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March 6, 2005 - Art Bell

02:54:47

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

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	I'm going to play a little bit of it.
	♫ Music Playing ♫ From the high desert and the great American southwest.
	I wish you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whatever the case may be, wherever you are in the world's time zones.
	All of them covered like a blanket by this program, Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell, 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 hoaxy 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's site hosted by Negative Zero.
	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... You know, it's funny.
	The page disappeared after I nailed them.
	It 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 Spregnana, 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.
	I 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.
	Stringer Vice Chairman at Sony and Chief Executive of Sony Corporation of America replaces the Japanese leader Uh, 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, 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 school's 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.
	But, hey, back in the day, it was nothing more... Mercury was kind of a... a cool oddity that kids played with.
	I was one of them.
	Yeah, so that's what happened, huh?
	We'll be back with more Open Lines directly ahead.
	Stay 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 a 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 Involve 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.
	Seventy-five percent 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, Tamiflu's 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.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air, top of the evening, morning or whatever.
	Hi Art, this is Blair in Sedona, Arizona.
	Hi Blair.
	I wanted to talk about one of my favorite talks you did about eight years ago with Terrence McKenna.
	That's 97.
	Terrence, yes.
	A lot of really good memories of Terrence.
	He was like an explorer using the mind, you know, outer space going through inner space.
	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.
	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.
	Before you move too far from that, I regard him as that already.
	Now, on moving through time?
	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 is in a linear fashion.
	It's bursts of quantum, little energy bursts.
	That's right.
	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.
	I absolutely don't rule out what Terrence said.
	The guy was brilliant.
	Thank you very much, sir.
	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.
	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, 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 and 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 decoy.
	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.
	Good morning, Art.
	How you doing?
	Well, quite well, thank you.
	Good deal.
	It's an honor to finally talk to you.
	Thank you.
	This is Rob in Kansas City.
	Yes, sir.
	I just wanted to touch on, well, basically, a few weeks ago, you had a rebroadcast of the interview with John Lear.
	And he gave you the briefing, basically, of the government's disclosure.
	That's right.
	And if the audience doesn't know what I'm talking about, I urge them to go check it out.
	I would think the majority of them would.
	The impact of that was gigantic.
	Indeed.
	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 and started crying.
	Um, it absolutely could have been, and that was a caller, of course, who once called the program and said that he went to a book signing with Jimmy Carter.
	And, of course, Carter was quite famous for having said that if elected, he would demand all the evidence on UFOs that our government had.
	And then the follow-up to that was the caller, this man mentioned, called the show and said he once went to a book signing, you know, after President Carter had left office.
	And that he asked about what President Carter had found, and Carter said something slightly dismissive, and then he pressed him.
	And he ended up with the Tyranners in his eye, and didn't talk about it.
	Fairly compelling, I would say.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	This is Colby.
	I'm calling from Portland, Oregon.
	Hi, Colby.
	How you doing?
	Good, how are you?
	Fine.
	I was calling to ask you your opinion on the Blue Book.
	On the ABC Special?
	You mean the project?
	Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
	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 the ABC Special.
	Well, they gave it a pretty short shrift, I would say.
	There, and in the case of Roswell, of course, they pretty well dismissed Roswell as nothing more than a myth.
	And I thought that was a wrong.
	By and large, as you know, I thought the ABC special was a good first effort for the general public, but dismissing Roswell that way I thought, how could they?
	How could they?
	With all of the eyewitness testimony and all that has come about with regard to Roswell, how could, you know, and then handling that other stuff, how could they so easily... President!
	No, you're not.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, I heard the program last night, and I'd like to mention something that I think is very relevant.
	Mark Lane was one of the major Sir, you're going to have to raise your voice a little bit.
	Mark Lane, who was one of the major researchers into evidence of CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination, wondered why he had been bashed by the media.
	And he finally, for a lot of suits, got his Freedom of Information Act file from the CIA.
