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May 11, 2001 - Art Bell
02:52:40
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - David Livingston - Space Tourism
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th, 2001.
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning wherever you may be across this great land of ours.
Friday night, Saturday morning, end of the week everybody.
Wherever you may be across this great land of ours from the Island of Guam, Zirak out there in the Pacific, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to Poland worldwide on the Internet, and coast to coast to coast to coast to coast.
Adding tonight, welcome KRKY in Dillon, Colorado.
930 on the dial in Dillon, Colorado.
That's KRKY, Dillon, Colorado.
Welcome to the network, as we continue to rocket toward 500 affiliates.
And don't forget, we pre-feed now, every night, three hours of the program.
That's good information for listeners and radio stations out there.
Three hours prior to each program, we pre-feed three hours of the previous night's program, so that those radio stations wishing to treat their listeners To the previous night's programs and some good ratings from their point of view, I suppose.
Why you can pick it up and one sort of flows into the other.
So what's going on tonight?
Well, as you know, the FBI misplaced, lost, or didn't turn over to defense attorneys thousands of documents, not a few, not a folder, but thousands of documents And as a result, some interesting things are happening with McVeigh.
The execution was rescheduled.
They've put it off now.
The Attorney General said because of this, they're going to put it off.
And McVeigh, in the meantime, is said to be possibly reconsidering his earlier decision against challenging the execution order.
Now, I suppose if they challenge it, it could go on for, what, a decade?
Some victims said they were sickened, others resigned after the dramatic turn of events in what was to be the first federal execution since 1963.
The part I don't get is, if they're going to put it off, I don't get it.
McVeigh said, do me, kill me, I'm out of here, don't want to be in prison for life, so if they've rescheduled for June 11th, it's not that far away, right?
In order to go over this new material, McVeigh, angry, says, well then, maybe I won't let you kill me at all.
I don't quite comprehend that.
Life is life is life, right?
So, I guess he's angry that he's not being dispatched on time.
Or changing his mind, who knows?
In Las Vegas, an 11-year-old girl saw her parents for the first time Friday since she was allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a former Baptist school principal.
A family court judge released the girl to the custody of Indiana Child Protective Services and ordered supervised visits with her parents.
An Indiana court has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on custody.
The suspect remains in Nevada to face charges in the alleged May 1st abduction that crisscrossed 12 states.
If you're watching the Blake case, Robert Blake's bodyguard said Friday that the police wrongly believe the actor killed his wife and dismissed his own theories on her slaying.
Earl Caldwell said he believes a killer gunning for Blake shot the actor's wife Bonnie Lee Blakely by mistake.
Blakely was shot in Blake's car on May 4th at a restaurant where the couple had dined.
Police will only say that Blake, the 67-year-old star of 1970s television series Beretta, has not been ruled out as a suspect.
All right.
I'm going to read you at least some of how the Washington Post covered the Dr. Greer affair in Washington.
A group of people, this is Washington Post, a group of people who believe in UFOs held a news conference yesterday, now the day before, that established beyond the shadow of a doubt that reached levels of credibility so high as to constitute actual proof That there really do exist people who believe in UFOs.
So you know exactly where this story is going to go, right?
All they say that was done is prove that there is actually a group of people who do believe in UFOs.
They go on, this was the big day for the Disclosure Project.
An attempt to incite the government to admit that unidentified flying objects are piloted by creatures from another world.
The organizer, Dr. Stephen Greer, I added the doctor, they didn't even put that in there, well they do say a Charlottesville emergency room physician, announced that this was a moment of historic, indeed planetary, significance.
This is the end of the childhood of the human race, he said.
It's time for us to become mature adults along with cosmic civilizations that are out there.
He arranged an impressive venue, the main ballroom of the National Press Club.
Upward of a hundred people were there, along with more than a dozen TV cameras.
At a long table up front sat twenty witnesses, most of them grey-haired men who'd served in the military.
As they took turns at the microphone, it became quickly apparent that this was rather An odd-fashioned event.
A return of fundamentals of ufology, the discussion of aerial anomalies.
At one point, a witness flashed two black-and-white photos of a saucer-shaped craft.
The tales were set, for the most part, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
No talk of alien abductions, or alien-human hybridization programs, or implementation of alien fetuses.
Uh, or any of those extremely intimate close encounters that have dominated ufology in recent years.
Actually, they say UFO mythology.
These guys were from the hardware wing of the movement.
They'd seen things in the skies they couldn't explain, and that suggested to their minds extraterrestrial visitors.
They'd seen objects, lights, radar blips, moving at extraordinary speed.
What they didn't see in almost every case were any actual aliens.
Only one witness, Clifford Stone, a retired army sergeant, told of having directly seen aliens.
He'd seen them both dead and alive at the scenes of crashed saucers.
Asked if he could describe their appearance, he said, I could, but it would probably take a whole lot of time.
He did stipulate that there are 57 alien species, including three types of greys.
Many aliens are humanoid, and indeed are indistinguishable from members of our own species.
Some can touch an object in a dark room and tell its color.
There were a few other unverified bombshells.
One speaker claimed that George Bush, the elder and director of the CIA, refused to give newly inaugurated President Carter top-secret files on UFOs.
Greer, meanwhile, assured the audience the military has already developed spacecraft that can travel faster than the speed of light.
The Disclosure Project is part of a long and, so far, unsuccessful effort to incite congressional hearings on the UFO issue.
Greer says he's conducted interviews with 400 people with intimate knowledge of the alien phenomena and government cover-up.
Many, he claimed, are afraid to come forward without some sort of congressional immunity.
We know, said Greer, lethal force has been used to keep this secret.
But there was nothing presented at the news conference that could be considered forensic evidence.
Indeed, the audience heard what is known as the argument from authority.
Evidence on the table was essentially in the form of resumes.
The witnesses vouched for their credibility and said they'd like to tell their stories to Congress.
Maybe that's not as impressive as someone coming forward with an actual alien tentacle, but you've got to start somewhere.
If nothing else, this was an interesting glimpse of the corrosive side effects of government secrecy.
The witnesses have been burdened by suspicion for decades.
Some said they were told by superiors to stay silent about what they'd seen.
Such things do exist.
Please believe me, said retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Charles L. Brown, who once analyzed UFO sightings and saw just two years ago two inexplicable objects.
And on it goes.
They say, toward the end of the story, when the news conference was over, rational observers were faced with two scenarios.
Intelligent creatures have piloted spaceships across trillions of miles to visit our planet.
They have the ability to elude detection by scientific investigators and mainstream news organizations.
We've also seen by thousands of people, secret forces within our government have masterfully covered up the alien presence for a half century, although sometimes the cover-up is imperfect, which is why, at Safeway, you can buy Chef Boyardee Flying Saucers and Aliens Canned Pasta.
People like Stephen Greer, the crusading emergency room physician, have seen through the lies and are going to help us enter the era of cosmic brotherhood.
Or, some people believe in things that aren't true.
Your call.
Pretty snide.
Pretty... degrading.
Divisive.
Uh, lots of ridicule in that.
And, uh, you know, that's pretty sad.
Not all news organizations, um, reported as the Washington Post did, but that's how they did it, and I thought you ought to at least get the tone of the thing, so you'd know.
You're going to love this one.
From Italy.
Remember I told you last night, well it was during the latter part of the show, so you might not have heard it.
I said I had heard that there were scientists who were reviving alien bacteria.
And this sounds like something else that the Washington Post could make fun of.
Except it's of course true.
I've got the news story right here.
Bruno D'Orangio, a geologist working for the Italian National Research Council, and Giuseppe Garacci, professor of molecular biology at Naples University, apologize for slaughtering names, identified and brought back to life extraterrestrial microorganisms lodged inside a 4.5 billion year old meteorite kept at Naples Mineralogical Museum.
When in contact with a physiological solution, they became visible and began to move.
They said while presenting the finding at the Italian Space Agency yesterday, the bacteria called CRYMS, that's C-R-Y-M-S, for crystal microbes by the researchers remained dormant for billions of years.
Survived extreme ambient conditions.
A clear indication, according to the researchers, that light can indeed exist everywhere in the solar system, though in a quiescent state.
Once brought back to life, the primes were cloned by the researchers and their DNA was analyzed.
Their genetic code is like any known on Earth.
That's a quote from the Scientific Director of the Italian Space Station.
So let's think about this now.
We're bringing back to life bacteria that are billions of years old from another world and another time and they're coming back alive.
And not only are they alive, but we are now analyzing their DNA so they might be cloned You ever wonder about the... We've got a lot of our own bacteria to deal with here.
Black goo, black fungus, whatever it is, closing schools and homes.
We've got a mystery disease killing thoroughbred foals in Kentucky.
Sweeping Kentucky's bluegrass country of all places.
Killing hundreds of foals and causing huge financial losses.
In the world capital of racehorse breeding.
And I'm afraid that it's actually getting a little worse now.
As a matter of fact, here's an interesting email from somebody in the area.
Hi Art!
Just wanted to share with you some more information about the deaths of the foals in Kentucky and also in other places.
I am the owner of a small-time breeder, both Quarter Horses and Thoroughbred Horses, and I've been following it very closely on the web.
Devastating for all those farms.
I know for a fact some of the foals go for, when they drop, about $88,000.
Now they're saying this mystery disease is causing problems in young horses That they are growing, or rather, not growing.
They're having problems in the eyes with fluid around the heart.
Like the general unhealth of the horses.
I also have friends in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they're all watching their foals and mares with an eagle eye.
All of them are looking good so far, but of course, there's not been a whole lot of grass due to drought conditions.
They say it has something, they think, to do with the grass and the warm temperatures.
I'm very worried about my last two mares.
Had last month.
It's called myotoxin.
M-Y-O-T-O-X-I-N.
I'm very worried about my last two mares that are due to foal.
I know that I will have my vet aware of when they are close.
I know two barns down the road from me lost two of their foal.
And those mayors had been up in Kentucky until just three months ago.
By the way, patients, this is Toronto now, patients at several Western Ontario hospitals, not just one.
Remember hearing about one with something like mad cow?
Well, it may not be just one, according to Ontario's health minister.
Apparently, the one that you recall is only one of four facilities where patients may have been exposed, they say, to the disease which attacks the brain like mad cow disease.
There are three other hospitals.
Why?
Because it seems that medical instruments are shared, we now find out, between not just the hospital that had that patient, but three other hospitals as well.
So they're going to hold a news conference to talk to some people, like me, that are afraid of this sort of thing.
And try and ease their minds in some way, I guess, but they are concerned that it may have spread.
Sound of thunder.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM, from May 11th, 2001.
Well, I see I've eaten up most of my first little segment here, haven't I?
Now, from Rio de Janeiro, bullfrog skin, if the bullfrogs stay on earth, is effective, they now say, get this, in treating severe burns.
According to a study to be presented later this month at a South American conference of plastic surgeons.
That's right.
Raw, regular old bullfrog skins, it turns out, will really help a burn as nearly nothing else.
Using the skin of the Rana, well I won't try to pronounce it, commonly known anyway as the American Bullfrog to cover severe burns is a technique developed by plastic surgeon Nelson Piccolo and used to great success.
At a hospital for the last six years there, hoping to treat some of the 50,000 Brazilians admitted to the hospital every year for severe burns.
Scar tissue normally forms over severe burns in some 20 to 30 days after an injury.
But, if you're using a bullfrog skin as a temporary cover, instead of 20 to 30 days,
you get it in 6 days.
Mmm.
And I remember when we were worried about frogs out there.
Remember that?
And a whole lot of people called up and said, well, who the hell cares if we lose the frogs?
What's the big deal?
Species come and go.
What do you need a frog for anyway?
Remember that?
Oh, we had a lot of them.
Whoops.
Turns out now that bullfrogs could save people if we can save bullfrogs.
So, anyway... In case you're ever burned severely, you might want to park that little fact in the back of your mind.
You will heal...
What, three or four times faster?
Three or four times faster if you use bullfrog skin.
If there is any bullfrog skin left to use.
I'm Art Bell.
Good morning.
This is Premier Networks.
That was Ark Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM on this Somewhere in Time.
We're going to be doing a little driving on a Saturday night. Come walk with me on a down day away.
Thanks for watching.
Hi!
It makes myself unclosed I, I live among the creatures of the night
I haven't got the will to try and fight Against the new tomorrow, so I guess I'll just believe it
Tomorrow never comes I said tonight, I'm living in the forest of a dream
I know the light is not as it would seem I must believe in something, so I'll make myself believe it
This night will never go Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
All the night is my world City lights paint the dark
In the day nothing matters It's the night time that matters
I Now we take you back to the past
On Art Bell Somewhere in Time Good morning, everybody.
Most of you, I guess.
Evening and afternoon for everybody else.
Somebody wanted to know where this article came from, entitled, Scientists Claim to Revive Alien Bacteria.
Discovery Channel News is the place.
Discovery, that's dsc.discovery.com.
And Discovery Channel News.
You can almost see it from here, can't you, in Italy?
One scientist looking at another.
Darcelli!
Look at these little beasties!
Look at them move!
Look at them multiply!
One of these days, one of these days, we're really gonna do it.
We're really gonna do it.
Sound of thunder.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th, 2001.
Music.
By the way, with reference to the black mold that we've been talking about,
just found out about, that people say is old, but really to me it's new.
I haven't heard about that.
Have you?
There is now, uh, circulating among realtors, uh, something you've got to sign, uh, if you're selling your house.
It starts out, there has been a great deal of publicity regarding the existence of toxic and non-toxic mold in homes, apartments, and commercial buildings.
Current information indicates that some types of mold may cause severe health problems for certain individuals.
Not all molds are detectable by a visual inspection by a realtor or even a professional wholesale house inspector.
It is also possible that the property could have a hidden mold problem that the seller is not aware of.
The only way to provide any reasonable assurance that the property does not have mold or other health hazard problems is to retain the services of an environmental expert who will conduct specific tests.
Normally, these tests will consist of an interior and exterior examination for airborne spores and a carpet test.
But other procedures may be necessary.
