experienced a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly or RUD, prior to or during landing. RUD is, of course, an old rocket science/slang expression for explosion. SN10 landed without exploding, but it came in so hard and so fast that it crushed the landing legs and apparently cracked the fuel tank, which left it standing lopsided with a fire burning and soon led to an explosion several minutes after the landing.

SN15 also experienced a fire following the landing, leaving myself, and I suspect many others watching carefully long after SpaceX ended their broadcast, watching and waiting to see whether this ship too would explode, just like the others. Just as with SN10, within a few minutes the fire-suppression had started up bathing the bottom of the ship and the launchpad with water. Unlike with SN10, however, before long the fire-suppression system put out the fire, leaving SN15 just standing there, as if it were quietly staring back at us, laughing, as we waited for something that would never come to pass. Starship SN15 never did explode, it remains intact as of this writing some five hours later, finally giving the SpaceX team something they’ve lacked up until this point, an intact Starship they could carefully examine and study, fixing problems that they’d known about for months but until now, had been unable to address because they lacked the data. My guess is that following the landing of the next Starship, we will no longer see flames when the smoke clears, and the ship stands alone on the launchpad.

SpaceX recently won a contract with NASA for 2.9 billion dollars for lunar lander. The contract was challenged by the other two competitors who lost out on the bid for the contract to SpaceX, when SpaceX substantially underbid them. This turn of events must have turned-up the heat on Elon Musk for SN15 to have a successful launch. If they thought their challenge might slow down SpaceX, his competitors clearly do not understand Elon Musk, a man who thrives on challenge, who embraces risks other’s refuse to take. My guess: their challenge only served to drive Musk to drive his team even harder to ensure today’s launch would be a success.

Whatever the reason there were weeks of delays for today’s test, but it was certainly worth it. Starship is the first ship of its kind ever built, a ship big and powerful enough it can carry 100 people or 100 tons of cargo to orbit, to the moon, to Mars, or perhaps even further to one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. And not only has Musk created a company in SpaceX that can build them, but he and his company has developed an unprecedented, modern-day version of the assembly line, specifically designed and optimized for cranking out spacecraft like Model-T Fords. It’s simply incredible, visionary even. Imagine where this could go in the future. A spaceship in every garage?

Perhaps, other CEOs, businessmen and women, investors, and leaders, people like Elon Musk, people with vision and money, will follow his lead, building spacecraft of their own design that are capable of interplanetary travel or even greater feats, building on what has already been done while including their own innovations. Perhaps the next Musk will perfect terraforming, develop our first interstellar propulsion system, create force fields, or the first vaccines for alien viruses. Who knows?

All I know for sure is I’d rather be talking about the humanity we all share, which unites us and binds us, and the incredible accomplishments we can achieve by working together, like the nuclear fusion reactor being built in France. A number of countries are involved in that project, including the United States, France, Great Britain, Russia, and China. More on nuclear fusion in a coming blog post.

Yeah, I’d much rather hear about what binds and unites us, rather than what divides us, about how different we are and how terrible the “other guy” is.

NASA’s Artemis and Mars Program, SpaceX, Orbiting hotels, colonies on Mars, mining asteroids.

Write your Congressmen and women people, tell them we need our top scientists working on reverse-engineering the interstellar technology and force fields at S-4, or Area 51, or wherever they’re keeping it these days. Only when we can easily, and safely reach planets orbiting distant stars will we become a true, space-faring civilization. Until then, to Elon Musk and my friends at SpaceX and NASA, I share with you the immortal words of Bill and Ted; Rock On!

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

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Blog Post #1166

April 28, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: The Future, Technology, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday

Starship Watch Update:

It’s on! Starship SN15 appears to be VERY close to taking flight now. Yeah, I know, that’s exactly what I said last week. This time, it really does seem imminent. Why? Because of the successful Static Fire Test they ran on Monday, for one. With numerous improvements made both to Starship and her Raptor engines, expectations are high for what is likely to be a successful Thursday launch. One site has it at 11:00 AM. While a different site has SN15 launching 4:00 and 9:00PM Eastern on Friday, I suspect it will be tomorrow (Thursday). Closures were in effect for today and will be again tomorrow, making tomorrow seem like the most likely guess at this point. But hey, that’s all it is, a guess. I’m looking forward to the time when, like the Falcon launches now, Starship launches will be scheduled, routinely scheduled I might add, such that there will be no more guessing. As I’ve said before and as we must all try to remember, these are test flights, which means they are not scheduled because if they were, they’d almost certainly change anyway.

Life after Starship’s first successful takeoff and landing:

The way will be here before we know it, whether it’s tomorrow or not; the day when SpaceX has its first, completely successful launch and landing of a Starship. But what then? The next major milestones I suppose, might look something like this:

  • Launching Starship and the Super Heavy booster together
  • Starship’s first successful orbital flight, using the Super Heavy booster to get it Starship into orbit
  • Starship’s first unmanned flight to the moon
  • Starship’s first manned flight to the Moon
  • Starship’s first unmanned flight to Mars
  • Starship’s first Manned flight to Mars

There will, of course, be a number of smaller, incremental successes in-between. It is also likely that more than one of these will be occurring at the same time. For example, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which manned flight to Mars occurs weeks after the first unmanned flight to Mars has launched.

I can’t wait; science-fiction becomes science fact!

Now for today’s main event:

You’ll often find common little threads winding themselves throughout a writer’s novels. Sometimes it is crime and passion, sometimes it is horror, sometimes it is history (think of Zane Grey, the Western writer of former years). In my case, as with many other contemporary authors, it is frequently the future, or more specifically technology in the future.

Take Michael Crichton, for example. In several of his novels, at least two that I know of, Jurassic Park and Next, he writes to his concerns around the awesome power of genetics, which humanity often wields carelessly, “like a child playing with matches.” In reference to scientists bringing dinosaurs back to life, he wrote in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

In another of his novels, Next, Crichton again raises serious concerns about the awesome power of genetics and the careless way he expects to see that power wielded by humanity. Whether it be by editing life forms, changing them into living company advertisements (think glowing jellyfish that read IBM or fluorescent birds with Verizon spelled out in their feathers)and then sold to the company willing to pay the most for such advertising, or a human/ape hybrid for servitude created through genetic manipulation, or some other form of genetic mishap gone awry, Crichton wanted us to remember one thing as humanity’s power over genetics continues to grow into the future; that alterations to germline genes can be passed down from generation to generation, from parent to offspring, for all time.

I’m not sure how it happened in my case. I suppose it was more a byproduct of “writing what you know,” or “what you’re interested in”, which is what someone told me I should do when I first started writing. Suddenly I find that I too am writing about the awesome power of technology, and humanity’s increasing control (or in some cases lack of control) over it, and the threat that technology poses if mishandled.

I’ve written an apocalyptic novel about our dependency on technology and on electricity, and the subsequent ending of civilization when electricity all over the world fails (The Great Collapse). The lesson: we’ve become so dependent on electricity that if we’re not careful, an enemy, an accident, or a natural disaster could mean a disaster of epic proportions.

I began another series of novels (the Cybersp@ce Series) with a foreign power hacking into our national infrastructure, causing nuclear power plants to meltdown, and threatening to destabilize the world and causing a global nuclear war. The lesson: our infrastructure has already been hacked by foreign states. If we don’t do a better job securing that infrastructure, at least some of the events in the novel could come true!

