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March 6, 2005 - Art Bell

02:54:49

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Robert Zimmerman - Space Missions

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49:15

robert zimmerman

01:21:44

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, good afternoon, whatever the case may be, whatever you are in the world's time, all of them, covered like a blanket by this program postpone.
		I'm Arbelle, honored, and privileged to be escorting you through the weekend.
		And what a weekend it has turned out to be.
		Listen, there is something that I think I ought to get on right away.
		I don't think there's anything coaxy about this.
		There have been over 3,000 earthquakes within 72 hours off the coast of the northwest U.S. 3,000 earthquakes in 72 hours.
		The story is catching fire, I guess.
		There are a lot of people on their way up to the Seattle area trying to figure out what's going on.
		It's all underwater.
		Maybe an underwater eruption?
		They don't really know.
		But 3,000 earthquakes in 72 hours means something is moving under the water there.
		Maybe it'll come to something, maybe nothing, but be warned.
		Also, in the category of hoax, as you know, last night I passed on to you this plan that was on a blogger site hosted by Negative Zero.
		Well, as soon as I discovered it, it disappeared, of course.
		But now they're back, and their new plan is to try and conduct a hoax.
		They say now either the original date, which was the 19th, or next Saturday, that would be when I'm on the air, or some other, and they're going to vote on when best to have this giant UFO hoax, which we'll be well aware of and tracking right along with, so I really wouldn't bother, but they seemed to, I mean, you're just absolutely, you know, it's funny, the page disappeared after I nailed them.
		Just went away.
		However, there's continuing follow-up pages yet today, and we'll continue to follow it.
		We have many sources.
		A left-wing journalist, Juliana Sprigiana, claimed American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire and said Sunday that she could not rule out that U.S. forces intentionally shot at the car, carrying her to the Baghdad airport, wounding and killing the Italian agent who had just won her freedom after a month in captivity.
		An Italian cabinet member urged her, who writes, by the way, for a communist newspaper that routinely opposes U.S. policy in Iraq, to be very cautious in her accounts and said that the shooting would not affect Italy's support for the Bush administration.
		This is a wild story, I think.
		Sony Corporation has named Howard Stringer as its chairman.
		It did so Monday, now Monday, in Tokyo, a decision that marks the first time, indeed the first time, that a foreigner is going to head a major Japanese electronics firm and comes as the company seeks to improve results at its faltering core electronics business.
		Springer, vice chairman at Sony and chief executive of Sony Corporation of America, replaces the Japanese leader who has been leading now for a decade.
		So an American is running Sony.
		And is that a wild turn of events or what?
		Would you ever have imagined, I don't know, five or ten years ago that an American would be leading the Sony Corporation?
		Yikes!
		A leading Republican senator is proposing to raise the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 68 for max benefits.
		Reasoning that Social Security is in trouble and reasoning that people are living longer these days, he's saying now people ought to wait until they're 68 and maybe that'll save Social Security.
		The militant group Hezbollah, largely on the fence since anti-Syrian protest erupted in Lebanon last month, switched gears Sunday and threw its weight behind Syria and its allies, calling for massive rallies in Beirut to show loyalty to Damascus.
		As mercury spills in schools disrupt classes, teachers and environmental groups want to get rid of student labs of the versatile but dangerous metal.
		In recent weeks, mercury was found in stairwells and corridors of a high school in the nation's capital.
		The building had to be closed twice for decontamination.
		And still more traces were found Sunday, even as cleaning crews were wrapping up their work in preparation for reopening the schools on Monday mercury poisoning.
		Mercury, well, you know, a lot has changed.
		When I was a kid, mercury was cool.
		I mean, heck, we took mercury and you'd put it on your finger and you'd put it on a dime or something, you know, like a dime and you'd rub the dime and the dime would get incredibly shiny.
		And that was fun.
		Fun with mercury.
		and now of course we know that it's uh...
		poisonous back in the day it was nothing more And I was one of them.
		Yeah, so that's what happened, huh?
		We'll be back with more open lines directly ahead.
		right there.
		One more item before we get to open lines.
		Whitley's site, unknowncountry.com, is keeping as close a track on this flu thing as I have been.
		And his lead story this hour is, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has warned that the outbreak of bird flu in Asia is the single biggest threat facing the entire world today.
		Right now, bird flu can only be caught directly from infected birds, usually chickens, for example.
		But there are now signs that the virus is evolving and may soon be able to be passed from person to person.
		Should that occur, we could have an epidemic very similar to or rivaling the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed millions of people around the world.
		Researchers don't know for sure that the H5N1 strain of bird flu will evolve into a form that can be passed from person to person.
		Right now, the bird flu has a fatality rate of about three out of four.
		75% who catch it die.
		So if this form of bird flu spreads throughout the world, obviously it would be an international health disaster.
		The longer the bird flu virus is around people, the greater the risk it might mutate and learn how to defeat the human immune system.
		A vaccine has not yet been developed for the bird flu, but researchers are working overtime to try and get one.
		The prescription medicine, Tamiflu, manufactured by Roche, is effective against avian flu, but if an epidemic begins, Tamoflu stocks will quickly be depleted, and the company may not be able to manufacture enough of the drug to fill worldwide demand.
		As with AIDS drugs, we'll see patients in rich countries being treated, and of course those in third world countries suffer and die.
		Let us proceed to the lines.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air, top of the evening, morning, or whatever.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
unidentified		This is Blair in Sedona, Arizona.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Blair.
unidentified		I wanted to talk about one of my favorite talks you did about eight years ago with Terrence McKinna.
unidentified		Back in 97.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Terrence, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A lot of really good memories of Terrence.
unidentified		He was like an explorer using the mind, you know, outer space, going through inner space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, he wasn't a very good advert for the war against drugs, that's for damn sure.
		He was so brilliant, so incredibly brilliant and fast and sharp, that if the drugs did him any harm, well, you couldn't tell.
		And so that didn't make him a very good advertisement for the war against.
unidentified		Yeah, but, you know, I think, you know, we get through this rough transition period.
		Maybe in 100 or 200 years, he'll be looked at as one of the great intellects of the 20th century.
		You know, he mentioned something about moving through time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Before you move too far from that, I regard him as that already.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, on moving through time.
unidentified		Well, I'm just trying to paraphrase what he said, and I wanted to get your take on that.
		He said, how you move around in time, it's not determined by the law of physics, but it's determined by cultural programming underlined.
		You know, we're far more imprisoned by cultural conventions than by physical laws.
		So, you know, you take the idea of quantum physics.
		Now, this is something that our science showed us, that everything isn't in a linear fashion.
		It's bursts of quanta, little energy bursts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		The difference between Einstein and, goodness gracious, Max Planck, for example.
		So that means it's there for us to access at any time we use.
		This is, according to Terrence, our imagination.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I absolutely don't rule out what Terrence said.
		The guy was brilliant.
		Thank you very much, sir.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And have a good night.
		By the way, the webcam photo that I have up right now, I'm going to put up a few tonight, no doubt.
		But this was from two days ago.
		And I've been telling you how much rain we've had in the desert.
		It has been a very, very, very unusual year in the desert.
		And I don't think I've ever put up a shot of the backyard before, at least certainly not from this angle.
		Now, I want you to know, number one, we plant no grass ever.
		The greenery that you see there has come from the rain and whatever seeds, prehistoric type seeds, might have been in the ground.
		So what you see there, none of it except for Ramona's little garden of, there is a garden of herbs there.
		That aside, all the rest of the green there is all natural.
		It's come from all the rain we've had.
		Otherwise, that would be a barren desert in the back.
		In the front, we have sort of a desert decor, as I think is the appropriate thing to do, you know, here in the desert.
		I put up a kind of a desert decor.
		I'm not one of those people who think that you should make the desert look like wherever it is that you originally came from.
		If people came from, you know, the lush Southern California area, lush because, of course, of the water that's pumped in mainly.
		But if they come from that area, then they want their new area to look just like that.
		And so a lot of people start growing lawns out here.
		Not a good idea.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning, Ark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quite well, thank you.
unidentified		Good deal.
unidentified		It's an honor to finally talk to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		This is Rob in Kansas City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I just wanted to touch on, well, basically, a few weeks ago, you had a rebroadcast of the interview with John Lear.
unidentified		And he gave you the briefing basically of the government's disclosure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		And if the audience doesn't know what I'm talking about, I urge them to go check it out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would think the majority of them would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The impact of that was gigantic.
unidentified		Indeed.
unidentified		I would question whether the story about Jimmy Carter at the book signing for the caller called in initially anyway, if that was the reason that he looked at him rather, and started crying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could have been.
		it absolutely could have been and that that was a caller of course who once called the program said that he went to a book signing with jimmy carter and of course carter was quite famous for having said that when if elected uh...
		he would demand all the evidence on u_f_'s that our government had and then the follow-up to that was a caller this man mentioned call the show and said he wants went to a book signing you know after president carter had left office and that uh...
		he asked about what uh...
		president carter found and carter said something slightly dismissive and then he pressed him and it ended up with the turners in his eye and didn't talk about it fairly compelling i would say was to the rockies you're on the air below hi hi this is probably i'm calling from portland oregon hi colby how you doing that are
unidentified		you i was calling to you you your opinion on the blue book on the menu in a project or or or or or uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		you're asking about the abc special and how they handled blue book or are you asking about blue book itself how they handled it on a special well arm they gave it pretty short uh...
		a pretty short shrift i would say there and uh...
		in in the case of roswell of course they'd be pretty well dismissed roswell is nothing more than a myth and uh...
		i thought that was uh...
unidentified		uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		a wrong a wrong by and large as you know i hope the abc special was a good first effort for the general public but uh...
		dismissing roswell that way uh...
		i thought how could they could they how could they with all of the eyewitness testimony and all that has come about uh...
		with regard to roswell how could you know and then handling that other stuff how how could they so easily uh...
		rather than a no you're not uh...
		well quite liner on the air high well i heard the uh...
unidentified		program last night and uh...
		i'd like to mention something i think is very relevant uh...
		mark lane was one of the major researchers into uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		sir you're going to have to raise your voice a little bit mark lane mark lane with the who was uh...
unidentified		one of the major of research uh...
		researchers into uh...
		evidence of c_i_i_ uh...
		involved in the kennedy assassination wondered why he had been bashed by the media and he uh...
		finally uh...
		for a lot of suits got his freedom information act well from the c_i_a_ and it turns out that the director of plans the c_i_a_ had been ordering all of its agents and all of its assets throughout the media to discredit him and even gave them the types of uh...
		uh...
		talking points they should use and among them were that he was a conspiracy nut he was just in it for the money uh...
		that uh...
		any uh...
		any uh...
		a newspaper would be uh...
		glad to have this because it would be such a jimmy olsen type of we would never cover this up exactly the kind of cliche if i heard from your guest last night from bob popular mechanics and i also know when uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		the guests last night sir only commented on scientifically investigated items sixteen of them in fact well that's not true part because that is true i was a dog program i know he closed off by saying that this was a not about independent commission certainly
		it was an independent commission everyone around the 9-11 truth family 9-11truth.org families have completely protested the conflicts of interest of that hand-picked panel by the Bush administration the conflicts of interest of certain developers take a breath my guest last night hardly even referred to that report he referred to the article in popular mechanics that's why he was here and that's what he was discussing
		for three hours well it really did he made a lot of political comments about the motivations the psychology of those supposedly hating he did say that he did say that he thought it was politically motivated and i think it is too well i think uh...
unidentified		i think they are politically motivated for a cat i uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		hard i believe you are because of you you claim that the subjectivity that you have disagreements with bush but sure supposed to disagree with us to be more bush that i did not war warm water i did not vote for president bush and i'll tell you why uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		because president bush is going to put nuclear waste here in about a whereas the other candidate had promised that he would not let it most politics there is local and if you lived in about a you might well with felt i'd really the way i did i agree with you on that issue but the point is on everything every um...
unidentified		murderous frame of a wall of countries for these are unprovoked uh...
		preemptive words around the world flow from this uh...
		fabricated version of nine eleven all of that depends and that you have the extra you have a little missus show your agreement with every one of those uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		military invasions and attacks going back from vietnam to afghanistan to iraq so you have a dog in this race no i did not i did not i did not hello sir i did not agree at all with the invasion of iraq and said so adamantly before it began well i i i certainly have heard uh...
unidentified		other things that i would like to mention operation northwards and if you don't believe that that's capable of for a
art bell ▲ ● ▼		elements in this government to kill Americans on that scale this is brought out by James Bamford the NSA expert yeah yeah I know I've heard tell me do you believe that President tell me do you believe that President Bush ordered the 9-11 attacks I don't know whether he knew or not but I believe it's very possible that people like Sinister Carl J. Keney Wolfowitz and the rest of them have that that ability to reprise this Operation Northwoods which had a
		plan to show you something I think it's reprehensible those people as a matter of fact it is absolutely reprehensible those people who think that Bush ordered somehow this whole operation and the airplanes, I might add, to attack and kill thousands of Americans, that our own president did that.
		I'm not a big Bush fan at all.
		On the other hand, I'm not a big Bush opponent either.
		However, as I said last night, and I'll reiterate right now, I don't for one second think that this president or any other president ordered an attack that would kill thousands of Americans.
		And I think it's sad for those who did die that it is represented by some.
		I mentioned the rent site last night, so I'm going to carry through with it right now.
		This is the kind of thing that I'm talking about.
		I just took a picture of a headline from a story that came from the rent site.
		That's why I mentioned it last night.
		This was originally printed 9-17 of 04, and you'll be able to read the headline for yourself.
		Government Insider says Bush authorized 9-11 attacks.
		I think the headline should be clearly legible for you to read.
		So if you go to coasttocoastam.com right now, you'll be able to see exactly what I mean in a moment or so.
		From the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		We'll be right back.
		You keep on fire, but you really don't know why.
		See when you need a smile to help the shadow in the way Come to me, baby, you'll see The love you're pretty, baby Who's gonna hold you through the night The love you're
		pretty, mama Who's always there to me Who's gonna love you, love you Who's gonna love you, love you Who's gonna love you Who's
		gonna love you 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.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is indeed, and there, I've got it up on my webcam right now.
		If you go to CoastCoastAM.com and click in the upper left-hand corner, you see Arts webcam.
		And I want to tell you, I could not be prouder to not be associated with anybody who would print anything like you see right there.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
		Back to the phones we go.
		Wild Carteline, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Mr. Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		I was wanting to call in and respond to a lot of the criticism you've been getting because of last night's show.
		Frankly, I don't think it's fair for people to jump up and down and start rioting in the streets simply because, in all fairness, we simply listen to another point of view.
		And I think that's what the show is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, I know.
unidentified		It has always been about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, I know.
		But the minute you say, you know what, those buildings in New York and the Pentagon may actually have been hit by airplanes that were hijacked.
		My God, I know it seems so far out, sir, but when you say it, they just take you apart.
		And you know, I'll tell you where it comes from.
		If you have a computer, go to coast2coastam.com.