Any visible mold should be professionally evaluated and then Down at the bottom, there's a place where the buyer has to sign and you've got to get this guy to come in.
I'm telling you, it's getting stranger and stranger out there.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, I'm calling from San Diego and I want to touch on three things.
First, the Timothy McVeigh thing.
Yes.
I was brainstorming about that and what I think is going on is something that The FBI and the government have known of things that are going on about plots to do things about the date of his execution, and they've released this stuff at this time.
Oh, I know exactly where you're going.
You think that there was going to be some awful act that would occur as he was executed, perhaps.
Yes, and they're being smart.
They need more time to investigate.
They're being smart.
They're trying to set them off track, which is a good thing.
You could be right!
That's what I think on that.
And then on another subject, let's see, the Stephen Greer thing, I've met him before, and at his conference there I've also met Clifford Stone, and I think he is really on to something, but he's off track on some things, and they're As is with usual things of this matter, they will mislead people and he admitted that he's not sure about everything.
At Stephen Greer's conference... How could you be sure of everything?
That's what I'm saying.
At Stephen Greer's conference, someone asked him about Hoagland's research.
Stephen Greer came right out and said, yes, we have evidence.
There are artificial artifacts on Mars, and I've met Hoagland before.
Yeah, you bet.
In fact, I've met you before, Ramona.
Name dropper.
Yes, I know I'm doing that.
Get it out right now.
But anyway, when Hoagland is on later tonight, what I think about him is even every day when I first start I see the Old Navy store, and he did that story.
And I really think... I'll never forget that.
Yes, and I really think that he is stretching it to the limit to try to get every information he can.
It is not doing anything wrong.
It is doing everything right.
Yes, you're absolutely right.
Get it into the focus and see where it goes.
And that's all I want to say.
All right, well you've said it.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Yes, the Old Navy.
God, that was fun.
That really was fun.
We heard from Old Navy store people for the longest time.
Remember their little headsets?
This goes back a long ways.
And their little microphones?
And the meetings?
That was a riot.
The whole thing was a riot.
Maybe I'll get Richard to tell that story.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello?
Hello?
Yes?
Oh, I thought you said somewhere else.
No.
Well, I just wanted to touch on the Oklahoma City bombing deal.
All right.
Where are you, pray tell?
From Dallas.
All right.
You know, I think with McVeigh, you know, we have part of the story with McVeigh that's come out, but we don't have the whole story that's come out.
I'm almost certain of that.
Yeah, I think most people feel that.
Well, you know, in Oklahoma, I've been, Sally, from Dallas, not too far away, and I've been naturally very curious about all these things, and I've I made contact with several of the people really involved with the alternative investigations up there.
There's a survivor bombing survivor group up there that was once covered on 2020, and I have that report, but they're actually trying to get the whole truth out, and they're coming close to releasing a report.
I was wondering if you'd be interested in having some of these people on.
Charles Key would be excellent.
He was, at the time... Well, what is the new news?
Well, the news has really not come out as much.
Some news has been discussed, like Carol Howe, that was on, I think it was on 2020.
I've got a 700 Club report that talks about Carol Howe.
You can read.
Alright, I'll tell you what, let's do this.
You, if you would please, email me the information and the contacts and I will proceed from there.
OK.
And by the way, over the weekend, you might want to email me at AOL.com.
Apparently, MindSpring is having some trouble with their servers.
And so I suspect that today I did not get the email that I should have from you all.
They're working feverishly to get that problem solved.
But over the weekend, you might go ahead and use ARCBAL at AOL.com.
And I'm sure by Monday, we'll be restored on Mindspring.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Yeah, hi.
This is James from McMinnville, Oregon.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, hi.
I'm right now looking at a book from George Anderson's Lessons from the Light.
Yes.
And I believe before you came back on the air from your absence, the guy there had Andrew George Anderson and Andrew Brown.
I missed the program.
So did I. Anyway, there's a section in the book about animals.
Yes.
Okay, and I was wondering, can I read you a short passage on this?
No, no, no.
Please don't read, but tell me about it if you would.
Okay, what it is, is it has to do with animals and their being cared for and respected and highly priced.
Um, highly valued at the Infinite Light, and that abuse towards animals is considered... Yeah, we were talking about that last night.
Yeah, is considered a greater offense to the Infinite Light, because at the hands of humans, animals can't protect themselves.
That's right.
That's correct.
Yeah, it's a great book.
I hope that maybe you can get George Anderson's back on.
Maybe so.
If you would provide the information to me, it would help.
Okay, and, uh, I just want to say, uh, I think that's really neat that you took Yeti in.
Okay, and I understand that's four cats for you?
That's four.
Yeah, you know, and, uh, cause I, uh, this is a, uh, medium book.
Alright, well listen, get me the information, I'm glad to look at it.
I can understand that reasoning, can't you?
That in a way, intentionally harming or torturing an animal.
Could be in the eyes of God a greater sin than what you might do with man.
Why?
Because man can at least has the ability to protect himself.
Animals don't.
They're helpless.
And if you choose to torture them, you are torturing those who cannot defend themselves in any way at all.
Sure.
I'd have to think about it, but it's an interesting argument, huh?
First time caller line, you're on the air, hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Yeah, all right.
Yes.
I wanted to ask you one big favor.
One big favor.
Yeah, I don't have a computer, and I was wondering, you know this new station you talked about starting up?
Yes.
Is there any way you could possibly get that on DirecTV?
No.
No.
Well, I'm out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and I can't pick it up.
Do you have C-Band?
No.
Well, I don't care.
You know, in this country, no matter where you are, we're on so many big 50,000 watt stations that if you have even a half-decent antenna, you'll hear us on plenty of stations.
Well, I'm clear out by Death Valley.
I'm on the other side.
You know where Trona is?
Yeah.
You should be able to get several stations out there.
I would say offhand, KDW in Las Vegas, 720.
I would say KFI, the mighty 640 in Los Angeles.
I would say 1000 from Seattle.
There's a whole bunch.
Oh yeah, I know, but they fade in and out, and I've got a CC radio.
Well, that's why you need, well, you have a CC radio.
It's a hard reception area out here.
God, I guess.
I don't know what else to tell you.
We're going to have a transponder on Seaband.
I should have information on that.
Probably first of the week where we're going to be on Seaband.
But it doesn't sound like you have that.
And DirecTV doesn't do anything except play 100 channels of elevator music.
Basically.
I mean, they've got some channels of 60s, 70s, 80s rock.
But I mean, they've got about 100 channels devoted to music.
That's true of Dish and Direct.
And they don't, for some reason, put talk up there.
And that absolutely blows my mind.
I'm kind of glad he mentioned it.
The talk format right now is the number one format in America.
So you would think, if you had a hundred channels, that you could devote at least just one of them to the most popular format in America.
Wouldn't you think that?
Now I understand that there are commercials and that they run stuff that doesn't have commercials, but you tell me, as a Dish subscriber or a Direct subscriber, commercials or not, wouldn't you like to have the ability to receive the show in a venue of that sort?
So I'm not sure what they're doing, why they're doing it, what's going on, but so it is.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air, good morning.
Good morning.
This is Olin in Culver City, California.
Yes, sir.
We've been talking about the horses eating the moldy bluegrass and the fish dying and the black mold.
I think I have an idea of what we might be able to do to begin to stop this.
I'm listening.
Uh, we should stop these white cargo planes from spraying chemtrails that are full of sticky spiderweb-like germs and molds and viruses.
Can't, uh, can't eliminate that as one possibility?
Well, see the rain washes that stuff down into the rivers and the ocean, and I think a year ago, uh, Linda Moulton Howe said that 90% of the lobsters on the East Coast had died out.
That's right.
Yeah, well, uh, These white cargo planes need to be stopped.
I don't know who's sending them around.
Well, you're making a bit of a jump here.
I agree with you that the whole chemtrail thing is terrible.
But you're making a jump without scientific basis.
We don't know it's not, and I'll allow it as a possibility, but we don't know that it's doing it.
I have rather another theory.
Frankly, about this emerging disease thing.
A mad cow, all the problems in Europe, the slaughter of two million animals, and now all of a sudden these mysterious things popping up here.
I think that it has to do with the change in our climate, more likely.
It has to do with the contaminants that we're putting into the air, ourselves, more likely.
I don't rule out the white plains and what are said to be chemtrails.
I don't rule them out.
But I really think that a larger environmental picture is what is at work here.
And that we better begin to change it pretty soon, or it will change us.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hey, I don't know if you heard about the I was watching this one TV show and they had frozen methane gas in the ocean bottom and you could use that as a fuel.
Did you hear anything about that?
There are a lot of people also worried that the frozen methane gas that you speak of, if released, would add quickly and rapidly to greenhouse gases.
It's perhaps a great danger.
Yeah, I heard about that, too, but... Did you?
Well, imagine that occurring, all that methane at once getting into the atmosphere.
That could certainly tip the balance, if it already has not been.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, sir.
Where are you?
First-time callers, area code 775-727-1222.
Okay, well, I'm going to have to eliminate that.
You're not allowed to use your last name on the air, folks.
No last names, please.
First-time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi.
My name is Rachel.
I'm calling from Tucson.
And I have several points to make.
You were talking about the frogs earlier, as if the problems with the mutations was not a problem anymore.
And they certainly are still finding many frogs like that.
No, and I didn't say that at all.
What I said was... Well, that's what it sounded like.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
What I said was that they have just discovered that bullfrog skin... No, no, I heard that.
I heard that, but you were saying something about how frogs... Yeah, I said, if they're still here, which meant there are still problems out there, and eventually we may not have frogs.
Right, because... And so many people, so many people called up and said, At the time, what the hell do we need frogs for?
So a lot of frogs disappeared.
That was during the big thing with frogs.
And here we have a good reason to have frogs now.
Exactly, but that sort of thing falls out of the news, but it's still going on.
They're still having the problem.
Oh, I'm very well aware.
But also, I wanted to say about the whole Timothy McVeigh thing.
I just recently read a book by Danny Colson, who you may remember is the FBI hostage rescue team founder, or first commander of it.
He wrote his memoirs and he explains very thoroughly and gives all the evidence of how they caught Timothy McVeigh and how the possible John Doe 2 came about.
And what happened was that the mechanic at the Rider rental place did see somebody.
Oh yes, I recall.
It looked like that, but it was the day before.
The person who rented the truck the day before, Timothy McVeigh, who also looked like him, he had somebody with him.
And Timothy McVeigh did not.
And the owner of the shop thought that Timothy McVeigh had this guy with him, but he confused him with the other guy.
Well, I still have a hard time believing that McVeigh, in essence, acted alone.
I really do.
One accomplice, not enough.
That was a large act.
That involved an awful lot, so... The earlier caller, I thought, had a pretty interesting point about a delay, and the reason for a delay, you never know.
A wild card liner on the air, hello?
Hello, can you hear me, Art?
Ah, yes, I hear you, and me, and your truck.
Yeah, I understand.
I'm going down the road.
I'll try to cue as far as I can.
Uh, my name's Jeff.
I live in Dunawig, Missouri.
But anyway, I was calling... Remember the military guy that reported picking up the triangular shapeshift?
Yes.
Haven't they seen them things all over the world flying at treetop level very slow, like they were looking for something?
Yes, well, I don't know about like they were looking for something.
That's supposition, but yes, they've been seen at treetop level and flying very low all over the world, actually.
Yeah, that was, I just kind of put, I was just speculating that maybe they're looking for the downed one.
Well, you would think, as good as we are at locating downed airplanes with transponders and emergency this and that, that if aliens had a downed craft, they wouldn't have to do a conventional grid-type search, you know?
They would more or less know exactly where it is.
I am still saddened by some of the press, the Washington Post in particular, and the way it's been reporting on what Dr. Greer is doing back there.
An awful lot of ridicule in that article, and I thought foolishly, naively, that we had gotten past that point.
And that if you put a bunch of serious military fellows who had some serious things to say, evidence in front of you, you would consider it without the right to comment.
Foolish me.
We're going to talk about tourism in space.
The trip back in time continues with Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM.
More somewhere in time coming up.
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It's all clear to me now.
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My soul is like a...
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Oh...
It's the only way out of darkness and light.
Premier Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11, 2001.
Well, tonight we're going to talk about space tourism with Dr. David M. Livingston.
He did a doctoral dissertation on space tourism.
We're trying to get somebody here from NASA to talk about space tourism.
They didn't want to comment.
Richard C. Hoagland will also be here a little later.
And we've got an awful lot to do, so if you'll just stay seated and strap in, it should be fun.
Yes, indeed.
NASA's favorite topic, space tourism.
tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th, 2001.
Music.
Dr. David Livingston is a business consultant, financial advisor, strategic planner.
For more than 25 years has worked in oil and gas exploration, real estate development,
sales, finance, marketing, direct advertising, and sales.
He currently specializes in solving business problems for entrepreneurial operation startups, businesses with 10 or fewer employees, in addition to his writing, lecturing, and consulting on commercial space matters.
Dr. Livingston has also served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Business at Golden State University, teaching entrepreneurship and small business management.
He earned his B.A.
from the University of Arizona, an M.B.A.
in International Business Management from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and his doctorate in Business Administration at Golden Gate.
His doctoral dissertation was titled, Outer Space Commerce It's history and prospects.
Livingston has spoken or had his papers presented at various International Space Conferences, including Space 98 and Space 2000 Mars Society Conferences, the Lunar Development Conference, the IAA and the Cato Institute.
Pretty prestigious stuff.
His lecture topics, including venture capital financing for new space businesses, RLVs and space tourism, barriers to space enterprise, wonder what that might be, as well as the exporting of business ethics from Earth to commercial space.
Tis, I presume, Dr. Livingston.
Good evening, Art.
Hi there!
How are you doing?
I'm doing just fine.
Okay, so you did your doctorate dissertation in matters of space tourism.
Well, it started out to be space tourism, but my advisors insisted that it be broadened because five and a half years ago, when this started, space tourism was a joke to everybody and to even the people who had heard of it.