	And it turns out that the Director of Plans of the CIA 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 talking points they should use, and among them were that he was a conspiracy nut, he was just in it for the money, that any newspaper would be glad to have this because it would be such a Jimmy Olsen type of scoop, and they would never cover this up.
	Exactly the kinds of cliches I heard from your guest last night from Popular Mechanics.
	The guest last night, sir, only commented on scientifically investigated items.
	Sixteen of them, in fact.
	Well, that's not true, Bart, because... Yes, that is true.
	I was here during the program, I know.
	He closed off by saying that this was an independent commission.
	Certainly it was an independent commission.
	Everyone around the 9-11 Truth family, 911truth.org families have completely protested the conflicts of interest of that hand-picked panel by the Bush administration.
	The conflicts of interest are... Sir, sir, hello.
	Hello.
	Pause, 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, he really did.
	He made a lot of political comments about the motivations, the psychology of those supposedly hating... He did say, oh yeah, he did say that he thought it was politically motivated, and I think it is too.
	Well, I think they are politically motivated, and frankly, Art, I believe you are, because you claim the subjectivity that you have disagreements with Bush, but your supposed disagreement is to be more Bush than Bush.
	I did not vote for President Bush, and I'll tell you why.
	Because President Bush is going to put nuclear waste here in Nevada, whereas the other candidate had promised that he would not let it happen.
	Most politics, sir, is local, and if you lived in Nevada, you might well have felt exactly the way I did.
	I agree with you on that issue, but the point is, on everything, every murderous frame-up of countries for these unprovoked, preemptive wars around the world, flow from this fabricated version of 9-11, all of that depends on... Do you believe, let me ask you... You have shown your agreement with every one of those 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.
	Hello, sir.
	I did not agree at all with the invasion of Iraq, and said so adamantly before it began.
	Well, I certainly have heard other things, but I would like to mention Operation Northwoods.
	And if you don't believe that it's capable of, for an element in this government, To kill Americans on that scale.
	This is brought out by James Bamford, the NSA expert.
	I know, I've heard.
	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 Senator Carl Jaffa, Annie Wolfowitz, and the rest of them Have that ability to reprise this Operation Northwoods, which had a plan to... Alright, I already got that.
	Thank you very much.
	I'm going to show you something.
	I think it's reprehensible.
	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 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 9-17-04, 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.
	So from the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AF.
	I'm a heart of the tip of the waterway.
	I'm a bad guy, such a sin.
	He's got me all wired, and I get him.
	I'm a heartache and everything.
	I'm a heart of the tip of the waterway.
	This is a situation that I just can't win.
	He's got me all wired, and I get him.
	I got a lot of those heartaches.
	I got a lot of those tip-offs.
	I'm a heart of the tip of the waterway.
	I feel you keep on trying, but you really don't know why.
	Baby, when you need a smile to help a shadow get away.
	Come to me, baby, you'll see The love's too pretty, baby
	So strong to hold you through the night The love's too pretty, mama
	There's always left to make it The love's too loose
	Who's gonna love you, love you?
	Who's gonna love you, love you?
	The love's too loose Who's gonna love you, love you?
	Who's gonna love you?
	www.LRCgenerator.com 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.
	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, 800-895-727-1222.
	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
	It is indeed, and there, I've got it up on my webcam right now.
	If you go to coasttocoastam.com, and click in the upper left-hand corner, you'll see Art's 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 alright uh... back to the phones we go
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Mr. Bell.
	Howdy.
	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 has always been about.
	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.
	Well, of course!
	Now, I'm telling you, brother, that's sad for America.
	When a lot of people start to get to believing, the President sat down and I had a paper in front of him, I'm sure, a secret, naturally.
	I 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.
	And also here, Mr. President, is the memo to let the Miami Dolphins win the Super Bowl, and also to raise gas prices this week.
	Yeah, and how about Boston to the World Series?