		I'm holding up an article that came from Rents.com, which was one of the sites, in fact, that was in Popular Mechanics, cited in Popular Mechanics.
		And the headline is, Government Insider says Bush authorized 9-11 attacks.
unidentified		Well, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I'm telling you, brother, that's sad for America.
		When a lot of people start to get to bleeding, the president sat down and I had a paper in front of him, I'm sure, a secret naturally, and said, well, what we're going to do, Mr. President, we're going to have these jets pile into the World Trade Towers.
		And then, oh, yeah, I think we'll have the Pentagon hit with one, two.
		And just to make sure, we're going to add a missile on here and some explosives to make sure.
		And please give me a break.
unidentified		And also here, Mr. President, is the memo to let the Miami Dolphins win the Super Bowl and also to raise gas prizes this week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and how about Boston to the World Series?
unidentified		There you go.
		That's all it is.
		There is a conspiracy mania sweeping the country where if anything we do not understand or if there's some tragedy that unfolds, people start jumping up and down and screaming, oh, the government's trying to kill us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, whatever happened to the most logical thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The logical thing is that the airplanes were hijacked.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That they did plow into the buildings.
		That it wasn't missiles.
		It seemed to me to be airplanes.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's what happened.
		And since we've been going after Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and to some degree even in Iraq now, I suppose.
		And that's the truth of it.
		So it's not more complicated than that.
		It's not a plot hatched out of the White House of the CIA.
		And the moment you say something that has a fair amount of logic like that, an Occam's razor-like thing, it's unbelievable.
unidentified		Anyway.
		Yes, there are burning art bell effigies out in the street.
		How dare you admit that there might be another way of looking at things?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I tried to point out last night that any number of individuals had their shot on this show for hour after hour after hour on the other side of the question, but dare speak one word on this side of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And these people who are screeching about openness just become, I don't know, they turn red and they hold their breath.
unidentified		Yeah, it's a case of open mouth and closed mind, I believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have a good morning, sir.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		You too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Hey, this is Wayne in San Antonio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Wayne.
unidentified		First of all, I do think that you and George put on a great, great show, and it's nice to have something out there that us insomniacs can be entertained with.
		And what I want to get to is my friend and I are really avid lovers of conspiracies and of supernatural phenomena.
		And we both have a crux for the Jersey Devil.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, the Jersey Devil.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
		And what we really are looking forward to is eventually when we can get up the funds for it, we're going to go to the Pine Barrens and basically just set up as much surveillance stuff and do as much as we can to at least get some evidence on this.
		And I was just thinking, we've done a lot of research on it, too, so we know what's the best thing to do.
		And apparently, from what the Mayans tell us, something bad is going to happen in 2012.
		I don't think the world's going to end, but I think there might be something.
		And we do know the Jersey Devil usually appears before a natural disaster, if it's real.
		So I was thinking, what do you suggest we should take?
		Do you think we should go with tranquilizers or just photogra cameras and stuff?
		Or do you think we should go before 2012?
		Or do you think we should just head out as soon as we get the chance?
		And what do you think about the Jersey Devil?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think he would make a tasty morsel.
		I don't know, sir.
		I mean, these decisions are up to you.
		I would be the last person to advise you to go out and hunt monsters.
		So if you want to go out and hunt monsters, have at it.
		And if it's sport for you, make sure you take care of it before 2012.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, Eric.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, I wanted to ask you if you've ever heard of this crash at Roswell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course I've heard of it.
unidentified		Yeah, I know you heard of it.
unidentified		But I mean, whether you heard or not that they did autopsies of those guys.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the rumor.
unidentified		Yeah, well, they found that they had convolutions of the brain, which means advanced intelligence or old age.
		And they were three to four feet high.
		And blue eyes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where did you get all this?
unidentified		Well, there was a guy that was on Kissim radio station, K-I-S-N, from Harland.
		Yes.
		This was back in 1974, I think it was in June.
		I sent for the documentary, and so I've got a copy of it here.
		I should make a copy of it and send it to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, please do.
unidentified		Yeah, but anyway, I live for the weekend here, Yard, and you just keep me awake all night.
unidentified		I wish you'd get on a couple more nights a week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Two nights is fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		You have a good day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you as well, thank you.
		You're on the Air Coast Skills Day Ammo with Art Bell.
		Where are you calling from, please?
unidentified		Well, it's Tremaine here, calling from Power River, B.C. Up in British Columbia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And your first name?
unidentified		Oh, Tremeen here, T-R-E-M-E-I-N.
unidentified		I want to thank you, first of all, for letting me on when Sir Charles was on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you're very welcome.
unidentified		And I remember that had to do with time, and actually it had to do with the spaceship going at this light speed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Which really has something to do with time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it does.
unidentified		I mean, you know, I called about three times on that, and finally I got my answer.
		I read something in Scientific American and was possible that where you have some, you know, you have some solar batteries and solar power that you can get it up to that speed.
		He confirmed it, eh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, in a way, yes.
		In other words, any propulsion system in space, even an ion generator, right, is eventually going to get something up near the speed of sound.
		What, of course, is going to be most interesting is to see whether the speed of sound ultimately can be exceeded.
		But any sort of, even fairly minor but constant propulsion system is going to continue to build the velocity of the craft that it's propelling.
		First time call our line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
unidentified		This is Roger near Fort Wayne.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Roger.
unidentified		And I'm not a trained scientist, but like a lot of your listeners, I'm very interested in science and technology, and I've got a theory about what happened to the water on Mars.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
unidentified		And I think it, From what I understand, there is little or no volcanic activity on Mars.
unidentified		Am I correct about that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not answering quickly because I'm not sure the last word on that is in.
		There's no real obvious volcanic current activity going on.
		That would be fair to say, I guess.
unidentified		Well, that seems to tell me that Mars, the core of Mars, would be colder than the core of Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess that would be logical.
unidentified		And since water seeks the lowest level because of gravity, on Earth, the only reason that the oceans haven't sank below the surface here on Earth is because we have a hot core.
		And when the water seeps down through the fissures and the cracks in the Earth's surface, it's forced back up by the heat from the core of the Earth.
		It can never sink.
		It can never actually reach the lowest level because of the heat from the core of the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a pretty interesting and, I don't know, fairly logical theory, I guess.
unidentified		And on Mars, I think the core is cold or cold enough to allow the ocean to sink through the cracks and the fissures in the surface down below the surface.
unidentified		I think all the water is still there, but it's below the surface because the core is cold and it allows the water to sink below the surface.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think that's a pretty cool theory myself.
unidentified		And so, hmm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you do have to wonder about it a little bit, right?
		We have our plentiful oceans on the world covering more land than not.
		And none of it has dribbled on down into the center, right?
		That's what he's saying.
		That Mars, with a cold center, would have allowed that to occur, so all of the water is underground on Mars.
		Well, we've got spacecraft investigating all of that, and I suppose eventually, perhaps sooner than later, we'll know if such a theory could be.
		And you never know.
		It could be.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, turn your radio off, please.
unidentified		Yes, certainly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's very important.
unidentified		Oh, hello.
		Hello.
		Is that Belle?
		Yes.
		Wow, I can't believe I got you.
		My name is Elizabeth.
		I'm from British Columbia.
		Yes.
		Yeah, I don't have to vote in your elections, but I do take an interest.
		I always have an interest in politics since I was about 12.
		So, I mean, one thing about George Bush, I noticed I do look at people a lot, and I've had a number, and I always thought George Bush had a very honest look about him, more than most people.
		I can't believe what people are thinking about him and saying about him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
unidentified		And I like you so much.
		I mean, I'll get through to you again, but I want to say that I love you because you're so honest, and you search for the truth.
		It's obvious the way you talk and you think.
		And I want to say one thing.
		People have said in the past that Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein didn't know each other.
		And I read after the attack, 911 attack, I was reading about bin Laden in the Canadian newspaper.
		I forgot the name of it now, but anyway, it said that he lived in Iraq from 1996 to 1998 and that Saddam Hussein, this is before I ever heard of anything going, there was no point, no talk of Iraq at the time.
		But it said he lived in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein taught him how to dig underground, to live underground.
		I remember reading that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's certainly where they finally found Sodom, right?
		Remember that?
		Pretty pathetic.
		Was in a hole, a very small hole in the ground, kind of vertically holding himself up in there.
		Pretty pathetic, huh?
		For the guy with a giant war machine.
		That's the way he ended up.
		Now he awaits trial, they're putting that off.
		East of the Rockies, you're on air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello, Art.
		Hi.
		This is Mike.
		I'm calling from Virginia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Mike.
unidentified		I just like the way you take your stand on this thing, and I have a feeling that most of the people that have this conspiracy theory probably never spent a minute in a different country.
		But what I do have a little question for you is, I think Big Brother hiccuped on 9-11.
		I'm not really sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My internet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The world hiccuped on 9-11, sir.
unidentified		No.
		Well, exactly.
		But one strange thing did happen to me.
		My internet dialed up by itself.
		And I was just wondering if anyone else out there had that happen to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		Maybe the world government wanted you online for some reason.
		Yeah, take a look at this headline.
		I mean, this is really the kind of crap that I'm talking about.
		I'm willing to buy and think about some things.
		And, you know, almost every president that's come along has been accused of something horrible.
		And this, I guess, is no exception, but it doesn't make it any more palatable or any better journalism of any sort.
		Government Insider says Bush authorized 9-11 attacks.
unidentified		Give me a break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Oh, boy, am I glad I got through finally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, here you are.
unidentified		Okay.
		My name is Gene.
		It was last year I had called you about an alien dead body I found on Mars in the city square.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now how would you find anything on Mars?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, by remote viewing it.
unidentified		Yeah, the pictures that are on the computer on Richard Hogland's page.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I remember, yes.
unidentified		Yeah, and I sent them to him.
unidentified		And if you were to get it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did he react?
unidentified		Beg pardon?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did he react?
unidentified		Well, I haven't heard from Mike Barr.
		Uh-huh.
		All the pictures of things that I had found.
		And I like to find out if I'm really right in what I have found, that alien dead body, in the city square.
		Or if it's a statue.
		It could be a statue that had fallen over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, sir.
		I wouldn't have any way of confirming for you, of course, what it is or isn't.
		That would be up to Richard Hoagland.
		So you're going to have to await a reply from him.
		But I can assure you that if what you sent Richard actually looked like an alien dead body, he'd be hot on the case, would be my guess.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
		I didn't push the button.
		Now you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
unidentified		John from Boise, Idaho.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, John.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Wow, I'm so amazed I get through.
		You're awesome mark.
		I just wanted to make the comment on last night's show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		It really doesn't really matter how it happened or who was behind it.
		It happened.
		And the American people, we're the ones that get the shortage of the sticks, the law-abiding American citizens.
		Every time I turn around, there's a new federal agency in our state restricting our freedoms.
		You can't even walk to a federal building without five armed guards and a movie camera and a metal detector.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the truth.
unidentified		So it's like it reminds me reminiscent of before World War II in Germany.
		Homeland Security, your papers, please.
		It's very scary what's happening.
		No matter who's behind it, that's exactly what the end result is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that means to some degree, see, that they win.
		The terrorists win.
		If they turn America into a police state, if they cause us to revise our own Bill of Rights and Constitution and remove the freedoms that were inculcated as a result of it, then they've won.
		So that's one thing we have to be very wary of.
		Wild, Carline, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		My name is David from Los Angeles.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm okay, David.
unidentified		I just want to say hello to all alien shifters out there and invite all the others to join our group.
unidentified		Alien Shift is a proactive group.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's a big plug for Alien Shift, whatever that is.
unidentified		Well, we are one of the groups.
unidentified		We are trying to contact different races of aliens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		Well, I wish you luck, and I'm sure people can research you on the web.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, this is Jesse in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I was wondering, what is the name of that song and where is it from?
unidentified		That goes, One Velvet Morning When I'm Straight, I'm going to open up your gate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's called One Velvet Morning by Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra.
unidentified		Lee Hazelwood?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And Nancy Sinatra.
unidentified		Oh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I've never heard it before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously you have, or you couldn't have sung me a line from it.
		Thank you.
		Welcome to the Rockies.
		You're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
		Yes?
		Yeah.
		I was thinking.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Always good.
unidentified		Yeah, a good thing to do.
		People with these conspiracy theories, I think one of the problems is they believe the United States is all-powerful.
		And when we were hit, it made them fearful because suddenly they realized we weren't all-powerful unless we did it to ourselves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess I'm getting a little sick of the bash America first mentality out there.
unidentified		Yeah, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm getting sick of it.
		You know, America wrong always.
		America bad always.
		American presidents, murderers.
		It's getting a little rough out there.
unidentified		Yeah, these people, one of your other people I called in, said they haven't lived in other countries.
unidentified		And when you've lived in another country and you've seen how things are, you realize that this isn't a bad country at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you could not be more correct.
		I've spent a very great deal of time outside the country in a lot of third world countries.
		And people here don't have a clue how well they have it.
unidentified		Not a clue at all.
unidentified		Well, thank you, Art, and keep up the good work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, thank you very much for the call.
		And by the way, coming up in a moment, in a very few moments, is Robert Zimmerman, who wrote, among other things, a book called Leaving Earth.
		Something we may have to do sooner or later, some of us, perhaps a little bit sooner.
		That's Robert Zimmerman and Leaving Earth, space stations, rival superpowers, and the quest for interplanetary travel.
unidentified		Let's rock.
		Be it sun, sand, smell, or touch, the something inside that we need so much.
		The sight of a touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak leaves deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
		Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
		To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing.
		To have all these things in our memories all.
		And they use them to come to us.
		To fight.
		Yeah.
		To fight.
		To fight that she's old.
		Take this place.
		All that strength.
		Just go me.
		To fight.
		Take a pillow.
		Take my heart.
		I've got to see.
		It's for free.
		Want to take a ride?
		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.
		To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll-free 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is.
		Good morning, everybody.
		You're in the right place for a ride, all right?
		Coming up in a moment, Robert Zimmer.
		He's an award-winning space historian, writing articles and books on issues of science, history, technology, and culture.
		He also writes a weekly column on the aerospace industry called Space Watch for United Press International.
		That's prestigious.
		His most recent book, Leaving Earth, Space Days.
		Hello, Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel was awarded the Eugene M. Emmy Award by the American Astronautical Society for the Best Popular Space History in 2003.
		In 2000, he was co-winner of the David N. Schram Award given by the High Energy Astrophysic Division of the American Astronomical Society for Science Journalism.
		In a moment, Robert Zimmerman.
		All right, here is a space historian, Robert Zimmerman.
		Welcome to the program.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Aud, I'm very glad to be back.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Every time it's been a pleasure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's good to have you.
		As a space historian, Robert, how are we doing?
		When you look at the history of the world's venture into space, I'm talking about the really big picture here.
		How are we doing?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, I think we're about to finally, without equivocation, in fact, without anything able to stop it, we're about to start the real grand adventure of settling and colonizing the solar system.
		All the pieces are in place.
		The gears are beginning to build up.