Well, now it still is now.
I don't think it's a joke to NASA.
I just don't think that they're ready to give up the control to space, which they have enjoyed for so many years, since 1959.
But actually, if I briefly tell you the story of my dissertation, it tells you what's really happened to space tourism and, for that matter, to commercial space.
Over the last five years.
All right.
And it's an interesting story and it involves Richard Hoagland.
OK.
About five and a half years ago, I received a call from my close friend, Laura, who's listening to this show.
And hi, Laura.
And she said, there's a guy on the radio on a talk show in San Francisco talking about the face on Mars and aliens and all sorts of stuff that you would probably love.
You've got to turn on and hear this guy.
So up to now, I had never heard of these subjects.
And they had been sort of in the closet with me all my life.
I'd had a telescope.
I was always looking at the stars and taking pictures as a kid, a subscriber to Sky and Telescope, but it never was mentioned to anybody.
It was just one of those things that you don't talk about.
And I turn on the radio and I hear the last 20 or 30 minutes of Richard's interview, and I immediately ordered all of his tapes and his book Monuments.
And it came in the mail one day and my kids were home from school that day and we immediately started looking at the videos and we were stunned.
And I was stunned on many accounts.
One, that this material even existed and two, that someone could actually talk about this in public.
Because my world, my business world, my cultural world had been very straight.
It was a world of whatever NASA said about space was absolutely right.
It was the Bible.
Whatever the United States was doing in space with NASA, it was right.
The Russians were our enemy.
We always had to do something better than the Russians.
I lived in the same world.
I think most of us who are old enough did.
There was never a day when you doubted what NASA said.
If they said it, it was like gold.
Not one ounce of critical thinking about it.
It was just accepted.
So, right after we got through watching the videos, the mail came, and in the mail was a letter from Golden Gate that said, guess what, David?
You have three months to produce a dissertation proposal, or you're out of the doctoral program.
So, I had completed my doctoral studies class a long time before, but I had lost interest in the program.
I had a son that was born with cystic fibrosis, and there were just a lot of other matters on my mind.
And writing a dissertation about returns on investment and whatever it might be just was of no interest to me.
And thank God it worked out that way.
So what did you do?
So I called Richard.
I tracked him down in New Jersey.
But I mean, did you propose prior to calling Richard that you do a dissertation on these matters rather than something more standard?
And how was that?
No, not yet.
Not yet, huh?
You called Richard first.
I called Richard first because I got the idea that here was a guy that really It sparked something about my passion and intuitively I was starting to wake up to something that just really drove me and that I could identify with all my life.
It was like I was coming out of the closet to be able to speak freely about space, to be able to speak freely about my knowing but not being able to prove that space was absolutely full of life, that the universe was teeming with life.
Uh, that humans belonged in space and it was time we get our butts off this planet and we go places.
And Richard had somehow sparked that in me when I saw his tapes on Cydonia and I read Monuments, which by the way for me without a good background in math was quite a challenge to get through.
And my kids were pretty young at the time and we were all just amazed at that material.
So I tracked Richard down in New Jersey, which is where he was at the time, and I said, Richard, can you help me figure out what I can do for a very conservative business school doctoral dissertation that has to be about making money and business.
It can't just be about science or about fantasy stuff, and they're not going to go into anything with aliens or anything like that.
It's got to be straight.
So Richard and I began an exchange that lasted Actually, let me stop you just for a moment.
To be fair to Richard, then, even now, Richard has never been into the alien aspect of ufology and not really into ufology.
let me stop you just for a moment to be fair to richard uh... then even now
richard has never been in the alien aspect of ufology and not into really into ufology what he has been into
is artifacts uh... on mars and artifacts on the moon from what he believes
to be some very ancient civilization
not necessarily current But he was never big on UFOs.
In fact, Richard never talked about UFOs.
He talked about stuff that was up there that we ought to go see.
Absolutely, but I didn't know that.
And I was still starting to figure out that there was a whole world out there that was of interest to me, but that I had had no knowledge of.
And there wasn't any differentiation yet with what Richard does and what I thought all of this meant.
So I had to make it clear to Richard that I couldn't go off into any fantasy tangents, but if he could help me figure out something that was a viable business school topic that would be able to be approved by a conservative business school, that would work.
So Richard and I began an exchange, and then Richard came out to the Bay Area for a UFO And my sons and I went down and met him at that conference.
We had never been to a conference like that, and that's an interesting story in itself.
And Richard gave me some ideas and pointed me in the direction of space tourism.
And then, as circumstances have it, while I was driving home from work one day, and this professor from Stanford, Bruce Lasinian, was on the radio being interviewed by NPR about humans going to Mars.
And I thought, my God, this guy I've got to meet with.
So I tracked him down at Stanford and I came down and was immediately given a two-hour lecture on space tourism is where the action is.
So I then went to my business school and I said, look, I've only got 45 days left of this period that you gave me.
I want to do my proposal.
I'm going to need more time.
This is my topic, space tourism.
And boy, was I laughed at.
Really?
It was humiliating.
And I was not taken seriously.
And the one thing I can say is that at the time, and I forget the professor's name, who was the head of the business school, was open-minded enough to say, look, just because I think this is foolish, and I don't believe in it, I'm not going to stand in your way of doing it.
So I'll extend your proposal time for another 90 days if you can find somebody at this school to be the chair of your committee.
And I'll give you a list of eight or nine or ten of the professors that I think are the most open-minded that you might have some success talking to.
So in a day or two, he faxed me a list, and I began calling these professors, and no one would talk to me.
Then you've got to give him some credit, because he... Absolutely.
He was open-minded enough to... He was open-minded.
I mean, he laughed at it and thought it was totally foolish.
He could have crushed you right there.
Right on the spot.
And every time I see him, I thank him for that.
Uh, being that open-minded, and I started going through the list, and most of the professors that were on the list, I did not know, because I had completed my studies work probably in the early 80s, 82, 83, 84.
So you called these professors.
What was the typical response?
They laughed.
Space tourism?
Are you kidding?
What are you talking about?
I study finance.
My specialty is real estate.
I do marketing.
What do I know about space tourism?
This is not a topic for a business school.
We're not doing science fiction novels here.
It was across the board, and I got down to two professors on the list.
One of them had been my economics professor in my MBA program and also in my doctoral studies program.
I had saved him for last because I wanted to get the reaction from the other professors before I called this gentleman.
And his name, Dr. Homan, and he said, David, I don't know the first thing about space tourism.
I don't even know if it's a possibility.
I don't know anything about it.
But I certainly remember you from my class work.
And, you know, if you can convince me, I'll do it.
So I came in and I brought in to a meeting a bunch of Richard's work.
And I did my best to convince him that space tourism and commerce in space other than satellites made an enormous sense.
And he said, if you can find some other people to be on your committee, I'll be the chairman for you.
And I don't know anything about space, but I can certainly advise you on business matters, and I can certainly advise you on the standards here at the university.
And he told me to call another professor at Golden Gate, Dr. Pruden, who is a finance and marketing man, and upon Dr. Homan's recommendation, Dr. Pruden agreed to I don't know the first thing about space tourism, but it sounds interesting.
So out of about 12 people all together, I found two open-minded people willing to be on the committee that confessed they had no knowledge about it, never heard of it, never thought of it, but were willing to give me a chance.
Then Dr. Lucinian from Stanford agreed to help me and then he introduced me to some
people at Boeing who eventually led me to Dr. Willenberg who certainly was willing to
join me.
He is with Boeing Commercial Space Division in Southern California.
And then I began the process of writing a proposal which took me just about a year to
do so they kept extending me to do this.
And at Golden Gate I had to defend the proposal.
I did not have to defend the dissertation when it was completed.
And if the proposal were accepted then if the dissertation was ultimately accepted by
my committee then I had earned my degree.
So I had to defend the proposal.
There were five or six professors there, including Dr. Homan, and I barely was accepted.
I think I was accepted by just one vote.
Well, how did you defend it?
I stood up there and I had done a year's worth of research on space tourism.
I had found a few books on the topic.
I showed that there was literary material on the topic that was legitimate and not crackpot oriented.
There had been a couple of articles in prominent magazines by now on space tourism.
There were and still are rhetorical statements by NASA that claim to support space tourism,
and I used those statements.
Most of the people on the committee thought that this was totally inappropriate for their
school and that this was not a business school subject.
But ultimately I prevailed, but only by one vote, and the people that were not supportive
of me were not happy that I prevailed.
And they did not really think it would reflect well on the university and its standards, and did not want me to do that dissertation.
They wanted me to do something on real estate or hotel management or financial investment.
Of course, I, by this time, had no interest in that stuff anymore in my life.
Well, hotel management might apply eventually.
Well, it would, and hopefully.
Hotel management courses might soon be starting to teach space hotel management.
That would be a fabulous course and I have actually recommended that at some of my lectures as to how to facilitate getting space commerce going.
So then what unfolded was the writing of my dissertation and it went from being laughed at and scorned at And giggled at five years ago to when I went in and surrendered my 530 page dissertation the first of April of this year.
There were about 12 professors that came to this little mini celebration.
There wasn't one person there that laughed.
They had all heard about the space dissertation and they wanted to meet me.
They couldn't have been more wide eyed and interested.
They asked me questions about space, about space tourism, space commerce.
One professor Even ask in front of all the others, what are all these structures and pictures I understand of strange objects on Mars?
And he asked me if I knew where to find on the internet the pictures of the glass tubes that NASA likes to say are sand dunes.
Oh yes!
So I gave him the links to your page and then he later emailed me back and thanked me and found them most interesting.
And it was a complete turnaround.
Five years.
And in five years, Dennis Tito has taken civilians into space and shown the world that we can all get up there.
And it's on the front page of every newspaper and in every form of media around the world.
And so that's my story, but it's also the story of space tourism.
How old is Dennis Tito?
I believe he's 60 years old.
Sixty.
Do you...
You know, I mean, we're going to discuss, I guess, why NASA has had such a problem.
Golden has made comments.
Glenn has made comments.
Some U.S.
representatives have made derogatory comments.
It's just been an absolute mess.
I mean, it's been a mess.
And I take it that you know, or you can help us out, perhaps, with some reasons.
Well, I can, but I'm not surprised by any of it.
You're not?
Absolutely not.
I sure was.
John Glenn went up.
Well, John Glenn went up, but he's part of the system.
Part of the issue is that these people don't want to see change.
They don't want to give up.
Uh, what they've had as their private domain.
Yeah, but wait a minute.
Their private domain?
I mean, we've all understood that it takes people, at least certainly at the beginning of the space program, who were test pilots and qualified in all kinds of ways, to go into space.
However, we saw John Glenn go up, so we know that older fellows can go up.
Now we've seen Tito go up, so we know normal guys can go up, even 60-year-olds, and survive the experience.
Doctor, hold on a moment.
We're going to take a break here at the bottom of the air, and when we come back, we're really going to talk about what the hell's going on with NASA.
Their private domain, I think, is what I just heard.
That would be our financed private domain for them, right?
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You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM, from May 11, 2001.
Um, any of you see contact with Jodie Foster by now?
I think most of you probably have, right?
Remember the gentleman who was up on the Russian space station that phoned Jodie Foster from space?
Remember that?
Nobody's really commented on this, but when you look at Dennis Tito, doesn't he remind you of that fella?
I, of course, would love to interview Dennis Tito, and it's a possibility that grows slowly, but grows.
So we'll see.
But when I looked at him, when I saw him up in the International Space Station,
I thought, boy, he looks like the guy in Contact.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Sound of rocket launching.
Now, we take you back to the past on Arkbell Somewhere in Time.
Alright, since Dr. Livingston did his doctoral dissertation on outer space commerce, its history and prospects, he's obviously, probably one of the better people qualified to comment.
on what's going on right now or what should be going on right now and you said NASA's doing this because it's their own they don't want to give up their own little private domain and I would say their own little private domain that we are financing well that's exactly right and I think there are several dimensions to properly respond to your question and the first dimension is what I like to call the superficial level And this is probably also equivalent to the mainstream level, what most people see, what most people probably believe, certainly what the mainstream press reports.
And this is reflected in statements by people in Congress, because the United States has paid the bulk of the cost of the International Space Station.
And Russia has not been a good financial partner they have caused at
least two years in delays and five billion dollars in cost overruns
and this was stated uh... recently by representative sense and brenner who's
a republican from wisconsin when he was objecting to people going up there
except he quite people going up there to brazenly
increasing the safety risk of the entire mission and and certainly i i disagree with that
furthermore in uh...
in the senate the democratic senator from maryland uh... barbara
mccoskey also stood up during nasa budget hearings on may ninth which was
just two days ago on that map of two thousand two fiscal budget
and uh... she said i'm very cranky about the russian This is like being pimps, which is just unbelievable.
It's like being pimps?
P-I-M-P-S.
Pimps?
She really said that?
Yeah, that's her quote.
I'm very cranky about the Russians.
This is like being pimped.
Wow.
And she called them pimps because of their decision to launch a paying customer to the International Space Station.
And this is, of course, just not only is it unbelievable language, it's immaturity, and it's also so representative of lacking of any kind of a vision and any kind of understanding.
I mean, you have to wonder how these people get to be in the Senate or in the Congress, but of course they're there.
But anyway, that's what she did.
Well, let's review.
They were worried about the safety of the space station and those personnel on it.
Now that Mr. Tito is back home, was the International Space Station put into some fatal spin by a flip of the switch that Mr. Tito hit, or did he break anything when he was up there, or did he do anything that put our astronauts and cosmonauts in mortal jeopardy?
Well, actually, the only thing that I'm aware of that happened is a couple of days before Mr. Tito went up there, something happened to NASA's computer system on the International Space Station.
Oh, yes, that's right.
They all got wiped out.
Every computer system.
But Dennis was not there at the time that it happened.
Now, had he been?
Well, he would have probably been blamed for it.
So the conventional theory is that NASA is playing to Congress on this matter because they are very sensitive about the cost overruns and the delays associated with the
International Space Station.
This thing is way over budget.