	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.
	Well, whatever happened to the most logical thing?
	The logical thing is that the airplanes were hijacked.
	Right.
	That they did plow into the buildings.
	That it wasn't missiles.
	It seemed to me to be airplanes.
	Right.
	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, 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?
	I tried to point out last night that any number of individuals had their shot on the show for hour after hour after hour on the other side of the question, but dare speak one word on this side of it, and these people who were screeching about openness, they'd become, I don't know, they'd turn red and they'd hold their breath.
	Yeah, it's a case of open mouth and closed mind, I believe.
	Have a good morning, sir.
	Yes, sir, you too.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air, good morning.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hey, this is Wayne in San Antonio.
	Hello, Wayne.
	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.
	Oh, the Jersey Devil.
	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's 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 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?
	Well, I think you 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.
	Western Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Yeah, good morning.
	Good morning.
	Yeah, I wanted to ask you if you've ever heard of this crash at Roswell?
	Of course I've heard of it.
	Yeah, I know you've heard of it, but I mean whether you heard or not that they did autopsies of those guys.
	Well, that's the rumor.
	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, and... Where'd you get all this?
	Well, there was a guy that was on KISSEN radio station, K-I-S-S-E-N, in Portland.
	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.
	All right, please do.
	Yeah, but anyway, I live for the weekend here, Art, and you just keep me awake all night.
	I wish you'd get on a couple more nights a week.
	Two nights is fine.
	Anyway, you have a good day.
	And you as well.
	Thank you.
	You're on the air.
	Coast Goes Down with Art Bell.
	Where are you calling from, please?
	Well, it's Jermaine here, calling from Palo Verde, B.C.
	Up in British Columbia.
	And your first name?
	Oh, Jermaine here.
	T-R-E-M-A-I-N.
	I want to thank you, first of all, for letting me on when Sir Charles was on.
	Oh, you're very welcome.
	And I remember that had to do with time, and actually had to do with the spaceship going at this light speed.
	Yes.
	Which really has something to do with time.
	Yes, well, it does.
	I mean, you know, I called about three times on that, and finally I got my answer.
	I read something in Scientific American, it was possible that where you have some, you know, you have some solar, you know, batteries and solar power, that you can get it up to that speed, eh?
	Well, he confirmed it, eh?
	Well, in a way, yes.
	In other words, any propulsive, 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 caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello Art, this is Roger near Fort Wayne.
	Yes Roger.
	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.
	Oh?
	And I think it is, from what I understand, there is little or no volcanic activity on Mars.
	Am I correct about that?
	Um, 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.
	Well, that seems to tell me that Mars, the core of Mars, would be colder than the core of Earth.
	I guess that would be logical.
	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.
	That's a pretty interesting and, I don't know, fairly logical theory, I guess.
	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.
	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.
	All right.
	I think that's a pretty cool theory myself.
	And so, hmm.
	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.
	Hello.
	Hello?
	Hi.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	That's very important.
	Oh, hello.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	Wow, I can't believe I got you.
	How do you do?
	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 been interested in politics since I was about 12.
	So, um, I mean, one thing about George Bush I noticed, um, I do look at people a lot and I've had a moment.
	I also 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.
	Yeah, I know.
	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 who you're talking to.
	Thank you.
	And I want to say one thing.
	People have said in the past that Bin Laden and Telemuhtin didn't know each other.
	And I read after the attack, 9-1-1 attack, I was reading about Bin Laden.
	In the Canadian newspaper, um, 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 anything going, there was no point in the 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.
	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 the 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 the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Hi.
	This is Mike.
	I'm calling from Virginia.
	Yes, Mike.
	i'd just like to wait a few stand-up i think i have a feeling that most of the people that are
	at this conspiracy theories are probably never spent
	a minute in a different country but what i do have a little question for you
	is um...
	i think big brother hiccuped on nine eleven I'm not really sure.
