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Jan. 22, 2005 - Art Bell
02:53:58
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Sir Charles Schults III - The Schults Report
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Time Text
So, I'm going to play a little bit of this.
And I'm going to play a little bit of this.
From the high desert and the great American southwest, I bid you all good evening, good
morning, good afternoon, wherever you be.
Heck, you may be in the world's time zones, all of them covered, one way or the other, by this program, Post to Post AM.
It's great to be here to escort you through the weekend, and it's going to be a very good one.
Sir Charles Schultz III will be here in the next hour, this night.
And then tomorrow night is going to be very interesting indeed.
We're going to do something I've wanted to follow up on particularly urgently in the last little while, and that would be do a show on the HAARP project with a couple of experts, Dr. Joseph Resnick and Guy Kramer.
And I have a lot of questions about what's going on with HAARP, a lot of questions that relate to weather and relate to Ionospheric radio conditions.
Maybe there's something going on up there, and perhaps tomorrow night we'll get to the bottom of it.
Although, I will warn you this.
These gentlemen are involved in some, I think, rather specific way, and there are some things, reference some patents, that I've been told they can't discuss.
Which are probably the ones that I really want to know about.
Joanne in Sacramento says, hey Art, great webcam picture.
It is a good one.
Taken last night, by the way.
Here in Pahrump.
Right from my front porch.
And it is spectacular.
So you might take a look-see.
A sunset in Pahrump, Nevada.
Alright, here we go.
The northeast is under siege.
Really under siege.
I mean, they are getting blasted.
Hundreds of airline flights cancelled.
They're getting a blizzard.
A good, old-fashioned, northeast blizzard.
Winds up to 50 miles an hour.
Maybe up to 20 inches of snow, maybe more.
Falling, I might add, on the various stadiums where later in the day a couple of very important playoff games occur in the NFL.
Not the least of the worries, I'm sure, of the millions of people right now in the Northeast.
And so, if any of you are going through this right now, it might be kind of cool to hear about it.
It's been, since I was a child, since I've been in a blizzard, you know, I lived in the Northeast for a while, Connecticut, that kind of area, and you get blizzards.
And they're pretty cool.
You wake up the next day, and of course, let's see, this is occurring Saturday to Sunday, right?
So, they might get all the plows out and working.
And they do have a lot of them going out, by the way.
For example, in New York City, they're worried about, you know, they'll worry about paying it later.
They say, this is really serious, a very serious weather event in the Northeast, and we'll do it now and figure out how to pay for it later.
So if you're going through that right now, and you're, it's the middle of the night where you are, what, a little after one o'clock in the morning on the East Coast, and outside it is piling up like there is no tomorrow.
It's a pretty weird and quiet feeling as the snow gets deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.
Pretty soon you open your front door and you can't get it open.
That's the kind of deep snow they're going to have, or are having right now.
So it might be interesting to hear from some people in the New York City, well actually in the whole Northeast area up there, see what you're going through.
I remember it from a No School Tomorrow perspective well.
The Iraqi government pledged Saturday it's going to do everything in its power to protect anyone who cares to vote in the elections from insurgent attacks.
But I wonder how many people feel... It's going to be interesting to see how many Iraqis feel safe enough to go to the voting place and cast probably the first vote of their lives, I would imagine.
I wonder how they feel about that.
International counter-terrorism authorities are looking for a Moroccan fugitive who may have attended a pivotal meeting with the September 11th plotters and is believed to have played a part, a logistical part perhaps, in the train bombings last year in Madrid, Spain.
The fugitive, somebody named Amara Azizi, appears to connect a group of terror operatives and may exemplify al-Qaeda's Decentralization, a trend about which U.S.
intelligence officials have warned.
In other words, they basically break up and go in all directions.
President Bush's inaugural address, with its emphasis on spreading democracy and eliminating tyranny throughout the world, was not meant to signal a new direction to any U.S.
foreign policy, nor to portray America as arrogant.
So the fact that that had to be said probably means that is the way some people interpreted the whole thing.
Iraq's minister on Saturday refused any comment on rumors that the top terror leader in the country, al-Zaqqari, has been captured.
He said, quote, let's see, maybe in the next few days we'll make a comment about it, end quote.
That would certainly lead one to believe that they've got him.
And if they have Elzegard, maybe they're having a real strong talk with him before they officially announce that they have him.
You know, a serious discussion.
Hey, here's this thing.
You gotta love this.
Headline is, Army Prepares Robo-Soldier for Iraq.
Now this is like one of the final stories in the Associated Press this hour.
Robo.
Robo-Soldier.
The rain is turning to snow on a blustery January morning, and all the men gathered in a parking lot here surely would prefer to be inside, but the weather simply could not matter less to the robotic sharpshooter that they are here to watch as it splashes through puddles.
Get this.
Splashes through puddles, the barrel of its machine gun pointing the way like Pinocchio's nose.
The Army is preparing to send out 18 of these remote-controlled robotic warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April.
Now, they're made by a small Massachusetts company.
The Swords, or short for Special Weapons Observations Reconnaissance Detection Systems, will be the first armed robotic vehicle to see combat years ahead of the future.
Combat systems currently under development.
You can imagine the Defense Department is making robots to fight our wars.
So here it goes.
Bet you didn't know we were that close!
We're about to turn robo-warriors loose in Iraq.
Now this is a very interesting development and perhaps you and I could talk a little bit about it.
You might have a comment on this.
There are people out there who would say that robots, warrior, Robots that can kill you might work, but are they ethical?
Is it ethical to use machines to hunt down and kill other men, our enemies?
Think about it for a minute.
Actually, hell yes, it's ethical.
Sure it is.
It certainly beats our young men and women coming home in body bags by a long shot, right?
So, from that point of view, if you're fighting a war, you do whatever you can, and if it's robot killers that'll do the job for you, then all the better.
At least that would be my answer.
That's where I understand some of you might feel other ways.
Now listen, this is something, um, I want to get this in tonight.
This is something that I have been very concerned about.
I've been talking to you about this since, oh, I don't know, what, six months ago.
Remember, we began to get stories about something called the bird flu.
Not that the bird flu existed exactly yet, but we began to get stories.
And here's another one.
Vietnam, on Saturday, Reported two more bird flu deaths bringing the human toll to nine humans now in three weeks as leaders of the World Health Organization plan to discuss preparations for a possible global flu pandemic.
Pandemic is a very strong word.
It's like epidemic is, you know, like five on a scale of ten.
Pandemic is more like nine.
On a scale of 10, it means really bad.
The United States submitted a special request to WHO's Executive Board asking it to discuss bird flu at its current meeting in Geneva.
It stressed the importance of strengthening outbreak surveillance, in other words, getting these people quarantined quickly, producing a vaccine, and formulating an international plan to prepare for a possible pandemic.
This one is beginning to really scare me, and if anything would cause me to go into a serious lockdown kind of condition, it would be if the bird flu got loose.
This is something you should all be keeping your eyes very closely glued on.
You know, the flu has the potential, as we know, to go around the world and kill, at one time, Many, many, what, 300?
How many million died?
It was hundreds of millions.
Just ridiculous amount of people.
And of course it travels very quickly.
It spread through the air.
Now this has not quite happened with the bird flu yet.
They thought they might have the first human-to-human transfer of bird flu, which of course would be really awful if this thing takes to the air, you know, as most flus might.
It could easily, easily reach pandemic levels, so I'm keeping my eye very closely on this story, and you should, too.
One more thing, really, one more thing combined.
We had, I think many of you who listen to the show probably know, I'm sure they covered it, and if they didn't, they should have.
We had a gigantic X-class flare the other day.
The sun really let go.
And it was quite something to follow on shortwave, the effect of it.
It came from sunspot number 720.
And this was a real whopper of a flare.
And then this.
In an extremely rare event, a communications satellite has stopped communicating, resulting in no telephone service for 10 South Pacific countries.
The $100 million IS-804 satellite stopped relaying phone calls on Saturday.
Probably, they think, still in orbit, but no longer pointing its antenna toward Earth.
And they're blaming the recent solar storms.
The NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado, has issued a warning about a strong solar flare and radiation storm, and it looks like It just put some islands in the Pacific out of the phone business temporarily.
So there you have it.
The sun is behaving in a very peculiar way for where we are in the sunspot cycle.
All right, let us begin.
Open lines.
What do you say?
First time caller line or on the air?
Hi.
Hi, this is Sam from Boston.
I'm in the middle of a snowstorm right now.
Oh, as a matter of fact, I heard actually that Boston probably would get You know, the deepest of all in the snow world.
Is that true?
What's going on?
Well, apparently it is.
Right in the middle.
We are in the middle of what they consider to be the worst of it right now.
They're saying two to three inches an hour until early this morning.
Wow.
And then probably keeps snowing all day.
Two to three inches of snow an hour?
Yes.
What do you figure is on the ground now?
Well, it's hard to tell because it's all in the air.
The wind is so strong that snow is mostly blowing.
Yeah, it's a blizzard.
What would you say the wind speeds are reaching there?
Well, I'm about a mile from the ocean, and they're saying the sustained winds are about 40 miles an hour.
And they have, I was seeing on the television, they have hurricane warning winds on the Cape.
Really?
Down in Chatham.
This is from a low pressure system sitting just sort of on and offshore pumping water right straight at you.
Yes.
And so this is going to be a really deep snow.
Are you prepared?
Oh yeah.
We've had snow this bad before.
It's the wind element and probably the flooding that we don't always get.
In 78 there was the flooding, but usually it's just a lot of snow.
Yeah, usually it's, well, poor kids.
It's occurring Saturday night, going into Sunday.
Probably isn't going to do them a bit of good for school on Monday.
No, probably not.
That's how I remember snowstorms, but I understand it is paralyzing.
Listen, I really, what's the temperature?
The temperature is, I think it's in the 20s.
During the day it was 10, and when it started to snow, the temperature rised.
Yeah, it went up a little bit.
They're saying that the temperature, because it's It was so low earlier, that is enhancing the snowfall because the amount of water, because the temperature is less, is causing the snowfall to be lighter and more inches.
I would imagine, yes, I would imagine at that temperature the snow is very dry or light kind of, right?
Yes, like powder.
You're going to have a lot of powder.
Alright, thank you!
Thank you very much.
We appreciate the report and take care of it.
The big target is right over Boston.
And that's right where that low is slamming all this moisture into the area in just a continuous barrage that adds up to almost hurricane force winds, I guess, and snow.
That's really serious.
I know that earlier today Michigan, for example, said to its folks that to go outside is to risk your life.
So don't!
Stay inside.
Do not risk going out into this.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air top of the morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing tonight?
Uh, quite well, sir.
Where are you?
Uh, Jeff from Ferguson, Missouri, listening on KTRS.
All right.
Um, sounds like that robot story of yours earlier, um... Oh, yes.
Sounds like they took the cue from Terminator 3.
Kind of.
Have you seen the movie?
Oh, of course.
Those big, bulky robots they had towards the end?
Yeah.
They're shooting up the rooms?
Mm-hmm.
What do you think, listen, the only...
Big controversy I see around this really is the ethics of it.
You know, sending machines to kill your enemy.
How do you feel about that?
And it saves soldiers' lives.
Yeah.
That's the only way it hit me.
You're the enemy.
Hit me the same way.
And have you noticed a comment about what's going on with Iran right now?
Um, with respect to?
Seems like there's a lot of similar rhetoric going on just before The Iraq War is going on with Iran now.
Do you think the United States will attack either Iran or Syria?
With the rhetoric going on, it's focusing more on Syria.
I mean Iran.
Iran.
But you do think that we have designs beyond Iraq?
Yeah.
Because I heard that report a couple weeks ago about reconnaissance missions inside Iran.
Mm-hmm.
To pick out targets.
Yeah.
Listen, it wouldn't surprise me, if the United States attacked Iran, it would probably, I don't know, I guess it would do so on the basis, same basis we went into Iraq, weapons of mass destruction.
Otherwise, what would be our excuse for going in there?
Well, yeah, but I think Israel would get to them before we would.
They have a history of doing stuff like that.
How would the rest of you feel if the U.S.
along car friends over there uh... maybe i thought the call
howard arrested rest of you feel it for the u.s. one after iran
probably as he points out before syria syria is also not part of well
some circles in washington But I would think that Iran might well be first, and the reason might well be weapons of mass destruction.
It might be a harder sell, but I don't know what other reason we would use.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Hi.
So glad to have you back in New York City.
Oh, it's good to be there.
We missed you a lot.
It's good to be there on the radio.
Now, you see, I hear that it's really fallen pretty hard, even in the city, right?
It is, but I have to tell you that, to me, it's just winter and being in Manhattanite and looking out my window, it's hard to see it anyway.
We have obstructed views here, these big apartment buildings.
You don't even know what's going on.
Yes, I know.
I have a question that I hope isn't so off topics here, but I've thought of it for so many years, I just wondered if you'd ever followed up with this man, or if you'd just tell me anything your take on him.
Well, first of all, there is no topic.
It's just open line, so no, it can't be off.
What is it?
Great.
Who is it?
You had a man that you interviewed a couple of times who was with the LA Times.
Yes.
I believe he was an assignment editor, a desk editor.
He was way up there.
Was he?
Yeah.
And he claimed to have been aboard, taken aboard several times.
I only remember vaguely him saying that his wife wouldn't hear of it.
That's right.
And I listened to a couple of interviews you did with him.
I haven't heard of him since, so it's a lot of years I've been wanting to ask you this.
What was your take on it, and have you ever interviewed him more recently?
No, I'm sure you heard the last one.
Look, my take was the guy was being straight and level with us.
And he had one hell of a lot to risk.
I mean, when you're in that kind of position, to be saying what he's saying is way over the top.
And so, I think he had more to risk than to gain by doing it, personally.
I quite agree with you, and I wondered, you know, what you thought, and if you ever, you know, had any idea of talking to him again, if he ever followed up with you, or... Yeah, I could follow up on it, sure.
It would be very interesting.
Again, thank you very much.
My take on it was that he was being sincere with us, and I think he has much more to lose than to gain by telling the story that he's telling, and it's one of alien abduction.
And that's just, you know, when you're coming from one of the nation's main newspapers, having worked in the city room, and you're pretty far up there.
That's a very serious story to tell.
I wish there were more people like that, of that caliber, who would come forward.
If so, we might have a real investigation underway.
What do you think?
I'm Art Bell.
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Very hard.
number pressing option 5 and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
All right, I debated internally about reading you what I'm about to read you very hard,
but I guess on balance I will. I will, because there's some things I guess I need. We all
need to know.
It's just a simple email, and I'm going to withhold the name, and he does give his name.
He says, Dear Art, my name is blank.
I'm 15 years old, and I go to Lincoln, well, you know, he names the high school here too, somewhere in Illinois, and I guess maybe I don't want to say that either.