It's already up to $30 billion and climbing, and the completion date is not until around 2004.
And it is likely that there will be continued cost overruns, and it is likely that Russia will continue to have
difficulty paying for their share of the space station.
Yeah, they're pretty much broke.
So, and the budget hearings are going on for NASA at the present time,
and so, you know, they have to take this posturing stance to say you can't do this
because they're protecting America's interest in the space station.
By the way, have you heard the Russians talking about Mir-2?
I have, but I've also heard that they're not going to do Mir-2, and I've also heard that there are private entities that want to do a truly private and a truly free enterprise space station,
which the Russians would be part of.
So I think there's a lot of rhetoric floating around, and right now it's probably too difficult to determine what's
real and not real.
Doctor, I've talked to people with plans for hotels in space and things like that,
made from the solid rocket boosters, uh... all kinds of interesting plans i've heard about
people are proceeding What do you think is possible?
What actually is within the realm of possibility?
What could we do if we wanted to, or if they wanted to?
Well, first, I don't think using the external tanks of the shuttle is ever going to fly.
And if we want to get into why I believe that, I'm happy to do that.
So I'm just going to exclude that as a possibility.
Okay, I didn't really ask that.
What I asked is, what is possible?
Well, I think it is possible for the private sector to build a space station-like hotel or space station-like business park that would be open to true free enterprise, free commerce in space, where people would utilize it just like they would use a business park here on Earth or a hotel here on Earth.
If you look at the fuselage of a wide-body jet, it's probably around 60 or 70 percent of the integrity needed to go into low-Earth orbit.
Really?
So that's one model that could be used.
There are also inflatable structures that could possibly be used.
Spacehab is a leading developer of these inflatable structures, and that's a real possibility.
Now let me go over that with you again.
A commercial airliner, like a 747, say?
Well, or a 757, any of the wide bodies, any of them.
Represent 60 or 70% of the total integrity it would take to be in low-Earth orbit?
Really?
Well, now, I'm not an engineer, but that's what I understand from my engineering associates down at Stanford University.
Wow!
So, obviously, there would have to be Changes made and things would have to be done to do that and you'd have to be able to get it up into orbit and keep it in orbit and then you would put them together like tinker toys.
You would not necessarily have to spin these.
So, and one of the assets about being in space is that you're in zero gravity.
That's really what people want to enjoy.
That's what Mr. Tito seemed to have for me.
So the necessity to take a business park or a space hotel first generation and spin it It's not particularly necessary, nor is it really economical.
Spinning it is going to raise your cost and complicate the engineering.
Right.
So you could put this thing together with Tinker Toy-like construction, and you could modify the fuselage.
And in fact, Professor Lucinian, who was one of my dissertation advisors, has his engineering class on space engineering working on using wide-body fuselages right now.
and building a space station that would probably, a hotel that would probably have a capacity
of 60 tourists and a crew of maybe 10 to 20 people.
And they're doing projects like that, not just at Stanford, but at other places.
Are you familiar with Robert Bigelow?
Yes, I've met Mr. Bigelow.
Oh, have you?
Very nice gentleman.
Yes, he's a very good friend of mine.
I call him a gazillionaire.
He hates that, but he's moneyed.
He's got Bigelow Aerospace, which he has now begun.
Right, and he's got the great cruise liner concept.
That's right.
How do you feel about that?
Most of the people that I know in the space tourism community that are really Out on the forefront pushing this, use the model of cruise liners as the way this will happen.
And they do not believe that it will actually come to be through the space community, it will come to be through the tourism community.
And the cruise liners are the model for it, because they take a certain amount of supplies with them, a certain amount of crew, a certain amount of passengers, and they're captive in an environment which is very similar to what's going to happen on the space hotel.
And they provide activities and recreation.
And sometimes they provide side trips.
And sometimes they're in really weird places or adventure-like places like going down to Antarctica, like on a Lindbad Explorer or something of that nature.
And so the cruise ship model seems to be The kind of approach that makes the most sense for first-generation space tourists.
Interesting.
Okay, well, I'll just let my audience know.
Mr. Bigelow, Robert Bigelow, will be with us May 17th.
Thursday, May 17th.
Now, the big issue, of course, is that we need a cost-effective, certified passenger-carrying vehicle to get people up to whatever the hotel is going to be.
That's right.
And we can talk about this later.
This is the biggest barrier right now to commercializing space, to getting space tourism going.
And this is also an area where NASA throws up barriers.
And in fact, when I delivered my talk at Cato recently on barriers to space enterprise, the classification of the barriers that NASA throws up that I'm talking about right now, I named at that convention Livingston's most insidious barriers to space enterprise.
And what are they?
Well, I did this because these barriers play with people's minds.
Well, and when you play with a person's mind, it is very hard to overcome it.
Okay, well play with my mind.
So, for one thing, NASA would make a comment, Golden would make a speech about financing reusable launch vehicles and new space vehicle technology.
And he would base it on the problems that Lockheed was having with the X-33 and the Venture Star.
This was a vehicle that probably was destined never to fly to begin with.
And they got almost a billion dollars put into it.
They could never make anything work.
Lockheed's chairman in 1999, Peter Teach, made statements that Lockheed was through putting their own money into the project.
If NASA wanted it, they were going to have to put their money into it.
And Golden made statements.
And if you want, I can find a quote and read it to you.
But essentially, He said, Wall Street won't finance these vehicles.
They won't finance new technology.
They won't do any of this stuff.
Wall Street only wants to make money, and we're not there yet.
And this was really applicable to X-33 and Venture Star, but what it did is that absolutely killed the financial hope for the entrepreneurial reusable launch vehicle companies.
Gary Hudson, who at the time had Rotan, and this was a reusable launch vehicle that actually flew in demonstration flights and got off the ground.
Could not raise money.
And part of the reason he could not raise money was the kinds of statements that NASA, Mr. Golden, put out.
And what happens is Wall Street and the banking community and all of this, they look to NASA as the Bible, just as I used to do.
They look to the aerospace industry as absolutely the Bible and God.
And if NASA can't do it and if Lockheed can't do it, how in the hell does a little entrepreneurial company think that they can do it?
So when Mr. Golden or when Chairman of Lockheed, Peter Teeth, makes a statement that says that you can't finance these vehicles and you can't make them work, these people don't know that they're talking about an X-33 or a Venture Star.
They don't know that it's particular to that engineering design.
They think it means everything.
And the guy that has the entrepreneurial design or the better way of building the mousetrap, he's included in that process and he's He's dead.
He's dead in the water because Golden said so.
And so this is why it's insidious.
They're telling people that this can't be done.
But the real truth is they're only talking about their particular model.
So people who know about X-33 or Venture Star know what they're talking about.
Wall Street doesn't.
For my dissertation, I did three Different surveys of the entire venture capital industry of the United States to test their attitudes and understandings of space commerce.
And it's dismal.
I mean, they don't even know the difference between the various types of a commercial space project from launching a satellite to putting a hotel in space.
Well, that's how it all stays within the club.
And not only that, these attitudes have not changed over 13 or 14 years, because I found
earlier surveys that were somewhat similar, so I could track it back.
And when you have Lockheed and you have Dan Golden making these statements, it perpetuates
this myth.
It's like another problem that we run into is NASA loses these orbiters going to Mars.
And they lost two of them, remember, last year.
Oh, of course, yes, of course.
And there was also a period when Titans were blowing up on the launch pad, launching American
military satellites.
And so Wall Street looks at this, and they said, my God, you can't even launch a rocket
without having a blowout.
My God, we don't want to finance this.
This is too risky.
We NASA can't even get a satellite or get something to Mars.
What makes you think you as an independent company?
can do this. If NASA can't do it, why can you do it?
Answer that question for me. That is a good question, actually.
Anybody looking, certainly Wall Street looking at this, would have those questions legitimately.
So what's the answer?
Well, the answer, I believe, is that, well, first of all, Wall Street needs to be brought along in education
to show that there's a difference in a project that NASA does going into deep space or outside of low Earth orbit.
Then a low Earth orbit commercial space mission, which is a totally different venture and a totally different set of
business risks.
And when we're talking about space tourism and space commerce, we're talking about low Earth orbit out to the moon.
We could do this with off the shelf technology.
The risks are entirely different than going to Mars.
The economic value of the mission is entirely different than going to Mars.
Sure, but as you pointed out, we've had quite a few rockets explode, and that would be a concern of any investor, right?
Well, it would be, but we don't send too many commercial payloads up on a Titan.
The best missile to use for most of the commercial payloads is the Russian Proton, which has
a very good success rate, although there are barriers because of legislation in the United
States to use the Russian missiles, especially after all the China problems and the bill
that was passed in 1998.
Also the largest and most popular selling commercial rocket in the world is Ariane,
which is from the French.
They don't have these failure rates and they don't have these problems.
All you have to do is look at the insurance premium for launching on a Proton or launching
on a Russian Zenith or launching on an Ariane.
They did have an Ariane or two that blew up, right?
Well, they were testing the new one.
I think it was the Ariane 5.
But the staple of the Ariane family is a pretty reliable rocket.
Now, it's more expensive than launching on a Russian Proton.
But most of the commercial launches of the world don't launch on American rockets.
Right.
Depending on where they're going.
Actually, the Chinese are doing a lot of launching for us.
They do, but they're probably a little less favorable because of all the political stuff that's been going on over the past couple years.
Yeah, but they've launched a lot of commercial TV satellites.
Absolutely, and they will continue to do that, and the Long March has become a fairly accurate and a much more reliable rocket, and it's a very cost-effective launcher.
So, when Wall Street has to learn to differentiate the risk here and it's really up to the people in the
commercial space field, the space tourism field, the advocates
to help bring people along to be able to make these distinctions.
And this is why I call these barriers insidious because when you don't make the distinctions
and when the statements are continually made to mislead people, they're extremely hard to correct.
Yes, but aren't we in a situation where the two support each other?
In other words, NASA wants their private little domain, and the space contractors, which build a lot of stuff for NASA, For their own self-interest, no doubt, support that position of NASA.
Absolutely.
It's fraught with conflicts of interest.
So for the people who think that Boeing or Lockheed or Ariane Space are going to jump on the bandwagon to build a cost-effective, reusable launch vehicle to carry cargo and passengers to and from space, it simply is not going to happen.
Lockheed and Boeing make $7 billion a year keeping the space shuttle flying.
The Space Shuttle employs roughly 25,000 people in very high-paying jobs at over five NASA centers.
There's not one congressman around who wants to see that cut from their district.
But the Space Shuttle now is really long in the tooth, isn't it?
Getting pretty old?
Yeah, they call it the equivalent to the B-52, which is still flying.
But they're getting ready to upgrade the Space Shuttle and make it modern.
But the fact is, they can't make it comply with the safety standards of a commercial airline, which is what you really need When you're going to take passengers to and from orbit.
I agree, and I'm sure the passengers would agree.
David, hold on.
Dr. David Livingston is my guest.
Richard C. Hoagland will join us shortly.
We're discussing what it would take to get, you know, people like you and I into space.
Would you like to go?
Yeah.
Me too.
The trip back in time continues with Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM.
More somewhere in time coming up.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'll tell you what's wrong before I get up and go.
Don't bring me down.
You want to stay out with your fancy dress.
To the city lights.
one way or another.
Take the long way home.
Never see what you want to see.
Or ever think of the gallery.
Take the long way home.
Take the long way home.
When you're up on the stage it's so unbelievable.
I may have thought you, I may have thought you But then your wife seemed to take you loose
You were sad and few, oh, but now I'm a-tee With an open way out
Oh, yeah Oh, yeah
Oh, yeah Can you feel that your life's become a mess?
Now, we take you back to the past On Art Bell Somewhere in Time
My guest is Dr. David M. Livingston.
We're talking about space tourism.
Shortly joining us is Richard C. Hoagland, one-time advisor to NASA.
Revered there in the halls of NASA, of course.
One-time advisor, science advisor to Walter Cronkite, the Angstrom Science Award winner.
So, it's going to be quite a program.
One of the reasons, you know, I have a great personal interest in this, and I'll tell you why.
Because in my lifetime, I would like to go to space.
I would love to do that.
And if I had the money Mr. Tito had, I'd be in line, which I understand is quite a long line right now.
He paid $20 million to get there.
For what?
About a week?
Incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
And I would like to do it.
Would I like to do a program from orbit?
You bet I would.
Do I think it'll happen in my lifetime?
I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe that's what we'll find out tonight.
Stay right there.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th, 2001.
Once again, Dr. Livingston, David M. Livingston specifically.
Welcome back.
Thank you.
I've just got a question before we bring Richard on with us.
Tex, I wonder how many guys are named Tex in Texas, he's in Austin, asked how long until space travel might be as safe as air travel?
Now, I would be willing to engage a risk that would be greater than that of air travel to go to space, I can tell you right now, but it is nevertheless an interesting question.
When could we get there?
Most of the good studies that I have seen say that we could have a passenger-certified space plane.
Stay good and close to your phone for me, Dick.
A passenger-certified space plane going up to low Earth orbit within 10 years.
And right now there are no standards on how to certify a passenger-carrying space plane, but there are people at the FAA looking into this and trying to come up with standards, and there are people within the aerospace industry doing this.
10 years, huh?
So, uh, probably within ten years if we really, you know, put the will into it and the commitment to it.
Oh, gee, I could make it ten years.
I could make it.
All right, um, let's bring on Richard C. Hoagland and engage him in the conversation.
Good morning, Richard.
Good morning, Art.
Hi, good to have you.
From the mountains of New Mexico.
Hi, David.
Good morning, Richard.
Yeah, I guess the two of you go back a ways now.
You know, I had really forgotten, David, how That early conversation had started and I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, you know, you have to be careful what you do because it might have effects.
It sure does and when we actually met for lunch at that hotel at the UFO conference and you talked to my kids about creative thinking and how to analyze and look at things, they got a better education in one hour at lunch with you than they've ever had in school.
You open their minds to a way of looking at what they are being taught and what they read
and what they see.