		The momentum is beginning to build real strong.
		Not just in the United States, but across the world.
		I mean, big picture, China is now the third country to put humans in space.
		Come this fall, September or so, they're going to do a second-manned mission, they say.
		And I have no reason not to believe them.
		Two-manned mission for at least five days.
		And the truth, right now, they have the best manned space capsule of any nation, because we don't have anything, and the Russians is not as good as this.
		Russia, just last week, said they're going to try to do a flyby of Mars by 2014.
		And based on what I wrote about in Leaving Earth, they have all the pieces in place.
		They understand how to do it.
		Much better than Mars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why do a flyby of Mars?
		I mean, it's going to take a long time and a lot of resources to get to Mars.
		Arguably, in a flyby, they're not going to gather any more information, certainly, than our photographic robots and or our little creepy crawlies have gathered by flying by Mars.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You see, you have to distinguish between two forms of knowledge, the robots and a landing.
		If your goal is just scientific knowledge, then you're right.
		They won't be gaining much knowledge.
		But if your goal is the engineering knowledge necessary to learn how to settle the solar system, travel to other planets, then a flyby is priceless because it teaches you how to live in space long enough to get from one point to another.
		Not just how to live there, but how to build a vessel that can keep you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that the Russians and previously the Soviets had learned so much about how to keep people in orbit in weightlessness for extended periods of time that they're ready to get away with it?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're not quite ready, and they admit it, but they are far closer than anybody else.
		I mean, they've done the research to do long-term missions.
		they have four people who spent more than a year in space already and they have the medical data to see what the consequences are.
		And on top of that, Oh, there are definitely consequences.
		I mean, I talk about that at great length.
		You've got the bone density issue.
		You lose about one half a percent of bone density per month.
		But the Russians are very convinced that with certain medicine and exercise, they can keep that loss of bone density in the weight-bearing bones to that rate, if not less.
		And they have missions to prove it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or come up with artificial gravity.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but they're not going to go for that initially.
		When they built Mir, Mir was basically an interplanetary spaceship that could get you on a flyby to Mars.
		It was built with that in mind.
		And the only thing it lacked was the engines and the navigational, well, the engines mostly to get it on a flyby mission.
		Now, they were planning to build what they called Mir 2, and they wanted originally, the Soviet Union planned to launch it in the early 90s.
		They ran out of money.
		The Soviet Union fell apart.
		But Mir 2 is in orbit right now because they got the United States to pay them for their half of most of their half of the International Space Station.
		And the actual hull of Mir 2 is what they used for the habitation module, Zezda, that's in orbit right now.
unidentified		And their half of the International Space Station is going to be Mir 2.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And the original plans with Mir 2, and they haven't changed from those plans, was to upgrade Mir to a level where you could add the engines and use it as an interplanetary spaceship.
		That's their plan.
		And they have said they're going to complete their half of the International Space Station by 2010.
		And they're making it self-contained, their half.
		They could detach it from our house and it would still function.
		So 2014, for them to do a flyby, it's possible.
		It might not happen, but it is definitely a possibility.
		And in that grand picture of this great, the larger picture of the grand adventure, that's exciting.
		Plus, you have Japan is reassessing its space program because it wants to compete with China.
		You have the Indian.
		India is aggressively, in the last year, decided it wants to have its own very successful space program.
		And they have a good space program right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're upgrading it.
		The only thing that seems to get us to do things in space is competitiveness.
		That got us to the moon.
		We were competitive then.
		And now maybe there's a little more competition building, as you just articulated, and maybe that'll get someone somewhere.
		Otherwise, we don't seem to go, unless it's Like we're going to beat the other guy.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's the only way it works.
		Cooperation doesn't do anything.
		It slows things down and things become bloated and not very effective, as is in the International Space Station.
		And you actually end up building up friction between people and hostilities and resentments because people are trying to work together and neither is getting anything accomplished.
		But competition, peaceful competition, such as capitalism, really gets the engines fired.
		And you could see that with the X Prize last year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that was cool.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it was so cool.
		And it was exactly the right thing.
		And it's being followed up now with Bigelow's America's Prize, which is going to demand an orbital mission by the end of this decade.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you know what else Bigelow's doing, by the way?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You mean his space habitat?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Bigelow Aerospace.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, he's got lots of stuff.
		He doesn't want to be the man to put people in orbit.
		I mean, to launch them into orbit.
		He's looking for someone else to do that.
		But he absolutely wants to have hotels in his own.
		He's going to do it.
		He's going to do it.
		I mean, I've talked to his company and the people that work for him.
		They've got the habitat, the modules actually built.
		They've got a small-scale model ready to launch almost.
		All they need is a cheap launch facility.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know they've come a very long way more than the American people know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm friends with Robert, and so I know quite a bit about it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, you know, you actually might have more information than me.
		I do know this, that they're serious, and they're not alone in this.
		You know, I've seen and looked into Elon Musk's Falcon rocket.
		This is the guy who did PayPal and sold it to eBay for a billion plus.
		And he's now going into the rocket industry.
		And in the next year or so, he wants to capture the rocket industry back from the Russians.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then there's Gene Myers, Space Island Group.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		you know about them there's a so there are a number of it I was giving you the other nations, the international political end.
		The European Space Agent wants to do it.
		But I hadn't even gotten, you know, we segregated into the private end, which is actually much more exciting.
		And then you've got NASA and Georgia Bush's proposal to return to the moon.
		What Bush has done, and we talked about this last year, he has put focus into NASA that has not existed for 30 years.
		And in that sense, it's a really good thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was fortunate to have lived during the years when we had the promise that we were going to go to the moon.
		And it brought America together in a way that I haven't seen America together since.
		Perhaps in the days immediately following 9-11, in a way we were together and now look at us.
		But really, we need that large national goal.
		We need something bigger than ourselves to pursue.
		And you're very optimistic as a historian.
		For me, I look at it and I think, gee, we did that and then we sort of stopped.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Now, if you're talking about the actual program that Kennedy did and how it makes, from experience, it would make you skeptical of whether Bush's proposal can accomplish anything long-term.
		I respect that skepticism.
		In fact, I've written on my UPI column extensively about how I have, there are doubts about whether NASA can pull this off.
		However, I do repeat, his proposal is unusual in that it, unlike Kennedy's or any other president's, it is the first thoughtful, long-term, open-ended proposal that is carefully worked out, that is incremental in growth, that doesn't have any particular one-stunt achievement that then ends things.
		It's open-ended.
		As Bush said, this is not a goal, but a journey.
		And that's the right idea.
		So from that respect, it's a good thing.
		And I sound like I'm a NASA lover here, and people who read my stuff, I have a lot of problems with NASA, and I have a great deal of doubts whether NASA can pull this off.
		I think it's very likely the private American industry come 2010 will be in a position to kind of like wave goodbye to NASA as they head off to the moon.
		I hope that's the case.
		But once again, this is just that longer vision.
		And your first question on, if you look at all these factors, I wrote a column in which I compared the response.
		George Bush Sr. in 1989 made an almost identical proposal to his son.
		And his proposal hit the ground like a lead balloon.
		In fact, it just vanished in less than a month from any discussion, never even got anywhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that occurred?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		The political atmosphere at the time was just not into it.
		Of course, you had a Democratic Congress, which Democrats generally oppose this kind of spending, and that's their political position.
		Today, you have a very different atmosphere, and it's not just that there's a Republican Congress, I think it's the nation itself, even among scientists.
		Scientists have, since the 70s, opposed generally manned space exploration.
		They think it robs their unmanned research stuff.
		That's right.
		That's changing.
		I have looked into, I've talked to a lot of astronomers and a lot of scientists, and there's still that knee-jerk opposition.
		Here I get a lot of guys in Ground who say to me, well, you know, we're curious.
		Maybe this is not a bad thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Give me your best argument for why we need men in space at all.
		I mean, there are many who are arguing, as you just pointed out, we don't need men in space.
		The machines can do it faster, cheaper, more efficiently.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, they can't.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, they cannot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Give me your best argument.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can give you a hundred arguments.
		First of all, they don't do it more cheaply.
		They're efficient and good scouts.
		But the bottom line is, why should they have all the fun?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The machines?
unidentified		Yeah.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you said it yourself, we have to have dreams greater than ourselves.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I said exactly those same words in Leaving the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We do.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And that's the reason to send humans.
		Now, I'll give you a more pragmatic reason.
		Scientists today are worried that the man program is going to rob the science research, which means you won't get the science students into the program, and you'll lose a whole generation.
		They say this over and over again.
		They haven't lost that generation for decades.
		In terms of science education and new scientists, America is booming.
		But what you do have in the United States, because we haven't pursued the engineering knowledge I mentioned earlier with going to Mars, we have had a terrible gap in engineers now for the last 15 years.
		There's a terrible deficit in that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, I don't talk to any young people who say, I want to be a rocket scientist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't hear that.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		don't have it anymore, but they don't have what they...
		But they don't have manned space exploration and the engineering innovativeness that makes people excited about becoming a rocket scientist.
		Well, if you shift to the manned program, you bring that back.
		And the truth is the scientists cannot do any of their work without the engineers.
		The engineers have to come first.
		And though the scientists say we need the scientists, they have tend to be a little short-sighted about the need for engineers.
		And this is one of the things I've noticed.
		It's changing.
		They're beginning to recognize that maybe they shouldn't be so focused on just their own needs, that there's a grander, wider vision necessary to explore things.
		So once again, I see we're about to, you know, and then the robots that are bringing back data are just invigorating the whole world, the whole world.
		And so, no, I'm extremely optimistic about the next few decades.
		Whether it'll be Americans first, I don't know.
		But the competition is absolutely gearing up, and it's a great thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can tell you this.
		If it's the Chinese first, then America will get off its duff.
		Kind of like when it saw Sputnik.
		When it heard Sputnik, we all went, oh my God, they've done it.
		We've got to get going.
		And that could happen again.
		And China could be the one that would get us there.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		China might be.
		I think it's more likely it'll be the Russians to surprise us just because they have the knowledge and the experience and the infrastructure ready to go.
		But it doesn't mean it won't be the Chinese.
		I've said this story on Coast to Coast before, but I want to reiterate it for Americans to know.
		We see this wonderful picture of the Apollo 11 landing site with the American flag standing there.
		What most Americans do not know is that flag is not standing there.
		It hasn't been standing there since 1969 when they took off their exhaust from the LEM ascent module, knocked it over.
		And the American flag lies on the ground.
		And what most Americans have to accept, and I'm giving the American perspective here, even though there's a lot of non-Americans listening, is that when foreigners finally show up to take pictures as tourist astronauts, they aren't going to pick the flag up.
		And I think we have an obligation just as a nation to have a greater vision and to pick that flag up again.
		And I think it's really beginning to gear up.
		If it's not going to be NASA, it's going to be private enterprise.
		You know, I can give you a quick historical analogy because my original historical background is actually early American history.
		And Britain is a great analogy to this.
		In the early 1570s, now I'm going to drop the century number.
		In the early 70s, they sent a colony to try to establish Roanoke.
		It failed.
		And they kind of lost interest through the 80s, through the 90s, through the odds.
		And then around 07, they said, you know, we can do this.
		We want to compete with other countries like Spain.
		Let's set up a new set of colonies.
		So they went in 07 to Jamestown.
		And in 20, they went to the Plymouth Rock.
		And boom, it happened.
		So in terms of human generational development, it's very comparable.
		We had it in 1969 going to the moon in the 70s.
		We kind of lost interest for a few decades.
		And now we're into the arts again.
		And we're saying, hey, we want to do this.
		And I think we're about to gear up to a really grand adventure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're an excited guy, kind of like the Tony Robbins of space.
		You know, maybe we need to get you testifying in front of some senator somewhere.
		And I can almost picture the senator saying, well, Mr. Zimmerman, look, we've got people in America playing devil's advocate here.
		They're hungry.
		And we've got 5%, 6% of people or better out of jobs.
		And you want to spend money to send men back to the moon or to Mars for what?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you this.
		They don't put the cash in a capsule and launch it into space to burn up every penny spent on Earth.
		So a person who is starving but has ambitions to dream greater dreams has a potential to work in that industry and create great things.
		So rather than whine about their starvation, we can give them a dream that will make them great.
		That would be my short answer, and I could go on now, as you know, for many hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Zenwinning, senators do not whine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They orate.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, they whine.
		I go to congressional hearings all the time, and a lot of them really like to wine.
		No, even that's changing.
		I heard a congressman actually say a few days ago, about a week and a half ago, that a NASA administrator said, we want to have absolute safety in launching the shuttle.
		And this guy took him to task.
		He said, this congressman said, Vernon Ehrlers, actually, this is a congressman.
		He actually said, you cannot have absolute safety.
		Your safety record is something to be proud of at NASA, but you will never have absolute safety.
		And if you want absolute safety, you're never going to go back in space.
		And I think that's a terrible approach to this.
unidentified		You should instead accept the fact that people are going to die.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you want absolute safety, you're not going to get on an airliner.
		You know, you're talking about the shuttle.
		I do want to talk to you about the shuttle.
		I think Americans are pretty curious about the shuttle.
unidentified		Is it getting too old?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		The shuttle, it was time to replace the shuttle, oh, I'd say about 1990.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		The shuttle is one of the most brilliantly designed, first-generation, first reusable prototype spaceship.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		If you, you know, you build a reusable spaceship, it's a first design, you figure out what works and what doesn't, then, hey, let's turn it around and build a new version that's even better.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Hold on.
		We're at the bottom there.
		He's exactly right.
		That's what the shuttle was.
		So serviceable.
		Kind of like the B-50 tune.
		It's time.
		My God, what a bomber.
		What a bomber.
		What a whale of a bomber.
		And the shuttle was great, but folks, it's time we moved on to something else.
		Past time we moved on to something else.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Mississippi in the middle of the dry spell.
		Tim and Roger on the victro up high.
		Mama's dancing, baby on her shoulder.
		It's time to set my molasses in the sky.
		The rocket's sending me when I had a moon.
		Everything.
		Always wanting more.
		We'll be longing for.
		Black fell and I live on.
		This is a production of WGBH.
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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		To talk with Art Bell from East to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And this night with Robert Zimmerman, who is a space historian.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're kind of touching on the shuttle right now, and I'm going to resume with that, and then we're going to talk a little bit about Hubble.
unidentified		lot of congress dot holland whether it's going to stay up there or deep orbit and burned to a cinder and and and All right, Robert, let's talk about the shuttle a bit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everybody, I think, agrees it is old and not what it once was.
		And we would all hope that we're working on or have the next generation all set to go.
		Where are we?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would say we don't have the next generation set to go, and we're very far away from that.
		When Bush made his proposal last January, he said we should retire the shuttle by the end of this decade.
		And he proposed replacing the shuttle with a manned vehicle he called the crew exploration vehicle.
		And that vehicle would be a modulus setup.
		It wouldn't just be one vehicle.
		It would be modulus, cargo in separate modules, additional modules to attach to a capsule so that you can extend its capability.