Future Schism, one of more recent, dystopian novels, dealt with today’s culture wars, extended far into the future, during a time in which, following a second American Civil War, America has become literally a divided nation, made up of a liberal province in the west, and a conservative province in the East. I’d like to think I did a fair job in portraying many of the flaws in the ideologies of both sides.

I recent finished Eternity, the first in my next series of novels, the Eternity series, and I’m nearly done with the first draft of the second. Without giving away too much, I will state that the plot revolves around yet another scientific advance that holds extraordinary potential for altering the course of humanity for a very, very long time. It too addresses the awesome power of this discovery, the danger of it falling into the wrong hands, and the difficult choices humanity will face with each major technological breakthrough.

Perhaps writers are like the canaries in the coal mines, an early warning signal, here to warn the world of imminent danger to come should it continue down a specific path. Who knows? Only time will tell.

Jeff W Horton strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor…WAIT!!!! “What about Billie Holiday and Nina Simone,” you might ask, and you’d be right.

Billie Holiday and Nina Simone:

So, what do these two amazing women have to do with technology and the future? Quite a bit, I’d say. They speak to us from the past, about something primal, something so very fundamental, at least to me. They capture, for me, a lot of the passion, the yearning, we experience as human beings. In essence, they capture in their words and the depth of feeling in each note, part of what it is to be human, a soulfulness that humanity must be careful to hold on to, I mean for dear life, as we move forward into an uncertain future. We are human beings, and not machines. Let’s make it a point to remember that, to embrace that, and to celebrate it, as we move to create a colony on Mars, perhaps several distant moons, followed, of course, by other, distant worlds.

Another Recruitment Campaign?

Think you could convince five people to subscribe to The Horton Post? Would you like to have another opportunity to win a free, $100.00 gift certificate?

If you answered yes to both questions above, and you would like to see another contest, just email Jeff at jeff@hortonlibrary.com with the words YES-Hold a June 2021 Recruitment Campaign! In the subject line before May 15th.

If there’s enough interest, then another contest there shall be!

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

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Blog Post #1165

April 21, 2021

Technical Discussion: First In Freedom-Martian Style

They Did it! Another grand achievement for mankind! Yes, for humanity, not just the United States, though I’m terribly proud of the country of my birth. If there is one thing other than God Himself that can unite humanity, it is space travel, and the many new firsts. I confess, I find myself feeling today much as I did when, as a small boy, I looked up at the moon, my older brother explaining to me that for the very first time, men were walking around on the moon. I seem to recall just staring up at the full moon for what seemed like an eternity.

But more on today’s main feature shortly.

First, I have a few exciting updates I must share with you about my current favorite spacecraft; SpaceX Starship SN15!

Starship Watch Update:

It’s on! Starship SN15 appears to be VERY close to taking flight now. More to follow in tonight’s post, below.

I’m simply giddy tonight as I write this. Why? Because it’s such an exciting week in space! I’ll be honest with you. I was planning on changing things up a bit and writing about something other than space travel this week. But I’m so glad I didn’t! This must be the single, busiest week in space travel in my lifetime. There is not just one significant space launch this week, but three!

Significant Space Launch #1-Powered Flight

Launch time: Monday, April 19th, 2021, 3:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time

The very first aircraft to have ever flown on the entire planet made its debut appearance! It’s another first for mankind!

Wait, what’s that? “Planes have been flying for over a hundred years!” you might say. Yes, that’s true. Orville and Wilbur Wright, the famous Wright Brothers were the first top ever successfully fly an aircraft, on Earth. But NASA was the first to build a drone aircraft, I’m referring to Ingenuity, NASA’s Mars helicopter, of course, and ship it 140 million miles to Mars, and have it fly itself on the surface of the red planet.

Granted, we’ve been sending probes to Mars since the 1970s. I was a boy when an episode of the Virginian was interrupted to broadcast “live” images from the Viking I lander, the first such images, in color I might add, from another world. Once again, I was transfixed by what I was watching on television. It felt as if I was standing on the surface of Mars.

Fast forward some 45 years into the future, and news that NASA has successfully testing powered flight on Mars may seem like something simple and trivial to some, but groundbreaking and, well, Mars-shattering news to others. Given what it takes to get to Mars that is understandable. But just consider for a moment, that no human being has ever actually seen anything fly on Mars. Flying in the sense of using air molecules to create high-pressure under the wing or blade of the propeller, creating lift for rotorcraft on Earth and on Mars apparently, or thrust for propeller-driven aircraft, and watercraft, on Earth.

This means, of course, that when people eventually settle on Mars, which SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions happening by the year 2050, there will be aerial drones flying everywhere on Mars, going where people cannot as easily traverse, at least not yet. I can already see companies like FedEx, perhaps renamed to RedEx (Maybe I should get a copyright or trademark or something for that to sell to them later, don’t you think? Are you folks in Memphis paying attention?

There will be cameras, newscasts, even terraforming drones used to remake the Martian atmosphere, they could all take advantage of the early success of this tiny yet mighty marvel.

I can easily envision drones playing a very important role in the future of human life on Mars.

For more information on Ingenuity, you can visit NASA’s website at: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Watch-Online

Significant Space Launch #2- NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 Mission

Friday, April 23rd, 2021, 5:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time

An international crew of astronauts will hitch a ride inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Friday morning to the International Space Station. The crew will consist of two NASA astronauts, Commander Shane Kimbrough and Pilot Megan McArthur, astronaut Akihiko Hoshide from the Japanese space agency JAXA, and astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency (ESA). Hoshide and Pesquet will serve as mission specialists aboard the ISS during their stay there.

The first Crew Dragon spacecraft, Crew-1, launched on Sunday, November 15th, 2020 at 7:27 PM Eastern Standard Time. It also few on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Onboard Crew-1 were NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

For more information visit NASA at: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-updates-launch-date-tv-coverage-for-agency-s-spacex-crew-2-mission

Significant Space Launch #3- SpaceX Starship SN15-Flight Test

While it’s nearly impossible to know for sure, it certainly appears that barring any unforeseen circumstances, SpaceX will launch SN15 sometime Friday, or possibly Saturday. It appears SpaceX has a window clear to launch on both days. The Friday window opens after 1:00PM on Friday, from what I was able to piece gather.

But all indications are that following a successful static fire test, in which all three raptor engines are fired up while Starship SN15 remains tethered to Earth, SN15 will be ready for a test launch. It’s even been fitted with a Starlink receiver dish. Apparently, the Mars-bound spaceship will have high-speed Internet onboard which, of course, I think is an awesome thing to have on a long trip through space.

So, look for the FIRST…SUCCESSFUL…Starship test flight…AND LANDING (without an explosion following as with SN10) …sometime this weekend!

Unfortunately, SpaceX doesn’t announce these launches ahead of time, merely because they are test launches, I am sure, and they want to maintain the freedom and flexibility to test when it’s best to test, and not just to keep a schedule. Frankly, I don’t blame them. It’s just a shame because so many people, like us, are fascinated by what we see happening with SpaceX.

You see, for those of you who don’t follow this as closely as some of us do, or even care about it much at all, you may not realize just how important what is happening now at SpaceX really is. I won’t say it is as significant as developing the technology to enable interstellar travel, but it’s a relatively close second.