My kids were pretty young at the time.
I remember telling you that you should be a teacher because you really can open people's
minds.
Well, you are being very gracious, David.
Thank you.
We do go back and it's been a fun relationship evolving.
Well, you know, sitting here listening to you, I have very mixed emotions because part
of me has been getting madder and madder.
I have looked at the space scene now, as you know, since I was with Cronkite, which was back in the mid-late 60s, early 70s.
And I remember conversations with colleagues and friends, and I used to have people in the science fiction field like Jerry Pornel, Robert Heinlein, my old friend G. Harry Stein, who's no longer with us.
Many of these people are no longer with us.
We always used to talk about, you know, Heinlein's comment, which is, once you're in low-Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Absolutely.
The hard part was getting that toehold in low-Earth orbit, and from there, the solar system and beyond was your oyster.
And we, you know, we used to talk about all these plans that we had and others had, you know, friends and colleagues and engineers that we knew, for really topping the costs of that first step.
It used to be that it cost, I think, correct me if I'm wrong on these numbers, but back in the days of expendable launch vehicles, you know, the Saturns and the Atlases and, you know, the first generation launch systems that we had in the 60s, it was like $1,000 a pound to get off the Earth and into orbit.
And the shuttle was supposed to drive that down by a factor of 10 to $100 a pound and be reusable, and that was how you were going to get your cost savings.
Well, if I'm not mistaken, I heard Golden the other day say that the launch costs for the shuttle are now $10,000 a pound.
Wow.
That is true, and it's the absolute most expensive launch cost of any vehicle that's available.
So we have been given another huge NASA lie.
And as you were talking, I was thinking of all the times we've been lied to on so many fronts by this agency.
And one of the things I wanted you to do, David, is to give us some comparisons, some analogies for the other dangerous conquering of space that we did earlier in this century that went from a few brave people to ordinary Americans and citizens of the world flying all over the place, and how long it took by comparison.
Because I don't think people listening tonight really understand how, what a huge boondoggle this NASA thing has been.
how there's been so much lip service and so little performance,
unless you give them a comparison with what other incredible frontiers we all conquered
and have all benefited from in roughly the same time period.
I'm happy to do that, and what I'd like to do after that, if I can,
is introduce the word cover-up to NASA, But just so that people understand, it's not my word cover-up.
It's coming from the most respected authority available in space tourism, Dr. Patrick Collins.
David, you've got to get right into that phone and stay there.
Is this better?
Much better, yes.
Okay, and I think it's really important, after I lay out this timeline, to show why even mainline authorities on space tourism are accusing NASA of a cover-up.
But here's what happened.
In 1903, The Wright Brothers had their famous flight.
And then in 24 years, we went to Charles Lindbergh in 1927, who crossed the ocean.
And then in 1939, we experienced our first trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic flight.
This was 36 years since the Wright Brothers' flight.
So we went from that plane in Kitty Hawk to crossing both oceans in 36 years.
Thirty years later, we made our first flight to the moon.
So technology advanced us the first time 36 years to crossing the ocean, then another 30 years, and we're landing on the moon on April 17, 1972.
That is amazing all by itself.
Absolutely.
Amazing.
Okay, now, the last Apollo flight, I'm sorry, the last Apollo flight was on the 17th of 1972.
The first one was obviously in 1969, so I apologize for that.
From the last Apollo flight, it has been 29 years to where we are now.
So not only have we not gone past the Moon, we have gone back in time because we can't get any higher than LEO, or Low Earth Orbit.
We cannot get back to the moon with a human payload.
And instead of our costs going down, we have gone up dramatically.
They've gone up by a factor of 10!
Now what has happened since 1972 in other fields of technology?
Well, you don't need a rocket scientist's brain to know what's happened in computers and electronics.
Sure.
Look at what's happened in genetics, medicine, medical equipment.
We've brought the world GPS.
We've brought phenomenal remote sensing and imaging Into the commercial markets, where you can buy pictures that are just unbelievable.
Telecommunications, off the charts.
The improvements in our commercial aviation planes, off the charts.
The technology in the military field, in weapons, in our military aircraft, and more.
What has happened to our ability to launch cost-effective vehicles into space And to go further than three or four hundred miles out into space.
All right, well, you've asked the question.
What's the answer?
Richard?
Well, the answer is a cover-up.
The answer is, I think, specifically a plan to keep the human race tethered to the Earth, because, you know, this is my perspective now, and David does not have to share this necessarily, but we found stuff.
And if you democratize space art, if you allow business and ordinary people And the Dennis Tito's of the world to go out there and look with their own eyes, oh my God, at some point they're going to see something they're not supposed to see.
So what we have instead is this elite group of 145 astronauts who are being paid, what's the average salary per year, David, for an astronaut?
I'm sorry, I can't tell you off the top of my head.
It's obviously $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year.
Correct.
Plus benefits.
And they get flight time when they're flying.
And we have these people, we have 25,000 NASA employees at all these centers, and they run this space truck at $10,000 a pound, to and from low Earth orbit, and they're doing what?
When we finally get the gem, what's supposed to be the next grand step, or as the Reagan people used to call it, the next logical step, we find that it's underpowered, it's undermanned, It can't carry out the experiments.
It's been drawn out so long now that the projected costs of the space station will be a hundred billion of our dollars.
And when one American, who is a pretty neat guy, used to be a rocket scientist, takes his own money to buy a ticket to go up there, he is absolutely furiously spat upon Not only by the head of NASA, but by every congressman and senator who opens his or her mouth on the idea that space is anything but a NASA preserve.
What's wrong with Victor?
You know what I heard?
Remember we were talking about Cameron wanting to go?
Yes.
I understand that Golden made a comment, and I'm going to paraphrase here, but roughly he said that Cameron is a patriotic American.
Because he's willing to wait until NASA's ready for him to go.
Now, I think that's roughly accurate, isn't it?
That's exactly what he said.
Now, by inference, what does that say about Mr. Tito?
I mean, that's horrible.
He called Mr. Tito un-American.
What?
He specifically called Tito un-American, and Tito replied, he's been most I mean, I don't know how he has the ability to do that.
Yeah, I don't either.
Not on that one.
He told Golden that Golden had some nerve calling him un-American when as a taxpayer he, you know, is being treated this way and all of this is going on.
And he just, you know, laid into him in a diplomatic way.
But Golden actually called Tito un-American.
Senator McCluskey, you know, Barbara McCluskey I want to talk a little bit about her, not right now, but in a couple of minutes.
But Barbara McCluskey, the other day, on May 9th, on Wednesday, the same day that Greer was holding his disclosure press conference on the other side of town, McCluskey would not call Dennis Tito by name, because in the committee hearing, she said, we had a lot of problems with another guy named Tito.
So the comparison between Dennis Tito, American businessman, former JPL rocket scientist, and a dictator, Who gave us Yugoslavia and the Croatian and the Slovak problem, etc.
I mean, this is beyond the pale.
You've got to stand back and say, what's really going on here?
Yeah, I think that's fair to ask.
There is a shrill sound coming from Washington, from NASA, and from the committee people who basically own space.
And what I find astonishing is that when you look at the polls, Space.com did one, USA Today did one, New York Times did one.
The numbers in favor of Dennis Tito and tourism, even at the exorbitant price of $20 million, is running 75% to 80% in favor.
And yet, to hear all these pundits, and all the congressional people, and Golan himself, you'd think that no one cared about space except them, and that somehow this was a threat To the world-class research facility that we, at currently, what, 26 billion and climbing, have put into orbit that can't even function the way it was intended.
I'm beginning to think, frankly, gentlemen, that this is a scam.
That the space station was sold to Congress on one level, but it has another set of purposes, and Dennis Tito's little trip through a huge monkey wrench into the carefully laid plans of this elite group of elitists And that's what they're screaming about, because they can see the handwriting on the wall, they can read the polls, and they're terrified as to what's coming down the pike, which is something which every American listening to us tonight should identify with.
It's called democracy.
Art, let me bring in another aspect to this.
Sure.
Because Richard mentioned the word cover-up, and I mentioned it earlier with Dr. Collins, And with Patrick's permission, I'm actually looking at a paper he delivered in February of this year to the FAA on their commercial space meeting.
And in 1998, NASA published a document called the General Public Space Travel and Tourism Document.
And we should talk about this at some point during the evening.
But this is an absolutely incredible document that talks about the profit potential of space tourism and the fact that we can do it right now with our technology right now.
And that it's going to be a huge money-making enterprise.
NASA refuses to put this document on their website, nor do they allow it to be distributed.
Now, why wouldn't they?
Well, Patrick, I was at the conferences when Patrick asked Golden to put this and challenge him to put it on the website, and Golden gave him sort of a wishy-washy answer.
And then at another conference, Patrick asked Lori Garver, who's the associate administrator, to put it on the website, and she said they would.
And they won't do it.
And if you know the acronym STA and you know how to use the NASA alternative search engine, you can eventually link to it, but it's still not on the NASA website.
But as Patrick says, NASA does not want the media, the politicians, teachers, the general public to know that we could start a passenger space travel service today.
At a public cost of a fraction of even one year's NASA budget.
Okay, well there's two ways you could look at this.
One is Richards, that there's something they don't want people to see.
Or, conversely, that their little private domain would look absolutely foolish if somebody were to do it economically and reasonably and easily and safely.
And they could do all that with regular people who weren't making big bucks to be trained to be up there.
Which Mr. Tito certainly was not, except his NASA background.
So, in other words, you could look at it two ways.
Cover-up as in they might see something, or cover-up as in their little private domain would be busted.
Absolutely.
And here you have the most mainstream of all scientists and professors dealing with space tourism, the world's authority on it, and he is directly at an FAA meeting accusing NASA of a cover-up.
...and accusing NASA of working for itself to protect the vested interest in its existing activities and not to achieve economic benefits for U.S.
taxpayers.
I mean, these are Patrick's words.
And then he goes on and says NASA covers up this epic-making report and refuses to implement its recommendations.
Now, we have a link, I think, through our site tonight to this report, don't we?
Well, I sent it to Keith, so I know there's a link to the Space Future website where this report can be found.
But...
I wonder if we have a link to the actual...
I sent the actual link to this report to Keith too, so hopefully it can get up there.
If not, maybe I can resend it if it needs to be resent during the break.
It's a long URL, so it wouldn't be feasible to give it over the phone.
But this is an incredible report, and for mainstream people to come out and say there's a
cover-up going on here and to challenge Golden and Lori Garber and to still not
get any results, even they challenge them in front of two, three hundred,
four hundred people, and it doesn't make a difference.
They might as well be talking to my dog.
Ha ha ha.
See, what's really interesting from my perspective is, I was watching, you know, we were kind of engaged down here on Earth, I remember, in the last couple of weeks.
Yes.
We were looking literally at the bottom of the world.
Oh, yes.
I want to get an update, by the way.
Okay.
And kind of on the far horizon, you know, the Dennis Tito thing was moving along slowly, and Golan was, you know, throwing his conniption fits and, you know, his furniture out his windows and all that.
And suddenly, somehow, Tito gets them to agree.
The Russians get them to agree to let Tito go up.
Yeah, it was the Russians, I think, politically who got it done for Tito.
Well, and we've actually cracked how they did that.
I would love to know.
Hold on, both of you, hold on.
We'll be back after the bottom of the hour break.
I'd love to know how that happened, politically.
It's kind of one of those over-my-dead-body situations.
So, somewhere there must be a dead body.
All right, we've got Dr. David M. Livingston here, along with Richard C. Hoagland, and we're discussing our future, as in, really ours, in space.
The trip back in time continues, with Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM.
more somewhere in time coming up I don't know what to do with my life I don't know what to
do with my life Why don't you ask him what's going on? Why don't you ask
him, please don't you say no?
Don't say that you love me Just tell me that you love me
Yeah I don't know what to do with my life
I don't know what to do with my life I don't know what to do with my life
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11, 2001.
Want to take a ride?
That's literally the question tonight.
Yes, I want to take a ride, and I'm sure many of you answer in the affirmative as well.
The only way that's ever going to happen is if we somehow wrestle space from the little private reserve that NASA has right now and open it up for everybody.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
It's gonna happen. You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time. Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th,
2001. All right, what Once again, back to our two guests, Dr. Livingston and Richard C. Hoagland.
Gentlemen, welcome back.
David?
Yes.
Remember in the PAX special when they had those shots of my cracked staff, all those blondes sitting in front of computer monitors?
I was wondering about that myself.
I asked you about that and you never responded.
Well, tonight we have the redhead shift on.
And the redhead shift has found the astronaut earnings from NASA.
Ah, great.
Yes, in fact, this one redhead's name is Robin, so we have to give appropriate credit here.
From the Office of Personal Management General Schedule, the astronauts are paid on the GS scale, you know, Government Service 11 up to 14.
Right.
And for a GS 11 guy who's, you know, a brand new astronaut guy comes in, Their minimum is $40,000, $39,178 a year.
But if you get up to a GS-14, which some of the more seasoned astronauts are, they can make up to as much as $82,000 a year.
That does not count usual benefits, you know, vacation, sick leave, health insurance, etc.
So we're paying $145,000 of these people to basically go up and come down in a truck and to do what?
Because the station, and David can give you chapter and verse on this, is not as it has been advertised.
And the other thing was that when Tito went up, I was saying this before the break, what I noticed was right as he almost got there, like a couple days before his launch, when Endeavour was docked, they had this incredible multiple computer crash.
Every computer in the spacecraft went down in the station.
And then it took them a long time to recover and they had to bring a hard drive back and You said on your show that I was very suspicious and frankly felt that they were wiping computer disks so that he wouldn't see anything.
Yeah, well, I have a question, Richard.
I have five computers in my house.
And I've had one hard drive crash in all the years of owning computers.
Now, to have all of them crash at once would seem statistically totally Completely impossible.
It's absurd.
And Golden admitted in front of the House hearing, or the Senate hearing yesterday, which was a tape delay of the May 9th hearing, that this was impossible and they couldn't figure it out and they had teams of experts trying to figure out what happened.