		That was just a very, very basic concept.
		And NASA spent the last year working up what they call a request for proposals, which they put out on the street on March 1st, about, what is it, last week.
		And that request for proposals is basically asking industry companies, and the industry company, industry, airspace industry, a whole range of companies were involved in working up that RFP request proposal for proposals.
		So the RFP went on the street, and now they're asking by early summer, they want to make a decision.
		They want to get proposals in from all these different companies on what they envision the crew exploration vehicle will look like.
		And what NASA's plan is is to reward two contracts, two contracts, sometime in September to two different companies to build a prototype and fly it unmanned by 2008.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We have the money for this.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a good question.
		I'm now just giving you the plan.
		I can get into the money in a minute, but at least let's set the framework for everybody so that you know what's hopefully going to happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, design and fly.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Design and fly.
		And what they're doing is the guy in charge of the exploration department at NASA is a guy named Admiral Chuck Seidel.
		And he came out of the military and was involved in the Joint Strike Fighter Program.
		The Defense Department was not very happy with the kind of results they were getting for their procurement contracts.
		They needed new jets, and they weren't getting them.
		They'd give out the proposals.
		The winner would get the contract, build something that wasn't very good or useful, but they'd been paid anyway.
		So they started to come up with this idea of having flyoffs, having two competitive companies compete for the contract, and then they do a prototype, and then they pick the company they like best.
		And that increased the chances of success.
		And actually for the military, it's been reasonably successful.
		There's a lot of criticisms you can make about it, and it's, once again, government program and bloated, but it's worked.
		So NASA has brought people in from that military end, and they're starting to copy that.
		So they're going to have a fly-off in 08, and that will be exciting in itself.
		And then the plan is that the winner that fly-off will then build and fly a manned mission by 2014.
		Now, having laid that out, I can lay out several projects to that framework.
unidentified		One, where's the money?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose the expectation there is that private industry supplies the money to come up with the winning prototype, right?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, actually not.
		Congress will be, NASA will be paying them money periodically as the contracts unfold.
		But this way because it's competitive and they both want to get the full or long-term contract, NASA's more likely to get a successful vehicle flown in 08 rather than something like the X-33 where NASA spent more than a billion dollars and given it to Lockheed Martin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it's got to be taxpayer money.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's got to be taxpayer money.
		This plan is taxpayer money.
		Now will we get taxpayer money?
		Congress is not sure they're going to do it.
		The concept that NASA's got is that it won't cost a lot more money.
		It won't have to increase NASA's budget gigantically because they're going to phase the shuttle out by 2010.
		So as they ramp up the crew exploration vehicle, the CEV, they'll be ramping down the shuttle.
		That's part of their thinking.
		Now, there is some logic to that, but I'm skeptical.
		I have to admit, I'm very skeptical that's going to actually happen, partly because the shuttle has to finish the International Space Station for a lot of reasons.
		That's one question mark.
		Will the money be there?
		And Congress has been skeptical.
		There's no doubt about that.
		The second aspect that makes this whole program somewhat of a problem is that the International Space Station is going to be assembled by 2010, and then we have tired the shuttle.
		And then what?
		And then this crew exploration vehicle, the CEV, doesn't fly manned until 2014.
		Well, from 2010 to 2014, how are we going to get humans to our own space station?
		According to them, that's a question that NASA has not clarified yet at this moment in time.
		We cannot go to the Russians because the Iran Proliferation Treaty outlaws paying Russians any money for this kind of technology until they certify they will not provide nuclear weaponry or nuclear technology to Iran.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of fact, they just made a deal with Iran.
unidentified		Yes, we did.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		So they're refusing to do it.
		And Congress and Congressman Bollard, who runs the House Science Committee, said at a recent hearing, he said, look, I have to tell you, I consider whether we get blown up much more important than NASA's budget.
		And so they can't go to the Russians.
		So how do we get out?
		So that's another gap in this plan, without question.
		It is possible they could accelerate the program of the CEV.
		It's very drawn out.
		I mean, they fly a prototype in 08, and they don't fly a manned mission until six years later.
		And I always go back to the American Gemini program in the 60s.
		They realized they needed a mid-program between the Mercury and the Apollo program.
		So they decided in late 1961 that they're going to create a third mid-ground program called Gemini in late 61, and they were flying their first mission in 1965, less than five, four years.
		That's pretty amazing, and that's a lot shorter than six years after you built your first prototype.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, those were amazing times, Robert.
		I'm not sure there is amazing now in that sense.
		We don't have that kind of drive, even though I feel it, and I feel that the world, this country certainly needs it.
		I'm not sure if we have it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, the we there is very important to distinguish because what you're really referring to is where the NASA and the government has it.
		That's right.
		And what Burt Rutan and Scale Composites and the XPRIZE proved is that Americans, there are Americans that have that, and there are Americans that are enthused by it, and it can happen very fast in other places.
		Now, NASA might get its act together.
		I'm not going to say they won't, but there are questions in my mind.
		Now, we've been talking about the next generation, the shuttle's replacement.
		We haven't talked about the shuttle itself.
		The shuttle will fly.
		It's scheduled now on May 15th for a return to flight.
		And I think it's really short-sighted to just dismiss this technology.
		It is available.
		It is a very useful spacecraft.
		Even if you retire it around 2010, that doesn't mean you...
		It's absurd.
		These space vehicles should be used either as a heavy lift module that goes into orbit and is permanently there for use, or as the engines and the solid rocket boosters in the external tank can be combined to create a completely new module that can go up to the International Space Station, or even be used, and we'll talk about Hubble later, be used as a way to make a mission to Hubble safer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the history, though, Robert, isn't good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you recall what happened to the monstrous engines that got us to the moon, when we decided to abandon all of that so quickly, I think they just rusted, didn't they?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		You're absolutely correct.
		And this is the concern I have about it's a government program.
		They don't think in terms of efficiency and practicality.
		I mean, you know, there is a completely, for example, with Hubble, they ground two mirrors when they were building Hubble.
		One of those mirrors, this is incredible.
		The mirror is, granted, the mirror in Hubble was slightly off, but they corrected that.
		But the second mirror is probably not off.
		It sits at the Air and Space Museum in Washington to gaze at.
		That's an incredible investment that should be used as a telescope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk about Hubble.
		Now, I want to know the current status.
		There's a lot of talk out there that they're going to let it deorbit and burn to a cinder.
		Others have said no.
		We're going to save it or should save it.
		What is your position on Hubble?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I can probably go an hour on the subject.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, I could probably do a whole show with you on the subject of Hubble.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we won't do that.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		But I can give you some basics.
		One, the scientific community decided back in the late 90s that they did not need an optical telescope to replace the Hubble Space Telescope.
		They decided that the next generation telescope, the James Webb telescope, would be an infrared telescope so they could do deep space cosmology.
		And so I want to put to rest right now anyone on your show that ever says, well, they'll get the James Webb telescope and that'll replace Hubble.
		They are lying.
		It is not an optical telescope, and it has no optical, it does not work in the optical spectrum, so it does not provide you optical pictures of space objects.
		It gives you infrared pictures.
		Now, infrared is good, but you know, to do good research, you need the whole electromagnetic spectrum.
		And Hubble gives you a very wide range from the ultraviolet to the infrared, and then other telescopes supplement that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're saying we still need Hubble?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		We, until, it says, I'm not a Hubble hugger, we can replace it.
		I would very gladly let Hubble fall into the ocean at the right time when we have something to replace it.
		We have nothing at the moment to replace it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got a little story here sent to me.
		It says, a new Hubble.
		Question mark.
		While Congress appears to be scrapping the funding for a costly manned or even robotic repair mission for the Hubble telescope, a new option has arisen, dubbed the Third Way.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I've heard that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Hubble Origins probe pictured, and they've got a picture of a proposed lightweight space telescope developed by an international team led by John Hopkins University astronomers, supposedly with instruments that would have been the fourth Hubble servicing mission, all the new instruments with Japanese collaborators, blah, blah, blah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that true?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They have made this proposal.
		It is a much more expensive and less capable instrument that could not get launched very quickly and probably there'd be a gap before it's launched and the Hubble that's in orbit right now fails.
		It is not...
		Every other solution will cost more, money that NASA does not have, and provide less capabilities.
		The robot mission, it steps out the window.
		By the way, what you were reading is incorrect.
		Congress has not scrapped money for Hubble.
		In fact, Congress has allocated in last year's budget that NASA is to spend $300 million on a rescue servicing mission of Hubble, and that money is still allocated, and Congress has audited.
		So NASA's saying we're not going to spend that money.
		They're not the ones that make the decision.
		NASA's the one that says we want to drop any spending for servicing of Hubble.
		That budget hasn't been approved yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why is NASA making that decision?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Fear.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fear of.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Fear of failure, of astronauts dying.
		You see, that NASA administrator right now, the acting NASA administrator is a man by Fred Gregory.
		He's a former astronaut.
		He was testifying in front of Congress, and he was the one who used these words, we want to have absolute safety when we launch our astronauts.
		And of course, it's absurd.
		You can't have absolute safety.
		And they have taken the attitude, they are fearful of the shuttle.
		They treat it like it's deathly, deathly to send men up in the shuttle.
		And it's an absurd thing.
		So a prototype first-generation reusable spaceship, the first ever built, they have an incredible safety record.
		They flew over 100 missions and lost 2.2.
		That's less than 2% failure rate.
		And I've said this on the air before, but I'll say it again.
		It bears repeating.
		The Clippership was the Everest of sailing ship technology.
		It was the end result of 5,000 years of evolutionary sailing ship design.
		It was a brilliant ship.
		They routinely lost 5% per year of all sailing ships, including the Clippership, when the Clippership was at its heyday.
		5% a year, and that was the ordinary loss rate for sailing ships.
unidentified		We lose a prototype spaceship, and we only lose 2%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a great safety rate.
		You wouldn't expect this kind of sentiment from NASA.
		I mean, its leader.
		I mean, NASA, after all, is a space agency.
		Who would better understand the risks and be prepared and willing to take them than all the people with the right stuff, you know?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, they don't have the right stuff.
		One thing is a government agency.
		The biggest problem NASA has right now, and this has to do with the CEV and Bush's proposal, is it often strikes me that they don't have the right stuff, that they are timid, that they are fearful, that they want to try to cover their behinds in every way possible to try to avoid anything going wrong.
		Now, granted, you do want to do that on this stuff.
		It's dangerous stuff, and you want to try to do as best as possible.
		But they sometimes take an attitude that prevents them from accomplishing anything.
		And this attitude in terms of Hubble is an example of that, because if you're going to go to the moon, back to the moon, how can you convince anyone that you're going to do it, including Congress, where they need the money, if you're afraid to send humans to Hubble?
		The risk is infinitely, not infinitely, I'm sorry.
		The risk for going to Hubble is much less.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, have they actually said that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That the reason they don't want to fix Hubble is because they're afraid.
unidentified		Yes.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, they say it's safety, though.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Is it say it's a safety?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes or no?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a yes?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		They have said it is safety.
		Yes, that they don't want to go.
		It's not safe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That it would be too dangerous a mission.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		They have said that repeatedly.
		In fact, in my most recent UPI column, I talked about this very specifically.
		When asked the question, they say, no, cost was not a factor, and it's true it's really not expensive to send a shuttle mission to Hubble.
		They've admitted, no, it's safety.
		The risk is too great.
		And if you analyze and toss out the actual risk of just sending a shuttle mission as they've done three times before, sorry, four times before, what you find is that the risk isn't really that great as it is.
		But they have not even looked into ways to reduce the risk for a shuttle mission, and there are ways that can be done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You do believe that's their real motive, fear.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Fear.
		Well, I think deep down, they want to cover their back hinds, and they don't want to take the extra risk of doing this.
		They also want to get the shuttle finished and not used anymore so that they can focus on the next generation.
		They also don't want to distract.
		They'd like to get rid of Hubble as well, by the way, because they see it as a big budgetary bite in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is the current exact status of Hubble?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it going to be allowed to re-enter and burn up, or is it going to be something else going to happen?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I can explain that in some technical detail, actually, without being boring.
		It has gyros, and it has right now, it has six gyros to begin with.
		One has completely failed.
		One is in safe mode, and they don't really trust it to work anymore.
		There's four left.
		They need three to do good science.
		They have tested and have actually done some tests that can do some science, reasonable science, with two gyros.
		Those gyros only have such a certain life expectancy.
		And they've done a lot of tests, and they've had a lot of experience with this already with the 15 years it's been up.
		They expect that they will be down to two or one gyro by end of 2007, almost certainly.
		The other problem is batteries.
		The batteries on Hubble, they have slowed, they're the most, they're the greatest, as one engineer told me in the Hubble control room, these are the greatest rechargeable batteries ever made.
		They've been recharging the Hubble in every orbit since 1990.
		So you're talking about tens of thousands of recharges.
		I can't even give you the number, and they work, but they're slowly to slow decline.
		And based on the decline, they think they're going to fail sometime.
		They originally used to say 08.
		Now they're beginning to say we might actually be able to stretch it to 09.
		They're really working that well.
		Now the gyros, if the gyros fail, you can't do science, but you can put the telescope in safe mode and bring it back to life.
		If the batteries fail, within 15 minutes, it becomes a pilot junk.
		Because they need to heat the structure of Hubble to keep it precise.
		Once the batteries are gone, they don't have the power to heat it, and basically the hot and cold of orbits would just tear it off the telescope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can the batteries be replaced?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, the plan in either a plan, if they sent a shuttle mission, they would either replace the batteries or they would bring new batteries up and attach them to the telescope, one or the other.
		And they've done...
		First, they've replaced batteries.
		One of the reasons that's proposed is that several instruments for Hubble already are sitting at the Goddess Space Flight set that's finished, ready to go, including a new camera and a new spectrograph.
		So those, an asteroid mission, can be quickly and easily installed in Hubble and improve the telescope immeasurably without losing its other capabilities.
		And in fact, tell the astronauts to even repair some of its other capabilities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Robert, hold it right there.
		We're at the top of the air and we'll be right back.
		We'll continue with the current Hubble trouble.
		Hubble's been troubled since it's been up there.
		Remember all the Hubble trouble headlines?
		Cute, huh?
		Anyway, to let it deorbit, to let it fail, or to get a replacement up, what do you think we ought to do?
		It's money out of your pocket, too, from the high desert in the middle of the night where we do biz.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Explanation is a colour.
		She doesn't give you time for questions As she locks up your arms And you follow to your sense Of which direction completely disappears By the blue-top walls near the market
		stalls There's a hint that she leads you to These days she says I feel my life Just like a river running through The year I was counting Standing around 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.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert Zimmerman is here.
		And by the way, his new book is Leaving Earth, Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel.
		It's dream stuff, or is it dream stuff?
		Is it something perhaps we ought to be doing right now?
unidentified		Oh!
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Reverence for the horn.
		Good morning, everybody.
		We'll get back to it in a moment.
unidentified		Music Oh, I tell you, there are some jewels out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Somebody calling himself Reggie says, hey, attention art.