What SpaceX is doing drives what everyone else is doing. Just look at what other companies are doing. They are tiptoeing in, wanting to jump in but wary of the untested waters they find themselves in. Elon Musk and SpaceX, however, are made up of the same sort of “right Stuff” as NASA people; bold, visionary, risk takers, determined to succeed.

Major kudos to Elon Musk who, I believe, realizes his incredibly significant role in history here, and just how especially important it is for humanity to once again step out into the unknown, colonizing other worlds as a hedge against our one day possibly destroying ourselves, or at least civilization as we know it.

It is my personal belief that perhaps, by looking outward, we (humanity) will learn to focus our energies on working together on something (space exploration, travel, settlement, and colonization), instead of working against each other on everything.

There’s a lot going on now in space, technology, and the world. Keep checking back here where you’ll find it all, along with a good book to read, and more, at The Horton Post.

 

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1163

April 8, 2021

Free Flow Thinking: Here’s a Riddle for You- What do Fish, Blue Whales, and People Have in Common?

And no, the answer isn’t going to be that they all swim in the ocean. Come on my bright, intelligent, erudite readers! Most of you know me better than that by now. But trust me, the answer will be obvious once I tell you, and there will be no room for argument as the facts are in black and white, my friends!

BUT…before I reveal the answer to you, I have a few important updates I must share with you.

Update#1- SN15 is About To Fly

Starship Watch Update:

SN11 blew up during a very foggy test flight on March 30th. To date, each of the Starship test flights have resulted in a RUD (Rapid Unplanned Disassembly). SpaceX founder and owner Elon Musk only recently provided an explanation for March 30th’s RUD. Given the extremely poor visibility that day, they relied almost exclusively on telemetry for data on what happened, and the telemetry revealed a small methane leak trigged the explosion. Musk promised that are doing everything conceivably possible to prepare the next-up in Starship prototypes, SN15. The latest Starship is currently scheduled to be moved to the launch area on Friday, April 9th, to prepare it for a test flight currently scheduled for Monday, April 12th. Be wary of the launch date however as these are still prototypes and this is still testing, so a lot of factors must come together for a launch to proceed. They are getting closer, however, and SN15 very well could be the Starship that carries us all one step closer to the human colonization of Mars, and so, so much more…

SN11 As SpaceX prepared for a Static Fire Test

Update#2- Ingenuity-NASA’s Mars Helicopter, Is Finally About To Fly!

I read today that the small helicopter NASA built to fly explicitly on the Mars rover, Perseverance, was detached from the probe and spent its first night on the ground Monday, April 5, 2021 relying on its NASA-supplied insulation and an onboard, battery-powered heater to keep it warm during the cold (up to -150 degrees F) Martian nights.

NASA wants this to be an event for everyone, so they’ve announced plans for the drone rotocopter’s first flight, the first powered flight of any kind (at least that we know of anyway) on Mars. According to NASA the test flight will take place no earlier than Sunday, April 11th. Now normally I would anticipate NASA missing this date due to an abundance of caution over this or that and hey, they do have an incredible track record of achieving whatever they set out to accomplish. There will be tremendous pressure o NASA Monday, however, not only to fly Ingenuity on Sunday but also to do it successfully. Their funding for the Artemis program and much more, along with the necessary support from Congress and from President Joe Biden, could be riding on it. Here’s hoping for success, as it would portend a magnificent future for the red planet, would it not, the skies filled with remote drones being flown from Earth, providing humanity with a birds-eye view of the Martian surface, even as SpaceX plans on establishing a colony there beginning in a few years.

Update #3- SpaceX to Begin Converting Abandoned Oil Rigs into Starship Launch Platforms

Just last month Musk announced plans to begin acquiring and modifying unuse oil drilling platforms from around the globe to use as Starship Launch Platforms. The idea is nothing short of brilliant when you stop to think about it. These platforms are often located in remote areas surrounded by vast distances of ocean, which greatly minimizes risk to human life. The platforms are extremely sturdy, robust, and cable of handling cranes and the forces generated from a Starship launch. The Super Heavy boosters can be floated to the site by cargo ship, hoisted into position by crane, and away we go.

Since he plans to launch many, many Starship flights every month, I feel quite confident his plan will turn out to be another sound business decision.

Now then, it’s time for our FEATURE PRESENTATION…

As I said, the answer is in black and white, my friends! The Orca, or as it is commonly called, the Killer Whale.

Now I will be both honest and upfront with you, as old and grizzled as I am after all my years walking this earth, I still can be a bit naïve every now and then. I guess I bought into the narrative that Orcas, which are closely related to dolphins, are like dolphins, friendly, and only dangerous to humans when provoked. That appears to Not be the case, at least not anymore.

Tour groups recent captured a series of attacks by Orcas, the apex predator found in each of the four oceans worldwide. They are seen attacking and then eating blue whales, gray whales, sperm whales, great white sharks, and even people.

Orcas Attack and Eat a Blue Whale

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/killer-whale-attacks-blue-whale-monterey-drone-video

It’s probably not a well-known fact, at least it wasn’t to me, that Orcas actually hunt great white sharks; I mean go figure! I’m not sure I would have believed it had I not seen it so many times as I researched this blog. Clearly the killer whales have learned how to leverage their superior intelligence, and their numbers, to launch coordinated attacks against great whites, eventually surrounding and then killing it. The solitary nature of these beasts makes it vulnerable to the pods the Orcas travel in.

Check out the picture below. Can you imagine any creature on earth hunting down and killing a monster like this?

Gives me a chill just thinking about it.

Orcas Attack and Eat A Great White Shark

https://www.newsweek.com/great-white-shark-surrounded-killer-whale-1486048

Orcas Attack and Eat 16 People

Sixteen Japanese fishermen were eaten by Orcas when they jumped off their fishing boat when an accident threatened to cause an explosion. A pod of killer whales, or Orcas, instantly attacked, killing and eating each of the sailors.

Scientists claim that Orca attacks on people are rare, and when they do occur, they are often “mistakes” and rarely result in death. Try telling that to the grieving families of the dead sixteen Japanese sailors.

https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/japanese-whaling-crew-eaten-alive-by-killer-whales-16-dead/

There’s something else about Orcas I did not know; the reason they are called “killer whales.”

Now as I started to say in the beginning, I’ve always thought of orcas as big dolphins. And they are big, really big, with very sharp teeth. They are also highly intelligent, like dolphins and whales. So, when I started reading about all of these killer whale attacks, I figured there must be something wrong with them. Well, apparently there is not; they are just doing what killer whales do; kill for food. In fact, Orcas were not originally called killer whales, but rather they were called “whale killers,” because of the number of whales sailors witnessed pods of Orcas killing.

So, when someone tells you that Orcas are attacking because “evil, greedy people” have been catching and eating all of the fish, just tell them how they got their name and why; that should set them straight; well, at least for a few minutes maybe.

Next Week’s topic: TBD. Thinking about several topics, so stay tuned!

There’s a lot going on now in space, technology, and the world. Keep checking back here where you’ll find it all, along with a good book to read, and more, at The Horton Post.

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

Blog Post #1162

April 1, 2021

Technical Discussion: A Starship Update

A warm Good Friday to you all, my friends. From my family to yours I hope you have a most blessed Easter Weekend.