Now what was interesting is that it was only the non-essential systems.
David, didn't you find that interesting?
That the computers required to keep everybody alive and to keep the housekeeping going, they still functioned.
Absolutely, life support.
But the higher level stuff, all where the interesting stuff would be, what they were doing, the workloads, the shifts, the scheduling, those all went down.
And for the entire week that Tito was there, and this is recorded in several places, CNN, MSNBC, whatever, The astronauts, supposedly, our American, you know, guys, and Susan Helms is the one gal up there at the moment, were essentially doing nothing.
For the six days he was there.
Now, this to me is a screaming Hollywood type sign which says, what weren't they doing that they would have been doing, except they had someone who wasn't a member of the club looking over their shoulder, so they couldn't do what they would do.
I hate embracing conspiracy theories, but Richard, you make it so easy.
You really do.
I mean, that's right.
I'm just following the data.
No, it's true.
I mean, why would they essentially, during Tito's day, be doing nothing?
Now, think about this.
We're paying these people $82, $65, somewhere around there, per year, and every moment they're in space, it's taken them, at $10,000 a pound, how much does it cost to send an astronaut into orbit?
All right?
If they weigh 200 pounds, right that's two hundred times ten thousand somebody do
that quickly in other words
it's expensive to put a person in orbit the idea that you would keep them doing essentially nothing
for a week while a visitor was there
he's only by the way you know all right without coming off our our tax dole
is just it it it it totally absurd
The more you look at this, I'm not surprised, David, that your friend stands up at a major conference and says, in essence, there's something weird going on here, because there's something weird going on here.
And it's not just Hoagland saying it.
Let me take you a dimension deeper.
Because the United States has an absolute bonafide history and precedence of helping industries get started.
So when we were doing the Transcontinental Railroad, we had land grants.
When we were trying to get the airline industry off the ground, the Kelly Air Mail Act was passed in 1925, and it subsidized the manufacturing of American airplanes in the airline industry.
When the biotech industry was getting started, they rushed to make it possible to have patents on biotech material, and all of a sudden they had value, and that industry had value.
When PCs were getting started, DARPA made a huge contract to get that happening.
The telecommunications industry, The United States government formed ComSat, which was partially private, partially government.
The rest is history.
They helped fund the research program for communications and telecommunications with Echo.
So, David, why are they not doing it with space?
Whatever you want to say is as plausible as it can be.
I mean, how can you... Well, I... How can you... You can't... It could be anything.
Yeah, but I'm asking you for your best guess.
My best guess is...
It's a little different than Richard's.
I think that there's probably, even though NASA's charter says no, there's probably some dark military projects that NASA gets involved in.
And I think that part of this is to control space for the power and for the people that are there, the system that we talked about earlier.
And I think another part of this is that even though NASA's not supposed to be doing it, they are doing things that are dark projects, they are doing things that are top security, and they just simply can't afford to have the masses come in and know about this, and they can't afford to stop doing it.
Alright, well then let me try this out on both of you.
Everybody says Golden is not forever.
In other words, Golden eventually is going to leave.
Right?
Well, in their nine years.
Yeah, but he's going to leave eventually.
Eventually.
And there's going to be another guy, whoever it is.
The next guy, a lot of people have hope that he'll be very different.
Do either one of you have hope that he'll be very different?
Well, I'm worried because it looks like the Bush administration is hell-bent on militarizing space, and we can talk about this now or later in the program.
But when you militarize space, that's completely 180 degrees away from commercial development.
Listen, I can go further than Richard in this regard.
Here's my view.
We worry a lot about a war, about ICBMs taking off from Russia or China or wherever all and heading toward the U.S.
and we'd have, what, 35 minutes warning or 30 minutes warning or less, whatever it is.
Um, except for the subs, and they get here pretty quickly.
However, if you had a bomb in space, or several bombs in space, there wouldn't be any warning at all, would there?
In other words, you would simply see a city disappear.
Right?
Absolutely, but there also would not be any warning.
If you put a bomb on a freighter and sailed into New York Harbor or into San Francisco or Oakland.
Or if someone said you could mail it by FedEx.
You know, or bring it in on a ride or truck across the border.
I mean, you can't keep anything out of the border.
I know.
The thing is, space, I believe, for defense is, imagine a line.
If the enemy knows you're defending and you have a capability in space, then why would they try to attack you from space or in an area that space could make them vulnerable?
They would just find another way to do it.
Well, if I was Russia, for example, and it was still the Cold War days, which, frankly, I still think it is in a lot of ways, and I wanted to have some sort of leg up on somebody who was building a space defense system, I'd have myself a few bombs in space.
Now, I think they're up there now.
Well, they may very well be.
I know there are treaties, but since when has that ever stopped us?
Yeah, but you don't need a manned space station of the complexity and cost.
Under a civilian agency to weaponize space.
Oh, I know.
I'm not suggesting it has anything to do with the space station, but I'm suggesting that I think there are nuclear weapons in space.
And I think you're probably right, and I think it's almost immaterial to what we're discussing tonight, because... Well, we can start talking about the militarization of space.
Yeah, but see, I don't agree with David on that being the reason, and I'll give you a couple of very simple reasons.
The space station is crewed by successive three-man or three-person crews.
The first one was an American astronaut.
He was commander of the station.
His name was Shepard.
That's not an accident, by the way, and that's a whole other discussion.
The second is now captained by a Russian cosmonaut, whose name escapes me at the moment.
He was the station commander when Tito arrived.
So we have the interesting scenario of two Russians came up on Soyuz with Tito.
One Russian is commanding the station.
Two Americans are with him.
So you had three Russians and three Americans.
But if Tito hadn't been there, it would have been a disproportionate number in favor of the Russians, as opposed to Americans doing something on that space station.
And so I don't see that there's a military thing here aimed at any of the normal players.
You know, East versus West, terrorist states, whatever.
I think if there is a military option going on here, David, it's against somebody out there, which brings us directly to Steven Greer's conference.
And the idea that we are being visited by a whole bunch of people who are now attested to by a whole bunch of very credible Military and other government sources who are willing to stand up in public and say, we've been tracking these guys for a long time and you're being lied to.
By the way, Richard, did you hear the, I read the Washington Post story on the coverage?
Yeah, Hockenbuck's.
Weird story.
Boy, oh boy, oh boy.
If he isn't an agent working for the black ops people, I will eat my fedora.
You know, that was the most satirical Diatribe against taking these people seriously, that you could do with a straight face and still keep your job.
I mean, he concludes that the only thing proven was that there are people who believe this.
And these people happen to have top-secret clearances and happen to have been involved in this up to their eyebrows for their entire professional careers, and he just dismisses them in a couple of lines.
Well, he forgot to include that part.
Well, but that's the reality.
My point is that if, in fact, the station is An outpost on that phenomenon in orbit?
Because you've seen all the shuttle videos.
You know, both of you probably.
STS-48, STS-80.
Absolutely.
There's somebody upstairs doing things that our guys can't do.
And doing it on a dime and being shot at.
In other words, is the space station a command post to manage the potential war that is about to erupt upstairs against enemies?
I mean, I thought it was fascinating.
That the day before Greer's conference, Donald Rumsfeld, the current Secretary of Defense, comes out and makes a major space policy speech where he announces that we're going to weaponize space.
And part of the Greer initiative, part of the Disclosure Project, was to get legislation through hearings that would prevent the weaponization of space.
Well, if there's nobody left down here to be our enemy, the only enemies are going to be aliens, ETs.
Is that what we're building toward?
Is that what Tito is not supposed to see?
Is that what they're really doing up there because it's Russians and Italians and Germans and Japanese and Americans all together in some kind of planetary defense system with an outpost on the edge of forever?
Well, I'll give you this much.
I agree with you, Richard, that there was something there that they did not want Tito nor any other civilian to see.
Whatever it was.
It's fine for the Russians to see it.
In fact, the Russians are managing it part-time, when their guy is the station commander.
Right.
So it's not your usual Cold War BS.
It's something more interesting, and I get intrigued when I come across interesting problems, as everybody in this audience knows.
Yeah, logic is on your side.
So let's go back to David, and how do we get around this conundrum?
Because there is a solution to this, alright?
It's been done before.
Americans are very resilient people, and when they figure out that they're being had, they simply change the game.
And they go around the roadblock.
And we're now at this wonderful fork in the road.
Richard, the key question is, how do you get from $10,000 a pound to $100 a pound?
David?
Well, you need to have a market that can fuel the research and development and the production of a cost-effective vehicle.
And that market is space tourism.
There are numerous market studies that show that this is a billion-dollar industry.
Including the well-kept secret of NASA's own study, which is important to tout over and over again.
That's right.
You've got NASA's own study.
You've got technology that can do this.
There's a space plane that's designed with Bristol Space Planes in England called the Ascender, which could do suborbital flight.
There's a slightly larger model called Space Bus that could actually go up into orbit.
These are designs that could probably win approval and become successful, and they would be cost effective.
And what has to happen is that somehow the financial industry and the markets, they have to start seeing
credible business plans, and they have to start seeing real opportunities in business with real business people, not
just engineers and not just scientists, touting they're
going to use this kind of fuel or that kind of fuel.
Well, David, with your dissertation, wouldn't you be the right one to write up a business plan like that?
Well, I've actually just entered into a book deal with an agent in San Francisco to produce a book from my dissertation on how to make businesses in space viable, and probably within a year, hopefully, we'll be able to put this book out on the market, probably called The Sky's the Limit, The New Space Economy.
But what we have to do is It'd be credible.
And so far, the credibility has been lacking.
It is a problem, and many of the ventures that are presented are bummers, to say the least.
This is one of the incredible, abysmal failures slash hidden agendas of NASA.
When I was listening to the show in the first hour, and David was going through the extraordinary hurdles that he faced in the academic community, Where instead of treating him seriously, they burst into giggles when he mentions space tourism and space entrepreneurship.
Sure, sure.
That is, get this folks, that's 20 years after human beings walked on the moon!
We're not back in the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon era.
We're supposed to be, I mean there are most of the people in our audience tonight are, were actually born are, after human beings walked on the surface of another planet.
And for there to be such isolation and insulation in the academic community that didn't even know it was possible to send tourists cost-effectively into space, and anybody who wanted to come in the front door and do a dissertation on it was considered to be one step above Bozo the Clown, is an extraordinary indictment of NASA's failure.
To make space a part of human activity and everyday existence.
Well, I have a question.
Let us, for the sake of this discussion, say that we could get a hundred bucks a pound.
Uh, which is saying a lot, but let's say that we get it.
If I wanted to buy a ticket for seven lovely days and nights, no, actually in space you'd have, you could advertise it as probably about 300 lovely days and nights.
Yeah, 45 minutes per, whatever, whatever, whatever the math would work out to in space.
If I wanted to go to space for a week, what might it cost me at a hundred bucks a pound?
Well, can I approach it from a different perspective?
Well, you can, but it would confuse me.
I was trying to get to that point where you said it would be financially viable.
Well, see, it's financially viable at prices that are higher than $100 per pound.
What is the limit?
Well, I think that probably reasonably in five to eight years you could maybe be $1,000 a pound.
All right, let's deal with $1,000 a pound.
I want to go up for a week like Tito did.
What's my ticket?
Hard to guess, but a lot of people are estimating the cost would be down to a million dollars to a million and a half dollars and it'll stay that way for around 15 years.
Well, there's a lot of people ready to pony up that kind of money.
Well, and there's even more that would pony up the kind of money that they spend to go climb Mount Everest.
Right, sure.
And getting to a hundred dollars a pound is going to be an evolutionary process in materials design and in Launch characteristics and everything that goes into making a rocket and it really depends on the kind of technology that we're going to use, which is really something that we should talk about and it's the subject of a paper I'm trying to get up enough nerve to give because I find blowing firecrackers off to get people into orbit
Yes, okay, good.
On that note, we'll break here at the top of the hour and be right back.
I'm Art Bell.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11, 2001.
If only you believed in miracles, so would I.
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Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th, 2001.
Good morning everybody.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11, 2001.
Good morning everybody.
Dr. David Livingston is here along with Richard C. Hoagland.
We're talking about the viability of space.
And by the way, commercially, in space, that means you and me, in space.
The document they don't want you to see, we've got a link to it on the website now.
We're running out of time, we might still get by.
Every time I think about it, I want to cry.
With bombs in the day, the bombs that the kids keep coming.
No way to be easy, no time to be alone.
That document is on my website now.
It's entitled, General Public Space Travel and Tourism.
Actually, it's been there for about an hour.
Keith got it up right away as soon as we discussed it.
Bless his heart.
So, if you want to see it and or download it, here is your opportunity.
If NASA won't put it on their website, I've got no problem putting it on mine.
General Public Space Travel and Tourism.
How do you get to it?
Just go to tonight's guest, look for the name David Livingston, Dr. David Livingston, and look down.
It's the first link.
Lo and behold, general public space travel and tourism.
Somewhere in time with Art Bell continues courtesy of Premier Networks.
And the crack of the return.
Gentlemen, we're back on the air again and so that document is up there and people can go get it.
I want to make a couple of points about You know, the cost factor and how we can get you and me into orbit.
Right.
Because I think David is being, you know, the conservative academic tonight.
And I applaud him for that, because for a lot of people who this may have been an unbelievable idea, like his, you know, thesis advisors, they need someone who is conservative and who's giving them the worst case scenario.
But what you don't know is that NASA Meaning we have paid for a tremendous number of technological studies and engineering developments that are basically just gathering dust and sitting on the shelf tonight.
Right.
Our space program, we've expended now, if it's about, let's say it's $15 billion a year for the last 30 years, that's a lot of money put into space and space development.
That money was not spent in space, it was spent here on the ground.
And NASA used to pioneer and do cutting edge work back when Dennis Tito was working at JPL.
There were all kinds of remarkable cutting edge frontier concepts being funded, explored, you know, built, tested, and then they all put them on the shelf, like ion engines, solar sails, uh... rocket-led transport we've only talked about you know
firecrackers tonight right sure or do airplanes were one part flies back
to me other part goes to orbit right
there is a concept where you basically would build a railroad track
uh... up a tall mountain they would correct me if i get part of this wrong okay
Right, the space elevator concept.