		Young boys and girls are dying right now so that you can have fun in the desert.
		I think your mission to Mars is total BS.
unidentified		In fact, you are a real BS artist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Punk.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much of that kind of craziness do you run into, Robert?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Much less than in the past.
		You know, the people in Iraq are dying so that others can have the freedom to follow their dreams.
		But Ruth, and those that want to fly into space, have that dream.
		No one should stand in their way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they do.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they try.
		Well, you know, then they make no difference than Saddam Hussein as far as I'm concerned.
		Or the Soviets who stood in other people's way, but built walls through cities to keep families apart.
		Or the Nazis.
		I mean, freedom says you have the freedom to follow your dreams.
		And, all right, you know, the naysayers always exist.
		And let them be small-minded.
		You know, having dreams, going to Space is not denigrating the great things being done to free other people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If that's all we got, Robert, that would be great.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But the trouble is we've got a Congress that won't cut loose with the money, for the most part, for the kind of dream missions that you and I both wish for.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the other thing I notice in the change.
		Congress gave NASA everything it asked for last year, which was very easy.
		Now, there's a lot of details there which put crimps in what NASA wants to do.
unidentified		But nonetheless, they did give it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And this is starkly different than in the past, once again, when Brussels proposed his Mars thing.
		They didn't get anything.
		They got less than they proposed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it may be that they were told not to ask for much.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		In this case, maybe.
unidentified		It's possible.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		But there's a change in the air, and I look at that as optimism.
		You ask me how much I get of that kind of negative statement, and I repeat, I don't get it as much.
		What you get instead is excitement and enthusiasm.
		And I'm talking about from people who in the past I would have expected negative comments from.
		I don't get it as much.
		So I'm much more optimistic.
		I can't help it.
		That's who I am.
		What can I say?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, that's fine.
		All right.
		When do you think we might have the first private passenger in space?
		You know, a private firm taking somebody up to somebody's hotel or for a few days' ride or whatever.
		Of course, we've already sort of done that.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, the Russians, and they do have a private company, have kind of done it already.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, we had a big fight about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		But putting them aside, there are companies that have actually reserved, people have paid for and reserved tickets for flights, suborbital flights, sometime in the next three years.
		At least three companies.
		One is based out of Oklahoma called Rocket Plane.
		They have a very sweet tax deferment deal with the state of Oklahoma, and they have an airport to work out of, and they have operations, and they're building their plane.
		There's Burt Rutan Scale Composites that's putting together their deal with Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic to do it by 2008.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, that, too, was cool.
		I mean, the flight around the world without refueling.
		That was pretty exciting.
		I mean, we have these moments when people are so inspired.
		And at those moments, I guess we realize how much it means to us.
		But then that moment is gone, and whatever comes next is up in the news.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but you know, once again, these things are happening that they weren't happening for many years in the United States.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It was kind of like a dead period through the 70s and 80s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, it was.
unidentified		Yeah, it was.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And that's changed.
		They're happening.
		So I can name a bunch of companies that are very close.
		I think I'll give you a very long, I'll give you, this would be a very safe bet.
		I think it's an extremely safe bet.
		In fact, I'm willing to bet someone a lunch on it that by the end of the decade, 2010, we will have a private space orbital mission.
		I think it's pretty likely.
		So, you know, I, you know, how much of a lunch, you know, an expensive restaurant, $100 lunch if someone wants to bet me.
		But, you know, I'll pick my one way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hope you're right.
		I mean, is this going to turn into, are we more likely to have a space industry with hotels where for a medium kind of price eventually you'll be able to, I don't know, spend a weekend in orbit or a week in orbit or something like that.
		Enough rooms in space to accommodate something like that.
		Or are we going to have a real mission to Mars and or beyond?
		Which is more likely?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think the suborbital tourist things are actually much more likely than anything NASA's planning right now, as far as I'm concerned.
		Followed by the private orbital missions, I think are also much more likely than anything NASA's building right now.
		Because once again, these private missions, it's private enterprise.
		It's freedom.
		People put their money down voluntarily to do it if the company can demonstrate it has the ability to.
		And there's a very clear evidence of a market for the capability.
		And there's very clearly now evidence of the capability developing.
		So you put the two together, you don't have to negotiate with Congress about getting the money.
		The money is there, and it goes.
		So I think that, more than anything else, is increasingly likely.
		The bottom line, without question, is selling the first ticket.
		When is someone going to have the courage to say, okay, I take your money, I put you on the ship, and you put you in a suborbital flight?
		That hasn't happened yet.
		That's the bottom line.
		Someone's going to have to have the courage to bite the bullet, actually do it.
		Take the risk.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So all in all, though, you think we're likely to end up with some sort of space tourist industry long before we tackle the long flights?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, without question.
		You see, now the interesting thing about the space tourism industry, these private companies, they're doing it to make money.
		But they're also visionaries.
		They love space exploration.
		So what they're going to want to do is they're going to want to make a lot of money, but they're also going to plow that money back in to improve their capabilities, not only to make more money, but to be able to do more in space.
		And before you know it, they'll go to the moon because they can set up tourism.
		You know, I did a column a few weeks ago about the moon itself, where we go when we first go back.
		And we're likely to go back to some southern craters.
		And there are going to be robot missions over the next few years to actually study the moon very closely, to pinpoint landing sites.
		There are craters on the south part of the moon.
		It's a very unique place.
		There is evidence that there's hydrogen locked in some chemical in the bottoms of those craters in the south pole that never see sunlight.
		Probably that hydrogen is locked in water, ice, because there's no light that reaches those craters, bottom of those craters.
		But what's interesting about the place is that the rim of the craters are mountains that are in eternal sunlight.
		Because they are, once again, the high pole and the sun never sets.
		You've got a place where you've got 24-hour solar power with water nearby.
		So you can set up a base there relatively easily.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, as we're done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The basics, all right?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's all the basics.
		And the water will provide you, and they have estimated from the previous probes the U.S. sent orbiting the moon, you could have 6.6 trillion tons of water.
		That's a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a lot.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And so you've got oxygen, you've got hydrogen for power, and you've got solar power.
		It's some of the basics.
		And you're going to need, of course, to supplement it.
		This is not a simple thing.
		I don't want to make it sound like you'd just be there tomorrow, but that's the basics.
		Once you get setting that base up, well, then you can start exploring the moon and start going to some really spectacular places that tourists are going to want to go to.
		One of my favorite examples is the rim of Copocanus, the crater.
		It's just spectacular looking at those lunar orbiter pictures from the past.
		It just takes your breath away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I'm kind of willing to buy that.
		I mean, I think tourism to the moon, that's really something.
		But for a second, let's talk about what's very likely in the near future.
		That's, you know, low-orbit hotels.
		Now, if there were a brochure for a low-orbit hotel or some time in space, what would be the high points?
		What would it advertise to people?
		Yes, going to space is unique, but what would your stay be like?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, what they're going to do is they're going to tell you all the bad things that are going to happen to you.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They're going to make it very clear to you that you're going to feel nauseous for several days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's inviting.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's exciting.
		I'm going to go down list.
		You know, they have been actually, there was an actual study done of the tourism industry in which the company that did it, Futron, decided, let's go to likely people with high incomes and tell them all the bad things that could happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but like all the TV ads I've ever seen, Robert, they'd say that at the bottom, you know, very quickly they'd add slight nausea and bone loss and some of them possibilities.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, no, they would tell it very clearly up front because, you know, there's actually safety issues here.
		You have to let people know, and there's now a congressional, there's now a law that says you have to let them know.
		So they're going to tell them it says nausea possibilities.
		You have issues, you know, you have to adapt to weightlessness.
		These are the bad things, you know.
		If you go for a week, those are basically the only issues that you have to worry about.
		If you go for a week, though, you will experience weightlessness in a long term, which is in itself a great, interesting, and Dennis Tito had none of those problems.
		He had a great time from day one and right to the end.
		You will be able to look at the Earth from space.
		And that is something that everyone who's been in space cannot express clearly how incredible that view is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They just can't.
		And they all talk about it.
		And they all talk about how they can't help, but just keep looking at the Earth all the time when they're in space.
		So those are two things.
		And then you get to participate in this great adventure.
		You help not only finance it so it goes forward, but you get to be a very unique individual.
		You've been in space.
		And I think those are the main points, the very main stroke points.
		You're going to have to get some training because there's no way you can go to these kind of habitats without having some understanding of the safety issues so you can help yourself or the crew if something goes wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, if something, well, aside from something going wrong, what do you imagine, once it's a little bit developed, 10 years downline, the price to go to orbit might be?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I've heard numbers in the range of around $200,000 a ticket.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		$200,000?
unidentified		Okay.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And that seems like a lot, but when you think about it, it's not that much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's, I guess, relative.
		It's not nearly so much as people have already paid to do it.
		$20 million.
		That's right.
		So a couple of hundred thousand.
		And after you'd written the here's what you got to worry about parts, the good parts would be you're going to get to see the earth as you have never seen it before with memories that will last your entire life.
		In fact, your entire worldview may change.
		That kind of thing, right?
		And you might toss your cookies.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And you might.
		That's exactly right.
		And the adventure in itself might do it.
		You know, the lawyer for Bigelow's company, a guy who works in D.C., one of his lawyers, Mike Gold, gave a presentation recently in D.C. in which he pointed out why are we trying to regulate this industry?
		We let people do things like bungee jumping, skydiving, millions of extreme sports, which they such.
		Go climb Everest.
		We don't try to restrict people from doing that.
		It's just equal situation.
		Why do people climb Everest?
		You know, pay thousands to be one of the people who've stood at the top of Everest.
		Well, they do it for the experience.
		And that's the bottom line, it's the experience.
		And, you know, if I could afford it, I would do it in a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you think there would be, at, say, the $200,000 mark, a sufficient market?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, that's the market studies that have shown, without question, when you tell people all the negatives that are involved, they easily still get a solid market at those kind of prices.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		A big market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if that's really true, then I guess I can see them going ahead and doing it in the private sector.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just passing NASA right on by.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Wave as they go by.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wave as they go by.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is why it is happening.
		That's why there are companies investing millions right now to build these ships, to do at least the suborbital flights.
		The suborbital flights could be significantly cheaper as a starting point.
		And in fact, there's no doubt about they could be significantly cheaper.
		So as a starting point, you start to get that.
		You know, those suborbital planes can very easily be turned into transportation vehicles of a highly sophisticated nature.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		One continent, one half of the world to the other half of the world in startling times.
		All right.
		I want to go back for a second.
		I don't know that I ever got sort of a final answer.
		I really want to know the status of Hubble.
		Is it about to die?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no, no.
		As I said, with the drivers and batteries, we have until the end of 07, at least.
		So we have to get a servicing mission up there by 07 to keep it functioning.
		If they can't do that, what they'll do is they'll put it into various safe modes to reduce its failure.
		And NASA has an obligation by international treaty to prepare its deorbit.
		And that de-orbit doesn't have to happen until 2012 or so.
		Its orbit is such it's high enough up that there's no chance it's going to fall back to Earth till then.
		So we've got a lot of time before it's going to fall back to Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you were aware of the rumors that they're about to do Away with it, let it go, let it deorbit, all the rest of the night.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, now what that is, is that's like taking what's going on and kind of like simplifying it in a way that's not really accurate.
		What NASA has done is they've said they've deleted any money.
		They would like not to spend any money on servicing Hubble anymore.
		They only want to spend money to be sent up a deorbiting mission sometime around 2011.
		That's what NASA has requested from Congress.
		Congress is questioning that.
		A lot of other people are questioning that.
		What will actually happen, we still don't know.
		The Hubble telescope itself will function through 2007 at a minimum without doing anything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It could be a mechanical failure, but you know, is there any legitimate argument that we have seen a lot or a high percentage of what's worth taking photographs of?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's why we don't need Hubble telescopes.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There are actually people who have made that argument, and it's the most absurd argument I have ever heard on this subject.
		Good.
		It's absolutely ridiculous, and the scientists know it.
		What the scientists did, the astronomy community did, the astronomy community does these decadal surveys.
		Every decade or so, they get together their biggest, most important people, and they sit down in a committee, and they try to figure out how they should structure the program over the next decade, and then they make recommendations to NASA and the National Science Foundation.
		And most of their recommendations are accepted.
		And in the 90s, they made a decision that they didn't want to focus on optical telescope work.
		They thought that Hubble would be maintained through at least 2010.
		And they thought they could live without it after that point.
		Or they didn't even think clearly about the lack.
		And now suddenly that they realize they're going to lose an optical telescope, they are gathering together a lobbying effort to try to save it because they really need that ability.
		You can't understand much else of what's going on in the other wavelengths in astronomy without having the optical image to give us something to look at.
		We really need that.
		And it gives you a perspective.
		So it's absolutely silly.
		And I've seen this kind of comment from scientists repeatedly, and it's like it's laughable.
		You know, you take one Hubble Deep Field in the northern hemisphere, it looks at a speck the size of a grain of sand from like six feet away in the sky, and that tells you what the rest of the sky at that depth looks like.
		And it's absurd because then they did it one in the southern hemisphere, and they found it wasn't quite the same.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can tell you this.
		I have been awed beyond belief by a very great deal of what Hubble has done, and I think a lot of Americans have.
		It is incredible stuff.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It has changed our view.
		A lot of us have completely forgotten what it was like before 1993, before Hubble was fixed.
		And one of the reasons there was all the disappointment as well as excitement when Hubble was launched is because everyone understood then, having it's like we never saw the far side of the moon until the Apollo 8 mission to the moon.
		This is the same thing.
		We'd never really seen the stars and the galaxies clearly until Hubble got into orbit, and everyone knew it.
		We've taken that for granted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so how much better is Hubble, given its date of birth and technological improvement since, how much better is Hubble than ground telescopes?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There's no comparison.
		First of all, Hubble is not the instrument that was fixed in 1993.
		Because of the manned servicing missions, they have now replaced almost every instrument on that telescope has been replaced in the ensuing years and made each time 10 times better.
		And there's been several multiple replacements, so the actual optical camera is 10 times, 10, x, 10 better than the first camera they put in.
unidentified		And the mirror?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Excuse me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was the mirror adequately compensated for the problem with the mirror?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, the mirror.
		The mirror is totally fixed.
		It's totally fixed.
		That's totally a non-issue because they initially put spectacles in, and then later cameras that they sent up, they put the corrections in the cameras itself so that they could remove the spectacles and put another instrument in place.
		And actually, that's what they intend to do if they ever get another servicing mission on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Basically, folks, the mirror was not in perfect round, incredible as that sounds.
		It was a really good Reader's Digest article on that.
		Oh, yes.
		And so they adjusted for that, kind of like somebody getting glasses or something.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour, Robert.
		When we get back, I want the latest on the rovers, those machines that we have on Mars.
		I know they've lasted a lot longer than anybody thought they would.
		In fact, there's been some strange news about the panels getting somehow magically washed off and cleaned up.
		Maybe the wind.