Some of my classmates have been being very cruel to animals.
Last week they were throwing snowballs at a goose repeatedly.
The goose got so scared that it smashed its head into a window and killed itself.
But I think the worst thing they did was put a cat in a microwave oven and cook it alive.
Now there are some pretty weird people at my school.
I heard that the culprits of this were devil worshippers.
I'm going to report it, but I'd like you to please tell your listeners to report any kind of animal cruelty.
And that totally freaks me out.
And I'll tell you why.
Because anybody who would put a cat in a microwave and cook it is evil.
Really evil.
Really evil.
And I can't even...
However, perhaps it is more widespread than we know, and if it is, then we do need to know about it.
So if you know of incidents like this, and you wish to contact me confidentially, then I would appreciate being so contacted.
And as for the rest of the details, I will assume this young man Followed up and contacted the authorities.
I certainly hope so.
If you didn't, young fellow, do so immediately.
But he said he would here.
Now, how much of this is going on?
I mean, this is really evil.
This is really evil.
As in, either there's a real devil, or... I don't rule that out, and I don't rule it in.
I think very likely there could be.
This is just such a horrible thing that anybody would do to anybody or anything that lives that it's, it's, I can't contemplate it.
And I hope it's not something that is spreading.
I understand this kind of thing is always going on.
A lot of these people who do this kind of thing go on to be serial killers.
You know, they torture small animals and then they go on to be serial killers.
so this this stuff needs to be stopped cold and i hope it's not prolific
bill in cupertino california says that with regard are two robles soldiers are
our current soldiers have enough to school the distinguishing between friend
and foe below.
They bomb wedding parties, families shot at checkpoints, that kind of thing.
Robotic soldiers would have even less ability to make that distinction.
That's the ethical problem.
That's probably true.
They're only using them, I would imagine, in very specific circumstances.
And even at that, I doubt the robot, in this case, is charged with making that distinction.
I'm sure that, robotically, a human being is somewhere behind the scenes calling the shots based on what they see.
But even then, you have a good point.
So, I don't know.
Machines.
Warriors.
What's to the Rockies?
You're on the air.
Hi, Art.
Even in the very specific circumstances, what you need to understand is it's a city with innocent civilians around.
It's hard enough to tell the good guy from the bad guy with your own eyes.
It's a fact, yes.
So, you know, trying to tell it either on a monitor or, God forbid, some computer program would be next best thing to impossible.
Maybe they're using it, though, to go, for example, check where a bomb might be or... Oh, yeah, well, that's...
Something like that.
I don't know.
I don't think you need a .50 caliber.
No, you're absolutely right.
And really, they're talking about turning robots loose in Iraq.
They're going to do it real soon.
Now, what you said about the cat, the people that probably should be contacted is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
If you're in Maricopa County here, Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff, tends to put a pretty good crimp on people that do those kinds of things.
Yeah, I know he does.
He's a very tough sheriff.
But, you know, this has profound meaning.
If there does happen to be a lot of this going on, if that's what it is, devil worshipping, And this is how it's manifesting itself.
Then, we really have trouble.
We really, really have trouble, because this is real evil.
Cats today, people tomorrow.
It's sort of a natural progression.
Ask any serial, uh, killer, and they do.
International Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, Mr. Bell, how are you?
Pretty good, Mr. Caller.
Where are you?
I'm in Eastern Ontario, Canada, on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Uh-huh.
Welcome.
Yes.
So, how are things in Pahrump?
Things in Pahrump are better than the Northeast.
You know what?
I used to live in Las Vegas for seven years, and I moved back.
Well, then you remembered the weather.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I was calling about that I guess it's an email you got from one of your listeners.
I can't understand how somebody would do that.
Yeah, it's an email and I consider it to be completely legitimate and I also can't understand.
See, that's when you know something is really evil.
Yeah, that is evil because I have a cat and a dog and I would never do anything to my... They're innocent animals and in some ways In some ways, and I know people really go berserk when someone says this, but I'll tell you something.
If somebody did that to one of my animals, I think I'd kill them.
Yeah, I would be very angry.
Yeah, I'd call that very angry, and I'd go to jail because of it, obviously.
Well, there is animal cruelty charges, but that doesn't replace your... He's part of your family, he or she.
I know you have about three cats.
Four.
I have a fork.
Yes, yes.
And then you don't have any mice problems.
Uh, no.
Yeah, because of the cold weather, the animals are being driven into our, like, mice.
Uh-huh.
No, a mouse would not dare step foot in this house.
Oh, this mouse made the mistake of coming into our kitchen.
And I don't know how he got in, because we got, uh, you know, our house is... Well, now, see, that's a stupid mouse.
Yeah, well... I mean, really stupid.
Well, I do illustrations.
I do artwork.
I'm not going to tell you what I do.
A mouse like that stupid deserves to be removed from the mouse genetic chain.
Yeah.
Well, anyways, I have a fireplace, and I have my drawing table, and my computer, and all that.
And I was doing something in the fireplace, just rolling over the log just to make sure it burns properly.
And next thing you know, I thought something dropped in the kitchen.
I turn around, and here's the cat.
It has a mouse in its mouth.
And, uh, he didn't kill it.
There was some blood in that, and then he got away, then he got it again.
Yeah.
And then he finally, the mouse was so scared I could pick it up by the tail that I just took it outside and then put it in the snowbank.
Yeah, I understand that response.
That's what we... Oh, one of our, you know, our precocious youngster Yeti caught a mouse.
Not in the house, because I can assure you no mouse could survive in here.
But he was out on the porch with us, and he did a mad dash off the porch.
He knows he's not supposed to be off, so, you know, his entire back end wiggled a few times.
He went shooting out, came back with a mouse in his mouth, and he wouldn't let it go.
We had to pry his little cat mouth open to get that mouse out!
And then released it in a very similar manner to that man.
But all the while, he was going, You are overruled!
In my mouse!
My mouse!
And he wasn't going to let it go.
But he did.
Man over mouse.
West of the Rockies?
Uh, no.
Hold that.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Good evening, Art, from the Low Desert.
This is Gary Cohen from Palm Springs.
Welcome.
Thank you very much.
First of all, I called you on the subject of Nostradamus, but I have to add my two cents worth about the email that you got.
It just destroyed me inside.
When you read what you read, I have a cat that I just adore, as you do, and if anybody touched my animal, I know what you said and how you'd go to jail and everything, but The way I've felt many, many times is, you know, you hear about human tragedies, such as what happened with the tsunami and all these other things, and it's really tragic, but when I hear about people that hurt animals, it just kills me inside, because they're defenseless, they have unconditional love.
Yes.
Anyway, I just had to get that off my chest.
George had a gentleman on the other evening that was talking about Nostradamus, and I fast-glassed him, but he didn't address it, and I was wondering, I'm as fascinated by time travel as you are, and I just wanted to get your take on what do you think the possibilities of Nostradamus or any of these other philosophers or... Having been time travelers?
I'll tell you what, sir, I am actively considering that right now, not just with respect to Nostradamus, but with respect to the whole time question.
And in legitimate circumstances, when we have evidence so strong, for example, the Princeton study the conscious human consciousness study it is so remarkable what's going on it implies time travel because the registering of a large event can begin thirty minutes to two hours before the event itself happens now that that implies some kind of precognitive time travel that's what it implies and were some of the
The very best, like Nostradamus.
Could they have been time travelers?
I think so, sir.
It's something we've got to consider.
Yeah, I mean, so many people, you know, have hit it right on the nose, and what's happening in the world today, and future events.
you know it seems to me that there may be some of that happening or
have happened in the past that these people from the future that know what
has happened to our planet yes world have come back and maybe
the the prediction well I mean it's one of the things that you cannot rule out
Thank you very much for calling, and one that I've begun to, you know, recently consider very hard.
That some of it is too accurate.
And then the Princeton studies would suggest that, uh-huh, ideas, concepts, something, consciousness, travels through not just space, but time as well.
So it could be the answer for any number of things.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Good day, Jay.
Good day.
My name's Jamie.
I'm traveling through Nashville, Tennessee.
And you're on a cell phone.
Is it terrible sounding?
I would rate this one at no better than a 5 out of 10.
Is it a little better now?
A little.
Anyway, proceed.
Anyway, yeah, I wanted to make a comment on the Spirit Com.
Uh, first I wanted to predict, I believe a Coast Listener's got a foot one together this year.
And, uh, I had an experiment for the rest of the Coast Listeners, if you could possibly put a minute or two of it on there.
Uh, that, that night you were playing that, uh, a long time.
You know the little earlobe attached to your face?
You take your index finger and you push it over your ears?
Hmm.
And, uh, Just turn the radio up real loud and you can actually, you can actually hear what the guy is saying a little bit better.
I'm just curious.
Come up with that towards the end there.
Okay, what you're doing is a kind of filtering.
In other words, by pressing that up against your ear, the bottom up against your ear, it's a type of filtering.
You're cutting out a certain range of audio frequencies and others are being allowed in.
So what you're saying is logical.
Interesting.
Okay, well I just figured I'd throw that out there and maybe do a little experiment with it.
Alright, thanks.
So what he's saying is, if you listen to the SpiritCon tapes, they are, I believe, direct evidence of communication with the other side.
That was a thing I played on Halloween.
This is going to live on for a long time.
I told everybody at the time that it was a very important program, even though people went, what are you doing playing this noise on the air?
An hour and twenty minutes.
There's never been so much comment about something that's lived on so persistently long as you just heard.
So try it.
He's got a good suggestion that would sort of filter out something in the audio.
Put the lower part of your lobe over your ear, press it in, and then listen to the Spiracom tapes, and it assists, he says, in hearing the real voice.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yeah, this is Jim.
I'm calling from about 20 miles north of Detroit.
Oh.
And we got about 12 and a half inches of snow here today.
That's a lot of snow.
It finally quit, but what's bad now, it's gotten really windy.
And so what I cleaned up today is blown all back over my driveway and sidewalk.
How do you feel about living where it snows that much?
Oh, you get used to it.
You know, it only happens two or three times a year.
I like the changes of the seasons.
It's not the same thing all the time.
I do like them to change, but they don't have to become radical.
Well, they are getting radical.
April used to be the nicest month of the year here.
It doesn't really get spring anymore now until about the end of May.
The robo-soldier?
Yes.
To me, Art, that is no more unethical than these car bombings they do all the time to kill all our people, you know?
Well said.
It's no worse.
Yes, you realize, though, there will be people who will say, it is not ethical to have a war, and what's honorable about sending a machine to kill a man?
Well, what's honorable about dying?
That's true.
This is true, you know, and it's You know, to me it's just backbiting the way they use those car bombs, so I don't think we're any worse off with the robos, so I think it's a good idea.
So do I, thank you.
You know, I suppose dying honorably is better than otherwise, right?
However, not dying at all is better than both.
That's the ultimate goal, to not die at all.
I worry so about what we're doing in Iraq.
I really do.
As you know, I've worried about this for a very long time, and it's still worth lots of worry.
Now we're going to send robots in.
Eighteen, if you missed it earlier, eighteen remote-controlled robotic warriors.
Now these are armed.
They've got machine guns.
These are serious machines.
Pretty interesting news.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Well, I called for another reason, but I wanted to say that when my kids were little, we had four cats and a dog, and they caught every kind of creature you could think of.
And I discovered, if you come upon them when they have the living creature in their mouth, if you pull on their tail, they'll drop the... Whatever it is?
But they'll turn and go, but they'll get really mad at you.
You mean just pulling on the tail will cause them to unleash involuntarily?
Well, I know if somebody pulled on my tail, I'd go, Wow!
But anyway, the reason I called, I think you might suspect what it is.
Okay, I'll carry the water and I'll save the thing.
I'm sure lots of other people are thinking.
During the run-up to the election, the 2000 election, there were all kinds of rumors, and indeed I'm almost positive that there was an allusion in one major magazine that I subscribe to, you know, very cryptic and vague, to the stories of animal cruelty perpetrated by the man who is now our president.
And I heard rumors, first I heard rumors about his lifting up garbage can That canned lids and throwing cats in with a lit firecracker, and then I heard that it was frogs.
Yeah, I don't know if I believe it.
I mean, you know, look, first of all... Gotta keep an open mind.
I know, but first of all, I mean, every single president we've ever had, all these wild rumors are started around the presidency and whoever happens to be in there.
You know, they did this or that.
And sometimes they did.
I mean, you know, presidents had affairs.
Apparently quite a number of them, actually.
And they did weird things.
Jimmy Carter's... Not Jimmy Carter.
He's the one who's not an example.
Jimmy Carter was clean as a whistle, from that perspective.
It was Bill Clinton I was thinking of.
I mean, so presidents have done pretty weird things, but, you know, I don't think it's fair to lay these kinds of totally unsubstantiated rumors on them.
I think instead we should be looking for anybody, and I mean anybody, who actually is committing this kind of crime.
And we need to find out what it's all about really quickly.
It's so evil, so totally evil, that I almost can't contemplate it.
From the high desert?
Nice voices, aren't they?
mark belt.
I'm going to be doing a video on how to get a new phone.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access
number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
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It is.
Can you imagine being an Iraqi soldier?
An insurgent, huh?
One that you can't tell from the other, and turning around, and there it is.
It's metallic, and it's armed, and it's bad, and it's about to kill you, and there'd be some terror, no question about it.
We'll ask Sir Charles Schultz about it, too.
He worked at Martin Marietta Aerospace for ten years on, guess what?
Weapon systems and computer-based automatic test equipment.
The nuclear EMP test software for the Pershing II missile system.
Yikes!
The nuclear EMP test software for the Pershing II missile system.
In other words, protection against EMP.
Worked on the Patriot, the Copperhead tank killer, the advanced attack helicopter systems.
He has performed research under Grant on nuclear fusion.
He was knighted ...and received a long-term grant for his present research in robotics and artificial intelligence.
My, my!
Talk about a question served up for the night's guest.
Holy mackerel!
He has written many technical publications and magazine articles on space, astronomy, the atmosphere, and space resource development.
In addition, Charles has also appeared on many TV and radio programs, certainly this one.
In a moment, Sir Charles Schultz III.
Now I really wanted desperately last week to talk about this, but the guest I had on,
who I thought would talk about this, was selling his book more than he was answering questions.
You will not find that to be the case with Sir Charles Schultz.
I mean, how often do you get served up on this good?
You've got somebody who worked on robotics, Artificial intelligence, weapons systems, and you get a story like this.
It's like a gift from God.
Sir Charles, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Art.
It's always a pleasure.
Somebody wrote early before the program and said, would you ask Sir Charles, please, to comment on how he became a Sir?
Well, I was knighted by a Scottish Baron by the name of Dr. Nelson Ying, and the terms of the knighting include a five-year grant to pay for my research, And basically I'm in his service for that period of time, and he pays for all my research.
And so that's how it happens.