Starship Watch Update:

As many of you know by now, SpaceX’s latest test flight of its new Starship prototype spacecraft once again performed a successful takeoff and subsequent reentry. As it began its descent in preparation for landing however, it ran into a few problems…

It was foggy that morning, so it was nearly impossible to see Starship SN11 itself, even after all three Raptor engines had fired up and the ship began lifting toward the sky. So thick was the fog that hung over south Texas that it would have been impossible to see anything at all, had it not been for SN11’s onboard cameras, which continued streaming footage as SN11 reached for the sky, eventually reaching its highest point, before turning for reentry. Someone from the SpaceX Control Center was counting down the distance as SN11 came closer and closer to the landing site. Suddenly, the camera froze, and a short time later there was the sound of loud explosion as debris began raining down on an area some 5-6 miles wide. According to SpaceX head Elon Musk, there seemed to be a “significant event,” perhaps another “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly,” or RUD, the term they like to use for explosion.

I suspect critics are thrilled and fans are dejected over the series of supposed failures, as I suppose I have been. But in truth, after reflecting on it I stopped to consider this, would I rather they find out about these problems before or after human beings are onboard? Does anyone remember what happened to Apollo 1, or the Space shuttles Challenger and Columbia? They exploded but with astronauts onboard; tragically all died.

All of that was to say this; space travel is hard. But do you want to know what is even more difficult? Safely landing a spacecraft, like SpaceX has already done, with falcon, for the first time in human history. Yes, they landed the shuttle, but that would not work on Mars, where the atmosphere is so much thinner. And yes, NASA has landed the Apollo lunar modules, the Viking and Pathfinder landers, etc. but they are quite different, and much, much smaller. SpaceX had difficulty getting Falcon right but once they nailed it, well, the results over the last year or so speak for themselves. They’ve launched an endless string of satellites into space, carried astronauts to and back from the International Space Station, while reusing the boosters, which themselves land when returning to Earth. They got Falcon right through trial and error, and I have every confidence they will get Starship right. Musk is a highly intelligent individual, and he has some of the smartest people on earth working for him. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, though, once we have developed exotic technologies like anti-gravity, antimatter, spaceships capable of interstellar travel, and force fields…the world as we know it will change forever.

It bears repeating that what SpaceX is doing is profoundly important in many different respects. Not only is important in regard to what SpaceX itself is seeking to accomplish, it is important in that it has become an enabler, making space travel much cheaper through the use of reusable components, which in turn, means that costs come down to build, operate, and maintain a space station, a base or hotel on the moon, or a thriving city on Mars. For the first time mining companies might have an opportunity to mine asteroids, chains like Hilton or Marriott might open-up hotels on the Voyager Station or on the moon, and FedEx might even star-up a delivery service ensuring packages make it back and forth from various points to Earth. Below are just a few of the impacts SpaceX is having, or will have:

-Reduced cost of launching satellites into space

-Increasing access to space by the private sector

-Greatly reduced cost for private citizens to access space

-Created opportunities for organizations like Orbital Assembly to build The Voyager Station

-Pioneered completely reusable spacecraft

-Pioneered an entirely new approach to designing, building, prototyping, and testing entirely new spacecraft

-Offering tremendous payload capability in Starship whether to a space station, the moon, Mars, or elsewhere in the solar system

-Offering tremendous passenger transportation capability whether to a space station, the moon, Mars, or elsewhere in the solar system

And this list only scratches the surface. So, truck on, SpaceX, and may God speed you on your way.

Oh, I had a thought today on the concept of the Voyager Station, which I posted about last week. The thought came to me as I prepared to write today’s post. A few years ago, I wrote the third novel in the Cybersp@ce Series entitled, New Beginnings. It’s a story about humanity’s establishment of its first colony outside of the Sol System.

One concern that my new colonists had to be concerned about was the microorganisms, the bacteria, the viruses, etc. that existed on their new world; their bodies’ immune systems would have no idea how to fight-off such pathogens. Scientists would need to visit any world being considered for colonization well in advance in order to understand the alien bugs present on such a new world, so settlers could be inoculated against the alien germs well in advance, before visiting and especially before settling their new home.

Likewise, once we’ve formally and publicly established contact with alien civilizations, visitors to earth will need to stop somewhere, perhaps a space station like the Voyager Station, where they might stay until health officials have been able to establish that it is safe for them, the alien visitor, as well as for Earth’s inhabitants, for them to proceed down to Earth. Similar, perhaps, to how Liberty Island once served as a port of entry for immigrants coming into the United States from Europe.

On the horizon for SpaceX

SpaceX will be launching another Starship in the very near future, that much is certain. They have a tight schedule to keep if they want to stay on-track with some of the public deadlines they’ve set. No doubt they want to identify and resolve the problem they’ve been having with the Number 2 Raptor engine, of course, before proceeding with a test of SN15, the next in the series to be tested. Yes, SN11 was apparently the last in that particular series of Starship prototypes, with some secret design change taking place from SN11 to Sn 15. I can’t wait to see what that’s all about.

Even more exciting is the fact that SpaceX will also begin testing Super Heavy, the booster that will launch Starship into space. Yes, both craft will be working toward a controlled landing and reuse of both stages.

I just can’t say it enough how appreciative I am for what Elon Musk is doing. There are so many ways in which the man could have made his fortune. Advancing humanity towards a new and exciting future in space travel, which will one day soon lead to us expanding throughout the cosmos, changing the way we approach space travel, and finding ways to make space travel cheaper and more affordable, even to the point that one day soon, you or I might be able to buy a ticket to board a Starship flight to the Voyager Station, to the moon, or even to Mars, or beyond. Hmmm, mmm. Exciting times.

Okay, well that’s it for today. Have a blessed Easter Sunday!

Up Next Week: (Unless Pre-Empted by Current Events)-Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship 3

There’s a lot going on now in space, technology, and the world. Keep checking back here where you’ll find it all, along with a good book to read, and more, at The Horton Post.

 

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1161

March 24, 2021

Technical Discussion: Voyager Station

Good evening friends.

Some of you may know by now that I am a big science-fiction buff, and I have been for as long as I can remember; at least since I was a small boy sitting down at night having dinner in front of a really cool new program called Star Trek.

That program, the original that is, remains among my all-time favorite for at least three reasons. First, Gene Rodenberry, the producer, made certain that the version of the future that he offered us was one of hope. Remember, when Star Trek came out in 1966, we were locked in the grip of a Cold War with the Soviet Union. It had only been five years since the world nearly ended in a horrific nuclear holocaust, with leaders of the two most powerful nations on Earth at that time, the United States and the Soviet Union, seemingly bent on unleashing his nation’s entire nuclear arsenal on the other. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and that generation survived to bear another, and yet another since.

Living under such a ghastly threat as global thermonuclear war and the subsequent fallout that would soon follow it was not easy, and there was much despair, leading many to drugs and other diversions to escape from the constant fear. When Star Trek came on television, it offered us a future in which humanity had, if narrowly, averted such a nuclear crisis, and had risen to become one of the most advanced races in the galaxy in only a few centuries, leaping across the vastness of space with the now-infamous warp drive, with its also-famous shields protecting the ship and its crew from harmful radiation, attacks, and many other threats common to space travel. There was the transporter which allowed them to forego the use of a shuttle craft, a universal translator to bridge language barriers with alien species, and so on. But it was always the bright, hopeful future that drew so many to it.