	The world hiccuped on 9-11, sir.
	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 happened to him.
	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.
	Give me a break.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Yeah.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Art?
	Yes.
	Boy, am I glad I got through, finally.
	Well, here you are.
	Okay.
	My name is Gene.
	It was last year I had called you Uh, about an alien dead body I found on Mars, in the city square.
	Now, how would you find anything on Mars?
	Oh, by remote viewing it?
	Yeah, the pictures that are on the computer, on Richard Hoagland's page.
	Oh, I remember, yes.
	Yeah, and I sent them to him, and if you... And how did he react?
	Pardon?
	How did he react?
	Well, I haven't heard from... Oh, no.
	I sent him to Mike Barr.
	Uh-huh.
	All the pictures of things that I had found.
	And I'd 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.
	It could have fallen over.
	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...
	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.
	Hello.
	Wait a minute, I didn't push the button.
	Now you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello there.
	John from Boise, Idaho.
	Hello, John.
	You're on the air.
	Wow, I'm so amazed I get to hear your awesome art.
	I just wanted to make the comment on last night's show.
	Yes, sir.
	It really doesn't really matter How it happened, or who was behind it, it happened.
	And the American people were the ones that got the short end of the stick to law-abiding American citizens.
	Every time I turn around, there's a new federal agency in our face, restricting our freedoms.
	You can't walk into a federal building without five armed guards and a movie camera and a metal detector.
	That's the truth.
	So, 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.
	Well, that means to some degree, you 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.
	That's one thing we have to be very wary of.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art?
	Yes.
	My name is David from Los Angeles.
	How are you?
	I'm okay, David.
	I just want to say hello to all Alien Shifters out there and invite all the others to join our group.
	Alien Shift is a proactive group.
	So it's a big plug for Alien Shift, whatever that is.
	We are one of the groups.
	Trying to contact different races of aliens.
	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.
	Hi, this is Jesse in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
	Yes, sir.
	I was wondering, what is the name of that song, and where is it from, that goes, uh, One Velvet Morning When I'm Straight?
	Want to open up your gate?
	It's called One Velvet Morning, uh, by Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra.
	Lee Hazelwood?
	And Nancy Sinatra.
	Oh, I've never heard it before.
	Well, obviously you have or you couldn't have sung me a line from it.
	Thank you.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I was thinking.
	Always good.
	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.
	Well, I guess I'm getting a little sick of the bash America first mentality out there.
	Yeah, it is.
	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.
	Yeah, these people, like one of your other people I called in, said they haven't lived in other countries.
	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.
	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.
	Not a clue at all.
	Well, thank you, Art, and keep up the good work.
	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.
	Some we may have to do sooner or later, some of us perhaps a little bit sooner.
	That's Robert Zimmerman in Leaving Earth, Space Station's Rival Superpowers in the Quest for Interplanetary Travel.
	Let's rock.
	You're dirty and sweet, and I don't know why, but I love you.
	You're dirty and sweet, and I'm mad.
	When you're sitting in the week, you've got the teeth of the hive upon you.
	You're dirty, sweet, and oh my God.
	Get it on, and look on, get it on.
	Be it sight, sound, smell, or touch, there's something inside that we'll need so much.
	The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sand, or the strength of an oak when it moves 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?
	And they use them to count us to five Five, five nights is all
	Take this place, off that strip Just call me
	Thank you for watching this video. If you liked it, please subscribe to my channel.
	Wanna take a ride?
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	Wanna 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 to the Rockies, call toll free
	800-825-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east to the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-727-1222.
	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.
	It certainly is.
	Good morning, everybody.
	You're in the right place for a ride, all right?
	Coming up in a moment, Robert Zimmern.
	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.
	The United Press International.
	That's prestigious.
	His most recent book, Leaving Earth, 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. Schramm Award given by the High Energy Astrophysic Division of the American Astronomical Society for Science and Journalism.