What a deal.
What a deal.
That is very, very interesting, actually.
So you are in his service as we speak?
That is correct.
As a matter of fact, he also has other people he has knighted.
Sir John Doerr is one of them.
He works on energy-related projects, and the two of us will be cooperating on an energy project very shortly here.
And that is another thing that I want to touch on tonight.
Oh, and we will, believe me.
I've got a big methane question.
Excellent.
But right now, look at this story.
I mean, we're sending 18 armed robots into Iraq.
It seems a little ahead of schedule, they say here.
Let's see, future combat systems currently under development by big defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, but we're sending in 18 armed robots right now!
That's incredible!
Well, as you know, we talked about this exact subject on a couple of previous shows as well, and while there's not a lot you can always say in advance, It is expected.
And it is a good development because in a lot of ways it can actually be more humane.
I'll explain exactly why.
You expected this, Sir Charles?
Yes, I did.
And we had talked about some of the developments in AI and in robotics and how it would affect our defense situation as well.
But you know what?
Since we last talked, I saw iRobot.
And so I have questions.
Excellent.
Ask away.
Well, one of the things that I wanted to talk about last week were the three laws, and I'm sure you've seen it.
You have seen it, okay.
It was based a lot on the three laws and the fact that they're not sacrosanct exactly.
In other words, the three laws could be interpreted by artificial intelligence as protecting human beings by forcing us to do that, which is, you know, I mean, if we're killing ourselves slowly, they might Take one of the laws with liberal interpretation and turn against us so that we do the best thing for ourselves.
Well, absolutely.
If you have a system that's smart enough to understand what those laws mean and how to enforce them, if the system is free to act on its own, it's going to eventually arrive at the conclusion we do a lot of things that are harmful and they shouldn't be allowed.
Yes.
In other words, they can be subsumed into one greater or zeroth law of the first order that says the protection of the human species overrides the protection of an individual.
Yes.
And so, with respect to the emissions, if that would be a problem of greenhouse gases or whatever all else, they would take action.
They would take action, which would not necessarily be in our best short-term interests.
Well, that's also true.
When you hand over control to a system such as this, or even when you hand over control to other people, such as a government or a group, who act in your behalf, you always run the risk of losing a great deal of your freedom to act.
And that's one of the trade-offs we make in any civilization.
I mean, civilization is a joint effort, and we have to remember that.
We trade off some of our freedoms in order to live in comfort and in safety with others, and it's a fine line.
It sure is.
Um, I don't want you to give away anything classified, but do you know more than you are able to say about these particular robots?
There is a lot that I could say.
What I would like to point out is if you ask yourself whether it's ethical to wear, for instance, body armor, you have no question.
I mean, you'd have no problem in saying, no, it's quite ethical to wear body armor.
But the difference is that's defensive.
This is offensive.
Well, when you go in wearing body armor and you're armed and you're in combat, that is offensive and defensive simultaneously.
You're right.
It's a very fine line.
So suppose you send in a man who's in an indestructible suit.
Is that any different from sending in a robot who's operated by a man a mile away or half a mile away?
No, it's better.
Because consider this.
If you send in a robot that cannot be easily taken out, and you're the man who's controlling the robot as a soldier, you have more of the most precious asset on your side, and it is time to examine the situation and make a decision about who you should and should not act against.
Yes.
In other words, they're not sending the robots in to do indiscriminate mass killing.
If they simply wanted to kill everybody there, they'd drop a bomb and be done with it.
Right.
The fact that they're sending in a robot means that they are morally responsible in the first place, and they're trying to be very, very careful about who the target is.
Alrighty then, Sir Charles, let me ask you this, and see if you can answer this without violating classified information.
Would the sensors' sensor ability on the robot Be as good as that of a human, standing in the same spot.
In other words, I understand there's a human behind the scenes somewhere, but that is the question.
Would it be better, or not as good as a human standing in the same spot?
It's all going to depend on two things.
Number one, we have very, very good video resolution, and we can send a great deal of very reliable information that way.
And if you're using color stereo video sensors, They can be not quite as good as your own vision, but quite good indeed.
The other thing is, when you are operating it through a human being, obviously the final decision of whether to shoot or not rests in the mind of the human being and not in the hands of the robot.
Alright, let me ask this.
Could a robot conceivably be so good That it could transmit an image of a face and have a computer go through a facial recognition program, issue a that's the guy and then fire type job?
That can in fact be done and right now we have a lot of systems that they're placing in cities for monitoring people and scanning the faces and doing recognition.
There are systems in place for instance in the United Kingdom where they have video cameras stationed around the town and they're able to see People who pass by, and they match them automatically to a database of known criminals.
And this gives them an opportunity to apprehend those people.
Of course, there's always the possibility of misidentification, but if you know where this person is, you can go in, do a personal identification, and see if it's the right person to arrest her on.
Now, in the case of these robots, you would most likely have your operator with a computer terminal by the side, and he would be able to see whether the robot actually recognizes the face or not before making the decision to pull the trigger.
So the robot itself wouldn't be making the decision, the software and the computer at the operator's terminal would be doing that.
Got it.
So they must feel they have this down that far, or they would never, ever put it in the field because of the possibility of, you know, the killing of the innocent or the killing of our own people.
So they must have it down.
They feel very strongly that it's a reliable system and they wouldn't put it out there without feeling that way.
Wow.
To imagine this is not the future, folks.
These 18 robots are going into Iraq to fight.
Now.
That just... I didn't think we were ready, Sir Charles.
I can't... It just was one of those headlines.
It just blows you away.
We're putting robots in Iraq now?
Wow!
And you can expect to see a lot more in the near term.
Some of the things we talked about as well were remotely piloted vehicles or unpiloted vehicles.
Now imagine the things we can do with recognition software placed in these vehicles in the same sort of context.
And the next question would be, when do they start dropping robotic paratroopers out of an airplane?
That's right.
There are many things that you can imagine from this simple starting scenario that lead you to feel that within a very short time we'll have the equivalent of a General Motors or a Ford Motor Company turning out thousands or millions of warriors for us.
Do you know... I know I'm going to get you in trouble, and I don't want to, so just be careful what you answer, but do you know how far they've gone in artificial intelligence, and is that an application being used in the system that we're sending to Iraq right now?
In a broader sense, there is a good deal of artificial intelligence in it.
Most of it is in motion control, in feature recognition, And the systems, not the sort of systems that you would actually be able to sit down and have a conversation with, not intelligent in that sense, but intelligence in the sense that they're very, very good at a specific task, far better than a human would be, in the same way that sorting mail is done at the post office by an artificial intelligence system that recognizes handwriting in some of the context.
So there are artificial intelligence systems in the field, in these machines, But they do not perform the way we imagine they would, based on what we know from science fiction movies.
How far... In other words, I don't even know what the current state of the technology is, and I might be very shocked if I saw one of these things in operation.
I don't know.
Can you imagine, for example, what kind of missions the current bunch of robots, the squad, would be suited for?
Right now, they would best be suited for going into a situation where Sending in a live warrior would be very dangerous for him.
They would probably be equipped with machinery to detect explosives, or mines, or booby traps.
If I were sending him in, I would certainly equip them with sensors for that sort of hardware.
They would probably be equipped with some sort of radar that can penetrate the wall of a building and recognize breathing, respiration, and pulse.
Those things have already been demonstrated here in peacetime applications.
More or less.
By sending a low-energy beam of microwaves through the wall of a building, they could locate survivors or living organisms inside wreckage.
The same technology can be used to identify a living soldier hiding behind a wall or under a bush.
Boy, I'll tell you, that's really something to contemplate.
It can see through walls.
Not sort of.
It can see through walls.
In fact, the software is written to recognize the pattern of heartbeat or the pattern of breathing.
God, how do you fight something like that?
Well, it would be extremely difficult.
And if our soldiers were equipped with these types of machines and recognized that right now they already have guns with a video camera and an eyepiece on the helmet, so the man Can hold the gun around the corner, see his target and shoot while he remains safely around the corner.
Sir Charles, how invulnerable would a robot like this potentially be?
Well, we have some pretty good armor, and if you keep in mind that the essential systems that keep the machines running can be encased in very heavy armor, then you can imagine that they could probably stand anything right up to a grenade, a direct grenade hit.
Of course, that's just imagining based on the known technology.
Yes, of course.
Of course.
Up to a grenade.
My goodness.
It certainly would be interesting to be along for the ride on the deployment of these robots.
Is this kind of an exciting story for you?
In a sense it is.
And what I'm looking at is the developments in the next DARPA challenge and how that may apply to the next generation of these robots.
You speak now of the last DARPA challenge, of course, had vehicles wandering mindlessly about the desert and generally getting stuck very quickly.
It was, to be blunt, a stillbirth.
Yes.
But understand that everybody learned from their experiences and that this time around things will probably be quite different.
Yes, but that was sort of a DARPA public relations, this is going to be a really fun kind of thing on the one hand, while who knows what they're really doing on the inside on the other hand.
Well, I've actually been approached by two of the groups independently recruiting some help.
I turned them down because obviously I've got so many things to do that my time is actually occupied to the maximum.
But there are people actively recruiting for robotics and sensor people right now for the DARPA challenge.
Do you think that we would all be very shocked if we saw one of these robots in action?
And do you think there are a lot of people?
I mean, I kind of speculated that a lot of people would say this is not ethical, sending machines to war to kill men.
Well, I don't think anybody would really be shocked because we've seen so much of it in movies and in fiction for so many years, literally decades.
That's true.
And I think that some people will actually derive a measure of comfort from it, knowing they're on our side, so to speak.
Well, certainly like moms and dads whose kids might be the one to have to do it otherwise.
And that is exactly a very good point, yes.
I just think it's very exciting.
I had no idea robots were actually ready to be deployed.
What's next?
I mean, they refer to big development by big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.
Where is this going when they lay out their best?
I think it's going to go in two directions simultaneously.
We're going to probably see smarter, intelligent armored vehicle type robots within, let's say, three to five years.
And we're also going to see much smaller, stealthier robots that may even be smart enough to go into a very tight situation and develop intelligence information for us.
And maybe even deliver offensive hardware, such as explosives.
Uh-huh.
How about in the private sector?
Is there going to come a day when the American people are going to see the first domestic robot?
One that'll do the dishes, I don't know, clean the cat box would be good, whatever?
Well, actually, yes.
You know, Joe Engelberger, who was one of the primary developers very early in robotics, he's the fellow who developed some of our earliest industrial robots.
He has been working for a number of years on robotic helpers for the infirm, particularly the elderly or those who are restricted to hospitals.
He spoke at a meeting that I attended on artificial intelligence and human form robotics.
And he is putting a lot of his effort into machinery that will be able to help people who are amputees or quadriplegics or elderly.
That, of course, is inspirational and wonderful, but I'm interested in when will you think they might get to the robot for the lazy?
Well, we're getting around to some of those earliest functions right now, and this is just the very early beginning, of course, but people have seen some of the vacuum cleaners and the lawnmowers.
These are our first, I would say, experimental entries into the market, and they're not entirely Wonderful machines just yet.
This is just the very beginning.
But imagine the first PCs and how expensive they were and how few people really had them.
That's right.
Now they're everywhere and they're infinitely better than they were then.
And they're very cheap.
And we're going to see the same sort of explosion in robotics.
And here's why.
People who are, for instance, hobbyists or have a wonderful interest in robotics and tinker a lot, are going to look at what's out there and a lot of them are going to say, you know, I think I could do a much better job myself.
And they're going to try it.
And it's going to be a very fertile development ground, and some of them will be successful.
And like anything, there's a force of evolution in industry and in sales.
And this is going to drive the market.
Well, I assure you, the house painting 2,000 or the cat box cleaning 5,000 or whatever, one that would even do all of it, are we 50 years away, 20 years away, 100 years away?
I'd say definitely less than 20.
Less than 20?
Yes, I would.
And once again, I'm going to quote a very simple fact.
We seem to exponentially grow in our knowledge, just as you related earlier.
And one of the most interesting things is we seem to develop double the computer power every 18 months.
That's right.
But we're also developing much better software.
We're at a threshold right now.
I think what's going to happen is the people who have come up around computers all their lives, and we've got a couple of generations of people like this now.
That's right.
These people are going to have, out of their midst, emerge a number of them who are very good at algorithms and understanding how things are done.
The reason we haven't really seen a lot of it right yet is because it's much easier to make a specialty or a targeted machine for a certain task.
Just like you have a drill to make holes and you have a blender to mix foods.
Got it.
Alright, listen.
Hold it there.
Sir Charles, we're at a break point.
I want one I can say Put another coat on the house.
Coat on that porch out there.
And the dishes.
And when you're done with that, the dusting.
And then, rub my back.
We'll be right back.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
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From coast to coast, and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with
Art Bell.
Insurgents wouldn't even have to receive a .50 caliber bullet from one of these things.
You'd just round a corner, you'd see it, you'd die of a heart attack.
robots going to iraq sir charles the work you do uh... itself might uh...
might have i guess in your career at some point brought on ethical questions
for you Certainly, writing software for missile systems and working on EMP protection for missile systems, that's exotic, wild work, but it is war work, right?
Indeed it is, and there are ethical questions.
And one thing I have to say is that when I was doing work, I had to always ask myself if I was doing the right thing, and I always felt that I did because we are essentially, and we have always been, a force for peace and for goodness.
In recent times, people have severely questioned a lot of the things we've been doing, but if I did not have an absolute commitment to doing the right thing, I would not have been able to do that work.
I would imagine that would be so, although there probably are scientists around the world that do it under a lot of duress, I would think, Arthur.
And I would imagine so, yes.
We have so much to talk about tonight, but I couldn't resist the robot thing.
I mean, that's amazing, putting robots in there now.
Okay, we just had a horrible tsunami.
It might have killed, I don't know what, upwards of 200,000 people they're talking about now or something.
There's an enormous number of people, and you've kind of done some work or some thinking about how to prevent such a thing, or what, a better warning?
Well, one of the things that we do have in place in our country is a pretty serious system of geologic sensing hardware, seismographs, geophones, and other devices that can detect seismic events and give us plenty of advance warning.
And our government did issue a statement that there was no warning of any danger or magnitude for our coasts.
I don't know what sort of information might have been sent to the other countries who were in the path of this danger.
I do know that some people had stated that there was a warning.
And people actually went to look at the wave that was coming in.
Was there any seismic precursor to this that anybody detected that you're aware of?
In other words, did we have any way of knowing the earthquake would happen?
I don't think that anybody really picked up any definite signs when it happened.
It was very sudden.
At least there's nothing that I am aware of at this point.
But it was an extremely severe quake, one of the most severe we've ever measured, from what I understand, at about 9.5 on the Richter scale.
I heard 9.
I thought it was 8 or 9.
9?
Okay.
And that could be correct.