There was also, of course, the ground-breaking special effects, and the incredible, extremely original storytelling, which only added to the positive, hopeful message we’d all grown to love. Of course, prominent in the crew was an African-Americans, an Asian, and a Russian, during a time of conflict of race and nationalities.

It is in this spirit that I ask you this; have you ever heard of The Voyager Station? If your answer is no, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. But what I’ve learned about it recently has proven to be quite a shock to the system. Why? Because It hasn’t been all over the news. Look, I’m a bit of a newshound so yeah, I am stunned I haven’t heard anything. So if you haven’t heard about it here it is; there is not one but two privately built space stations being constructed by a company called Orbital Assembly and The Gateway Foundation. The Voyager Station is going to be a spaceport, the first of its kind ever built, at least by humanity. Yep, the Voyager Station, formally referred to as Von Braun station and then The Gateway Station, it will be a rotating space station hotel and laboratory, and the first built in space. Yes, it will be built using robots, drivers, pods, and many brands new techniques being pioneered by OAC.

 

Blog Post #1160

March 17, 2021

Free flow Thinking: Self-Driving Electric Cars: Are They Really Ready for Prime Time?

Good evening to you, my very clear-thinking, discerning, and enlightened readers!

Now before I begin, please allow me to say that I certainly appreciate that many of you have far better taste, and perhaps an appetite for a much more select line of automobiles than the ones I will discuss. And I also acknowledge that in all likelihood, many of you have a process for researching, seeking out, and consummating your next vehicle purchase that is far superior to my own, and for that I commend you. Much of this post then, may not be for you. Please consider that it might, however, be helpful to someone else who might not have your “head” for business when it comes to buying a new car. In either of event know that I often find myself impressed at just how cunning, insightful, and capable the average American is; how much more then are you, my most cultured, erudite readers?

Nevertheless, and for whatever it is worth, below is a bit of what I’ve found in my search for my next automobile. Perhaps I’ll post an update once I’ve made my purchase; we will have to wait and see!

Starship Watch Update:

This will be a really cool, new feature…okay; so, it isn’t really new to the blog. Yeah, I obsess about it, I know! I just think it’s cool stuff, okay?” Moving on…

Starship SN11 is still sitting at the launchpad in Boca Chica, TX. A static fire of all three Raptor engines was expected today but from what I can tell, as of this writing it hasn’t taken place, yet. I have a live feed up, however, so if it does, I hope to let you know! Once this test has been successfully completed, SN11 should be ready for its first, and possibly its only flight, whose primary objective is, I suspect, to land safely. More on this as it develops.

Self-Driving Electric Cars: Are They Really Ready for Prime Time?

So…I’ve been looking at buying a new car and in case you were wondering, no, I never even considered a self-driving car, of any persuasion. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea. Ever since I watched the self-driving taxicab in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Total Recall, I’ve been intrigued with the concept of taking a nap on the way home from work without it turning into a dirt nap. But therein lies the problem. How many advertisements have you heard where you hear the statement, or something like it, “drivers must give their attention to the road at all times…” Say what? Then why am I spending all of that hard-earned cash on a driverless system? The answer is, it’s not a driverless system; it’s a car with some cool features that resembles, sort of, a driverless system. Only a system that is truly as safe as or preferably, even safer than, a human driver should be considered a driverless system. And just as a human being has alternatives to driving when they are clearly unable to successfully manage and direct said vehicle, can buy several cups of coffee, pull over and let someone else drive, or just pull over and sleep it off, so too should an automated driving system have many failover systems in place, alternatives to crashing and killing not only the driver, but potentially and very likely, multiple other drivers as well. No, until the ads go something like this, “Completely autonomous; humans can take a nap while the autonomous driving system drives you safely home,” and the company has gone at least six months with no lawsuits putting it out of business, then I’ll give it a look.

Electric Cars

I remember driving through central Florida several years ago when I came across a strange, small town that had apparently rolled its welcome mats up, shut the doors, and turned off the lights about the time the sun set, and the full moon rose. Now given that this town sat on the edge of an immense acreage of woods well, it wasn’t creepy at all when we nearly ran out of gas because we couldn’t find any gas stations open there. Needless to say, I was not wanting to run out of gas while in that particular town, so we prayed and, twenty minutes and with the fuel indicator a needle nearly lying flat on the dashboard, far below empty, a gas station in another small town with the gas pumps open appeared out of nowhere. Needless to say, I stopped and filled that tank up just as fast as that gas pump could get it out.

Well, when it came to all-electric cars, which I found myself strangely drawn to after watching a Consumer reports review of one of the lower-end Teslas. While I found having nothing more than what amounted to a tablet PC running the entire car very disconcerting, I found that I really liked the independence from gasoline. I’ve written in several of my novels, and happen to believe, that the world will soon begin running out of fossil fuels before long, it has to, there’s a finite supply and last I checked, there are no more dinosaurs.

So, what did all my talk about my trip through the Florida ghost town have to do with buying a new car? Well, when I started seriously contemplating electric cars, specifically Teslas, I learned about the charging stations Tesla’s setup across the country. “Ookay ,” I thought, “that sounds good. But what happens if I can’t quite make it to one of those stations. What fi I’d been in the ghost town at midnight, under a full moon, no one alive anywhere to be found, and my electric car “runs out of gas? Do I want to walk around until morning or worst still, sleep in the car all night, in the ghost town, until I can catch a ride to the charging station? Oh, wait, how can I carry enough electricity back to my car to get it to a charging station?

Seriously, that place truly was creepy, and I don’t spook that easy; I don’t want to push that car, wait for a tow truck, or push a minivan for 10-20 miles whether I’m in a middle of a ghost town or not.

So, what’s the moral of the story? In my humble opinion, you should determine how you would handle running out of power as you would running out of gas before you buy an electric car and find out for yourself.

In my assessment, the vehicles need an emergency failover system of some sort, perhaps a small electric engine or an emergency battery of some sort, which would only be used in the event you run out of power and can get you to a charging station before your brand-new electric car becomes nothing more than a paperweight.

By now you may (or may not) be wondering what I did. Well, if you read my earlier post, you saw where I had a problem with the State of North Carlina forcing me to have my car declared “a total loss” following a wreck where someone else hit my vehicle. Yes, I was punished for someone else hitting me. Oh, I get the law was passed to help protect people from unscrupulous people in the car and insurance business, but they should have worded the law so that the insurance companies aren’t essentially forced to junk my vehicle.

Now fortunately, we were able to find a low-cost body shop to repair the door on my minivan. This bought me the additional time I wanted to save-up more money to buy the car I want. Before I heard bac from the body shop, however, I had narrowed my decision down to two 2021 vehicles:

  • The Subaru Outback
  • The Honda CV

I’d pretty much settled on the Subaru. It had an excellent rating from Consumer Reports, its reliability score was solid but not great, and the turbo version I took on a test drive handled like a dream.

I’m glad the body shop got back with me before I traveled too far down that road, however. Truthfully, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the reliability scores of any of the vehicles I was considering. The only cars that blew the other vehicles out of the water were not the type I was looking for this time around. The 2021 Kia Telluride had one of the highest ratings I’d ever seen from Consumer Reports, a 97, and a 5/5 for Predicted Reliability. It was simply too big for what I needed. Also, the Telluride seemed to be a one-off for Kia when it comes to exceptionalism, the exception instead of the rule.