	In a moment, Robert Zimmerman.
	Alright, here is a space historian, Robert Zimmerman.
	Welcome to the program.
	I'm very glad to be back.
	Every time, it's been a pleasure.
	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?
	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, for a 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.
	Right.
	And I have no reason not to believe them.
	Two-man 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 theirs.
	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.
	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.
	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 alive.
	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?
	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've spent more than a year in space already, and they have the medical data to see what the consequences are.
	Right, right.
	And on top of that... But there are consequences, by the way.
	There are definitely consequences.
	I mean, I talk about that at great length.
	You've got the bone density issue.
	You lose about one and a half 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.
	Or come up with artificial gravity.
	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 to fly by Mars.
	It was built with that in mind.
	And the only thing it lacked was the engines.
	And the navigational engines, mostly, to get it on a fly-by mission.
	Now, they were planning to build what they called MIR-2, and they wanted, originally, the Soviet Union 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 most of their half of this International Space Station.
	Yeah, they're good at that.
	And the actual hull of MIR-2 is what they use for the habitation module, Zvezda, that's in orbit right now.
	And their half of the International Space Station is going to be Mir 2.
	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 was 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 half and it would still function.
	So, 2014, for them to do a fly-by, it's possible.
	It might not happen, but it is definitely a possibility.
	And in that grand picture, the larger picture of the Grand Adventure, that's exciting.
	Plus, you have Japan re-assessing 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 but 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.
	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.
	Oh, that was cool.
	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.
	Do you know what else Bigelow's doing, by the way?
	You mean his space habitat?
	Well, Bigelow Aerospace.
	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 space.
	And he's going to do it!
	He's going to do it.
	I mean, I've talked to his company and the people who work for him.
	They've got the modules actually built.
	They've got a prototype.
	They've got a small-scale model ready to launch almost.
	All they need is a cheap launch facility.
	I know they've come a very long way, more than the American people know.
	I'm friends with Robert, and so I know quite a bit about it.
	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.
	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.
	And then there's Gene Myers, Space Island Group.
	Yes.
	You know about them?
	Yes.
	So there are a number of... That's the private end.
	I was giving you the other nations, the international political end.
	The European Space Agency wants to do it.
	but I hadn't even gotten, you know, we segwayed into the private end, which is actually much more exciting.
	And then you got NASA and George Bush's proposal to, you know, 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.
	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.
	Now, if you're talking about the actual program that Kennedy did, and how it makes you 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 doubts about whether Nassar can pull this off.
	However, I do repeat, his proposal is Unusual in that, 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'm being, you know, I sound like I'm a NASA lovey here, and people who read my stuff, I have a lot of problems with NASA, and I have a great deal of doubt as to 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 I, once again, this is just that wrong vision in your first question, Art.
	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.
	It never even got anywhere.
	Why do you think that occurred?
	The political atmosphere at the time was just not into it.
	The Democratic Congress, the 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 talked to a lot of astronomers and a lot of scientists, and there's still that knee-jerk opposition.
	I get a lot of guys and gals who say to me, well, you know, we're curious.
	Maybe this is not a bad thing.
	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.
	Well, they can't.
	That's true, they cannot.
	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?
	The machines?
	Yeah!
	I mean, you said it yourself.
	We have to have dreams greater than ourselves.
	I said exactly those same words in Leading the Earth.
	We do.
	And that's the reason to send humans.
	Now, I'll give you a more pragmatic reason.
	Scientists today are worried that the MANS 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 science America is booming.
	But what you do have in the United States, because we haven't pursued the engineering knowledge I mentioned earlier when we were going to Mars, we've had a terrible gap in engineers now for the last 15 years.
	There's a terrible deficit.
	Robert, I don't talk to any young people who say, I want to be a rocket scientist.
	You don't hear that?
	They don't have it anymore, but they don't have what they... They see Hubble pictures and the astronomical discoveries, and that gets them so excited to be astronomers, and you have that.