I know that a lot of estimates of numbers have been kicked around, but 9 is about right.
Yeah.
And in the case of this sort of activity, there's going to be a repercussion.
There are only a few things that will really generate a tsunami, and earthquake activity is one of them.
A large landslide or a large amount of ice coming off an ice shelf can do it.
And also an asteroid or a meteorite falling in the ocean could do it.
Oh, yes.
So, and these are all things that there's nothing we can really do to stop or predict.
The best thing we can do is to sense the events and broadcast warnings to the people in those areas so they can get the heck out of there.
Well, for some reason, the warning didn't occur.
Have you looked into why that was so?
I've heard a lot of accusations flying around and...
You know, a lot of people feel that if a warning was not issued properly to the people who were in charge of warning the populations of those areas, then the people who did not issue those warnings are morally responsible for the death and the destruction.
And I would have to agree, if somebody had the capability to make that warning and didn't pick up the phone and say, you know, you've got a real problem on your way, you've got an hour or 20 minutes or something to get out of the way, if that wasn't done, And the individual who is responsible for that is morally responsible for those deaths.
You would think they would have looked really hard into this because there was the hour and something you mentioned for a lot of the people and somehow that warning either wasn't given or they didn't have the infrastructure in place to assure the warning.
I don't know.
It's like the news has blacked out on this subject.
Yes, there's been curiously very little said about it.
And that in itself is almost a telling thing.
I know that many people have said that, you know, they really need a better Pacific sensing and a warning system in place.
And that being said, that may be the case.
I'm certain that great improvements could be made.
Once something like this is detected, how do we know who gets notified?
Who gets called?
And in what order?
And I think that's also a very serious question.
Should there be some sort of a governing body That is responsible for contacting everyone so that they know what's happening.
And that may be a solution to this.
I know there was just an agreement by 200 and some odd nations to improve things.
Exactly.
I don't know what that means, and I don't really know what happened.
I know this.
If you were a terrorist, and you had just one atomic bomb, you would apply it appropriately in a place called La Palma.
And when you did, the entire East Coast would be swamped.
And that's also been said.
I don't know how believable that is.
Understand that to set off a quake, or to set off a disaster of that sort, it requires a lot of things to be in place.
For instance, there have been those who theorize that injecting water into the joint of the seismic plates could cause it to set off very easily.
Do you know if there... would you guess there might be something to that?
There may be, but I think that the technical hurdles to get that sort of thing done would be immense.
Just drilling an oil well is a major job in a lot of cases.
Now imagine having to drill something that's going to go precisely to the location you need to inject the water, and imagine the amount of power it would take to do the job.
We're talking a major undertaking.
Alright, well I'm not a geologist, but I've seen, I think, some 60-minute pieces or something about La Palma, and it seems to be teetering, and if it were to go into the water, All at once.
It said it would create this monster of a tsunami in the Atlantic.
That's true.
And I know that there's a great deal of concern about a landslide of that magnitude that we've never really observed anything of that sort in historic times.
And yes, it would be a disaster.
But I think that if you really look at it, finding the right place to do it, finding the right forces to do it, and getting it all done secretly.
You mean like they did on September 11th?
Well, of course, the circumstances are quite different.
September 11th didn't require a huge amount of industry.
Everything was already in place.
All it really took was a decision by a number of human beings.
In the case where you want to cause a disaster using La Palma, for instance, you would have to have the right types of explosives, the right hardware to deliver it.
So it would be a huge undertaking.
It would not be an easy thing to get away with.
I hope you're right.
We have so many threats from so many corners these days.
There is a movie coming up on, what is it, HBO, I believe, Monday night called Dirty Bomb.
And it's about a bomb going off in London, which really wouldn't be an atomic weapon, you know, it would just be a, I guess, explosive, conventional explosive, surrounded by radiological stuff that would then get blown all over the place, and they call it Dirty Bomb, and they're going to show sort of the government side of it, and there's been comment from Britain, I don't know if you're following the story or not, but That's one of the other worries we have these days.
Somebody putting together one of these damn dirty bombs.
Well, that would be actually one of the worst disasters that you could cause.
In my estimation, if they're going to do something that's really reprehensible, this is going to be the thing they're going to try.
It's easy to get non-explosive nuclear material, such as reactor waste.
Right.
Or medical waste.
And then blow it to kingdom come.
Yes, and because of the ease with which this can be done, this is something we need to be very seriously concerned about.
Well, apparently they are.
And even trying to get ready for something of that magnitude, what it would do to, you know, it's terror.
It wouldn't kill a lot of people, actually.
It would, as I understand it anyway, I suppose, unless you have very, very high level Radioactive?
Well, let me ask you.
You know about this.
If they were to put together reactor-grade waste around a bomb and blow it up, exactly how truly dangerous would it be?
If you had a typical reactor fuel rod that was exhausted, actually, it's not going to be the optimum material, and here's why.
An exhausted fuel rod is really still mostly viable nuclear fuel.
But it's just below optimum generating capacity, so it's pulled out and it's cooled in the water pool, immersed for a while, or set aside somewhere, until the day that it can either be stored permanently or reprocessed.
Now, what you would want to use is not this rod ground up into dust, because most of the material in it is not that hot.
Only about 1-2% of the mass of an exhausted reactor rod, as it turns out, is the dangerous stuff.
The stuff with medium life spans and moderately hot output.
That's wild.
I didn't know that.
Okay, so then what would be more likely and available?
The most available things, it would be the hottest of the things that burn out the fastest.
It would have to be manufactured hours or just bare days before it was used.
And that would mean you'd have to have a reactor available for that.
Instead, what you would settle for is the mid-range materials that could be extracted from a rod, but it'd be a very dirty, dangerous process.
Fortunately, this works to our favor.
So the most destructive material that they would use would be exactly the toughest stuff for them to extract from a used fuel rod.
Other alternatives would be from exhausted medical devices.
There are many machines used in medical treatment, for instance, cancer radiation treatment, that use isotopes that have moderate lifespans and fairly heavy output.
Recycled medical machinery, I think, would be a real problem.
I know there has recently been a real crackdown on what happens to these older machines.
Alright, I think though the governments of the world are trying to get the word out that a dirty bomb, awful as it would sound, wouldn't be as bad, casualty death-wise, as many other things.
Is that true?
That's true.
The biggest worry at this point, really, would be an increased incidence of cancer a few years down the road.
And the cleanup from a dirty bomb would be rather problematic, but it could be done.
And I know that they're working very hard on getting better regimes of decontamination in place.
Oh, boy.
So there would be cancers down the road?
Well, yes, there would.
I see.
I was sort of laying back, I guess, on what the governments have been saying, that it just wouldn't kill that many people one way or the other.
It might not even be very effective.
It would scare the hell out of everybody.
Yes, it would.
It would be extremely messy, too.
Okay.
How good, Sir Charles, are our detection capabilities for finding this kind of thing before they could get it to a place where they would detonate it?
Actually, the detection capability is very simple.
The real obstacle is deployment of those detectors.
If you really wanted to protect the city from the sort of damage that a dirty bomb could do, You'd have to implement a series of sensors placed all throughout the city and wired to some sort of central computer, for instance, to monitor them.
That is an expensive proposition, and right now I'm sure that somebody is sitting down with their calculator and figuring out whether it's cheaper to put sensors and a computer system in, or just do the cleanup.
At this point, it's an economic proposition.
What's easiest?
What's simplest?
But once it becomes obvious that people are concerned about it, They will probably go to the point where they'll put detectors in secret everywhere and wire them into the detection system and then say, yes, we do have a system in place.
Do you think we'll get that serious about it before or after a dirty bomb goes off?
I think it would be after it goes off.
Because nobody ever really takes a threat seriously until they see it executed.
Until it happens.
Now, all these countries get together after the tsunami and say, well, gee, we better have a better warning system in place.
That's just human nature, yes.
It's unreal until you actually see the event.
It's not very comforting.
That's true.
As long as we're on the subject of disastrous things, hurricanes are too, and it says here that you might have some offering of how, I mean, it was bad.
Bad, bad, bad in Florida this last hurricane season.
Really bad.
And a lot of people just about threw up their hands and said, we're out of here.
Well, as you know, I live in Orlando, and three hurricanes went right over my head this last season.
There you are.
And we had a very near fourth miss.
Yeah, so what do you know about this?
Is it possible to either disrupt, divert, or otherwise dispose of a hurricane before it gets here?
Believe it or not, actually it is, and that is one of the most important things I have to talk about.
This is a very hopeful message here.
Good.
There was an article published in Scientific American October last year, and it was written By a fellow who's done a great deal of research in hurricanes, Dr. Ross Hoffman.
And in the article, what he pointed out was they took the data from the hurricanes, various hurricanes, ran simulations on the computer to see how they would play out, and then they altered some of the conditions, such as ocean temperature, evaporation, and so on.
What they were searching for was the smallest change that would deflect or diffuse the hurricane.
Right.
Now, there are three strategies that have seriously been proposed at this point.
One of them is, as you know, contrails from airplanes decrease the amount of sunlight fall in an area slightly.
That's very controversial.
Yes, it is, but... I believe you.
I absolutely believe you.
I've seen some... Did you see that classic picture of the southeast part of the U.S.
which was taken from satellites?
Yes, indeed I did.
It showed hundreds of contrails.
Hundreds?
Thousands of contrails?
I mean...
It has to have an effect on the surface temperature.
Well, it does.
And it's measurable.
And one of the proposals was to fly scheduled flights with enhanced contrails over portions of the hurricane's path where the sunlight would be cut out slightly and it would alter the ocean temperature.
And this would alter the path of the hurricane.
Oh.
In other words, a hurricane wanting to be fed would turn toward warmer waters.
That's right.
Understand that hurricanes are driven by heat.
All of our weather is driven by solar energy, the sun.
Yes.
And so, more heat means a more powerful hurricane, in simplest terms.
So by altering contrails around the hurricane, you alter the heat going into the hurricane.
And that's one scheme that can be tried out.
Well, just before you go on to whatever's next, there are lots of people All across this country, and now all across the world, Sir Charles, who are somewhat suspicious of what they call chemtrails.
And I read a bit about that, and I've heard about it, and I don't know how true it is or not.
Yes.
But, in all fairness, we have to say that that is actually a very different issue from... Maybe.
From using the contrails to generate a mild cloud cover?
Well, yes and no.
I mean, it's still releasing something into the atmosphere either way, right?
For a specific effect to try and achieve.
Well, most contrails are nothing but water vapor that condenses.
So I'm going to hold.
Yes.
But perhaps there is some testing going on with regard to spraying something or another into the atmosphere.
I mean, it's got to have occurred to people that you might have an effect in the way that you're describing.
I mean, the chemtrails aren't that far away from it, are they?
Well, chemtrails, actually, if they are what we've been told, they would actually have a very different target, a very different purpose, and they would be generated with a completely different means, injecting something into a jet's exhaust other than what just happens to go through the turbines.
If you're going to do a hurricane modification, then you certainly wouldn't want to inject anything in the exhaust.
You'd simply want a lot of contrail, content, or bulk to reflect your sunlight.
How would you achieve that additional bulk?
A lot of ways to do it.
One would be to have water injectors in the afterburners or on the outside at the back end of your jet engine.
Well, there you go.
We're injecting something into the engine.
Yes, well there you are.
And so before you know it, like that picture we saw of the southeast, you would have a virtual man-made sort of weather system, right?
That's right.
You would use modified jets that had water injectors in the rear, at the exhaust portion of their jet engines, and you would create artificial cloud cover to slow the hurricane's growth.
And that's only one of three really interesting scenarios.
Number three is the most important.
Alright, fire away.
I'll touch on number two quickly.
Uh, evaporation of water is one of the things that also helps build the weather system of a hurricane, and it was suggested that a thin film of a biodegradable substance like an oil could be spread over an area of the ocean to slow the evaporation.
Yes.
Oh, you mean spread the oil actually on the ocean?
That's right.
Spread a material on the surface of the water that would break down in two or three days naturally, but for that period of time would retard the amount of evaporation, and therefore modify the structure and strength of your hurricane.
How much of a factor is evaporation versus heat, say, if you're looking at these various... Well, the heat is conducted through the methods of evaporation, through the mechanism, because when water evaporates, it carries the latent heat energy with it.
Right.
So evaporation is a key to transporting heat from the ocean water into the atmosphere.
Okay, and it sounds like you're most up on the third one.
What's that?
Ah, yes, and this is a subject that's near and dear to us both.
We have both discussed the orbital solar power station concept on and off.
I think on every single show I've done.
Oh, yes.
Wait a minute.
Sir Charles, there are some who are new tonight, so please explain to them the concept.
Certainly.
Basically, we would put a solar collector in high Earth orbit that would gather sunlight, focus it on a generator of some sort, and convert it to electrical or microwave power and beam it to the Earth for our use.
So we would have a system that would gather sunlight in space.
And it would do so very efficiently in space, right?
Very efficiently, yes.
And it would beam that microwave energy to the ground or in the form of infrared lasers.
On the ground we would have a catching station that would convert it to electrical power and pump it right into the grid.
And another option is we could beam it to offshore stations and use the gathered power to generate hydrogen very, very cheaply.
So there's another option.
Alright, so that's the concept.
That's the concept.
Gathering sunlight, turning it into energy we can use on the ground, and we don't end up burning any fossil fuel.
And one of the great things about this concept is the microwave generators generate less heat per kilowatt hour than our power plants do, and on top of that, they inject no pollutants into our environment.
So we're way ahead on both heat and pollutants when we use orbital power.
All right, Sir Charles, hold it right there.
The rest of the story?
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I think the book was Sunstroke, right?
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Sunstroke, I think the book was Sunstroke, right?
Anyway, Sir Charles is talking about something that would gather energy in the quiet, silent,
frozen atmosphere of space. The satellite with great big wings would silently just sort of collect the sun.
Oh, very efficiently.
Lots of sun up there, never-ending sun.
And then, through a microwave system, yeah, you'd fire up microwave tubes and you'd microwave the energy back to ground, to a collection point on the ground of antennas that then would distribute it to the grid.
But where we're going here, folks, is this all seems wrapped into the third method of controlling, let's say, something like a hurricane.
Something like that.
So in a moment, we'll ask Sir Charles exactly how you would then take this device and use it to control a hurricane, or a weather front, or possibly even prevent some disastrous, some other disastrous weather occurrence.
Apparently that's what he's talking about.
Sir Charles, we just had a very large flare.
Somebody named Ray in Burbank, California says, hey, what would a, well, I don't know, a mega flare, for example, and we do have these big, giant, incredible flares lately, do to a power station of the sort Sir Charles is talking about?
Actually, we could shield the power station quite adequately from solar flares.
The problem with most satellites is we're running a race between how light we can make it and how effective we can make it versus the amount of shielding we can afford to put on the thing.
Weight is money when you come down to space travel.