My most heavily used, and relied upon tools when looking for a new car have been and continue to be these:

Consumer reports ()

Edmunds (https://www.edmunds.com/)

They haven’t let me down yet!

Next Week, a new series: New Innovative Offerings in Technology

First up: A New Hotel-In Space Coming soon to an orbit near you.

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1159

March 10, 2021

Free flow Thinking: $39 or Three Engine Overhauls

Good evening my most learned yet unpretentious truth-seeking readers!

I have what I hope may be somewhat useful, if mundane, information to share with you tonight. It is for your edification, elucidation, and profit that I share this with you tonight.

But first, a word from one of our favorite spaceship companies, SpaceX:

Before we get started, I’d like to share a few updates from the world of Elon Musk and SpaceX.

First, a comment from Mr. Musk about what happened to Starship SN10 a week or so back.

“SN10 engine was low on thrust due (probably) to partial helium ingestion from fuel header tank. Impact of 10m/s [22 miles per hour] crushed legs & part of skirt…Multiple fixes in work for SN11.” Elon Musk, Owner of SpaceX.

Next, here is a bit of good news. Starship SN11 has already been moved to the launchpad at the Boca Chica, TX facility following those same fixes. Perhaps we will have the opportunity to see the first successful high-altitude flight, roll, and controlled landing of the largest rocket to have ever taken off and landed in such a controlled manner.

Moving on…

$39 or Three Engine Overhauls

$39.00 a year. That is all you have to spend to avoid an experience like what I had with my old Mitsubishi Galant, which I purchased with just 12,000 miles on it many years ago. The vehicle was new enough that it was still under factory warranty. That’s a good thing too, because I had not owned the car very long before I had to take it in for a major engine overhaul. I was told that the main seals had developed a leak, and that it was going to cost around a thousand dollars to replace that seal (it may have been closer to two thousand, it’s been a long time now. I know I was young, didn’t make that much money, and I was very thankful it was still under warranty.

So, it could have happened to anyone, right? Even newer cars with less mileage develop serious problems from time to time, right? Yeah, well that’s what I thought at least, until a year or so I had to take the car back in for service for another oil leak. Guess what they told me; that’s right, the mail seal had to be replaced, again. Once more it was covered under warranty for which once more, I was grateful. But why had it happened again? The mechanic at the dealership had no real answer as I recall. After a few days I had my car back and all seemed well.

That lasted for another year or so; long enough that this time, when the mechanic told me, for the third time, that my main seals had to be replaced, again, there was no warranty to cover it. Now I don’t recall how it came about. I suppose somewhat at my dealership spoke with someone at Mitsubishi because I soon learned that, to their credit, Mitsubishi offered to pay for the repair themselves. Perhaps they were embarrassed that such a new car had the same problem three times in a row. “Ah, did it happen a fourth time,” you’re probably asking by now, “and if so, what happened?” Well, to be honest, I can’t recall whether I had the problem a fourth time or now. I’m fairly certain I’d already decided it was time to buy a new car and had already set out on the path toward finding one.

This leads me to my $39.00 remark. You might be surprised to learn that $39.00 a year is exactly what Consumer Reports https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm charges to access the test results they list on their websites.

Now many of you have, like me, been using Consumer Reports for years to help guide your buying decisions, and kudos to you for doing so because that small fee is more than worth what you get for it.

The Search…

Following my debacle with that Mitsubishi Gallant, I decided I wanted my next car to be about as reliable as I could afford no, strike that. I wanted my next car to be more reliable than I could afford. So, the search began for my next vehicle purchase which, this time, would be with reliability at the very top of the list of traits I was looking for. I wanted to spend my time driving from place to place, not stuck at the dealership waiting around for hours for my car to be repaired, or for a shuttle to arrive to carry me back to the dealership so I could pick-up my vehicle.

Now while I relied very heavily on Consumer Reports, I didn’t rely solely on them. I’ve always believed on spreading out risk, so I also visited sites like Edmunds.com and others, to get their insight into vehicles.

Now I won’t say exactly when this search was going on, but it was a long time ago. Anyway, after spending may hours on these websites, I finally narrowed it down to a handful of vehicles, The Honda Accord, the Toyota Camry, the Ford Taurus, and the Nissan Sentra.

Base on the data from Consumer Reports, it seemed that the Taurus had begun a gradual decline a few years earlier after receiving top awards for reliability only a few years earlier. I was disheartened because I wanted to buy American. Money was very tight, however, and I couldn’t afford to be constantly paying for repairs once the car was out of warranty. The Nissan Sentry didn’t seem to keep up with the others, so it too fell out. This left the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry. The Camry had a timing chain, so no regular, expensive timing belt changes. It also handled curves extremely well, something I really valued, The Honda, however, won out hands-down for reliability and as much as I liked the Camry, years of problems a friend of mine had with her Toyota, and the superior marks for reliability of the Accord made it largely a no brainer. That Honda Accord lasted me over 200,000 miles and over 20 years. I bought a Honda Odyssey minivan just a few years later and I still have that. So, what does that say about Consumer Reports; can they call it or what?

So, recently I started looking at vehicles again. Some of the came inro play, namely the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. But there were some new twists and turns this time, not the least of which was a brand new, game-changing entrant in the field, namely the Tesla.

Sorry, cliffhanger. I’ll fill you in on my recent experiences looking for a new vehicle next week.

Until then, don’t forget, the $100.00 Giveaway contest ends this Saturday. Make sure you send an email to me, referencing the contest, once you have twenty folks who have subscribed to the blog and followed two of my social media accounts!

For more information:

Blog Post #1155, The Horton Post Free America 2021 Social Media Giveaway! | The Horton Library

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Blog Post #1158

March 6, 2021

Free flow Thinking: Gun Permits, State Laws, and Starships

My apologies for the late post! There was so much to say and so little time to write!

It is my sincere hope that everyone is doing well and staying safe during the pandemic. God willing, we may be ending the end of this thing as vaccines roll out and life finally has an opportunity to return to normal.

Also, a reminder, I’m trying to give away $100.00 to the first person to get 20 people to subscribe to my blog and follow me on at least two of the following social media websites:

Remember, The Horton Post Free America 2021 Social Media Giveaway ends on March 13th. For more information click here: Blog Post #1155, The Horton Post Free America 2021 Social Media Giveaway! | The Horton Library

Two unpleasant experiences that reveal the need for everyday Americans to get more involved in their government…

Isn’t the government supposed to be working for us????

The Government works for us, not the other way around; though it often seems nearly everyone in government from the President down to local county courthouse supervisors have forgotten that.

I once knew someone who delivered mail for the United States Postal Service. He’d sometimes tell me stories about some of the people he worked with, and how employees could get away with virtually anything and still keep their jobs. He said it was virtually impossible to get fired there. Having worked in the private sector for virtually all of my adult life, I found the concept somewhat alien. I’d worked for companies off and on for years that strove to be productive and efficient to the point they could squeeze blood out of a turnip. Never satisfied, they would then expect employees to find a way to spin gold out of straw and always, it was very, very easy to lose one’s job.

An experience dealing with some local government employees reminded me of what my friend had said to me, and it appears he’d not been embellishing the stories he’d told.

I recently made a trip to the county courthouse, where the sheriff’s office is located. While there, I asked about my Concealed Carry Weapon Permit. I’d missed my appt. several weeks earlier and was forced to reschedule for the first slot available, which was five months out.