		Maybe somebody on the corner somewhere trying to earn a couple of bucks wiping the windshield.
		I have no idea.
		will ask when we get back.
unidentified		Riders of the storm, riders of the storm, into this house we're born.
		Into this world we're thrown like a dog with the cake.
		I'm out.
		I'm out.
		I remember those times reflected in your eyes.
		I wonder where you are.
		I wonder if you think about me once upon a time in your wondrous dreams.
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 7757271295.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not necessarily a NASA guy, but definitely a very strong faith advocate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guest is Robert Zimmerman, and we'll get back to him in a moment.
unidentified		Don't go anywhere.
unidentified		Don't go anywhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's take a moment and catch up on the rovers.
		It's certainly a recent tremendous success of NASA, no question about it.
		Where are we now, Robert, with the Rovers?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, they sent two rovers to Mars, and they had a goal to be working for 90 days each.
		We're now over a year in both cases.
		One's at 409, the other's at like 488 days, something like that, operating.
		Over a year.
		Pretty incredible.
		They were originally never supposed to go more than 600 feet from their landing site.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And one's more than a mile, and the other one's heading out much greater distances, actually, several miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tremendous successes, right?
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What have we learned?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, they have confirmed without question that Mars is a place that had water, significant liquid water on its surface in the past.
		And that's a fundamentally important discovery because it means that geologically the planet has changed over time.
		It also means that it very likely, well, how can I phrase this properly in terms of science because we don't know yet, it very possibly had life once and almost possibly has life now.
		The Europeans have an orbiter right now called Mars Express, which recently took these incredible pictures of an area on Mars called Elysium.
		And it's in the northern lowlands of Mars.
		And Mars is half of its planet is very low and smooth and flat.
		And the southern hemisphere is kind of higher and rough.
		And the theory by many scientists is that there might have once been an ocean on the northern hemisphere.
		Well, Elysium is kind of off the coast, but in the ocean section of the northern hemisphere, about five degrees north of the equator.
		And they took photos and they saw what looked like a field, frozen icebergs trapped in a frozen sea that's now kind of coated with volcanic ash, which kind of protects it from subliminal way.
		Now, what's important about this, the reason I bring it up, is because there was a recent conference about Mars Express's discoveries, and they polled the scientists at this conference, and 75% of them said they think that Mars once had life.
		And 35% of them at the conference said, you know, it's still probable, it probably has life now, based on the data they're getting.
		That's incredible.
		And that same place in Elysium is where they're getting, Mars Express is getting readings of methane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Methane.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Peaks of methane.
		And methane is something you, you know, it can be formed in a lot of ways.
		Volcanoes produce it.
		It doesn't have to be life, but it gets dissipated very, very quickly by sunlight and other chemical processes.
		So you need to renew it to get evidence of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's not that much volcanic action on Mars.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Which means that's why a lot of these scientists say, well, the only thing that could do it is biological activity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there any active volcanic activity?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they don't know of any.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They don't know of any.
		There is no evidence of, you know, they have now had several years of photographs of its surface, and even comparing those photographs with early Mariner and Viking photographs, there is no evidence of any significant change.
		No evidence of dust changes.
		You know, dust devils and things like wind dust storms cause slight changes to the visual surface, but no evidence of any kind of volcano.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have we seen any evidence, or do we have any evidence, of even small life?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, absolutely not.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Not at this stage of the game.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Insect level, anything.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No.
		During the Viking landers, there was one of the three experiments there.
		This is the only thing we've got that a few scientists say indicates that there's something on the surface that we don't understand.
		That's what the scientists say.
		One explanation for that evidence would be life, but they don't claim that.
		They say we don't understand what's going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was it they were looking at that made them think that?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, what happened is there were a bunch of different experiments.
		Vikings' sole goal was to see if there was life on Mars.
		And in a sense, it was a misconceived mission because to send two craft there and land to try to find life, it's not really the best way to do science.
		Your odds of success are too slim.
		You're better off trying to learn what the planet is like, which is what we're doing now.
		But they said three experiments.
		One experiment was supposed to see if there was organic material, the leftovers of life, and it found none.
		But another experiment, they took some soil and they dumped basically in a nutrient bath, like really a good soup of food.
		And it suddenly burst with the production of carbon dioxide.
		And it didn't do it exactly the way a life form would do it.
		You know, if you suddenly life could breathe and prosper, it would start to have waste product, and carbon dioxide is one of them.
		And so the thought was, well, maybe that's life.
		But it didn't do it exactly the way life would.
		And there are some scientists who come up with chemical reactions that could explain it.
		And most scientists dismissed it as evidence of life.
		But a few scientists have never accepted those explanations.
		And they bring up valid indications that say the chemistry, you know, inorganic chemistry doesn't explain it.
		So that's the one experiment that indicates something on the surface that we don't quite understand.
		But it doesn't say life, and at this moment in time we have not seen anything that is life.
		So scientists, if they speculate, if 25% of them think there is life there on Mars, it's merely an opinion, and as a scientist, they would immediately agree that we don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was quite a flurry about the methane.
unidentified		Yes, the methane is a marker.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It says, well, gee, what else could it be?
		But it's not proof.
		And it's very dangerous in science to jump to those kind of conclusions.
		It just means we've got to go back and do more research.
		And that's the exciting part of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the water.
		Some of the photographs I saw, and many in the audience saw, had what appeared to be, I don't know, channels where water had obviously eroded away, geography, that kind of thing.
		Is that a sure thing, or are they not sure about that either?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, well, you know, the original orbital pictures from Mariner 9 and followed with Vikings showed all these meandering streams, it looked like.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Similar to on Earth, not quite the same.
		What the rovers have found, the rovers landed, both rovers landed in places which looked like might have had water because of those streams, those meandering streams.
		The spirit landed in the middle of a crater that looked, by orbital pictures, like it once had been a lake.
		It had a meandering stream flowing into it.
		And because of elevation change, it looked like that stream had once filled the crater.
		The irony is that at the lowest points where the spirit was, they found it's just lava.
		It's a lava bed.
		It doesn't show any evidence of water.
		But as spirit climbed up the hills, up Husband Hill, named after one of the Columbia astronauts, it immediately crossed a geological barrier that was a change, less than two feet across, actually.
		And now once it gets higher up, it's finding evidence of water.
		Evidence not of water, but of water processes that produced the geology we see today.
		And in fact, recently, they found evidence of what looks like salt, which would be a leftover from water left behind by evaporated water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Now, the other opportunity, it landed in an area that landed right at the bottom of a little crater.
		And they find evidence of water layering, erosional processes.
		They don't find water, but they find the remains of what was once what was left behind when water evaporated.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are they making any good educated guesses about how long ago that water would have been there?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They make some educated guesses millions of years.
		But to be honest, they don't know.
		and they realize that because they haven't done any carbon dating, so they really don't know anything on Mars about when these processes...
		But they don't actually know when they started and ended.
		They just know one was earlier than the other.
		And they won't be able to pin those years down until they get to Mars with some carbon dating, and that's really not probably going to happen for a while.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is Mars more interesting than the moons of Saturn, like Titan, for example?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or would Titan be a more exciting destination?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They're all actually incredibly exciting.
		The difference is that Mars is relatively closer.
		You're talking about a much more challenging mission out to Jupiter or Saturn.
		We at this moment in time, remember, we can't even put humans into low Earth orbit.
		So to even think about going to Mars is a challenge.
		And Jupiter and Saturn are far beyond.
		It's going to be a while.
		Mars, though, is beginning to gear up to much more realistic because we're now beginning to get an armada of satellites in orbit and on the ground studying the planet.
		And so we have a much better, fuller understanding of the whole planet.
		And that puts us in a better position to go there.
		And so once again, to get there, what a lot of people don't understand is that there are two things you need to learn how to do to be able to go to Mars and land on it.
		You first need to learn how to build a vessel to get there.
		And that's what I talk about in Leaving Earth.
		It's you need to understand how to build those long-term interplanetary spaceships.
		That's what space stations will give you that knowledge to do.
		The other thing you need to do is how to learn to live on another planet.
		And that's why going to the moon again right away makes sense, because then you can get, it's a short trip, you can start to learn the technologies for establishing bases on other worlds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, you told me a little bit about what we could use to establish a base on Mars.
		What have we learned so far with regard to Mars?
		And the same thing.
		Will we have we would have to have water?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You see, that's the good question.
		We don't really know yet enough about Mars to be able to answer that question.
		Okay.
		It is pretty, they think pretty, they're pretty convinced that there is water, ice, at the poles of Mars.
		But we haven't yet really gotten solid data.
		And in fact, even with the moon, we haven't gotten solid data.
		But the moon, we can find out much quicker and much more easily.
		Mars is much more challenging.
		And so we have to first, with further rovers and landers and orbital missions, get a much better idea of where to go on Mars.
		It's going to take a little longer.
		So that's, once again, a reason why the moon is a good, for exploration purposes, it's a good first place to go.
		Then you build up towards the more difficult interplanetary missions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe the moon has been placed there like a tricycle for us.
unidentified		Yes.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you want to be spiritual about this, it sure is a convenient working place.
		You know, and there are a lot of science fiction novels that actually were written how aliens put it there for us to have a base to work on.
		And you can be that way if you want.
		But either way, it is a convenient starting point, without question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
		I mean, it's three little wheels that we can get started with.
		So you think we could do that by, say, when?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, once again, Bush's proposal is return to the moon sometime between 2015 and 20.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Whether NASA will do that or not, you know, can be argued.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Describe that mission to me, Richard.
		You say return to the moon.
		You don't mean just step on it and have a second leap for mankind and then get back on board and come home.
		You mean something more, right?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		This is established bases there to learn the technology to go to Mars.
		And I think that's the right attitude.
		And because of the other international pressure that's building on it, you have a situation that we won't just go back and step on because everyone else doesn't want to just go and step on it.
		They want to go and stay.
		So you've got an international competition.
		It's very similar to the 19th century and 18th century competition between the European powers to try to colonize the rest of the world.
		They each had a vacuum and they had to fill it.
		And here, there's no native population for conflict.
		It's whoever gets there first and possesses the territory.
		And so you've got a competition going.
		It's to go and to stay, without question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The moon will never belong to any one nation, will it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Will it?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, no.
		Let me answer the question.
		I think that assumption is a mistake.
		The law, according to the UN right now, is no.
		No nation can claim territory.
		But let's be realistic.
		When the time comes that people are starting to possess territory, that law will, people can step back out of that law and countries will start to do it.
		Secondly, if you start to have a thriving colony on the planet, the colonists are at some point going to say, we don't care what the UN and Earth countries decided.
		We want to have our own nation.
		And they might be multiple different nations who compete with each other.
		So that law, I actually think the UN law is a hindrance to the future.
		I think it would be much better if the United States got out of that law and said, we're going to the moon to claim territory.
		And that not only would increase the competition, but then it would protect the American citizens that are eventually there because they know they're going to be part of the United States and our laws to back them up.
		Right now, based on the UN treaties that we have signed, American citizens on the moon are really almost forced to live under UN jurisdiction.
		Yeah.
		So let's just leave it at that.
		It's not a great thing.
		But in the end, it's going to go away.
		It's going to be one of these things that will last for a while, but sooner or later, push will come to show us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So let's get this straight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If Americans, or if we went to the moon tomorrow, we would be under the jurisdiction of the United Nations.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		According to the U.N. Treaty, no nation can claim any territory.
		Private citizens can own property, but under what law?
		Since no nation can claim sovereignty, therefore they can't claim property rights under U.S. law.
		It has to devolve down to the U.N. And there's a lot of space law analysis on this subject, which says it devolved down to the U.N. Now.
		They challenge it, but right now they accept the idea that it goes back to the U.N. Not a good situation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I was thinking of three to five acres minimum for myself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, uh-huh.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, they wouldn't let you.
		You see, and the U.N. is made up of a lot of countries that believe in communal rights, that they all should have a share in your success.
		So they're not going to let you own it.
		They're going to want their piece of the pie.
		They're very communist, a lot of them.
		So it's very, property rights don't exist yet in space for the citizens that will go.
		Someday, yes.
		But at the moment, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your book, Leaving Earth.
		And I know you've got an appearance coming up.
		Tell me about it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I'm going to, there's an international, the National Space Society is actually going to have a conference in Washington in third week in May.
		And it's going to be pretty cool.
		I'm going to be there giving some talks on historical stuff about why some of the things we're doing now might not be good based on what has been done in the past and history.
		So I'm excited about that.
		The International Space Development Conference by the National Space Society is pretty exciting.
		What really is exciting to me, though, about this conference is I have not had a chance yet to actually meet and interview Bert Rutan.
		And he's going to be there.
		And what makes it even more interesting is that NASA has decided to co-sponsor the conference with the National Space Society.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is interesting.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and this is really cool because that means some of the guys who are trying to create the crew exploration vehicle are going to be there.
		And so you might have a situation where it has a face-off.
		You get to see what the private guys are proposing versus what NASA's proposing.
		And I'm very excited about that because I think the National Space Society has actually been one of the best advocates of going into space.
		And the best thing about this conference is it's going to be going on when the shuttle is in orbit, when the shuttle returns to orbit.
		So those things combine.
		This is one of my talks that I'm going to be giving in which I'll be discussing how in the 60s, NASA and the Congress passed laws that they thought would help private communications in space, and they ended up squelching the American space industry for decades.
		And that's kind of happening now with the private space industry, with the new space law, in my opinion.
		And I want to express why I think that's happening and try to get clarity so people understand how we are restricting the future of space exploration with the laws we've been passing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why was NASA, and why was, in fact, our government, so freaked out over the possibility of civilians, just regular people, getting a few days on the shuttle?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why was that such a big damn deal?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Power.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Power?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Power.
		It's power grab.
		They don't want to give up control.
		NASA has controlled the American Space Program for decades.
		They have determined who can go into space.
		And they can't.
		It's the way government bureaucracies work.
		They don't like the idea that someone else is going to go do something that they have no say in.
		And so that's what's really going on.
		And when it came to, you know, the Mir flight of Dennis, I'm sorry, Dennis Tito's flight to the International Space Station, NASA looked like a fool.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, it was crazy.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It was absolutely crazy.
		And what was more disgraceful is there were actually people in the press who called me up to do interviews where they wanted to have a debate.
		Should tourism be allowed?
		And that phrase drives me up a wall because if you believe in freedom, who has the right to tell you you're not allowed to do it?
		Definitely earned his money legally.
		He wanted to spend it on this.
		The Russians had the equipment and capability to put him in orbit, and they were willing to do it.
		So freedom says, let them do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let them do it.
		All right.
		Let's rock it to the top of the hour, shall we?
		My guest is Robert Zimmerman.
		I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is indeed.
		Robert Zimmerman is here.
		He's certainly an optimist about space and an advocate of getting on up there, but not necessarily of NASA.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Are you sorry?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, I wonder if you think that characterization I just made of you as a very strong space advocate, but not necessarily one of NASA.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is generally fair?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is fair.