Absolutely.
And when you launch a satellite, it has to be as lightweight as possible.
So shielding becomes a very difficult problem.
As the bottom line is, most satellites don't have very good shielding.
They're shielded as best they can be for the environment they're expected to operate in.
One just died.
That's correct.
And it looks like a direct result of that solar flare.
Protons, energetic protons from the sun and x-rays and other particles.
Anyway, you could protect such a collection station.
Certainly.
The station would be large enough and bulky enough.
And shielding, once it's up there, would be cheap enough because of where we're going to be getting a lot of our resources from to build the stations.
Alright, now I have a feeling that it was leading toward your third way of diverting or lessening a hurricane.
Indeed it is, and it's very simple.
By using the beam of microwaves to change the temperature of the ocean water around the hurricane, we can direct the hurricane to follow a path that we set.
Direct the hurricane out to open sea, colder waters, where it dies away naturally.
Oh brother, a microwave pied piper.
Yes, indeed.
By changing the temperature, the evaporation of the surface has changed, and the transport of heat has changed.
And the simulations done in a NASA-funded study by Dr. Ross Hoffman, who wrote the Scientific American article, shows that the system will work.
Okay.
Sir Charles, a number of years ago, The Russians, you remember the big fires in Southeast Asia?
Yes, I do.
The Russians offered to divert a typhoon, cyclone I think they called it in the story, as an example of what they could do.
First diverted cyclone for free, they said, and after that they would charge for the service.
The clear implication there is that the Russians are already doing this kind of thing, and they said they would be doing it from satellites.
So what you have just described sure sounds like what they were talking about.
It does sound like it, and I don't know what the technical details of their system are, but they certainly don't have a solar power satellite or anything of that magnitude in place to do it.
Understand the satellites I'm talking about would be putting down billions of watts, and typically the beam is much weaker than sunlight.
In fact, the collector for such a beam to put into the power grid would be about 500 acres, or a little less than a square mile in area.
So, it isn't something you can focus down to a point or do a great deal of damage with.
However, you can tune the microwaves to penetrate to the surface of the water and heat just the upper layer of it.
So, like you would heat up a cup of coffee in the microwave, you would heat the top layer of the ocean?
That's correct.
And it's a very simple plan, and mathematically and simulation-wise it's been shown to work.
And so, we now get to the next phase.
We know that there was no funding available for building solar-powered satellites, and it's been kicked around for many years, and it sounds like a very good plan.
How in the world will we get funding and a launch vehicle to put this system in place?
As it happens, I am presently working with two organizations that can make that happen.
One of them is, and Dr.
Let me back up a little.
The Space Island Group, which many people may have heard of.
Oh, of course.
Gene Myers, who is the CEO, he and I have been discussing this.
And, as it stands, what he is doing is building the replacement vehicle for the space shuttle.
It's essentially a heavy launch vehicle that would put orbital stations in place very quickly.
And, as it stands right now, the plan is to have hardware flying by late 2007 or early 2008.
Oh my goodness.
Yes, there is a system in the wings.
And of course, there were not a lot of things I could say on the last show until I had discussed everything with everyone and made certain that I could speak of this.
My God, how could it have come that far, that fast?
Well, as it stands, there are already agreements in place for stretched solid boosters from Thiokol and stretched liquid fuel tanks from Lockheed.
And you know the DC-X or the Delta Clipper experimental rocket that landed powered and moved sideways through the air under control?
Yes.
This system is going to be the re-entry vehicle.
So now, instead of being a single stage to orbit, it becomes the vehicle that's carried every time this shuttle is launched, the shuttle replacement.
And it becomes a vehicle that can carry your people back down once you're done, and it can carry up to 35 passengers at a time.
Gene Myers has gone that far?
Yes, indeed.
He has enlisted the help of Dr. Gabbits and his team, and they've agreed to use this vehicle as the re-entry vehicle.
Holy mackerel!
There has been a lot of progress, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to come on the show and let you know about this.
A lot has been done.
I don't know where to begin.
Could a private individual, or individuals like yourselves, get, is permission the right word?
Understand that all of this is going to be done by private industry.
The government actually stands to gain from this, and I'll back up a little and tell you why.
There was an article written by Gene Myers, and it was for an insurance publication.
In fact, He also wrote one for the Tallahassee Democratic Op-Ed article, and in these articles he discussed the benefits of setting this industry up, because there'd be a great deal of money in the aerospace industry to be made.
But not only that, consider who stands to gain the most.
If you control hurricanes, and look at the fact that we're at the beginning of a three-year cycle of hurricanes, from all indications, the insurance industry has a pool of something like $400 billion.
Well, here's what we're negotiating.
all of this is all from premiums and they have to pay out every time there's
a disaster nine or eight and a disastrous season on a background
carrier to going under from a look at the heart well everybody else it was happening
said you know that these insurance carriers just aren't gonna make it through
this they just don't have enough money
well here's what we're negotiating what we're going to do
and we've made this proposal and so far it sounds good and we're going to have a lot of negotiated to do but it
appears that we will be able to obtain funding from the insurance
industry to put this vehicle in orbit
and get hardware flying And we expect the first orbital power satellite, which can be used to produce power as well as steer the hurricane, to be in orbit by 2012.
Holy mackerel!
How do you anticipate Getting through the government quagmire of the blizzard of paperwork.
I'll tell you how that's going to happen.
Please.
Whenever there is a disaster of this magnitude and the insurance payouts are made, the government often pays out more than the insurance industry does.
That's fact, yes.
It is in their best interest to go along with the plan and reduce their own payout and our personal taxes in the bargain.
I suppose that would be true.
The insurance industry has a number of reasons to back this program, one of which is the control of hurricanes and the lessening of damage that will result.
The other is the fact that they presently own $15 billion worth of satellites in useless orbits.
Sir Charles, let's say that we were actually able to control the course of hurricanes and And we began diverting hurricanes away from the U.S.
mainland entirely, which I guess would be our goal.
That would be a large part of the goal, yes.
Yes.
Let's say we began doing that.
Who's looked at the repercussions of doing such a thing?
I'm not saying that hurricanes hitting are a good thing.
However, they are a sort of an air conditioner of sorts for the atmosphere, and I just wonder Do you imagine any possible blowback?
Well, understand that if we direct a hurricane into colder northern waters where it dies away on its own, the amount of air circulation that takes place in that hurricane is still going to happen just as it does.
If we're worried about removing an amount of rain that normally would have hit the land, we actually, I see the possibility of actually starting or seeding small tropical fronts using the same methods.
I don't see why we couldn't induce rainfall in areas using the same technique.
So you're saying replace the rain that otherwise would have fallen?
That is correct, only in a controlled manner.
Or have the hurricane simply skim your shoreline so you do get some rain and some minor storms.
Okay, let me pursue this angle though.
If you make rain in point A, you're then potentially taking it away from point B, whatever would have received the rain otherwise.
That's a possibility, but imagine that you have a hurricane and you're steering away from land anyway.
You'd be in a no-lose situation in that case.
Well, probably.
And I'm not saying it's important that a hurricane hit land.
If it ever hit land, it might not be.
I really honestly don't know.
Would you say with scientific certainty it would not be a problem if another hurricane never hit land?
I don't foresee a problem.
I do know that some people in the forestry aspect would be quite interested in knowing how it's going to affect old growth trees and forest replacement.
Right.
Because there's a lot of culling that's done by storms.
Right.
I don't see any real environmental problems.
The same amount of evaporation and rain is going to take place.
It's just going to happen in a different area.
If we need to control the amount of rain we get, there are a number of ways we can increase the moisture, the humidity, and the atmosphere.
This would be just one of those methods, and an easy one.
A very simple one, and one we can obtain in just a number of, like, six or seven years.
And you're saying this could be used by the same device that otherwise would deliver power to the planet?
That's correct.
Now, out of curiosity, with today's technology, assuming that we could launch today, tomorrow, or next year, or in the next few years, what could we launch, and how much power could it reasonably, honestly transfer?
Well, we're talking literally billions of kilowatt hours.
And here's another thing.
I have to go one slight step off of the direct subject to kind of come back around to it.
China, as you know, is a huge growth industry right now.
Oh, yes.
And they have their equivalent of an environmental protection agency.
And of course, they're trying to follow the coyote record about greenhouse emissions to the letter.
At this point, China's EPA has shut down 26 major power plant development projects because of their environmental concerns.
In particular, things like burning coal with high sulfur content and the greenhouse emissions.
Boy, I don't know, Sir Charles.
Have you ever been up into China, or in recent years been to China?
No, I haven't.
Shenzhen, that economic little paradise they have there that now is populated by millions of people, it has air that you could cut with a knife.
And that is exactly why they have this concern.
China is going to be one of the world's leaders in the development of orbital solar power.
One of the deals that we're trying to work through the Space Island Group is a means of leasing the power satellites and their production capability to China.
To China?
That's correct.
It appears that China and India will be the leaders in consumption, followed by the rest of the developed world, such as the United States and Great Britain.
Can you compare the output of one of those satellites and its counterpart collection grid on the ground to, say, the output of a typical coal-fired or nuclear reactor, or any kind of reactor we can associate with, so we understand the scale of this?
Sure.
A typical orbital satellite of this type would probably replace 33 power plants.
33 power plants?
Yep.
And they can be scaled up, made much larger, and replace more of them.
It's only limited by how large and how many we're willing to build.
And the interesting thing is, our target cost for power generation at this point is $0.05 to $0.07 per kilowatt hour, but over time, after the first few become operational, that could drop to $0.03 per kilowatt hour.
That's cheap.
Oh boy, is that cheap.
And that's a lot of power plants you'd be replacing.
Is there any estimation of the The cost of construction and launching, and then the whole ball of wax, the satellite, getting it up there, the cost of the ground station, and then whatever.
Well, basically right now we're targeting, trying to raise a pool of ten billion dollars to fund this over the next few years.
And all of it is basically available through private industry.
We're certain of that.
The insurance industry, of course, would be a large part of it.
But another thing is, if we could work a deal with the government of China For instance, a donation based on the population of a province.
And that's one of the things that's been in the works.
Then, that would mean that they would have a real toehold in getting those stations set up that much faster.
And, for just as a point of interest, there was a meeting between the Space Island Group and the Chinese Aerospace Group.
Great Wall Aerospace.
It lasted three and a half hours in Los Angeles just last Monday.
Really?
And they are negotiating right now, trying to figure out the best way to carry this out.
Sir Charles, why is all of this so much more readily possible with China in the beginning than the U.S.?
Do you know, I believe it's because we have it so easy here, compared to the rest of the world, that we don't see the problems as readily as people who are really with their nose to the grindstone.
Oh, and they have that.
They really, that country, what's going on over there, if most Americans could see it, it would scare the bejesus out of them.
If you've never traveled out of the country, you really don't know what the rest of the world is like, and that's a fact.
And with regard to China, I'm telling you folks, it would fill your senses and you'd go into overload if you saw what was going on in China right now.
The miles and miles and unending miles of factories, the way it used to be in the industrial U.S., I mean, it's unbelievable what's going on.
I'm certain of it.
Negotiations are going on now, and we will have hardware flying in just a very few years.
That is to be expected.
Funding is in the mill.
So, I'm happy to announce that this thing we've talked about for so long is finally going to materialize.
It's actually going to happen.
It is going to happen, and I'm going to be a part of it.
Now, I've got other players on the field, and some of them have been guests on your show before as well.
Oh?
As a matter of fact, Wednesday, a week ago, on George Norris' show, you had Michael Fulton, who was the head of Ion Beam Optics, and one of the things he is very good at is deployable optics, and these are optical systems that can be rolled up in a canister, deployed to some location, they unfold, and they do their thing, such as Fresnel lenses made of silicone rubber, so they're flexible.
He's very good at optical coatings, and this is going to be an extremely important part of the construction of these stations.
And Michael Fulton is in this project as well.
He is putting together an energy consortium based on his contacts in Singapore for portable generating stations based on solar.
And the work that he's doing in the deployable coatings will have direct applications to the work we're doing on the solar power stations.
So there are a number of people who know what they do, and they are dedicated to getting this done, and it all comes down to energy will be the world's largest market coming up in the next few years.
We're going to see to it that there's plenty of it available.
Address the problems associated with Sunstroke.
Sunstroke was a book written a long time ago.
I interviewed its author.
I particularly enjoyed this book about exactly what it is Sir Charles is talking about.
The orbiting satellite, the ground station, and of course, it's a science fiction novel.
So in the novel, the satellite begins to drift in orbit.
The microwave beam stays on and it starts turning people and things on the ground into french fries.
Okay, the most obvious error there is that the density of the energy in this beam is less than the energy of sunlight.
And in many cases, microwave energy has been used for very low-level heating in some places with little or no biological effect.
So, the case studies that have been done indicate that very low-level exposures to microwave on this concentration will pose little or no health hazard.
Uh-huh.
So, to be used as a weapon, this is really a very impractical weapon.
Well, I think they were thinking more like an accident.
Not so much a weapon, but I'm sure there are applications there.
I'm seeing more of just an accident where the satellite begins to drift and stays hot.
We'll address that when we get back.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
Sir Charles Schultz III is my guest, and we're talking about power from the sun in space to earth, courtesy of a microwave beam.
we'll be right back What will you do when you get lonely?
No one waiting by your side You've been run, I've been rushed and run
You know it's just a foolish plan Well, you got me on my knees, babe
Ooh, you can dance, you can die Having the time of your life
Oh, you will see that girl, watch that scene Watch that scene.
Think it's a dancing queen.
Riding high and the lights are low.
Looking out for a place to go.
We're the babe of our music.
And in between, you can't delete the pain Anybody could be that guy
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free 800-893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to
Coast AM with Art Bell.
I'm certainly honored that Sir Charles Schultz and Gene Myers and company would all choose this program to make this announcement on.
So here it comes.
An orbiting space power station that they're going to put in orbit.
that's a pretty serious goal and we'll get right back to it i must admit if you have the insurance companies are mighty
force as well as the government of the united states and not to
mention china on your side you really might get something like this done and i am
honored that you would choose this program to make the announcement on
That's pretty spiffy.
Well, in part, I have to thank you, because in order to make all these contacts, the exposure on your show made it very simple.
The right people.
That's correct.
Alright, John from Vancouver, BC, peppering you already with a question about this.
Look, I understand technically what you're talking about, to some degree at least, Sir Charles, and so does John in Vancouver, and he says, but look, if somebody wanted to, these orbiting power plants could be weaponized, couldn't they?
Well, so could an automobile.
Well, true.
And understand, once again, The energy level that's coming out of this, while overall it's a huge amount of energy, the density of it is so low that it's not going to be harmful.
It's very hard to make a weapon out of sunlight, if it's just plain sunlight.