	But they don't have manned space exploration and the engineering.
	It 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 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 No, I'm extremely optimistic about the next few decades.
	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.
	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.
	China might be.
	I think it's more likely it'll be the Russians to surprise us, just because they're They have the knowledge and 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 LM ascent module knocked it over.
	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.
	So, and I think that 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.
	In terms of human generational development, it's very comparable.
	We had in 1969 going to the moon in the 70s.
	but 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 Plymouth Rock,
	and boom, it happened.
	So in terms of human generational development, it's very comparable.
	We've had, we had in 69 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 cure up to regret if you're excited guy kinda 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
	mister zimmerman look we've got people in america
	playing devil's advocate here They're hungry, and we've got five, six percent of people who are better out of jobs, and you want to spend money to send men back to the moon or to Mars for what?
	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.
	No, they whine.
	I go to congressional hearings all the time and a lot of them really like to whine.
	No, even that's changing.
	I heard a congressman actually say a few days ago, a week and a half ago, that NASA administrators said, we want to have absolute safety in launching the shuttle.
	This guy took him to task.
	He said, this congressman said, Vernon Ehlers 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
	are never going to go back in space.
	And I think that's a terrible approach to this, you should instead accept the fact that
	people are going to die.
	And for Congress to say that, I thought was wonderful.
	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.
	Is it getting too old?
	The shuttle, it's time to... It was time to replace the shuttle, oh, I'd say about 1990.
	Right.
	The shuttle is one of the most brilliantly designed First generation, first reusable prototype spaceship.
	If you built 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.
	Exactly.
	Hold on, where's the bottom there?
	He's exactly right.
	That's what the shuttle was.
	I mean, so serviceable, kind of like the B-52, and it's time.
	My God, what a bomber.
	What a bomber.
	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.
	Mississippi in the middle of the dry spell.
	Baby Roger on the victrola up high.
	Mama's dancing, baby, on her shoulder.
	I'm starting to set my life, my life's selection in style I could say I knew I had it in me
	Everything, always wanting more Believe in longing for
	Like feathers I leave behind Oh, la la la la la
	Oh, la la la la la Oh, la la la la la
	Valentine is done Here but now they're gone
	Romeo and Juliet All together in eternity
	Romeo and Juliet Forty thousand men and women every day
	Forty thousand men and women every day Forty thousand men and women every day
	Come on baby, don't feel the reaper Baby take my hand, don't feel the reaper
	We'll be able to fly, don't feel the reaper Baby I'm your man
	Do talk with Art Bell. Call the wildcard line at area code 7.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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	International callers may reach Art Bell 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, call Art Bell. This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. And this
	night with Robert Zimmerman, who is a space historian, and 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.
	A lot of converse about Hubble and whether it's going to stay up there or de-orbit and burn to a cinder.
	Sound of rocket taking off.
	Music.
	All right, Robert, let's talk about the shuttle a bit.
	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?
	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 modular setup.
	It wouldn't just be one vehicle.
	It would be modular.
	Cargo in separate modules.
	Additional modules to attach to a capsule so that you can extend its capability.
	That was the overall, 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 companies, the aerospace industry, a whole range of companies were involved in working up that RFP, request 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.
	Will you have the money for this?
	Well, that's a good question.
	I'm not just giving you the plan.
	I can get into the money in a minute, but let me at least set the framework for everybody to know what's going to happen.
	Alright, design and fly.
	Design and fly.
	What they're doing is, the guy in charge of the Exploration Department at NASA is a guy named Admiral Chuck Seidel.
	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 be paid anyway.
	So they started to come up with this idea of having fly-offs.
	Having two competing companies compete for the contract, and then they do a prototype, and then they pick the company they like best.
	Increase 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 imploded, 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'll be exciting in itself.
	And then the plan is that the winner of that fly-off will then build and fly a manned mission by 2014.