Now, I had no idea what would happen. I thought they might say they couldn’t process both because they were so busy, and that I’d have to come back at my scheduled time. I decided I would try reasoning with the woman at the reception desk. I asked her why they couldn’t go ahead and process my request since I was there, and there was no one else in line to get theirs. She said only that it was because there were others scheduled before me. I looked around at the near-empty room, with no one in line but me, and I looked back at her wearing a most-incredulous expression. “Really?” I said, “Who exactly is in front of me, or behind me?” I later learned that her supervisor had instructed her not to process my application. Greatly annoyed I continued in vain trying to reason with her, lavishing on her the frustration I should have expended on her boss instead.

As we left the courthouse and drove away, I was on a rant. How inefficient and ridiculous they were, continually acting as if they were all so very busy with the phone switchboard constantly lit up, yet there was no one in line but me for twenty minutes! I’d already paid my fee and processed my paperwork online; and there was no one waiting. Processing my application then would have meant there was one less to do during the busy summer months. Instead, some bureaucrat decides, for whatever reason, that I, the peasant, must wait for a more opportune time. Yes, I was no longer a citizen of a country where the government is of the people, by the people, and for the people; I lived in a country ruled by tyrants both large and small.

The Government Works for us, not the other way around; though it often seems nearly everyone in government from the president down to local county courthouse supervisors have forgotten that. I suspect until you, I, and a big chunk of Americans all over the country begin to stand-up, make some noise, and show-up at the ballot box on election day to fire those who refuse to acknowledge it, that things are only going to get worse. We must remind our elected officials, who manage the non-elected officials, that we the people are in charge, and not them, and if they refuse to listen to us, we will most certainly fire them. If we do nothing, I fear we the people will continue to be kicked around by those in power, who believe we are here to serve their every whim.

Arrest the shooting victim and tax him for the bullet!

Oh yes, here’s another example of our government taking another step in the direction of tyranny. The following isn’t overly complicated, but there are some twists and turns, so stay with me. Below is the sequence of events as they unfolded.:

  1. A young man driving his truck failed to yield and slammed into my 2001 Honda Odyssey minivan’s passenger door.
  2. The state trooper found the other driver to be at fault.
  3. His insurance company called and sent an adjuster to my house.
  4. The adjuster said, “Because the repairs needed to fix your van exceed 75% of its value, I’m afraid we’re going to have to total loss your vehicle.” (Keep in mind, only the door was visibly damaged). He continued. “We will pay you market value for your van.” Now the market value, they said, was over one thousand dollars less than the cost of the repairs!”
  5. I told them, “I don’t care about the money, just fix my van back the way it was before your insured damaged it!” I told them I was asking for no more AND no less than what I had before the accident (seems fair…right?).
  6. The other driver’s insurance company claimed their hands were tied and that there was a state law requiring them to total loss the vehicle. I didn’t believe them; how could that be?
  7. I called the North Carolina Insurance Commissioner, who confirmed what the agent had said (See the actual statute below. It truly boggles the mind; how mind-numbingly stupid to pass such a law without an exception for someone like myself. Either that, or some lawmakers’ palms got royally greased by somebody. IDK, maybe it was passed with the intention of protecting folks but missed its mark with people like us. Regardless of how things got this way, the law clearly needs to be fixed.
  8. With seemingly having no other recourse for myself, I was able to work with the other insurance company to close the gap a little. Nevertheless, I’m being punished for being a victim.
  9. Oh, I forgot to mention that the law also requires I get a salvage attachment to the title of my Honda Odyssey; can you believe that? It drives perfectly fine, I’ve already paid to have the door fixed, yet I’m being forced to accept a salvage title on my vehicle. What a world. This whole mess is wrong, very wrong, and I don’t care how long this ridiculous law has been on the books. I can only imagine what a working single mother of four children must think when she’s struck by another vehicle and told that the State of North Carolina will not allow the insurance company to repair her vehicle. Instead, she’s going to have shop all over the state and more to find a vehicle of what the state declares to be equal value.
  10. I’ve already contacted my state representatives about getting this ridiculous and punishing law revoked or amended. It won’t help me but maybe it will help someone a lot worse off than me in the future if we can get it changed.
  11. For this interested, I’ve included the most relevant paragraph from the statute below.

11 NCAC 04 .0418TOTAL LOSSES ON MOTOR VEHICLES

(c) When a motor vehicle is damaged in an amount which, inclusive of original and supplemental claims, equals or exceeds 75 percent of the pre-accident actual cash value as determined in accordance with Paragraph (d) of this Rule, an insurance company shall designate the motor vehicle as a “total loss” and pay the claimant the pre-accident value. In return, the insurance company shall receive possession of the legal title of the salvage of the total loss motor vehicle.(d)If the insurance company and the claimant are unable to reach an agreement as to the actual cash value of the total loss motor vehicle, the settlement offer shall be based upon the following values:(1)The published regional average values of substantially similar motor vehicles; and(2)The retail cost of two or more substantially similar motor vehicles in the local market area when substantially similar motor vehicles are available or were available within90 days of the accident to consumers in the local market area.

Starships

It was a big day last week not only for Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, but also for the entire planet!

As you, my brilliant, exceptional, accomplished, and erudite readers know, SpaceX has been working on a prototype spacecraft capable of not only making it to Mars, but also landing there as well. The Starship spacecraft will be capable of carrying 100 metric tons of cargo, or 100 people to the moon or to Mars.

Furthermore, SpaceX plans to re-use most components involved in these launches much as they already have with Starship’s cousin launch vehicles, Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy.

Elon Musk’s approach to building spacecraft is as unique as it is successful. For Starship, he has a virtual assembly line of Starships being built onsite at the SpaceX Launch facility in Boca Chica, near Brownsville, Texas. In building reusable spacecraft that land instead of being burned up in Earth’s atmosphere SpaceX, working with NASA, is pioneering new technologies and new approaches and techniques to spaceflight that has frequently resulted in explosion after explosion, in the early stages of testing. The important thing is that they learn from each mistake, from each flaw uncovered and correct them, comfortable in the knowledge that they will easily recoup any losses as each new ship becomes stable, dependable, and reusable, as has the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which experienced their own explosions during their early testing. Now, the Falcon spacecraft have proven to SpaceX, to NASA, and to the world that Elon Musk’s approach to designing, building, and testing spacecraft works.

SN8

SN8, or Serial Number 8, was the first Starship to achieve high-altitude flight, accomplish the complicated belly flop maneuver, and align itself for landing. As you can see in the video below, it came in too fast, which was caused by something related to fuel pressure. As Musk later said, “Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed!” RUD being an abbreviation, of course, for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, a.k.a. an explosion.

SN8’s Test Flight

https://tinyurl.com/eye84rdv

SN9, which launched with SN10 already sitting on the launchpad nearby, flew to an altitude of over 6 miles, performed the roll, and once more oriented itself for landing. Unfortunately, only one engine fired when there were supposed to be two, resulting in yet another RUD.

SN9’s Test Flight

https://tinyurl.com/yhfphpxh

With SN10 SpaceX achieved yet another very important, and significant milestone in the effort to carry human beings to Mars. SN10 not only achieved everything SN8 and SN9 accomplished, but it also landed successfully landed at the Boca Chica site! The first time in human history such a large spacecraft landed in such a manner.

it appears that at some point during landing, the SN10 developed a methane leak which ultimately caused a third RUD. Still yet, SN10 was a remarkable achievement.