And the microwave energy being as diffuse as it is, is just a convenient package to carry the energy in, for the electrical grid, or for making hydrogen, or for controlling the hurricane.
No, you would have to answer some questions.
I mean, there would be people with questions about this technology.
And, you know, to be fair, the government might have interest, and even more interest, because of the possibility of weaponizing something like that, because it'd be a great cover for a weapon in space.
See, we're not supposed to have them, right?
That's correct.
Weapons in space are pretty much prohibited.
Pretty much.
And the thing to keep in mind is, if you have a body that is interested in, like a controlling or regulating body, that is interested in maintaining the peace, because that's the only way you're going to sell your product, is maintaining the peace, then they're going to oversee and be very, very circumspect about what they do with that system.
If I were to ask you for an honest answer to the following question, I wonder if I could get one, or maybe you just would rather not answer it.
Even though weapons in space are not legal by treaty, do you believe, in fact, there are things orbiting this planet right now that are weapons?
I think it's highly possible.
So do I.
It's not probable.
Do you have specific knowledge of things orbiting?
If I did, I couldn't say.
Yeah, okay.
All right, good enough.
So, how much of an application change would it take from supplying power to a grid, say in China?
And then getting it over to warm up the waters ahead of a location you'd like a hurricane to go.
Actually, there's no difference whatsoever.
All you have to do is aim the beam.
And we can easily treat the globe like a map using GPS coordinates or geometric coordinates and limit the places the beam can be aimed to.
There are a number of ways of putting a very simple mechanical stop in a system that prevents it from operating in a method you wouldn't want it to.
And I'm sure that every safety precaution will be taken because there will be such an uproar if anything were to happen.
Oh, big uproar.
It was dangerous.
And rightly so.
The system of this magnitude and of this power does need to be regulated properly.
Well, all nuclear power plants, domestic power plants, they all have rules.
That's right.
They operate by.
And this would be, even in the case of an accident of some sort, and you've got to always imagine they could happen, you're suggesting it would be far less traumatic than a nuclear accident.
Oh, sure.
I mean, at any time, somebody can just throw the switch and turn it off.
And understand these are going to be manned stations, because with the building of this new launch vehicle, there's a very important difference between it and the traditional space shuttle.
This launch vehicle is designed to use the external tanks as laboratories and working spaces.
Manufacturing spaces.
Of course.
And so instead of throwing away the tank every time you take a launch, this tank would end up in orbit and part of an orbital station.
And eventually there would be as many as 500 people working on each of these stations.
So there will be on-orbit crews that will do the work and the support and do the construction.
So you'll always have somebody Who has the ability to turn the switch off.
This isn't going to be some untended thing flapping about like a chicken with its head cut off.
It's going to be very well operated and tended.
And Sir Charles, here's a sort of a technical question.
Between the satellite that gathers and then beams back to Earth this microwave energy, you have to pass through the good old atmosphere.
That's correct.
And with what efficiency would the energy be transferred to the ground station?
Would it be a hundred percent?
Would every bit of energy that you transmit from the satellite reach the ground station?
It won't be a hundred percent, but the estimates show that the amount of energy that's transferred from the beam, if it's properly tuned to a frequency that passes through our atmosphere, the amount of energy, the heating that occurs, would be less than the heating from the light of the full moon.
About a hundredth of a degree centigrade.
A hundredth of a degree centigrade.
Very, very tiny amount.
What are you talking about?
The immediate error would heat to that degree?
That's right.
The error directly over the one hundredth.
Just one percent of one degree centigrade difference at the most.
Boy, that's not much.
So there's not a lot.
It's almost indetectable.
There's almost no loss to speak of, then.
There is some loss, but the loss ends up as heat in the wires, heat in your conversion system, that sort of thing.
So those people that would march up and down the signs saying you're causing global warming would be wrong.
They'd be absolutely wrong, because to generate the power in space, none of the process heat is radiated on the planet.
Only the power itself.
So, per kilowatt hour, An orbital solar station will generate far less heat than a power plant would on the ground.
And, of course, there's no pollution being exhausted in the atmosphere.
So we're way ahead on both counts.
What would the life of the satellite be?
I mean, you would virtually have microwaves generating power tubes, big power tubes, right?
That would be the... That's correct.
And they would be modular and easy to replace and recondition right on orbit.
So the lifetime of the station is Well, how quickly can your crew replace a part that burns out?
You'd have constant maintenance going on, and part of it would be automated or robotic, and part of it would be by human beings.
And that raises another interesting question about why the insurance companies would fund this.
I mentioned earlier that they own $15 billion of useless satellites in orbit.
One of the tasks that we are going to offer is the ability to recondition those satellites and refuel them so the insurance companies can sell them back as services to the ground.
In other words, they'll recover that $15 billion that they've invested as a write-off.
They'll get that capacity back.
This sounds really good.
In a project of this size and magnitude, I'm sure that you've had brain sessions just sitting down trying to shoot holes.
You know, where is going to be the hole in our idea?
We have tried to find everything that could go wrong.
And?
We've come out empty-handed, pretty much.
The human factor is the real problem that we have to deal with.
We have to have trustworthy people, as in any operation.
Sure.
It comes down to the human factor.
We're not worried about radiation.
We're not worried about impacts.
The collectors themselves are coated silver plastic, and if a meteorite were to go through a meteor, a grain of sand, or a piece of hardware, it'd punch a little hole in it and it'd keep going.
It wouldn't affect the operation at all.
And the generators are designed so that they work in tandem.
If you're using turbines, for instance, you'd have one spinning clockwise and one spinning counterclockwise, right next to each other.
This would eliminate torque forces that make your satellite tend to twist around.
So, we've tried to cover, if one of those generators fails, what happens?
Well, there's a whole network of generators spread out over the surface of this system, and one of them being hit or destroyed would simply mean that one got shut down immediately, and the rest of the grid would pick up the slack.
Everything would be modular.
Everything compartmentalized and everything backed up.
Multiple redundancy is the key, just like all the cells in your body being redundant.
So you think that the governments would be... You don't think there's going to be any resistance, for example, on the part of the U.S.
government when China becomes the first real customer?
Well, they have a choice.
They can let China burn fossil fuels and create Substantially more pollution than even we are generating now.
Yes.
Or they can go along with this plan and the Coyote Accord and they can allow everyone to be in compliance and use clean energy.
Well, if China got it going, wouldn't a screen go up that, how can you do this for the Chinese and why aren't you doing it for us?
Because it comes down to who pays for the job to be done.
If people in this country Can get the government to support the funding for building these things through commercial or private industry, that's fine.
Or, if private industry finds a market in this country, that's fine.
It's all going to depend on who invests their money in it, because the investors get their payoff.
Well, maybe I should ask why you think the Chinese are willing to pony up the money, when the U.S.
government apparently is not.
One of them is the negotiations that are going on.
A response is expected next month, as a matter of fact, because if they commit by April, they are planning on announcing at the next Coyote meeting, which I think is in May, what they are planning to do, and that would be orbital solar power.
Once they've made that announcement, you know what's going to happen.
Oh, yes, I can clearly see why they would pursue it.
I'm just saddened, I guess, that we wouldn't do it here first?
Understand that there is one advantage to this, and that is that any of the technology we develop and put into these stations remains in our hands.
We sell them power and they gain the benefits.
We don't run into any technical export problems.
And, once again, As soon as somebody is ready to invest in a power station, we will have the facilities in place to put one up for them and sell them power.
So, once anybody sees it working, once the first one goes up, and people see it working, They'll be far more willing to invest in it, and I see that there's going to be a real explosion of investment once the first one is in operation in 2012.
Why do you think it is just now happening?
I mean, we have realized now for some time that what you're proposing is probably technically feasible, and therefore feasible.
So, why do you think it is just now that it's happening?
I think it's because people see just how serious the situation with energy and pollution is becoming.
And there's also the impetus, once again, about natural disasters controlling the hurricanes.
People don't want to face the sort of weather and destruction they've seen just this year.
And when we look back over the previous years, things like Hurricane Andrew, I know that the amount of devastation just from a simple storm that could be prevented more than justifies this course of action.
And people are seeing right now, we have the technical know-how to do it.
All we need is somebody to sign the check, step aside, and let it get done.
You think that's all it'll take, huh?
That's all it'll take, that's right.
Step aside, let us do the work.
Well, whether modification is a serious matter, and there are a lot of people, Sir Charles, who feel that it's kind of playing God, that there could be unintended consequences to the manipulation of such large natural forces.
Well, and that is always a legitimate concern.
But whenever people raise the phrase, playing God, I see little red flags.
Plastic surgery is playing God, penicillin is playing God, ferroconcrete skyscrapers, airliners.
I don't think there's any aspect of our lives in which in some way or another we don't tend to play God.
All it really comes down to is our desire to control our environment for our benefit.
Yes, and to hope that there's no detriment along the way.
Fortunately, this is the sort of thing we can learn a lot about early on in the stages of this thing.
There will be a number of experiments performed.
I'm certain of that.
Yes.
It's just that sometimes, for example, drugs get released to the American people after a very supposedly careful review by a government agency that's supposed to be sure everything is safe for us.
And then a few years later we find out, oops, recall them.
This is true.
They don't know what the long-term effects might be or what interactions might exist.
We're just not good on long-term effects.
Well, I have a solution to a couple of these problems already worked out, in fact, worked out a number of years ago.
On my site, I've placed some articles outlining how to control global warming, how to reduce the amount of energy reaching the globe if it becomes necessary.
And those are under my space articles on the homepage.
Well, let's hear about it.
If pressed to do it or come up with an answer today, what would it be?
If somebody said, you've got to stop global warming, I would say the easiest way to do it, if you're going to do a project in space, is to place large reflectors that can be opened or closed like Venetian blinds in orbit.
Then you can modulate a tiny percentage of the sunlight reaching the ground Just enough to alter the total input of energy to the globe.
You mean, like a giant version of the mini-blinds I have here?
That's exactly right.
The system would, in concept, operate exactly like a mini-blind.
And it would not have to be a very big system.
It would only take a tiny fraction of a percent of the energy reaching the ground to have a sizable effect.
So, with these two systems in place, we gain the ability to raise or lower the temperature locally or globally, In any combination that we need to bring about the desired effect that we have to have.
I'm trying to envision what such a mini-blind in space would be.
Now, I presume, by its very nature, the closer to the Sun it was, the more effective it would be.
In other words, there'd be a certain orbital point out there where it would virtually shade the Sun's side of the Earth.
How far out would you have to be, and how big would it be?
Well, actually, in our case, we would want it to be fairly close to the Earth.
Really?
Although, we could place it farther out from the Earth toward the Sun, and it would be somewhat more effective.
The problem we run into is, how do you keep it on station?
One of the solutions is to put the system in an orbit, in sort of a fake orbit.
It's in an orbit that is just inside the Earth's orbit toward the Sun, but at a point where the Earth's gravitation drags it back so it doesn't move ahead in the orbit.
Okay.
So, imagine normally if things are orbiting freely, something closer to the Sun would orbit more quickly than something farther away from the Sun.
Correct, yes.
Well, if you place it at just the right distance, the force pulling it ahead of its orbit and the force of the Earth's gravity pulling it back will balance.
And that's one possibility.
Another possibility is to actually use the Earth's magnetic field as a sort of a tethering system to help keep it in place.
Because if you put this thing in orbit, and it's going around the Earth, Then it's only going to work when it's eclipsing the sun.
So you only get its effect for a tiny fraction of the time that it's in space, and that's not very good.
You have to have a station-keeping system to keep the blinds in place.
So then you would affect or cool specific parts of the globe, sort of a macro kind of deal.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
And by changing the locations of them, you could target areas that you wanted to cool slightly.
We're even getting more into the God area here.
Well, and there's an interesting thing in the article that I point out.
Using the same system, we could raise or lower the amount of sunlight on an entire planet.
For instance, I've got a scheme for terraforming Venus and giving it a day and a night cycle, very similar to the Earth's, that uses little more than that technology.
And once you understand how it works, it's very simple to see how it could be done.
Engineering-wise, it's an entirely intensely huge task, but it could be done.
That's really fascinating, and it's something that could literally be done if you wanted to, and you had to, fairly quickly.
That's right.
And you know, that's funny, because this is the first time all night I've mentioned another planet, and usually I'm all over that.
Well, we're right on the edge of that anyway.
We want to talk about a couple of the recent missions.
They were very interesting, weren't they?
The Titan mission, Indeed, that was one of the most interesting things I've seen.
And just to give people a little background, Titan is one of the 33 known moons of Saturn.
It's the sixth one out, and it is a very large moon.
It's very unusual in a number of ways.
It's larger than the planet Mercury, and it's larger than the planet Pluto.
If it weren't orbiting Saturn, we'd easily accept it as a planet.
What sets it apart is that it has an extremely thick atmosphere, and it's very, very cold.
It's about minus 290 Fahrenheit.
And water, on Titan, is a mineral.
It's a rock, because it never is seen in the liquid state.
The atmosphere of Titan is mostly nitrogen, with a lot of methane in it.
Nitrogen and methane.
That's right.
And here's an answer to a question that's been posed recently.
You may want to know this.
I haven't seen the answer to this yet.
People are wondering where all the methane comes from on Titan, because some of it's being destroyed and something's replacing it.
Well, I've worked the answer out of that very, very easily as soon as I saw the question.
And it is?
And it has to do with something called clathrates.
When Titan was formed, it was made of about 50% rock and about 50% water ice.
But dissolved in the water ice is methane, bound in a form called clathrate.
So the methane is trapped in the ice, chemically.
Now, as Titan orbits Saturn... Sir Charles, I'm sorry, I've got to cut you off here.
you know instead of i'll tell you what instead of bumper music
they had a microphone on on on the ship that entered
tightens very dense atmosphere flout through the atmosphere toward titan this
is what it hurt and
and and
www.thevenusproject.com You're the one I want to...
Light from the neon's turned the dark to day.
We were too hot to think of sleeping.
We had to get out before the magic got away.
In the middle of the night.
We had to get out before the magic got away.
In the morning with the night, playing with the shadows.
I'll invite you at night, till the morning light.
Running with the night, playing with the shadows, that's our job.
Good morning everybody, I'm Art Bell.
Sir Charles Schultz is my guest and I want you to listen very carefully.
The phone numbers to get through and ask a question are a little different on the weekend.
So, here they are.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number,
pressing option 5, and dialing toll free, 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
And a very, very provocative program underway.
we're going to talk a little bit about Titan and then we're going to open the lines for all of you.
I thought the microphone on the vehicle headed through the atmosphere was incredible, didn't you?
Sir Charles?
Oh.
Oh, look at that.
Would you look at that?
We lost Sir Charles.
I thought that he was a little slow to answer a provocative question like that.
Let's get him back.
I'll tell you.
It's probably another satellite or something.
Let's see.
This happens all the time on talk radio.
Why?
I don't know.