Well, not the elevator.
This is the accelerator sled.
No, the rocket sled, okay.
It's a rocket sled, except it's not a rocket.
It's an electromagnetic train, Art.
And you have a huge power plant on the ground.
And you have basically a maglev concept.
You know, the bullet train that rides on a magnetic field?
Of course.
And you have basically a car with fins and it's rockets and its own propulsion system.
And the first stage is anchored to the ground and basically goes up a mountain like in Hawaii at 19.5, of course.
And you rocket this thing up using electromagnetic energy from a big power plant on the ground to get it up to hypersonic speed.
And then it leaves the end of the track.
There's a very famous movie called When Worlds Collide.
You ever seen that movie?
Of course.
And remember the ship, and it goes down the valley and up the sled, and then it flies off the end of the railroad track?
Yes.
That is a viable engineering concept.
It's a lot more viable if you don't have an atmosphere, but you can build it high, like in the Andes, or, you know, in the equator somewhere in Africa, and so you'd be above most of the atmosphere.
And if you design it out of the right materials, like the SR-71 was built out of materials so that it doesn't You know, melt by the time it gets to the end of your track.
You can economically launch passengers and cargo for a fraction of the shuttle.
And all of the various pieces have been invested in and built over the years.
It's just never all been assembled in one concept.
In other words, if people read the NASA report, and if people on Wall Street and people in Silicon Valley who have lots of money and want to do something interesting with it tonight, Want to really make history and change the history of the human race from now on, and were to put money in some of these innovative concepts that are available in the public domain, because we pay for it.
The American taxpayer paid for all this R&D.
They could leapfrog a generation, as opposed to starting from a standing start.
And you could have within five years, ten years, space Access that would make it possible for you and me to go and do a show in orbit, circling the world tonight, as opposed to sitting here on the ground.
I'd love to do that.
Wouldn't that be incredible?
I'm not big on remotes, but that's one I'd really do.
And it's possible.
This is not pie in the sky, and we're not talking about anything that's at the edge of the paper, like electrogravitics and antigravity and all that stuff, which was part of the Greer Conference.
And we know that that's in the black ops area.
Go ahead, David.
Precedence earlier about what the U.S.
has done to help industries get off the ground.
This is a prime example of how our government could use its money to help a space transportation system get off the ground that could help produce this industry that would be worth billions of dollars a year in 10 years and would produce a return, create jobs.
I mean, it would just be an incredible plus.
And the technology is here, the designs are here, and there's absolutely no help from the government and no support from NASA.
And again, I go back to these questions.
Why is it that to get humans off this planet, we are treated differently, this industry is treated differently than every other new kind of industry that the US government has stepped up to the plate and helped develop?
It's mind-boggling to me that this is going on and that nothing happened.
Well, I go back to what Eisenhower said about the military-industrial complex.
I think that's why, and that's what's going on.
Well, I think it's deeper than that.
I think it's deeper than that.
Maybe it is, but I mean, really, the fact that NASA has its own little domain up there, private domain, and they want to kind of keep it that way, and the industry that supports NASA That gives all this money?
Well, they're sure not going to take any other point of view, right?
And we all suspect the military is involved heavily.
Well, even more so coming up.
Yeah, so military-industrial complex.
The reasons are important.
What is it that they're hiding?
Let me give you an example.
We've seen these shuttle videos that have come out of NASA.
STS-48, STS-80.
Yep.
Suppose Dennis Tito Sitting next to his big panoramic window, listening to opera, with his video camera, has got some astonishing footage of UFOs from orbit.
Just suppose, alright?
This is a question, of course, that you're going to ask him.
Well, they said about the only thing he did up there was take pictures and video, I guess, a lot of it, too.
So, who knows what he's got?
Well, during the STS-80 mission, we know that the crew While the incredible things that I brought that video down and showed you there in the grump was going on outside.
Inside, the astronauts, we actually have a timeline.
We know what they were doing.
They were screwing bolts and nuts into a big metal plate with some kind of electric drill in the mid-deck of the shuttle.
Nobody was looking out the windows.
And everything that was captured on those cameras was being done by remote control By the way, Richard, maybe you can help me out here.
I asked you, when you brought the STS-80 stuff to me, you may recall I said, man, we ought to get this on the web, and there were certain reasons then not to do it.
Why can't we make up an MPEG of the STS-80 video, or one certainly exists somewhere, and get it up?
It's time.
Let's do it.
Really?
Yep.
Let's go for it.
I mean, it's the most incredible Because that's one of the reasons, gentlemen, I will firmly stake my whatever on, that NASA doesn't want us upstairs as ordinary human beings.
That's why they kicked such a butt about Tito.
All right, then if somebody would be kind enough to MPEG for me in the audience, oh, I don't know, a couple or three minutes at least prior to the event, and then the event itself.
If you would please... Remember, there are two events.
The event over Chile... Yes.
And then there's all hell breaks loose over the Amazon.
That's right.
That's going to be harder.
But I mean, the single event, the Chile event.
The single event, obviously the ground knew what was going to happen.
Yeah, obviously.
They zoomed in.
That's Santiago, Chile you're looking at there.
But we're dealing with an impact.
So two or three minutes ahead of time.
Show us what the camera was doing, and then the event itself.
If somebody would MPEG that to me, we'll put that up on the web.
It's time.
But if that's going on, and we have a lot of other anecdotal evidence that those kinds of activities... I mean, for many years, NASA would not show us, after those videos came out, any nighttime shots.
I know.
And it's at nighttime that you can see this stuff, because these things are glowing.
And they're operating under a bizarre non-reaction regime.
In other words, they're not rockets.
They're real spacecraft.
They're real electrogravitic antigravity, whatever you want to call them.
I like to call them hyperdimensional because that's the physics they operate under.
But the point is that how does a NASA cameraman sitting at a console in Houston know where to point a camera art to photograph UFOs if they're just aliens showing up On a non-scheduled tram.
I'm in agreement with you.
Which means somebody has to be in the loop to know where to point the camera.
That implies we have either access to that technology, or it is our technology, and the whole NASA program, and David, the military program, is kind of like a sham.
It's kind of like a fake.
It's like one of those western towns where you go and look behind the general store and there's nothing there but a couple of boards holding it up.
The Hollywood Front.
The Hollywood Front.
So is this why NASA has not been serious about democratizing space, even though they keep giving a lip service?
And why they buried this report?
And why Golden and McCluskey and Senator Bond and the others universally could not say enough bad things about Dennis Tito?
Because of course, he's their worst nightmare!
You know though, Richard, the only thing bigger than NASA, and bigger than all of this, and the only thing big enough, in my opinion, to keep all of this bottled up, would be the fossil fuel industry.
No, I don't think it's that.
Well, I tend to think it is.
If it involves energy systems that... Well, that's one component.
I mean, look... That would be enough.
That's a great way to get those guys to go along with you.
Alright?
But I think it goes back to Brookings.
Because remember Robert Heinlein's comment.
In fact, Harry Stein did a book with that title.
Right, David?
Absolutely halfway to anywhere.
Halfway to anywhere.
When you get to Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Can you imagine if you had a burgeoning, exploding, Real free enterprise system in low Earth orbit.
Hotels, business parks, you know, things being made, materials being brought down.
Right.
The next step, of course, would be, hey, want to take a first flight to the moon?
Well, sure, it'd be just a loop around the moon.
Max Faget, who was the designer of the Mercury capsule and the Gemini capsule, told me in an auditorium, we were sitting in the back looking at something, you know, waiting for something to start, And I said to him one day, I said, Max, could we take the shuttle to the moon?
And I mean, here's a really bright guy, right?
Yes.
He's Cajun.
He literally created the spacecraft on which this nation's program has been founded.
The answer is yes, actually.
He looked at me with a twinkle, he said, hell yes.
Yes.
And then he proceeded over the next half hour to lay out exactly how you could take this space shuttle, this albatross, this dinosaur To the moon.
And take it to the moon and bring it home safely.
Right.
But you could go into low lunar orbit, it could be filled with tourists, they could be pointing their Nikons and their Digicons and whatever down and photographing, guess what art on the lunar surface?
The artifacts, the structures, the ancient remains.
This is why NASA doesn't want you up there, because once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Out of curiosity, Richard, did he speculate on how much it would cost to outfit the shuttle to do a trip around the moon or two or three?
Oh, yeah.
It's a trivial add-on.
Because once you're in Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
What you would do is you would take the external tank with you instead of dropping it in the Indian Ocean.
Yes.
Which, by the way, doesn't have to be done.
David, do you know the studies on that?
Uh-huh.
That it actually, NASA is deliberately throwing a huge chunk of it away every time on every flight.
They don't have to, boys and girls.
They do it deliberately.
Because if you took the tank with you into orbit, You don't need to build a space park out of tanks.
There are reasons, technically, why that may or may not work.
But what you could do would be to drain the fuel that remains in the tank, because there's quite a bit of fuel left in each ET, when they cut it loose.
Correct.
You would then put refrigerators up there, powered by solar energy.
You'd keep the hydrogen and the oxygen cold.
You'd stockpile enough fuel That then you could refuel a shuttle that goes up separately, with its own engine, and then it could leave Earth orbit, go into orbit around the Moon, come home, break, go back into orbit, and then come home like a normal shuttle.
So you're telling me all it would take, then, is a refueling there to do it?
That's it.
That's it?
That's it.
That's all.
Everything else could stay exactly the same.
The avionics, the electronics, what you put in the payload bay, the astronaut spacesuits, everything else we've already built.
You could take the shuttle to lunar orbit and bring it home again for a fraction of the cost of what we did on Apollo, because we only have the infrastructure, and they won't do it because they don't want us to see what's on.
I remember Armageddon.
In Armageddon, that's exactly what they did.
They took two shuttles where?
Well, they took two shuttles, but they also had a nuclear stage.
Remember they used nukes?
I remember that, yes.
But that also was off the shelf.
Right.
That was part of the NERVA program, and or the Orion program, I love that name, for contained nuclear explosions, used to get you to and from?
Yes.
I mean, look, we have so many studies, so much hardware, so much development that we paid for, that's languishing, gathering dust in some ancient NASA archive.
Because they don't want us off the planet.
We're supposed to stay home on the farm.
And 145 people being paid $80,000 a year are the only ones that get to go.
At our expense.
Art?
Yes?
See, one of the issues in getting off this planet is the lack of space infrastructure.
So what Richard is talking about, essentially an orbiting gas station, is another way for the government to help support the development of commercial space and space tourism.
By putting refueling stations in orbit so that they can assist these vehicles.
And this is another perfect way to help subsidize a new industry to get it started.
But again, it's another example of how we're not getting that assistance this time with helping a new industry get off the ground like we've gotten in so many other cases as new industries have developed in this country.
It's just not happening.
Yet there is a technology and there is an option and there is equipment Where you could have orbiting gas stations that were perfectly safe, that would help in getting this new industry off the ground.
Well Richard, or either one of you really, if going to the moon is easy, or relatively easy, with a shuttle, why haven't we done it?
Why did it take us 23 years to send the first mission after Apollo, after the December mission of Apollo 17, back to the moon?
The unmanned Clementine?
Yes.
And why was it a DOD mission?
I have no idea.
And why didn't Bill Clinton, the night of his State of the Union address, even talk about it?
I don't know.
For a joint session of Congress?
Right.
Well, because there's stuff on the moon they don't want us to know about.
And remember, we now have some allies.
When Greer held his thing on Wednesday, one of my guys at ABC asked him the question, We've been talking about artifacts out there.
Are any of your whistleblowers, your witnesses, you know, confirming that?
And he said yes.
He said they've got one guy at Boeing and one guy at JPL who confirmed there are artifacts on Mars.
And I don't know whether the moon was included in that, but since we know they're there, if they're confirming them on one place, they have to know about them on the other place.
The point is that this is the reason we're still down on the farm.
And unless we get people mad enough and fire it up enough, and this audience directed enough to make a dent in the problem, it ain't gonna change.
But I think we can affect a way to change it, and with this program tonight we can start, and after we come back from the break, I have a couple of suggestions.
Well, I'm already angry about the whole thing, about so much time already lost.
Almost two generations.
Do we have time for another comment, Art?
Oh, sure.
There's a group of very serious space entrepreneurs and business people, and they're meeting in Las Vegas for the third annual Lunar Commerce Conference in July, and they actually have valid, real serious business plans for lunar commerce ventures and lunar settlements that make money.
And there's one company that I'm very well familiar with and may actually do some work with at some point.
How do you make money on the moon?
Mining.
There's this company, Applied Space Technology, that's actually going to send a mission to the moon and bring back moon rocks and moon samples.
Right, but what's on Earth?
We brought back some samples.
What mineral is on the moon that makes it feasible economically?
Well, at this point, anything you brought back from the moon would be... Oh, you mean selling moon rocks?
Selling moon rocks, selling jewelry, whatever you could bring back.
Oh, absolutely!
I'm going to talk about Project Harvest Moon.
All right, all right.
We'll do that when we come back.
Everybody stay put.
What would you pay for a moon rock?
They're around your neck.
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The end of another show already facing us.
Can you believe it?
Another week gone.
Your tomorrows are here now.
So we can't wait a long time to get into space.
Our tomorrows are just happening one after another, you must have noticed.
By the way, I want to thank everybody for sending me the picture of that 87 pound cat that's going around the internet right now.
But please, stop.
I've got at least, I don't know, 25, 30 thousand pounds worth of that 87 pound cap, if you
follow me.
I've had it a lot of times, so I know it's out there, and I know you know I'm a cat lover, and so you send me that photo, but please stop!
I can't take anymore!
We'll get back to my guest, Dr. David Livingston and Richard C. Hoagland in a moment.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 11th, 2001.
Music.
Back now to our guests.
Gentlemen, you're back on the air and I think you have plans to dive into this half hour?