	Now having laid that out, I can lay out several plans for that framework.
	One, where's the money?
	Well, I see the expectation there is that private industry supplies the money to come up with the winning prototype, right?
	No, actually not.
	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 giving it to Lockheed Martin, who only got zero.
	But it's got to be taxpayer money.
	It's got to be taxpayer money.
	Under this plan, it's 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 wrapping 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.
	Right.
	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've tired the shuttle.
	And then what?
	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.
	As a matter of fact, they just made a deal with Iran.
	Yes, we did.
	So they're refusing to do it.
	And Congress and Congressman Bowler, 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, that's another gap in this plan, without question.
	It is possible it could accelerate the program of the CEV.
	It's very drawn out.
	I mean, they fly a prototype in 2008, 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 Well, those were amazing times, Robert.
	I'm not sure there is amazing now, in that sense.
	that they're going to create a third middle-midground 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.
	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.
	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 McCann at Scale Composites and the XPRIZE proved is that 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 the worst thing they could do is decide, okay, we're now going to store it at the Aerospace Museum for people to stare at.
	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 and 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.
	Well, the history, though, Robert, isn't good.
	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?
	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.
	That's an incredible investment that should be used as a telescope!
	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 de-orbit 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?
	I can probably go an hour on the subject.
	No, I could probably do a whole show with you on the subject of Hubble.
	We won't do that, 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, we'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.
	So you're saying we still need Hubble?
	We, until, if 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.
	I've got a little story here sent to me.
	It says, a new Hubble?
	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.
	Oh, I've heard that.
	The Hubble Origins probe pictured, and they've got a picture, is 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.
	Is that true?
	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.
	The simple bottom line thing here is that the cheapest, most effective way, and quickest way to keep Hubble running when its gyros, before its gyros and batteries fail in around 2008, is to just simply send shuttle astronauts to do it.
	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, you are That 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, and they're not the ones to 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.
	Why is NASA making that decision?
	Fear.
	Fear of?
	Fear of, of, of, of, of failure.
	Of, of, of astronaut to die.
	You see, that NASA administrator right now, the acting NASA administrator, is a man by Fred Gregory, he's a former astronaut.
	Yeah.
	He was testifying in front of Congress, and he, he was the one that said, used these words, absolute, we want to have absolute safety when we watch our astronauts.
	And of course that'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.
	For a prototype, first generation, reusable spaceship, the first ever built, they have an incredible safety record.
	They flew over a hundred missions and lost two.
	Two.
	That's a less than two percent failure rate.
	And I've said this on the air before, but I'll say it again if there's repeating, the 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 Clipper ship, when the Clipper ship was at its heyday.
	5% a year, and that was the ordinary loss rate for sailing ships.
	We have a prototype spaceship and we only lose 2%.
	It's a great safety record.
	You wouldn't expect this kind of sentiment from NASA.
	I mean, it's 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?
	No, they don't have the right stuff.
	It's a government agency.
	The biggest problem NASA has right now, and this has to do with the CEV and Bush's proposal, is that 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 They're behind 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.
	You want to try to do the 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 Yes.
	is infinitely not infinitely i'm sorry i have a lot of our public much less
	robert have they actually said that that the reason they don't want to fix a bubble is because
	they're afraid that now they pay it safety though is a great pleasure no yes it's
	a yes that they have said
	it safety yes they that that that they don't want to go It's not safe.
	That it would be too dangerous a mission.
	That's right.
	They have said that repeatedly.
	In fact, in my most recent Hubble, my most recent UPI column, I talk 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 have 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 it is, they have not even looked into ways to reduce the risk for a regular, for a shuttle mission, and there are ways that can be done.
	You do believe that's their real motive, fear?
	Fear.
	Well, I think deep down that's, they have, they have 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.
	What is the current exact status of Hubble?
	Is it going to be allowed to re-enter and burn up?