But it does.
Let's see.
There.
That.
And then press that button.
And then you say, Sir Charles.
Oh.
Okay.
Sorry.
Now, that doesn't happen all the time.
That's rather unusual.
Let's try this one more time.
Let's see.
I wonder if we've got some kind of... I hope we didn't lose the satellite.
We are having a lot of sunspots right now, folks.
And probably just something glitchy in the phone system.
Let's try it again.
Oh, that's very bad.
That is very bad.
Hmm.
Well, we have a backup cell number here, but you sure hate to use those.
I'm going to try it one more time.
And this is very ominous indeed.
Very ominous indeed.
So let's try it one more time.
What would do this?
I reached him at this number originally a couple of hours ago.
Now we're getting some kind of weird... This is very bizarre.
I'll let you hear for yourself what we get.
Here we go.
Your call has been forwarded.
No, I don't believe it.
All right.
This is what the backup cell number is for, I guess.
Let's try that.
Adventures in Live Talk Radio.
That's how it works, folks.
Things just happen.
I hope nobody got to him.
All right, this will be a backup cell number that we're calling.
Welcome to AT&T Wireless Service.
What now?
The subscriber you have called does not answer.
Please try your call again later.
All right.
Well, hmm.
That was the backup cell number that I just called.
And the first one I called, obviously, met up with somebody's answering machine.
This is bad juju.
Bad stuff.
All right, let's, uh, let's just take some calls.
Now, what the heck?
You've heard the, uh, the proposition, right?
That we're going to put up a spacecraft.
In fact, uh, in concert with Gene Myers and others who have these talents and abilities, we're going to put up a spacecraft to collect energy, transform it into electricity, and then beam it to the Earth via microwave To a receiving station, and as the old saying goes, Sir Charles virtually is telling us that nothing can go wrong.
Like with that phone call.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Hello.
Well, we seem to have lost our... It's Sir Charles.
No, no.
Can you hear me?
You think that Sir Charles is here.
He's not.
Oh, he's not?
No, we lost him, and the primary number doesn't work, and the secondary backup number doesn't work.
Oh, well, you know what?
What?
Am I in the air now?
You actually are, yes.
That's what it is.
My uncle wrote the first book of Nikola Tesla, John J. O'Neill.
They were friends.
Really?
And you wrote about my uncle in one of your books, because my uncle discovered a bridge that appeared to be man-made on the moon, and you put it in your book.
But anyway, to get to the question, when he comes back on, Nikola Tesla was working on a project.
Him and Edison set up the electrical grid in New York.
I guess he ended the 1890s or 1900s, and J.P.
Morgan financed it.
But anyway, Nikola Tesla, after that, wanted to give the world free electricity.
So, he was working on it, and it was to put something in the sky.
And to collect it and beam it down.
And my question for Sir Charles is, was that the same thing?
But guess what happened?
I don't think it could have been, and I'll explain why.
But guess what happened to Nikola Tesla's lab?
Oh, I know what happened to it.
It got burned down because he wanted to give free electricity to the Earth.
Well, thank you very much, and we will ask about Nikola Tesla, but a lot of the technology proposed in what Sir Charles is talking about didn't exist.
When Nikola Tesla was doing his work, and that's not to say that a lot of Tesla technology may not have application in our future power needs on Earth.
It may.
We don't know, because a lot of Tesla's documents, of course, were taken by the government, and we never heard another word about it.
I'm going to try this one more time, this primary number, and this is really weird.
If I didn't know better, Why, I almost could believe one of several conspiracy theories here.
Let's try it.
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message.
You know, even I am a little suspicious about this.
If Sir Charles were sitting there, he would know that we were disconnected.
He would do one of several things.
He would reset the answering machine.
He would answer the phone when it rings, and he certainly would answer his backup number if the cell connection would go through, which it won't.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is strange stuff.
International Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, Art.
Hey, there.
I'm noticing you were concerned a little bit about the weapons in space and about amateurs.
Well, I don't know that the two are related.
I hope the two aren't related, actually.
But yes, I'm concerned about weapons in space.
Yeah, because, well, I guess I'm kind of invulnerable in the action, but I launched a satellite illegally just a few years ago.
You did what?
Using a hydrogen balloon.
You did what now?
You launched a satellite?
Yeah, it's got a telescope on it and a digital camera.
And it went, well, it went out of the Earth's... Oh, well, you got ham, don't you?
You work on the ham systems, right?
Yeah.
Well, if you can receive, if you have the capability to receive 20 gigahertz, you can tune into it and control it if you like.
20 gigahertz, I do not.
So you're telling me you floated a satellite into space?
Basically, yeah.
It's a 100-pound satellite.
100-pound satellite.
I understand how you floated it through what we know as the atmosphere, but how did you then go through those other layers and escape to an entirely airless environment?
How did you manage that, sir?
A 500-pound explosive.
That was the dangerous part about it.
So you blew it up there?
Yeah, pretty much.
Just like when you put a firecracker under a trash can, basically.
That's why it was so illegal, quote-unquote.
So you have launched yourself, a satellite, by floating it up to the virtual edge of space, and then blowing it, like a trash can when we're kids with fireworks, into space?
Yeah, pretty much.
Just to show you how vulnerable it is for anybody to get into space.
I was going to ask your guest, because I know he's in the NASA industry, I didn't have anything to do with him.
I should have in order to get access, but I didn't.
I just put it up there.
I didn't want to deal with the red tape.
Oh, I can tell.
I believe I'm prediction number 86 or 85.
You and who else did this?
Me and a group of friends, four friends.
You and a couple of buddies, huh?
Yeah, pretty much.
We all contributed a little money.
And what does this hundred pound jewel do up there now?
Well, it spins around and takes pictures pretty much.
It's not high-tech.
It's just a camcorder, a digital camcorder.
Do you have any idea how upset the U.S.
government would be to learn that you've done this?
It doesn't really matter.
I mean, they can really beam it out or shoot it out of the sky, but it's pretty far away now.
It takes eight minutes for my information to get to Earth, so that's just to give you an idea of how far it is.
Eight minutes?
Yeah, it takes quite a while.
Eight minutes.
Well, my goodness, at the speed of light, then that puts it out near the sun.
Yeah, it's pretty far out there.
It's not in Earth's orbit or anything like that.
It's just floating out there, just spinning around, taking pictures.
But what you're saying about the weapons, about There is a very high possibility for weapons in outer space, even amateurs, because I did it.
I have a 1 megawatt laser.
Well, it's not a megawatt.
It's like, I think, a thousand watts.
It's a positioning laser.
It's an aircraft positioning laser.
It shoots at the Earth to, you know, keep it... I can track onto the Earth, you know, whenever I want.
It's not green.
It's not green, is it?
Green?
No, it's a red laser.
It's a red laser.
Okay.
Well, then you're not the guy.
Somebody was messing with green lasers.
That's quite a story you've got there.
All right.
You connect with me, sir, by email, if you would please.
I'd like to pursue this story and perhaps talk to a couple of your buddies.
So be sure and email me, artbell at aol.com or artbell at mindspring.com.
This sounds exactly like the kind of story that I would wish to pursue.
I mean, you never know.
You hear these people.
Just layin' this stuff on us.
Well, I launched a satellite arm, a hundred pounds, and now it's eight minutes radio time out, which would put it as, you know, far away as the sun, at least.
And, uh, you just never know.
What if he did?
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yes, sir.
Hello.
This would be helpful to the shuttle program, also.
You mean the last guy, or Sir Charles?
No, I'm talking about the suggestion I have to make.
Ah.
If we would make the fuel tanks, Well, uh, and a Dewar flask.
In his project, we could wrap the reflective foil about the inner flask, and on the earth we could pull a vacuum, making it a perfect, uh, Dewar flask, so we wouldn't need insulation on the outside to pummel this space shovel.
And we could even, uh, when I got an outer space with a vacuum on both sides, you could slip the outer shell off, And unfurl this plastic membrane at your desire.
When he was talking about making the thing to control the amount of sunlight that goes through it, in this case you could even just wrap it back up.
And of course you could have two of these to take care of the gyroscope effects he was talking about.
Okay, well, you know, I think the whole thing is fascinating.
I mean, the idea of being able to control the weather is compelling.
Interesting and a little worrisome.
I'm not totally clear on the fact that there would not be unintended consequences with either heating or cooling parts of the planet that would not normally, by our seemingly random weather system, be heated or cooled.
I'm not convinced there wouldn't be.
But on the other hand, you can never stop progress, can you?
First time caller line, you are on the air.
Hello.
Good morning, Art.
Good morning, sir.
I had a question for sure.
Sir Charles, I'm a little upset he's gone, but... I would say, sir, it is suspicious that he is suddenly gone and that both the primary and backup numbers are now something entirely different, wouldn't you?
Yes, I would say.
I know that he had mentioned that it was very highly unlikely that he couldn't use his power as a weapon, but you know, what per se that he Aim that at a snowy mountain top to cause a large avalanche or a flooding to wipe out a town.
Would that be possible?
I don't know, sir, but I also wonder what it is that makes us imagine we could deliver power from space reliably to Earth.
When we can't even deliver a caller's voice reliably over this new technology we laughingly call cellular phone.
I mean, did you hear how awful that audio was?
Did you?
Do we deserve that in this century?
No.
We deserve better.
I would like to petition the cellular industry and, you know, I'm going to do what I threatened to do.
You remember I threatened, I said, you know, from now on when I get a really lousy, lousy cellular connection, I'm going to have people begin to name the company that produces or carries their cellular signal.
Now, perhaps these cell companies out there would take that as an invitation to improve the quality of the audio.
If not, that's all right, I guess.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Ah, yes, Art.
I'd like to, if you could get Cheryl Schultz back on tonight.
That's a big if.
Yeah, I know.
I'd like to ask him if there's any further development on his discovery of the life on Mars, the fossils on Mars.
I would ask him about that, as well as, you know, we were poised to talk about Titan, Well, I hope you get it back.
I do, too.
I'll tell you what, my guest line is ringing.
Hold on just a moment.
On my guest line, who would be ringing this number?
That would be Sir Charles, Art.
Sir Charles, my friend.
What happened?
Well, we had a phone disconnect.
I'm sorry about that, but we were able to get through to you at last.
Well, not only did we have a phone disconnect, but let's run through... You know how nothing can go wrong?
Well, I have a primary number for you, and I have a secondary number for you, a cell phone backup number.
Both of those numbers?
Well, the primary number, all I received was some repetitive tape on somebody's answering machine, and the backup number wasn't in service at all.
Yes, unfortunately my cell phone battery is dead.
I just found that out.
Uh-huh.
Now, um, with regard to the nothing can go wrong scenario for our power station, Well, obviously, we'd want lots of backups.
And this is a prime example of that sort of failure.
Single-point failures are the worst.
Yes!
Yes.
All right.
Okay, I've got a... I had a caller.
He's gone now, too.
I tell you, technically, this night is really in trouble.
Let's take a few calls and see what kind of questions we get.
First on the caller line, unless the world has collapsed, you're on the air.
Arty?
Yes, turn your radio off, sir.
Turn your radio off.
And now, no, all the way off.
And proceed.
Hello?
Hello.
Arty?
Yes.
Going once.
Going twice.
Gone.
Wild Card Line, you are on the air.
Uh, yeah, my name is Bevan.
I'm calling from, currently, Van Horn, Texas.
Van Horn, Texas, all right.
Actually, well, maybe I missed it, but I've never heard anybody mention how the electric company feels about this alternative.
Well, no, what a superb question.
Sir Charles, what about... Actually, they feel pretty... I'll tell you why.
Electric companies would not have to maintain generating stations if they were buying the utility power from the grid where we broadcast it in.
We would sell it at one rate to the electric company, and they would charge a different rate to the customers because they maintain the lines and distribution system.
So as far as they're concerned, this is no different from them buying power from another utility over the grid today.
Okay.
All right.
Very good.
Look, I want to cover... We started to cover Titan.
You were talking about the atmosphere.
I was playing the sound from the microphone, which I thought was totally incredible, of the spacecraft going through Titan's atmosphere.
Well, it's a fascinating place.
It's one of the most interesting worlds.
And, as I mentioned a little earlier, water is a mineral there because it's a frozen solid.
So, the primary fluid in Titan's environment is liquid methane.
And, in fact, it looks like it rains and snows methane on Titan.
They discovered what appeared to be large lakes or flat areas full of the fluid.
And there was a lot of speculation in the beginning whether it rained hydrocarbons.
And, in fact, it does.
The methane on Titan is being replenished because it's inside the moon trapped in the ice as a clathrate and so the scientists are still kicking that one around that's the answer to it very simply in a nutshell.
It brings me to my friend's question since we're generally talking about energy.
Methane is... where does methane rank in terms of possibilities for energy generation?
Actually it's a very good source of energy and even low-grade forms of methane can be useful You know that in a lot of third world countries, particularly where energy is in short supply, they often will use biomass, such as manure, fermented to produce methane.
And they'll burn that methane to produce their electricity, or to cook with it, or whatever.
Methane itself is an excellent fuel.
Now here's the catch.
The methane on Titan is just as good as any methane anywhere.
But number one, it's a huge distance away from us.
And number two, it takes oxygen to burn the methane.
So you're not going to be making any power with it.
Methane on Earth would be quite useful.
Methane on Titan, it's useless to us.
So it requires the oxygen.
That's correct.
If you were to... In what proportion?
Let's see.
One methane molecule contains one carbon and four hydrogens.
So you'd need two or three oxygen molecules to combust it properly.
Let's see.
One, two, three, four.
Yeah.
One, two, three, four.
So what percentage of oxygen Then, to properly burn it as a fuel?
If you had a mixture of, for instance, 80% oxygen and 20% methane, you'd have pretty much, I think, an ideal combustion mission.
I could be wrong, but that looks like about the right ratio.
That's a lot of oxygen.
So that doesn't make it practical.
Did we learn a lot of new stuff about Titan from this mission?
Yes, we did.
Titan turns out to be a geologically active world.
Almost as active as Earth or Mars, and it looks very similar.
One of the most important discoveries is this.
Even though Titan has an exotic chemistry, and there is no water acting as a fluid in its environment under most conditions, it still has rivers, erosion, precipitation, and a hydrological cycle.
So, our eyes were not betraying us.
That is what we saw, is what it was.
Indeed it is.
All right, my friend.
Hold it right there.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
Let's see if the magic of the telephone company can get us through the coming break.
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Some of them want to get used by you.
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Baby, you'll see.
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From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Vell.
It is, my guest is Sir Charles Schultz III.
We're talking about an announcement that's been made tonight, that we're going to put an orbiting power station We're going to blast it into orbit and we're going to return power to the Earth.
That project underway as announced tonight.
Otherwise, we're talking about Titan, energy, all kinds of things.
If you have a question for Sir Charles, now would be the time.