Note: I did have a link of a video done by NASA engineers that included the SN10 explosion but it’s since been removed, so I now have a SpaceX clip below without the explosion. The explosion is available, on the 2nd link.

SpaceX’s SN10 ship successful launch and landing

https://tinyurl.com/2aauf6nx

SN10 Explosion:

https://tinyurl.com/mdju7bhd

SpaceX engineers will undoubtedly have SN11 on the launchpad any day now, and you can most certainly expect to see the first successful launch, and landing, of a SpaceX Starship, without the RUD, within the next few months!

Stay-tuned and stay safe and remember, it’s a great time to be alive!

Jeff strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

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Blog Post #1157

February 14, 2021

Technical Discussion: Clean Coal

Some years ago, I saw something on television, a scientist, or maybe he was an engineer, who was talking and demonstrating something I’d never heard of before, clean coal. He claimed that coal, which the United States has in abundance, could be used without pumping so much carbon dioxide into the air, thereby making it one of the biggest manmade sources of global warming.

It must have been during the Obama administration’s “War on Coal.” Just take at the first page of search results that appeared in Bing when I typed, “Obama administration shuts down coal plants”…

Obama EPA War on Coal to Shut 200+ Coal-Fired Plants …

https://thenewamerican.com/obama-epa-war-on-coal…

Aug 09, 2013 · Barack Obama’s antipathy toward coal is no secret. During his first presidential run, in 2008, candidate Obama let it be known that his plan was to bankrupt the coal industry with huge fees and…

Obama declares a War on Coal | Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/obama-declares-a-war-on-coal

Jun 25, 2013 · An administration that throughout its 2012 election campaign denied it was waging a War on Coal has now come out and publicly declared its intention to shut down coal-fired power plants – putting…

Obama orders new rules on coal-fired plants, sets …

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-orders-new…

Jun 25, 2013 · President Obama pressed ahead Tuesday with his climate change agenda, calling for new regulations on coal-fired power plants and setting a …

Obama Kept His Promise, 83,000 Coal Jobs Lost And 400 …

https://dailycaller.com/2016/09/05/obama-kept-his…

Sep 05, 2016 · Obama Kept His Promise, 83,000 Coal Jobs Lost And 400 Mines Shuttered. This Labor Day, America has 83,000 fewer coal jobs and 400 coal mines than it did when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, showing that the president has followed through on his pledge to “bankrupt” the coal industry. A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s …

Obama To States: Shut Down Coal Plants Or Else | The Daily …

https://dailycaller.com/2015/02/03/obama–coal-highway

Feb 03, 2015 · Font Size: The Obama administration is taking a page from their health care playbook and setting aside billions of dollars to encourage states to shut down coal-fired power plants and implement policies to fight global warming. President Obama’s 2016 budget proposal includes $4 billion in payments to “support states exceeding the minimum requirements” …

I remember how hearing how bad it was in states like West Virginia and others. So many plants closed down, so many people, employed for so long at these coal plants, these coal mines, and these energy companies. I remember how badly I felt for them, and how glad I was when I saw the guy talking about clean coal. “This is it,” I thought, “the thing that breathes new life into the coal industry.

Well, the industry did turn around in a major way just a few years later, when a man named Donald J. Trump was sworn-in as Commander-in-Chief. It wasn’t because of clean coal, but because of the raw determination of the folks who decided to hang ion and stick around in coal, and assistance provided by our new leader.

But clean coal has been quietly moving forward it seems, slowly finding new and better ways to handle coal.

Blog Post #1156

February 17, 2021

Technical Discussion: What’s Going On? The Equilibrium Theory and Manipulating Space-Time

Before I start on the “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff…” any David Tenant-the tenth Doctor in Doctor Who fans out there?

The following is a quote from the paper from Alan C. Holt listed below. Please note that this was written in 1980, that’s three decades ago folks!

SPACE TESTING OF ELECTROMAGNETICALLY SENSITIVE MATERIALS FOR BREAKTHROUGH PROPULSION PHYSICS

Article, Jun 1999

Alan C. Holt, Eric W. Davis, Harold E. Puthoff

“Recent ultrahigh-intensity, peta/eta-watt tabletop lasers have achieved extreme electric and magnetic fields, pressure, temperature and space-time curvature that can only be found close to a black holehorizon. Based on these research and experimental efforts, some examples of space experiment andmaterials/technology testing approaches have been examined to determine the feasibility and potential benefits ofusing the International Space Station (ISS) to address breakthrough propulsion physics and technology challenges.

Space testing of electromagnetically sensitive materials for breakthrough propulsion physics…”

Recently it has been experimentally demonstrated that non-local (instantaneous) communication between two beams of light (spin direction) can randomly occur. The effect is described as a consequence of the physics of quantum mechanics. Other research has experimentally demonstrated that the zero point radiation/fields (ZPF), which pervade space-tim…

Follow link below to download the full paper:

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Alan-C-Holt-2053410365

Now below, is an updated paper, an article submitted in January 2019 by Yoshinari Minami.

NEW DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE PROPULSION THEORY-BREAKTHROUGH OF CONVENTIONAL PROPULSION TECHNOLOGY

Article, Jan 2019

Yoshinari Minami

At the present stage of space propulsion technology, the only practical propulsion system is a chemical propulsion system and an electric propulsion system, which are based on the expulsion of a mass to induce a momentum thrust. Since the maximum speed is limited by the product of the gas effective exhaust velocity and the natural logarithm of mass…

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330184698_NEW_DEVELOPMENT_OF_SPACE_PROPULSION_THEORY-BREAKTHROUGH_OF_CONVENTIONAL_PROPULSION_TECHNOLOGY

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

 

Blog Post #1155

February 13, 2021

Special Announcement: Announcing The Horton Post Free America 2021 Social Media Giveaway!

Friends.

I recently left Twitter and Facebook after several personal experiences with the ridiculous and Orwellian censorship exercised by the company executive. I’m also moving away from Google, Apple, and Amazon for the same reasons. I’ve been active on all of these sites over the years and I’ve invested years in building up followers.

But by Heaven this is America, not the Soviet Union and not some third-world dictatorship. These are businesses that believe we are too dependent on them and their platforms to ever leave them, leaving us no choice but to obey and follow their every whim. Will, these pathetic miscreant wretches have another thought coming, as I believe, hope, and pray more and more Americans will be doing exactly the same thing, abandoning the world of Big Brother and the Communist Party for the free and open world of America and the liberty and freedom she stands for.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a matter of political parties, it is a matter of being free, and remaining free in America. One thing is certain; if we don’t fight for our freedom we are certain to lose it. Russian and China will make certain of that.

So….starting on new platforms I need followers, folks to interact with on these platforms. Initially it will be Gab, MeWe, and CloutHub, but I hope Parler will become a significant social media site again as well.

You can find all of Jeff’s published novels here: Works by Jeff W. Horton | The Horton Library

Please follow Jeff:

You might also want to explore Jeff’s website: at www.hortonlibrary.com, or visit him on the

Amazon’s Author Website for Jeff: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeff-W.-Horton/author/B004NK5MJC?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Barnes & Noble’s Website: https://tinyurl.com/1emwpg16

Author Jeff W. Horton

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