		The other thing about my approach is I like to take as an objective and clear-minded, thoughtful look at the situation rather than just be an advocate for this agency or this agenda or this company.
		So, you know, if NASA can get it to happen, great.
		But I look at them very with a cold eye.
		And I especially look at them with a cold eye because as bureaucrats, the agency does tend to play games with the truth.
		Some people do that.
		I hate to say it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		Miguel of Nuevo-Laredo, Mexico says, I'm disappointed with Robert.
		Why does the moon have to become U.S. territory?
		Isn't space future supposed to be detached to political movements?
		Moon colonizers should be just that moon citizens, not earthlings, but the free people of the moon.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, in the end, that's going to happen.
		Because in the end, just like the United States revolted from England, and so did all the other countries, sooner or later, the citizens of the planets that are out there are going to say, we're going to set up our own sovereign nation.
		To say that the politics will never be there at all is silly and naive.
		Human society needs some form of governmental structure to make a civilization function.
		And it's better to recognize that and be honest and objective about it and thoughtful about it than to just make believe, no, no, no, we can live in a fantasy land, which is what the Soviet Union tried to do, and that sure didn't work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you just know the Moonites are going to eventually do that.
		They're going to say those damn earthlings.
		They don't know what we need.
		They're a long ways away.
		They just, we need to be free, and there's going to be a moon revolt.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's an interesting thing, Art, but in doing my research on leaving Earth, we already see that pattern going on with the space stations that have been built.
		Because there's a consistent pattern with every space station that the people on the ground do not understand what it's like to be in orbit.
		And they try to tell the people in orbit how to do things, and the people in orbit eventually tell them to go jump in a lake because they know better.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There has been a lot of that, has there?
		There has been a lot, right?
		A lot not so publicized.
		Some publicized, but a lot of it not.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of it actually has been focused.
		Yes, both the Americans, when they went to Mia, especially NASA people, it was like they had no idea what happened on Skylab, and they made all the same mistakes again.
		The Russians have spent a lot of years learning these mistakes, and they've kept, at least at this point, they seem to understand what to do, and they let the people in the space station run their situation.
		But I will say that we always see indications of that.
		It's very difficult for us on Earth to dictate to the people in space, and sooner or later, they're going to tell us to go drop in a lake, without question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, at least we can say, well, then, at least we've got a lake.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true, except you know what?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		If they get the capabilities of space really good, down the road, eventually, they'll get to a point where they can bring an ice-bearing asteroid from Saturn to the moon, drop it onto the moon, and you've got trillions of water again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've got a moon radiation.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, They're going to have the technology that we don't have, which will give them a flexibility that we don't have.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		In the end, they will actually be in a better position than us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if they get really upset with this, it's probably the technology to throw a rock at us.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You better believe it.
		You know, think about it a minute.
		Which country dominates the world right now?
		It's the United States, which was the colonial nation of Britain once.
		But we now, because we start fresh with new innovative ideas and a look at the world with fresh eyes, we suddenly come up and become dominant.
		And that's a pattern in human history.
		So I wouldn't be surprised if that happens again in space.
		In fact, I think that will happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you don't necessarily think, do you, that it's the United States that's going to lead, blaze the path?
		You're beginning.
		I can hear it in your voice.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I think the United States has the capability of absolutely dominating the future in space.
		Whether we will have the will to dominate the future in space is the unknown.
		I think that the times they are changing for the positive, but there is no guarantee that it'll happen.
		The advantage we got, though, is that we have a very rich, solid culture based on the concept of freedom.
		And as much as many Americans have forgotten that or are trying to abandon that idea, the richness of the culture is one of the reasons people like Bert Rutan succeeded recently.
		And their success can lead to greater successes down the road.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, plug your book.
		You told us about where you're going to be.
		Tell us about your book.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Leaving Earth is essentially a history of manned space exploration since post-Apollo.
		It doesn't really talk about the Apollo missions.
		Because a lot of Americans don't really know what happened since then.
		And it's very important to understand that, and I've mentioned this already about space stations and interplanetary spaceships, but it's one of the premises of the book, and that's why I call it Space Station's Rival Superpowers and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel.
		Space stations are not scientific laboratories, at least not at this time.
		When you call them that, you confuse the situation, you make them boring.
		You also make them less useful.
		What a space station is and has been for the last 30, 40 years, and the Russians have known this, and Werner von Braun when he built Skylab knew this.
		They are prototype interplanetary spaceships.
		If you're going to put humans in orbit for a long period of time at this stage, it's to learn how to build a vessel that can carry them to the planets.
		That's what they're for.
		If you put it in that context, suddenly everything being done on International Space Station can make sense because you're starting to build a vessel that people can live in for a long enough time to get to other planets.
		So I wanted to tell the history of the work that's been done for the last 30 years in secret almost, not intentional secret, sometimes for political reasons in secret, to learn how to do that.
		Most of that history has been the Russians because they have had an extensive space station program now since like 1970.
		But it did include some American stuff.
		And in the process, not only am I talking about the engineering and the problems that we're facing to do this and how many of them have been solved, I also talk about how the politics interfered with that effort.
		Because you have this interweave between the United States and Russia that is really fascinating.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, for example, I would like to know how much, I understand that Russia learned a great deal because they spent so much time in orbit compared to us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But how much of that has been legitimately shared with America?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		A good deal of it has been, but a lot of it has not.
		And for perfectly legitimate reasons.
		Why should they give up what they spent hard?
		Look, I'll give you an example.
		I spent three days interviewing Valery Polyakov for leaving Earth.
		Now, a lot of Americans don't know who this guy is.
		Most Americans don't.
		But he holds the record for the longest space flight.
		He was in orbit for 14 and a half months.
		He's also a doctor who has focused on space medicine his whole life.
		And so I spoke to him for three and a half days, and he says one of the big problems, the biggest problem about long-term weightlessness is the bone density loss.
		I mentioned it earlier in the show.
		Well, Polyakov says that he has worked out the exercises and equipment to reduce the bone density loss to less than 1 half a percent a month, which makes it possible to get to Mars.
		You know, he tells you a lot of the specifics, but he then says, you know, I will be glad to be a consultant to NASA and tell them the rest.
		And I think that's perfectly reasonable.
		You know, he's earned the right to say, you want my knowledge, you pay for it.
		And so a great deal they have told us, because we insisted if we're going to work with them, but a lot of the details they have not.
		And then there's a cultural thing.
		A lot of people at NASA, and Americans in general, have a certain arrogance and contempt for the Russians, which is not called for.
		And I've seen this repeatedly from NASA people, how they just do not can take what the Russians have done seriously.
		And I think it's a terrible mistake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, your book is available at Amazon.com and such.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's available on the website, absolutely.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, and if you go into bookstores, you can, if they don't have it, they should, but if they don't, you just demand that they order it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We're going to the phone.
		First time calling the line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi there.
		I wanted to bring up some points that you're...
		the future of our species.
		And it seems like if we limit the potentials of this, even in the short term, moving beyond the practical issue of getting there immediately, to sort of our existing political and social realities and concepts, that we may be limiting the possibilities of our vision for this.
		And I refer specifically to, you know, I see a sort of like with the X-Prize business and Which I was really excited about, but a kind of almost market fundamentalism that suggests that the alternative is between government and business only.
		And my concern comes because I'm calling from North Florida, and this is a part of the world where we're seeing on a daily basis in both our human and our natural environments, the effects of negative effects of untrammeled private enterprise.
		And my concern is sort of, am I going to see a McDonald's sign staring down at me from the moon someday?
		And some might not necessarily call that a bad thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we've got to hold it there.
		He brought up that point.
		Commercialization.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, one of the fundamental questions I asked in leaving Earth is the decisions we make today will determine how future generations live in space, what kind of societies they have.
		And it's a question that we as Americans used to ask routinely because we came from a series of colonies that all were experiments, and we recognized what worked and what didn't.
		And one of the reasons the nation grew so successfully with new states is because we had applied successful experiments to the new territories, and they were able to join the nation prosperously.
		We don't ask these questions anymore, and we don't seem to want to apply the same rules we have on Earth to the people who live in space.
		Now, in terms of on the Earth, space exploration is not going to destroy the Earth.
		Let's dismiss that right away.
		That's not.
		It's not going to destroy the environment of the Earth.
		In fact, as time passes, the best, most efficient energy source you can have to go into space is actually the main engine of the space shuttle, which takes hydrogen and oxygen and combines them to produce steam and a lot of energy.
		It's the most efficient chemical reaction.
		So I'm not particularly worried about the environmental effects of space at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about the commercialization?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, and freedom, once again.
		Freedom.
		You know, America used to be proud of the fact that we were a little bit garsh and commercial and innovative and creative and so what if you had a little bit of billboard here and there.
		It said that was showed productivity and excitement and creativity.
		And, you know, I don't worry about that so much.
		And I think it's a mistake to worry about that so much.
		And the Russians don't, you know, once again, a good example.
		The Russians want to make a living at doing this.
		And so when they went private, one of the very first things they did is start to sell billboards on their rockets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, then, Robert, if somebody figured out how to float a Coca-Cola sign so that it was like a neon sign in the sky, that'd be all right?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, it might be all right with me, except in this case, I don't have a say in a matter.
		No one else does.
		Congress passed a law a few years ago that makes it illegal for Americans to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They did.
		It's part of the Commercial Space Act.
		There actually is restrictions in the Commercial Space Act, which says that Americans cannot do that kind of commercial advertising from space.
		So it's almost a moot point.
		It brings up to me a certain aspect of American culture today that worries me, which is we kind of like to immediately jump in and restrict the freedoms of others.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then it might probably be American money that finances the French.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It'll say la coca collat.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know what?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Russians might do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's not under our law.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They might, and they might get some American company that'll pay them to do it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		You're absolutely correct.
		And what it will do is there'll be a lot of whining and complaining on the Earth, and it might not be a great thing.
		But if it finances the exploration of space, they're going to thumb their noses at us as they wave at us as they go by.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, that's big money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You get a sign up there in the night sky, and that's pretty hard to beat in terms of.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I think that it's much, that kind of thing is not a real worry for a lot of technical engineering reasons.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There are a lot of things they can do that are more effective and have been doing, like Coca-Cola and Vesti have done repeated commercials in orbit with the Russians.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And they've made a lot of publicity from it.
		One of the great stories I tell in Leaving Earth is that in August of 1991, the two guys on Mir were doing a Coke commercial in orbit.
		At the same time, the August coup was taking place that ended the Soviet Union.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure.
		You might be making my point.
		You know, there have been a couple of technologies that have threatened to allow this signage in space.
		It's been talked about.
		I'm sure you know about it.
		All right.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
		I wanted to ask Mr. Zimmerman about the weightlessness issue and if he was familiar with Paget's disease.
		Do you know what Paget's disease is?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Describe it for me.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Give me some details because I might know, but not by name.
unidentified		It's a condition that causes the bones to become significantly more dense than they should be.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I'm not familiar with disease, but I will tell you this.
		The issue of weightlessness from a medical point of view on Earth is significantly important.
		This is one of the areas that they...
		Things like osteoporosis and also bed rest.
		Weightlessness is an exact analogy, almost an exact analogy, to the symptoms of long-term bedrest on Earth, which causes some of the same problems.
		It can actually kill people as they get older.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they atrophy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You atrophy.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And weightlessness matches that very well.
		And so there's been a lot of research, actually, that has then been turned back to Earth to apply to those two issues.
		So they tie in very well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, why is it, Robert, that people don't recognize these things?
		They say, well, where are the benefits?
		Benefits are exactly the kind of thing you just outlined, and there have been many of them in the space programs of old.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, the truth of the matter, this is once again, getting back to what I said to you earlier.
		I think things are changing.
		I don't get that kind of question that often anymore.
		You get more questions like the call I just had, where they're asking about a disease.
		Now, I'm not familiar with this.
		I'm sorry.
		I am actually unfamiliar with that.
unidentified		But it sounds interesting that it actually could be used to maybe solve The bone density loss problem in space.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		If you can figure out what causes the density increase in the disease, you can maybe apply that to preventing density loss.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She might have been thinking space would be just a great place for her if she had overdense bones.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and that may be the case, too.
		I mean, you know, the legs are pretty useless in space.
		Someone who's lost both their legs would suddenly become equal or maybe even superior to everybody else in order.
		It's a place for those people.
		So, you know, once again, why people don't recognize the connection, I think, is not as much of an issue as it used to be.
		I think people are much more aware of it.
		I mean, you know, people own GPS.
		They watch the Weather Channel.
		They are in hospitals with all the medical sensors that all basically come from the space program.
		People recognize that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they don't remember that.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I think it's less of a problem.
		I do.
		I think that it's becoming more obvious that those that ask that question are speaking from ignorance rather than knowledge instead of the other way around.
		I think that's...
		The battle is becoming won, is the way I look at it.
		I'm an optimist in this respect, but I actually think, based on my experience, that these questions are...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		Welcome to the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Robert Zimmer.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
unidentified		Good morning, Robert.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		This is Dan from Odesto, California, listening to you on 780K08.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I've got a question for Robert.
unidentified		Robert, if I was to give you an open check and you had two choices, one to write for how many billions of dollars for the space program versus the education of our children, which would you write it to?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, here we go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, there you go.
		I want to inspire kids.
		And a space program does that.
		It's not as if the education, you know, it's kind of like a straw man argument.
		The check isn't coming out.
		The check you're offering me isn't coming out of the educational program.
		If I have a blank check, I would go into space.
		And I brought up that issue earlier.
		We have the Hubble Space Telescope and the astronomical research that's been done in the last two decades has inspired a whole generation of Americans who want to become astronomers.
		And it has definitely fueled that educational program.
		And scientists worry that if they lose the astronomical program, they're going to lose the next generation of scientists.
		But because we haven't done space exploration in the last two decades, we have lost two decades of engineers.
		And there's a shortage of engineers in the United States right now.
		A serious, serious shortage.
		And we need that engineering talent to move forward.
		So if you do a space program, you inspire a whole new generation to do that.
		And that gives you the education that you want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		There's your answer.
		Robert Zimmerman is my guest from the desert in the middle of the night.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Ain't got no trouble in my life.
		No foolish dreams to make me cry.
		I'm never frightened or worried.
		I know I always get by.
		I love the goodness.
		Something gets in my way, I go'round it.
		Don't let life get me down.
		Don't let take it the way that I found it.
		I got music in me.
		Yeah I got music in me.
		I got music in me.
		I got music in me.
		Ooh.
		They say that life is a circle.
		A circle.
		A man in the way that I found it.
		Gonna move in a straight line.
		Keeping my feet.
		Furby on the ground.
		I hit up.
		I got music in me.
		They say that life is a circle.
		A circle.
		A man in the way that I found it.
		Gonna move in a straight line.
		I hit up.
		Furby on the ground.
		I got music in me.
		Ooh.
		They say that life is a circle.
		Keeping my feet.
		A circle.
		A man in the way that I found it.
		Gonna move in a straight line.
		Ooh.
		Keep in my feet.
		Keep in my feet.