Yes, we do.
David, do you want to go first?
Well, I want to say something that's a little bit of a different tone, and then Richard, you can do it.
But there really is no doubt that we're coming off this planet to live, work, and play.
And I'm almost 55, and it's going to be in my lifetime, assuming I live a normal lifetime.
And the Dan Goldins of the world, and the Nasses of the world, and the amount of money of the world may make it take a little longer.
But it's in the process of happening right now.
It's unfolding.
It's no longer a question.
It is going to happen.
And what I want to put out there is we need to be really concerned and attentive to what we export from this planet.
Because we have a lot of models for business and a lot of models for our culture that we just simply can't afford to cede space with.
The greed models, the secrecy models that we've been talking about tonight, We don't want this to be the way of our future generation in space, because we're going to have people living on the moon, we're going to have colonies in low Earth orbit, we're eventually going to have people on Mars, and we can't seed the human race in space with what we've been talking about tonight.
We have to do better, and we have to take the best that the human spirit has to offer, and the best that the human quality is for business, and not the worst.
And all of us get a choice on what this space economy is going to look like.
And so as we lobby our people in Congress and as we fight for space commerce and as we cheer Dennis Tito and the ones that have come after him on and as we look for the alternative launch industry, just keep in mind what we want it to look like and make sure we're striving for the best David, we didn't make it happen tonight in terms of getting Dennis Tito on the air.
We were actually close.
I hope you'll keep working on it for me.
Absolutely, definitely.
I think that your forum would be the absolute best for an interview with Dennis, and I hope I can help you make it happen.
Okay.
We will keep working on it.
For both of you, J.D.
in Fort Worth observes the following.
I saw a NASA spokeswoman on TV the other day.
The host asked her why Tito had to go to Russia.
She said, because they need the money.
He said, sure, the ISS is a money pit.
The lady almost had a heart attack right on the show.
Beautiful.
Here's a little tidbit in line with that.
Radio Shack sells an item called a talking picture frame.
Yes.
So for Father's Day, they came up with the idea to take the International Space Station astronauts' families here on Earth And put messages on this talking picture frame and then have the astronauts do a commercial for Radio Shack to help sell this picture frame for Father's Day.
So, of course, the Russians jumped on it and are going to be doing it.
And NASA's code of conduct and policy does not allow NASA astronauts to do anything that smacks of commercialism.
Therefore, the only Radio Shack commercial for this talking picture frame on the ISS is going to happen with the Russian astronaut.
So, I mean, it's just a little minor aside.
No, it's a big... It's another evidence of the fact how NASA just can't seem to get a grasp on doing something that has to pay back.
No, it's a... No, it's not small.
It's big.
In other words, if... I mean, you can just imagine the millions and tens of millions of dollars that would flow from anything advertised on the space station.
Absolutely.
And they put the daughters and the family of the American astronauts on the picture frame.
And that would be subsidizing our tax dollars, so why the hell not?
Well, NASA policy.
What was so interesting about the hearings that I've been watching, you know, with Golan and the Senators, is how all the Senators kept talking about how Dennis Tito, visiting the station on his own nickel, was somehow demeaning this world-class research facility Which, in the same hearings, they pointed out can't do any research because it's only got three astronauts and two and a half of them are required to simply keep the thing in orbit.
So Barbara McCluskey, you know, this very intriguing lady who was demeaning Tito at every breath, was making the point that, well, how can you do any real research if you only have half an astronaut devoted to doing research, Dr. Goldman?
And, of course, the questions were never answered.
This is all well and good, but we need to do something in the political realm to kick-start this thing further along than it is tonight.
And I have two recommendations.
One is our old friend John McCain.
When we needed John McCain to come out and go to bat for us on the Mars imagery, we got 70,000 images because Mike Malin was scared to death and NASA behind him that John McCain would begin to delve and dig Yes.
probe beneath the surface as to why these pictures were being held for years
Yes.
past the contract date for yes they look yes i want to give out two facts numbers tonight
and david you will back me up on this faxes are the way to go we now know
that when senators get email attraction the staff just just dump it
so emails are not the way to go Remember way back when we started these campaigns with Dan Golan and getting pictures in 98?
I said, putting faxes on his office floor, so the secretaries have to wade through the pile of paper to get to his desk.
Boy, did we get hell for that.
But we got the pictures, remember?
Yeah, that's right.
We did.
It worked.
Okay, here's John McCain's fax number.
202-228-2862.
202, that's Washington D.C.
228-2862.
202, that's Washington, D.C. area code.
228-2862.
By the way, folks, these are public fax machines.
These are public fax machines.
Now, John McCain is the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
Right.
And the Senate Subcommittee on Space is under John McCain's full committee.
Now, think about this.
He's Chairman of the Commerce Committee.
What have we been talking about tonight?
Commerce.
Right.
Business.
Sure.
How to make money in orbit.
You bet.
John McCain wants to be President.
Don't you think if a lot of Americans said to him tonight, you know, John, there's something going on that you ought to know about.
And here's a NASA study that says we can make as a country billions of dollars by letting ordinary Americans get to orbit in an efficient way, a cost effective, a safe way.
Don't you think John McCain might get a tad interested if a lot of people expressed interest in this?
And he might turn to Dan Gold and say, you know, Danny, it's about time we kind of open this system up.
So that's my first recommendation.
Fax John McCain at 202-228-2862 and let him know how you feel.
The other person I want you to fax, and I have a personal reason for this because I actually know this gal, is Senator McCluskey.
You know, I knew her when she wasn't a senator.
I knew her when she was just a representative.
We spent a very windy and chilly night on the top of the building at Times Square where they lower the New Year's Eve ball.
There was a whole group of us up there, and it was kind of interesting to watch how she has matriculated into this bitter and acerbic and extraordinary elitist person, because she didn't used to be that way.
Don't hold back now.
And I'm not.
I'm letting you know how I feel.
Her fax number is 202-224-8858.
That's in her Washington D.C.
office, in the Hart Senate building.
202-224-8858.
8-8-5-8.
It's Senator Barbara McCluskey, spelled M-I-K-U-L-S-K-I.
She's a Democrat for Maryland, the Senior Senator for Maryland, and she needs to hear from people that a lot of you think it's time for us to go.
It's time for us to get up there.
It's time for us to democratize this extraordinary experience Dennis Tito was just gloating about when he came back.
And if enough people send faxes to Ms.
McCluskey, she will get the point that she is so out of step with the American people.
Yes.
And maybe enough people would get mad enough at her to actually go into Maryland and say, you know, Senator, you don't deserve to be reelected.
All right, but let's try and be civil.
No, no, we have to be civil.
Yes.
We have to point out the facts.
I hope the coach took notes tonight.
I'm sure there's some way that you can reach David for follow-up.
If you have specific questions about studies or numbers or, you know, past performance.
But the main resource is this NASA study.
Because let's put it right in their face that NASA itself says there's gold in them thar hills, and why aren't we taking advantage of it?
I actually have a third person to contact, too.
Okay.
Congressman Dana Rohrbacher from California.
He's a very strong advocate of commercial space, and while I don't have his fax number, His house office number is area code 202-225-2415, and he's in room 2338 of the house office building.
Yes, he's a very strong supporter.
And he's very strong on commercial space and space advocatism and space tourism.
And Rohrabacher is spelled R-O-H-R-A-B-A-C-H-E-R.
He's a Republican from Southern California, the Huntington Beach area in the 45th District.
Very strong person to be in contact with.
Well, are you two actually confident that we could really get this done?
I mean, getting some pictures kicked out of Malin's office is one thing.
Getting something the size of what we're talking about underway, and changing the forces that have kept it the way they've kept it for so long, I don't know if a facts campaign will do that or not.
Well, but it can kick it off, and this is the magic part of it, okay?
Most people need to see something done for the first time to say, oh yeah, it can be done.
That's where Tito comes in.
He's done it.
He's gone up, he's survived, he loved it, he's come home, And ultimately, he's going to be on your air, right?
Yes, that would be wonderful.
That's number one.
Do you think they'll send, by the way, another?
Do you think?
Oh, yes.
Because the Russians have Golan over the proverbial barrel.
They have the Soyuzes.
Golan needs those Soyuz escape vehicles.
So every time the Russians go up, they've said they're going to fill that third seat with a paying guy.
And there ain't nothing that Golan can do about it.
So we're going to have more examples.
Number two.
Because of the NASA study and all the other studies David's talked about tonight, we know there is tremendous amounts of money to be made in orbit.
And as he also laid out earlier in the program, the main impediment on Wall Street is to thinking it can be done.
They know there's money to be made, but they think there's no way to get from A to Z. Now we know they know there's a way to get from A to Z. So with these two forcing functions, It's definitely happening, and I'm seeing the business plans coming in that are reasonable and realistic.
I think some pretty astonishing things can happen because we're right at the edge of
the razor blade.
We're at that point where when you blow on it or push it with a feather, it will fall
off the cliff.
It's definitely happening and I'm seeing the business plans coming in that are reasonable
and realistic.
I'm seeing a different quality in the way the papers are being presented and the types
of programs.
I'm seeing a lunar conference where they're actually presenting viable plans to do business
on the moon and in lunar orbit and on lunar missions back and forth.
And these people aren't wasting their time.
They're anticipating that all of this is going to happen and unfold in a reasonable amount of time.
And the groundwork is being laid for it right now.
And Dennis Tito broke these windows open.
And it's just going to, I believe, keep growing and growing and growing.
Maybe a little slow.
For a while, but it's there, and as I said earlier, the Dan Goldens of the world, the Lori Garvers of the world, the governments of the world are not going to be able to stop it.
It's going to be happening.
One of the indicators that David is right is the shrillness coming out of Washington from people like McCluskey and Bond and Golden.
Because if they didn't see the handwriting on the wall, if they didn't know how important Tito was symbolically in breaking the logjam, In making the financial community say, oh yeah, it's possible.
They wouldn't be so scared.
Normally, these agencies, and certainly our politicians, are monitoring public polls very carefully.
And if you get upward of 70% of the people in America believing anything, you better get on board.
Usually.
Usually.
It ain't happening this time, and why isn't it?
Because something else is driving the train, which is more important to them, to their survival, than the American people's will.
Here's an important note, and Dennis observed it when he came back at his homecoming in Los Angeles the other day, that NASA has done a superb job of making the space program boring.
What could be more boring than to see people assembling something in orbit?
I mean, we are really bored with it.
It is not like Apollo at all.
Dennis comes back, and this guy is in seventh heaven.
He is ecstatic.
You can see passion all over him.
He is joyful.
And he says, why aren't the astronauts joyful?
Do you know, Art, half of the astronauts, actually more than half of the astronauts, have never been to space?
Sixty-nine out of the hundred and...
25 or 154 whatever it is, have not been to space.
They've put a freeze on hiring astronauts and they're going to let them die out of attrition
because they don't have anything for them to do.
And they come back from being in space, whether they've been there once, twice or three times,
the most incredible experience a human can have.
And they're boring.
And everything they do is boring.
And Tito comes back and he's like a kid in the candy shop.
It's a good point.
It's a really good point.
I mean, you really are right about that.
That's right.
And Frank White wrote a book a few years ago called The Overview Effect, where he interviewed all of the people that have been to orbit, including the civilians that went up before the Challenger accident.
And when you read about their experiences and their spiritual transformations, And what they looked at when they saw the Earth without boundaries, or they saw pollution or fire, and they saw the Earth as an entire unit rather than all these little nation-states warring and fighting.
Maybe they don't want us to see the Earth that way.
Absolutely don't.
Bill Nelson, the congressman, said, damn it, everybody who's running for office should come up here on the space shuttle and see the Earth before they go into office.
Right.
The Saudi Arabian Prince, when he flew over the Middle East, he said, there's no boundaries between the Arabs and Israel.
What are we doing having this fighting?
And he said, paragraph after paragraph at it, he was totally transformed.
And maybe that's what this is all about.
That the power that is derived from political systems that are still in place today, from the geopolitical states, maybe that power just can't be uh... weakened in any way and when you the earth and have
this overview of fact that's what it's called
and it's transformational experience and even the astronauts have it
the russians have it maybe
they just can't afford to let people have that costa power for transforming this planet
will be so phenomenal like pat chadhams was talking about you know what you know
what i've never heard this one before but i think you're right
and i'm going to consider it carefully and frank white would be a fabulous
guest for you to have on your show about this overview of fact and and off the air i can give
you his contact information
Please do.
It's an incredible experience, and he has documented it.
It's amazing.
Richard, we're short on time.
Anything, any final words?
Well, I guess we'll have to save my story of Project Harvest Moon for the next time.
But I do want to end on this note.
We've been talking tonight about conventional technologies, about things NASA's paid for, rockets, you know, electromagnetic systems launching from the ground, flyback shuttles, all that, and what's needed to get them to where they're commercially viable so they can handle the volume of traffic that these studies, the NASA study projects, you know, would be adequate to reaching low Earth orbit and getting people the experience of their lives at a reasonable price.
But let's talk about, for a couple of minutes here, the wild card, which is what Greer held his press conference on Wednesday about.
Sure.
If all those people are telling us the truth, hell, if a tenth of those people are telling us the truth, remember, it only takes one white crow to prove all crows aren't black.
So if one of those people is telling us the truth of his 400, it means there is a stunning technology Hidden in the black intelligence, military, industrial community.
That if it was turned loose, if it was democratized, if it was made public, would make it possible for you and me, Art, and David, to go visit ISIS in ten minutes.
Alright?
And that's what can happen with political pressure as well.
Well, we shall try.
Richard, thank you.
Dr. Livingston, thank you.
We'll have you both back again inevitably.
It's been an honor, Art.
Thank you.
Keep looking up, Art.
Richard, good night.
Good night, David.
Night all.
All right, folks, that's it for this week.
That's all the time we have.
We'll have a very, very, very controversial week next week.
In every way you can imagine, there's going to be a lot of whiplash involved, topic-wise, but I kind of like it that way.
Anyway, for now, I'm Art Bell from the high desert.
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