Stay right where you are.
Alright, let us see if the magic that's our phone company has maintained Sir Charles on the lines.
Sir Charles?
And indeed they have, I'm right here.
Oh, very good.
All right, so I guess I wanted to know anything else that was really something that we learned about Titan.
Certainly the photographs were fascinating.
It looked like, I don't know, a river system?
It even almost looked like a shoreline.
Some of the pictures I saw were just incredible stuff.
Yes, indeed.
They found what appeared to be a shoreline, and the word islands was even bandied about, and it certainly appears to be islands and river deltas and everything that you'd expect to find even here on Earth.
What a surprise.
One of the most important and interesting things that I've found relates to a mystery that I've found and worked out on Mars, and it's something I call moat rocks, just like the moat around the castle.
The Spirit Rover in Gusev Crater has reached an area of the ground where it's changed substantially, and one of the things that has shown up is here and there, there are rocks that have a ring in the sand around them.
Now, normally the sand is blown up around the rocks in all directions, and it covers their bases, but these rocks look as if something had blown the sand away from them.
What I've found is, the most likely explanation is, steam is venting from underground.
Water is boiling away, forming a fumarole, like a little geyser vent, but water doesn't emerge, steam does.
And the steam is blowing away the sand, and the rock is capping off the vent of the steam.
Now, in the very first ground image that we see on Titan, where Huygens is sitting on the ground, you will see, in the middle distance, a moat rock, identical in every respect to the ones that are on Mars.
Now we know that liquid water is not very likely to exist on Titan because of the extreme cold.
What it implies, however, is some fluid underground is evaporating and causing vapor to vent up from under the rocks.
So there's a hydrological system just like there is on Mars, only it's probably methane.
Wow.
Alright, and how do we profit, or where do we profit from what we've learned?
How does this information all help us?
Well, I doubt seriously there's ever going to be any sort of monetary profit, but knowledge-wise, what we've learned is the forces of erosion appear to be identical no matter what planet you're on, as long as there's some sort of a fluid, whether it's water or methane, or whatever it might be.
Whatever erodes rocks and minerals will work there, and all it takes is a little bit of energy.
Interesting thing is about the geothermal aspect.
You know Io, the moon of Jupiter with the volcanoes, is heated by geothermal energy.
Jupiter's gravity flexes it due to tides.
The same process apparently is occurring with Titan and Saturn's gravitational pull is flexing it through tidal force and heating its interior so that water might be the volcanic fluid on Titan.
That's incredible.
That's really incredible.
Back for a second to the usefulness of methane on Earth as a power source.
Well actually methane is very useful.
One of the interesting processes I've seen uses methane gas and converts it to methanol or methyl alcohol.
And methyl alcohol has a great number of advantages.
Number one is it can be stored very easily as a liquid.
Which is much denser than a gas when it goes for storing an amount of energy.
Number two, methanol, as it turns out, can be used in many of the new generation fuel cells that are being made.
So methanol is a wonderful fuel for the fuel cells that can produce electricity in laptop computers, cell phones, small electronic devices.
It acts exactly as a battery, but it's powered by chemical alcohol.
Many wish to speak to you.
So, first time caller on the line, you're on the air with Sir Charles Schultz.
Hello.
Yeah, hi.
My name is Bill.
I'm calling from Merced.
Yes, Bill.
And I would just like to know, first of all, Art, I think your show is great, and I've enjoyed it for two years now.
I really like it.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
My question is, basically, if this machine Put up there, is there any chance that if it had a decayed orbit, it'd cause any danger to the people on the Earth?
Okay, alright.
See, everybody is, I don't know if it's the Sunstroke book, I don't know if it's the genre of science fiction in our country, or just the fact that we've seen things go wrong so much.
Sure, and a lot of it is people don't realize just how high geostationary orbit is.
It's 22,300 miles above the Earth.
Yes.
And so something in an orbit that high, if it, for whatever reason, began to drift, it could be up there for thousands of years before coming to the ground.
The amount of energy needed to change its orbit enough to bring it back to Earth is very substantial.
It's not going to happen by accident.
If something collided with it of sizable mass, then it's a possibility.
But even at that point, At the velocity it would be moving, it would burn up in the atmosphere.
Notice that even though this thing is many square miles in area, most of it would be a material like very thin silver plastic, similar to a candy bar wrapper.
But I think most of the folks are inquiring about this drift in orbit.
Just a drift, an accident in which, and of course your answer is that the microwave is not dense enough to fry people alive on the ground as it goes.
Well, and the thing here is, the beam has to be steered actively to keep it on target.
Movement of the satellite is not going to affect where the beam goes because it's being aimed all the time.
Imagine yourself holding a pocket mirror outside and walking around your yard while aiming a spot of sunlight using that mirror at a certain target.
Right.
And it doesn't matter where you walk in the yard, you can always aim the spot where you want it to be, as long as there's sunlight falling on your mirror.
Yes, I'm just telling you where your public relations nightmare is going to be.
Well, certainly.
You're absolutely right.
Okay.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Sir Charles Schultz.
Hello.
Yes.
I wanted to know if he can... Turn your radio off, please, sir.
Oh, I'm sorry?
Yes.
It's very important.
I wanted to know if there is control over the hurricanes.
Would it be possible to control the humidity over west of the Rocky Mountains and east of the Sierras by converting our desert into a lush Great Plains or similar situation?
Okay, doing something as incredible as converting a desert into an arable, growing land, whatever.
Clearly, if you could import enough water, you could make a desert into arable farmland.
The problem here is the natural barrier, mountain ranges.
Convection and flow are the thing.
No matter how much moisture you put in the atmosphere, if you can't get that moisture-carrying air to the area where you need rain to fall, it won't matter.
So even though you could use this system to create large storms, most likely, The difficulty is getting that moisture-laden water or the clouds to pass over natural barriers, such as mountains, to get into your deserts.
The reason you have deserts there is because of the barrier that keeps moisture from getting there.
Okay.
Good answer.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Sir Charles.
Hello.
Good evening, Art.
Good evening.
Sir Charles, I had a question for you.
Okay.
I wanted to hear your thoughts of what hurdles might have to be overcome for the viability of a company That's about to bring to the global market a highly innovative, extremely low-cost, actually an answer to a near-50-year-old technology called, it's basically replacement satellite technology.
It's going to replace satellites by utilizing high-altitude airships positioned in the stratosphere, in a geostationary position using technology of GPS tracking, etc.
And the concept of UAV vehicles.
All right, well, that's a big one you just asked.
Let's hold it right there.
Sir Charles, he's talking about, and there have been a number of people who have talked about, it would actually be cheaper with the cost of satellites to orbit high-altitude aircraft or a lighter-than-air craft of some sort at a very high altitude.
In fact, there have been a number of experiments about that.
One of them, of course, involves typical helium balloons designed to operate at high altitudes.
And the station-keeping technology for it isn't exactly where we want it to be, because there are some very high-velocity winds, even in that environment.
However, it could be done.
The other answer to that would be the type of airplanes that can fly for many hours or days without refueling.
And an electric airplane, similar to the ones that NASA has been working on, is not a bad solution to it.
The only problem they found is sudden changes in the wind would break the wings and the thing would die.
The technology isn't yet ready.
Got it.
It is a near contender.
And I imagine that in the near future we are going to see the equivalent of a micro satellite that can be more or less placed at a very high altitude and used for communication.
And it should be fairly cheap.
So it really depends.
What it comes down to is what is your application and what's the cost.
I do see it being used in the future, yes.
All right.
Tomorrow night, Sir Charles, I'm going to have a couple of guests.
Who are going to be here talking to the degree they can, because I know they have classified information and about patents and so forth, but with respect to the HAARP project.
Now, I'm sure that it has crossed your desk one way or another, or at least your mind.
There are people talking about HAARP with respect to the possibility of weather modification and all kinds of pretty exotic things.
Do you know anything about it?
Well, at this point, some of the rumors have said, you know, it could be used for submarine communications.
Some have said we're going to be modifying ions in the upper atmosphere.
There are many people who do research who are using the hardware for various sorts of tests, depending on magnetic or ion conditions in the upper atmosphere, and those are fairly common knowledge.
As to the target, the goal of the whole project... Yes.
You know, when you compare what's been said in rumors and what's been said officially, you really sometimes wonder just what would bring about the construction of this project.
What did they have in mind?
And I know that people in the general public often have questions about hardware of this type because it's so mysterious.
Bottom line that I've been able to determine so far is it's basically research both in communications and in the Earth's magnetic field and its influence on ion particles and that sort of thing.
There are many things that occur in our upper atmosphere that are absolute mysteries.
Some of those were spotted by shuttle astronauts, for instance, the sprites that occur above lightning storms.
Oh, they've spotted... As a matter of fact, I collect these stories, you know, and I've got a very interesting story here someplace about the fact... Yeah, here it is.
A fact that wasn't released.
Columbia crew saw a new atmospheric phenomenon.
A new atmospheric phenomenon was caught on video by the crew of the space shuttle Columbia just days before the shuttle broke apart.
Astronauts relayed the video to NASA in real time during their 16-day flight.
What it amounts to, apparently, is a light, a single frame of the video representing 33 milliseconds, shows a mysterious reddish glow in the night sky on 20 January 2003, and he says, the scientists involved, we're not sure what we saw, It was something extraordinary.
The glow occurred about 150 kilometers from the ocean near Madagascar and does not appear to be linked with any thunderstorms.
This was some kind of display of light that they can't explain.
And apparently it was some sort of plasma effect and I don't know what was originally discussed about it.
I know what's been determined is it was some sort of unknown plasma effect and it is still being looked into.
I don't know how seriously they're researching it.
But it's just one of those amazing things we discover.
It's like, at the dawn of the radio age, they discovered that the atmosphere whistled, and it was based on lightning.
That's right.
And whistlers, I know that you're familiar with whistlers you hear on shortwave radio.
That's certainly so, yes.
So yes, there are still many, many mysteries about the world, things we have no idea about, and we're just beginning to look in the right places to find them and ask the questions.
Okay.
Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Sir Charles.
Good morning.
Good morning, Garth.
Hi.
Hi, this is Jean in Western Washington.
Welcome.
Thank you.
I want to ask, Sir Charles, what if it was necessary to put up those things like blinds that you described in order to control the temperature?
What would happen if the Earth was badly hit by an asteroid and knocked out all the technology on Earth?
Those things would be up there and it would be impossible Possibly for the Earth to recover from that, then.
Okay, see, thank you.
In other words, impossible to open up the blinds and they get stuck shut or something.
See, that's, again, this is going to be your public relations nightmare.
When you talk about sending power to Earth, or you talk about shielding the Earth from the sun's rays and creating cooler spots and atmosphere.
Yes.
The solution to the blinds question, and it's this.
Okay.
You place a number of machines on the ground, And in that manner, presumably, hopefully, nothing could go wrong.
We would certainly hope so.
operation. If something catastrophic happens that brings down, let's say, the
power lines, the power system, they stop transmitting and the blinds go into a
safe position by opening. And in that manner, presumably, hopefully, nothing
could go wrong. We would certainly hope so. But here's another thing. The
technology in orbit, as she pointed out, could well remain in operation and we
we would have people in orbit still in operation right
This same technology could be used to help the planet recover because of this.
If we had the sort of catastrophe that raised a lot of global dust and dropped the temperature greatly, we could move a set of these blinds to the side or the rear of the planet and actually direct more sunlight to the ground to compensate for the effect of global cooling.
Is this the kind of thing that NASA thinks?
Do they think tank this kind of stuff?
Or is it just people?
Yes, there are people that do this sort of thing.
And a lot of these discussions, of course, are just purely speculative.
But they're done with the knowledge that one day these could be possible.
And the very fact that they're discussing these things brings about a sense of just what it would take to get there from here.
Got it.
You've got no book to sell, although my understanding is you are working on a book.
Care to say anything about it?
Indeed I am.
It's going to cover the discoveries of the Martian fossils, some of the physics behind it, and some of the history behind it.
It was a lot of fun doing the research, and I've been working on the book for a while.
And it's to the point now where I'm going to have to start looking for the right publisher for it, but it's coming along quite nicely.
A little more slowly than I'd like, but it's coming along.
And in the meantime, you do have an active website, right?
Indeed I do.
Which is?
And that's www.xenotechresearch.com.
And it's X-E-N-O-T-E-C-H-R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H.com.
We've got a link, no doubt, hopefully anyway, on our site.
I'm sure we do.
Indeed you do.
And so if people want to know more they can go there and one would assume when your book is finally published it'll be announced there and here I'm sure too.
That too is correct and I'll be putting up the hurricane simulation data on my site by tomorrow.
Oh!
Alright, what are we going to see?
Well it's some of the mathematical simulations that were done on the hurricanes to show How energy could be transferred into them to change them.
And we incidentally have the full cooperation of Dr. Hoffman in support.
He's the fellow that did the research in the NASA-funded study and published the article in Scientific American.
When do you think it reasonable that we might make a first serious attempt to affect the track of a hurricane?
2012.
Huh.
Interesting year.
We expect to have our hardware flying by then. 2012.
So that's only seven years away.
That's only seven years.
You know, it's time to start sizing up space suits.
Let's see if I can fit one quick question in.
International Line, you're on the air with Sir Charles.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Hello, Sir Charles.
Pleasure to speak with you.
We've only got a moment, so... Okay, when we're in outer space, we get close to zero gravity, and I would suppose mass becomes less of a problem near zero.
How fast with modern technology can we get a decent load and a large fuel source How fast can you get it going toward another star?
Well, you know, that all depends on two things.
What your fuel source is, and how much of that mass you have to throw away to do it.
Present day technology with rocketry, we can expect many thousands of years of travel time to the nearest star.
If we started using the same beam microwave technology we're talking about, we could power a spacecraft with that and get there in a few years.
As a propulsion system?
That's right.
In other words, it would just continually stream particles out the back and the ship would begin going faster and faster and faster, right?
That's correct.
I had not thought of it as a drive.
How effective would that be?
It could be extremely effective.
We could get a probe up to nearly the speed of light, if it was an extremely lightweight probe, In the course of maybe six months.
Imagine a probe that only weighs a few kilograms, or even a few grams, made with some of our smallest technologies, driven by a beam of light with microwaves.
It would act very much like a light sail.
And I believe this technology was put forward by Dr. Robert L. Forward quite a while back.
Yes, indeed.
Oh, that's fascinating.
And so you could reach this near the speed of light in half a year?
That's right.
We could actually have lightweight probes in place around some of the nearest stars in 10 years or less, sending us data back.
That's incredible.
Sir, Charles, sir, Charles, it's been a pleasure having you on here.
It always is.
You're really something to interview.
Thank you.
You are very welcome.
Good night, my friend.
Good night, my friend.
All right, we'll continue tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night we're going to talk about heart as much as we can.
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