Scanning through the paragraphs, and I find no mention of Ivermectin. It is widely prescribed
for river blindness and has been for decades. It is not for horses. It works on this
disease, and as it turns out, it works on COVID too. Sub-Saharan Africans would be
prime candidates for receiving Ivermectin for river blindness. It should be obvious that
it confers some protection against COVID too, doncha think?
A CTRL-F scan finds no references to Ivermectin in the piece. However, there are some other
references to it in the news articles linked below it! ( psst! look below the article)
The impression is that they refuse to acknowledge the obvious. They aren't mystified, they
are in denial. And we aren't talking about the river in Egypt.
Musk is already going to the moon. Would a more robust transportation system be a good
enough reason to go to Mars via the moon? What would such a system require? Why would
the current system be less robust?
Taking the second question first, the current system requires a very long trip. It needs
to be very robust to accomodate so many people for so long. An eight month journey is a
very long time in a weightless environment. Not to mention the radiation. The system
Musk envisions would not be good enough for the trip. There needs to be an artificial
gravity system and more protection from radiation would be desirable as well.
Launching from the moon can give some advantages that aren't available on Earth. For one
thing, the transportation system can be built there if you can get enough material there
to do the job. But a lot of material already exists there. His stainless steel rockets
could be manufactured with iron obtained from the moon itself. The moon has no atmosphere,
and there wouldn't be the requirement to make it aerodynamic. It can take on an odd
shape and still "fly". For example, the lunar module used during the Apollo mission had
a skin as thin as aluminum foil, but it went hypersonic speeds. Regulatory approval shouldn't
be an issue as nobody lives there.
He can let his creative juices flow in that environment. It may add a bit more time to
the timeline, but if you are going to do a thing, then do it right. A direct flight to
Mars for a small crew may make some sense, but a million people? He needs something even
more extraodinary than his Starships. Yes, even more extraordinary than a bigger gargantuan
version of Starship called version two. He could build that sort of thing on the moon,
and it could fly there as soon as he can get it constructed.
It is the "constructed" part that may be the most time-consuming. He will need a lunar
version of the starbase. It could be the collecting point for a lot of people, and it
could be the debarkation point for the long journey to Mars. Instead of a direct mission
from Earth, just have the thing take off from the moon. It will use less fuel to get
the delta v needed, and the ship can be as big as you wish it to be. It could be heavier
so as to allow for more shielding against radiation. A bigger ship could be spun up at fewer
rpm in order to get the artificial gravity needed to help with the weightlessness.
Instead of a tall ship, a short donut shape could be considered. A torus could be spin up
for artificial gravity. A 200 meter in diameter torus could be spun up to 2 rpm in order
to approximate Mars gravity.
If it is too big to land on Mars, you could build a welcoming station in Mars orbit. Just
launch it from the moon. Or use the ship itself to hold people while they are shuttled
down to the surface.
Musk is already going to the moon. A lunar base is not that big of a stretch, and it would
be a good training and proving ground for his starships no matter what he does with his
plans. While there, why not try something really bold? If these aren't the best approaches
perhaps another approach in materials or methods could be better. It may need to be
because what he has now entails more risks. There is less risk in making something more
robust which would launched from the moon towards Mars.
These are a few snippets from the 1970's flick about the run-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Lots of folks at the time thought that President Roosevelt let this attack happen so as to
get America into the war. The flick attempted to tell the story and they did a fairly good
job of it. FDR didn't get much blame, but there was some suspicion.
I recall these scenes from the movie because it seems to go with the idea that what happened
in Afghanistan and the other things that Biden is doing seems to go with the idea that he
and his handlers are doing this deliberately for some reason. This is the kind of thing
that goes with respect to Honorius and Ricimer. After Honorius and the sack of Rome, there were
the deeds of Ricimer. Now Honorius was undoubtedly incompetent to the point of foolishness.
But Ricimer was just downright hostile to the interests of Rome, which is who he was
supposedly in service to.
Biden's deeds in Afghanistan and the other things are either incompetence or malice. It's
all the same as far as the results are concerned. It seems to me that too many people
out there are waiting for confirmation. Like the snippet below, waiting for confirmation
of the true state is like the captain waiting for confirmation about the sub just outside
the entrance of Pearl Harbor just before the attack. Just saying'. When the "confirmation"
comes, what will we see?
This video paints a rather dismal view of life under the Roman Empire when it was at its
end. Perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words as the saying goes. A pic, then the
embedded video for further explication, if you are interested.
There is a supporting video recently found, and is attached below. The original post was back in early 2016.
Why write this? I've already posted on it a couple years ago, if memory serves. I've just spent a couple hours watching videos of what happened during that period of history. It did confirm my opinion that the two most responsible figures for the fall of Rome were the Western Emperor Honorius, and the military commander Ricimer.
Honorius was Emperor during the time of the first sack of Rome in 410 AD. He showed very little interest in the welfare of his people, and actually sabotaged efforts that could have held things together for another generation or two. The sack of Rome pretty much opened the floodgates of destruction that was to overtake Rome in the following decades.
By the time Ricimer came along, the Empire was on its last legs. But even here, there were competent generals, including Ricimer himself, who could have pulled things together for awhile longer. Ricimer was like Honorius, as he cared little for the people he governed.
The point of the post is that when a society reaches a point where its leaders don't care about their own people, that society doesn't have much time left. I get the impression a lot of the time that the leaders we have now are just like those two leaders of ancient Rome.
We can heed the warning of history, or we can fail to heed it, and repeat it.
We have an election coming up for the presidency. It seems to me that we should elect someone who is vitally interested in its well being. I don't get that sense from Hillary. Actually, just the opposite.
As for the rest, I haven't analyzed them yet. But Hillary is absolutely unacceptable.
Update:
The same for Biden and a many others in BOTH parties. It won't help much just to switch party control next year. It's going to take much more.
A stroll down memory lane here. This was one of the early influences upon the writings in
this here blog way back when. Elon Musk may want to go to Mars, but he may want to visit
the moon first. The reason being is that the moon has resources that can be used for his
Mars ambitions. Mining the moon for its resources is on par with the spirit of that book.
The moon has abundant amounts of oxygen. It may not be made of cheese, but there's plenty
of other good things there. One thing that just came to mind is that the solar wind could
be responsible for the water on the moon. What if it was possible to mine vast stretches
of the lunar surface for its particles coming via the solar wind? Would it be enough?
Over the course of time, yes. But over the time scales that we live in, which could be a
matter of days or weeks, maybe not. It could be made up for, maybe, with the use of the
materials at hand, which could capture the charged particles which can be used as a resource.
The solar wind exerts a definite pressure. It is the pressure of charged particles traveling
at high velocities. This may be the reason for the water traps on the moon. The highly
charged hydrogen nuclei could've been initially trapped and converted into water with the oxygen
available on the lunar surface. In cold places where there is no sun, the water froze,
and couldn't escape. It accumulated over time. It is believed that there could be vast
resevoirs of water trapped in these permanently shaded craters.
I was also thinking that since these are electrically charged particles, could it be possible
to mine them for electricity? The particles could induce an electrical current if they
could be concentrated somehow. It may also be possible to collect them in the metal hydride
devices discussed in an earlier post. The hydrogen could be mined to produce electricity
and water.
With these resources, you could leverage them into additional resources, such as food. It
is much less energy intensive to launch from the moon than from Earth. If there is sufficient
reason to stop at the moon on the way to Mars, it may be worth it.