		Cherry on the ground, I hit up, down, down I got words in my head so I say them Don't let life get me down Catch a hole when I'm losing this dream To talk with Artfell.
		Call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guest is night, Robert Zimmerman.
		You could say he's very up on space travel.
		It's been fascinating.
		If you have a question, we're going right back to the phone.
unidentified		So All right, it's back to the phones with Robert Zimmerman.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, are you there?
		Oh, I'm here.
		Lots of people wanting to talk to you.
		On the international line, you're on the air.
		Hi, where are you calling from, please?
unidentified		I'm calling from north of Baghdad.
unidentified		In Iraq.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Iraq?
		In Iraq.
		Robert, hold on one second.
		A couple of questions I'd like to ask you.
		How in the world are you hearing us north of Baghdad?
unidentified		Some guys played it over our CB radio here.
		I'm with a trucking firm called Brown and Roots doing some contracting over here.
		They just played over Two Way on Channel 18.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I heard they were doing that over there.
unidentified		And it's really cool.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I've never heard the show before, like two weeks ago.
unidentified		And both, I like both you, Mr. Bell, and Mr. Nori.
		You guys are just cool.
		You're totally different, and you're pretty cool.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of a neat show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You rock on, buddy.
		That's really cool to hear.
		So no problem with telling us where you are and what you're doing.
		You're being safe over there.
		How is it?
unidentified		It's hot.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of hostile.
unidentified		You don't want to mess around a whole lot.
		Nobody's really friendly to me.
		That's way hot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess that sums it up pretty well.
		Well, stay safe.
		Do you have a question for Robert?
unidentified		I do.
unidentified		Mr. Zimmerman, we were over at the OTA Officers Club back on base.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And one of the officers, I don't probably want to tell you his name or nothing, but he was talking about how the Air Force was going to take over the moon program that the president wants to do.
unidentified		And that it's already been being bid out by civilian contractors to build it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And they're going to use a heavy payload rocket.
unidentified		And in the shuttle, they're going to put on a barbecue spit and spin it so there's gravity.
		Is that true?
		Or do you know that's going to really happen?
		Or you just pull them up?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There are people.
		First of all, I want to just thank you for what you're doing.
		No, you have to do that.
unidentified		I've got tax-free cash over here.
		I'm over here with my eyes open.
		The only bad part is that I can't have a gun.
		The contractors aren't allowed any weapons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a bad part.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's bad.
		Yeah, that's bad.
		That's a bad enemy, you know?
unidentified		Well, yeah, that don't work over here.
		The guys do a real good job.
		We get escorts everywhere we go.
		But, you know, it's hostile.
		But I'm getting tax-free money, and that's what it's all about.
		Big money, tax-free.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you are.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		All right, now, to answer your question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Same reason we're going to go to the moon.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There are people who are concerned that Bush's proposal is actually trying to shift the space program into the military.
		But I think those people are tend to be partisan Democrats, to be very honest.
		If you look at he just released, for the first time in almost a decade, a new national space policy, which very clearly says that he wants to shift this into private commercial operation.
		Now, what happened is the Air Force developed, in the last few years, has developed what they call the evolved expendable launch capacity.
		They want to have a better rocket to get their satellites into orbit.
		And they paid for that.
		And Boeing and Lonkey developed heavy-lift vehicles, the Heavy Delta and the Atlas V, for doing that kind of thing.
		And so NASA now is looking into possibly seeing if they can use those heavy-lift vehicles for their future work with the crew exploration vehicle.
		The Air Force is not going to take over the moon.
unidentified		I don't think he meant take over the moon.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		He just meant it was going to be their job, that NASA was going to take over the domestic issue, and they were going to make the moon, making a base on the moon a military matter.
		That's not true.
		It's just not true.
		The military program in space is large and robust and has its goals.
		But its goals are not to go to the moon because the moon does not have any, at this stage at least, military value.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You would think the moon would have strategic value.
unidentified		Very strategic is what it boils down to, is what they were saying.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		And the reason they were going to pull it away from NASA is the bureaucratic reason.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		They can use, you know, I don't know exactly all the terminology.
unidentified		I'm not really military, you know.
unidentified		Executive privilege or something that they could use to get the money to go to do it.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It would have strategic value, but not militarily.
		It has no tactical military value at this stage.
		Strategically, it does.
		You want to be on the moon so that you can possess it, but that can be done by the civilian.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I want to thank the caller from Iraq.
		I kind of agree with him.
		Why doesn't it seem to me it would have tremendous strategic value?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		But not for the military at this moment.
		You can't do military work on the moon now.
		You just can't.
		It doesn't secure the nation in any way.
		There was always a fear you could set military bases up on the moon to shoot at the Earth, but you don't need to do that.
		You can do that from low Earth orbit or from VMs on Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		So the Moon has strategic value, but from a civilian perspective now, and I was talking about that earlier, you know, the competition to gain territory.
		But that's not necessarily military at this stage of the game.
		No, not at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		First Tom Color Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimber.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
		This is Michael.
		Hi, Robert.
		Hello.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, I was checking on AOL News yesterday that under the science category that Japan has announced plans to build a rocket launch base on the moon.
unidentified		And also recently that China has been testing long-distance space rockets to take their, what they call Teichlox, which means space in Chinese, to also land on the moon as early as the year 2012.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're really rocking, no question.
unidentified		I believe that both China and Japan, as well as a few other developing countries, but I use the two Asian countries, for example, have the most technology, the most funding, and the most enthusiasm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Japan is, first of all, quite well developed, believe me.
		As for China, they're becoming well developed very quickly.
		So, Robert, it is a good question.
		And I think if I listened carefully earlier, you think it's entirely possible that one of these other countries may be the space leader.
		It may not be us.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, as I mentioned earlier in the show, I would also add Indian to this.
		Japan is interesting because up until now they have basically decided to depend on us for their manned program.
		But with the appearance of China sending humans into space, the Japanese have suddenly rethought that.
		And they recently, just a week or so ago, had a success of their H-2 rocket, and they've had a lot of problems with this rocket.
		It's a heavy lift rocket again.
		It can Get numerous tons into orbit.
		They're now beginning to think of maybe establishing their own manned program because they want to compete with China.
		And on the other side, you've got India.
		India has a very successful rocket program.
		They put satellites in orbit.
		It's a commercial program.
		And they are putting together a probe to orbit the moon to do research there.
		And NASA is trying to hitch a ride on that to send an experiment.
		So those three countries are undoubtedly going to be players in this future effort.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Chinese sure are.
		I've been watching them.
		And SpaceWise, you know, it was really Mickey Mouse at first, but they're getting there.
		They've got a lot of resources, a lot of money.
		The industry in China is going up out of limits.
		They're going to have the capability to do it if we don't.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And they do right now have the best manned spacecraft in the world.
		Their spacecraft, the Xinjiang craft, is superior to the Soyuz by far, and it's better than anything we've got because we're not in space yet.
		Until the shuttle returns.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, Art Walt from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		WNTJ and a fellow ham operator at that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Awesome shuttle.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		He is with them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yeah.
		All right.
		Mr. Zimmerman, question for you.
		What do you think of the significance of a rover mission like we sent to Mars to send one to Titan?
		What do you think we'd find?
		Do you think it'd be worth it?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You know, the truth of the matter is that no one really knows.
		It's very far away.
		We have to remember.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But not impossible.
unidentified		Oh, no, no.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, nothing is impossible.
		Anyone who tells you it's impossible, they're wrong.
		It actually is doable, but is it doable at this moment in time?
		No, I would put priorities first, other things first.
		I think, though, that Titan is one of the more mysterious places in the universe, in our solar system.
		And it is a place that carries with it almost undoubtedly information we need to understand the process of how a life-giving planet like the Earth develops.
		But the photos that came back from Huygens and Cassini of Titan are incredibly tantalizing.
		They say, they show things that are amazing, but to understand what they're showing at this point is really difficult.
		They don't know if the dark areas are water or frozen.
		Not water, I'm sorry, frozen lakes of carbons or whether they're actually liquid.
		They don't know if it's mud.
		They're really unsure of a lot of things, but they know they've seen something that's incredibly mysterious.
		We will go back.
		And rovers, I think that's hard, because you don't know what the surface is going to be like at this stage.
		You need to send orbiters there, do a lot more reconnaissance first, to have a better idea of what kind of...
		And landers that just land, to have some idea of what you're dealing with, and then you can deal with the...
		Oh, yes.
		It's incredibly tantalizing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
		Yes, sir.
		You are there.
unidentified		This is Elber.
unidentified		How are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Am I in the air?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Okay, I have the question.
		I want to have a question.
		I'm calling from Cleveland, WTM 1100, Cleveland, Ohio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And I have a question for your guests.
unidentified		Is there a possibility that we could use the moon to protect us, a base on there, to divert an asteroid from hitting our Earth?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		No, we wouldn't use the moon to do that.
		Not directly.
		To deflect an asteroid is going to require a much more sophisticated in-space capability than we have right now.
		And that includes, once again, as I've talked about, learning how to build those vessels to travel through the planets.
		But it's also going to involve some of the technology that you would learn on a lunar base.
		Deflecting asteroids is complicated, more complicated than people realize, because a lot of asteroids are nothing more than very loose rubble piles.
		And so you can't just blow them up because they'll just be a pile of rubble still coming right at us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me throw a scenario at you and let's see how you handle it.
		Robert, tomorrow, some astronomical observatory gets confirmation, and they would never announce this without it from another or multiple observatories, that in five years, something a mile wide to five miles wide is going to have a high probability of hitting the Earth.
		Could we stop it?
		Could we stop calamity, the end of life on Earth virtually?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Five years, that would be really difficult.
		Let me inject some knowledge into this.
		Based on what the surveys they've done, it's highly unlikely they will find an asteroid that large that will hit us in five years.
		However, it's very likely they will find, it's not unlikely, it's probable and possible they will find an asteroid significantly small but dangerous that could hit us any time in the next 10 to 20 years.
		And I think in that time frame, we could put together technology to fix it.
unidentified		Five years difficult.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Five years would be impossible?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I didn't say that.
		It would be extremely challenging.
		But if survival's the thing, then the resources suddenly go way up.
		And five years, you know, once again, we did amazing things in the 60s when we put our mind to it.
		If we knew death was five years away, I think we'd do amazing things.
		And we have a lot of the capabilities now.
		So I think that if the resources had to be put to it to get us to an asteroid, to move it, in five years, it's doable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, we've all seen the movies, or most of us have, you know, the scenarios they might use.
		Rocket motors, atomic blasts burrowed in.
		What would we do?
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		It's going to depend on the asteroid, because there are different kinds.
		The rubble piles would be very difficult.
		An iron, solid iron-nickel asteroid would be much easier in the sense that you could latch onto it and you can actually treat it like a ship and push it.
unidentified		But a rubble pile, it just kind of like dissipates.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		You can't push it very easily.
		So that's a much bigger problem.
		And a lot of asteroids are the rubble piles.
		A lot of them are not.
		They are solid, and it's going to depend on what the asteroid is.
		And it might be that we have to take multiple approaches, and you have to be prepared for the multiple obstacles, you know, solutions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I assume at least we have think tanks working on this kind of problem and what our planned response might be, what a logical response would be.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There have been scientists in the planetary research community that have written papers on the subject, a variety of papers.
		They mostly are those that do research on asteroids themselves because they're trying to understand what asteroids' makeup is, density, shape, all those things.
		And so when they get some sense of what those facts are, they then extrapolate and ask, well, how do you deal with the problem?
		And there have been papers written.
		But our knowledge of asteroids is vastly improved in the last five years because we've actually had an asteroid orbit and orbit and land on an asteroid.
		That was the NEAR probe.
		So our knowledge has improved, but we are lacking in a great deal of specific knowledge about what the makeup of a lot of asteroids will land.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robert, I've seen a lot of news stories saying some line like this.
		Yesterday or last week, the Earth had a very close encounter.
		Scientists have just announced that, and then it goes on from there.
		In other words, a lot of times we seem to find out about these close encounters after they happen.
unidentified		This worries me.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		There has been an aggressive effort paid actually by NASA and the National Science Foundation to do a very detailed survey of the near-Earth space to put together a census of all the asteroids that exist.
		And the results have been very positive.
		They, five, six years ago, were predicting a certain number of asteroids existing that they didn't know where they were yet.
		And the survey, after a number of years, they're beginning to realize that, you know, they actually have gotten a good count.
		And the numbers of unknown asteroids that they think are there, they think are much reduced.
		And I think in the next 10 years or so, we will be in a position to say that we probably have spotted better than 90% of all the asteroids out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was just wondering why they so often find out about them only after they have passed.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Well, in the more recent years, that's been going down, and it's more likely they've been coming up with a lot of asteroids that they see from a distance, figure out the orbit, and realize they have a probability of maybe hitting us in 30 years.
		They then do further studies and realize, no, they're not going to hit us.
		And there have been a lot more of those kind of results in the last like 10 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I would expect that, yes.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		So you're seeing that slow process.
		I recognize your memory is correct.
		Often it used to be, oh, it's just fastest.
		But that's happening less, and it's more happening.
		We now see it 30 years down the road.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the odds are not that high that the one that gets us, we would not see it all.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I think that we've been doing the homework here, and the odds of us getting surprised is decreasing significantly as the years go by.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But not gone at the moment.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Not yet, no.
		They're not gone yet.
		It still could happen, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		Mr. Zimmerman, your enthusiasm for Return to the Moon is certainly contagious.
		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It sure is, isn't it?
unidentified		It is.
		I was 13 years old when we first landed, and I remember the pride and the awe that everyone seemed to feel over that event, even though much like today, you had an unpopular war, the country seemed to be tearing itself apart from the inside.
		But people seemed to come together on that and share a sense of pride.
		But there's a couple of things about the moon that I've read by some authors that are heavy hitters, Lear, Hoagland, Jim Mars.
		Now one of the things...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Real quick, sir.
unidentified		Mars stated that on each Apollo mission, they planted an extensive array of seismic sensors, and that when the Lamb would leave the moon and they would jettison the rockets, when they would slam back down on the surface of the moon...
		It would ring like a bell, yes.
		Do you put much credence in that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We're short on time.
		Quickly.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'll do this very quick.
		There have been a lot of seismic studies of the moon using those seismic readings, and they hit rockets, which gives them a basic understanding of what the moon's internal workings are like.
		And they think, and there's actually disagreement now, but they think the moon is mostly solid.
		There's no more molten core.
		There's some scientists now that are beginning to think differently.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Robert, we're out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fine.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		I could go on forever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can tell you could, and you will be given another chance to.
		Indeed, you'll be invited back, my friend.
		Thank you.
robert zimmerman ▲ ● ▼		Pleasure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night, Robert Zimmerman.
		I'm Art Bell from the High Desert.
		What a weekend it has been.
		I love it.
		Good night.
unidentified		Good night in the desert, shooting stars across the sky.
		This magical journey will take the sun around.
		Filled with the longing, searching for the truth.
		Will we make it to tomorrow for the sun to shine on you?

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