	Or is it going to be... Is something else going to happen?
	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 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 every orbit since 1990.
	So you're talking about... That's pretty good.
	You know, 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 decline, they think they're going to fail sometime.
	They originally used to say, oh wait, now they're beginning to say we might actually be able to stretch it to 0.9, 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 pile of 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 Can the batteries be replaced?
	Well, the 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 the first, they've replaced batteries.
	Gyros, now let's go back for a second to the Hubble origins, the hop, the replacement Hubble.
	One of the reasons that's proposed is that several instruments for Hubble already are sitting at the Goddard Space Flight Center finished, ready to go, including a new camera and a new spectrograph.
	So those on a shuttle mission can be quickly and easily installed in Hubble and improve the telescope immeasurably without losing its other capabilities.
	All right.
	And in fact, tell the astronauts to even repair some of its other capabilities.
	All right.
	Robert, hold it right there.
	We're at the top of the hour, 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.
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	on the Internet, call Art Bell at 800-618-8255. This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Robert Zimmerman is here, and And, uh, 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?
	Ah, reverence for the horn.
	Good morning, everybody.
	but it will get back to it in a moment or tell you there are some tools out there
	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.
	In fact, you are a real BS artist.
	Punk.
	How much of that kind of craziness do you run into, Robert?
	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.
	And if Burt Rutan and those that want to fly into space have that dream, no one should stand in their way.
	But they do.
	Yeah, they try.
	Well, you know, then they make them no different 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, alright, you know, the naysayers always exist.
	And let them be small-minded.
	You know, having big dreams and going to space is not denigrating the great things being done to free other people.
	If that's all we could have, Robert, that'd be great, 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.
	Well, that's the other thing I notice in the change.
	Congress is They 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, but nonetheless, they did give it.
	And this is starkly different than in the past, once again.
	When Virginia proposed his Mars thing, they didn't get anything.
	They got less than they proposed.
	But it may be that they were told not to ask for much.
	In this case, maybe.
	It's possible.
	But there's a change in the air, and I look at that as optimistic.
	You ask me how much I get of that kind of negative statement, and I don't get it as much.
	What you get instead is excitement and enthusiasm.
	And I'm talking about 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?
	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.
	Well, yeah, the Russians, and they do have a private company, have kind of done it already.
	Yeah, we had a big fight about that.
	But anyway.
	Well, putting them aside.
	Yes.
	Putting them aside.
	There are companies that have actually reserved, people have paid for, 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 a plane.
	uh... there's of course the company's perot can scale composites that's
	putting together that they deal with uh...
	richard branson's uh... virgin atlantic to do it by uh... or eight they went out to school in the flood
	around the world without refueling that's pretty exciting i mean these 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
	yes but you know what to get the things happening uh... that they weren't happening for many years in the
	united states It was kind of like a dead period through the 70s and 80s.
	Boy, it was.
	Yeah, it was.
	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.
	I hope you're right.
	I don't know how much a lunch, you know, a lunch at an expensive restaurant, a hundred dollar lunch, if you want
	to bet me.
	But, you know, I'll pick my, what I want to bet.
	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?
	Well, I think the suborbital 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 also, much more likely than I think 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, No, 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, OK, 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 and actually do it.
	Take the risk.
	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?
	Oh yeah, without question.
	You see, 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'd 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, 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.
	Those would be the basics, all right.
	That's all the basics.
	And the water will provide you, they've 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.
	That's a long time.
	That's right.
	So you've got oxygen, you've got hydrogen for power, and you've got solar power.
	It's some of the basics.
	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 can just be there tomorrow, but that's the basics.
	Once you get to 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 Copernicus, the crater.
	Actually, we're looking at those lunar orbit pictures from the past.
	It just takes your breath away.
	All right.
	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 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?
	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.
	They're going to make it very clear to you.
	And you're going to feel nauseous for several days.
	That's inviting.
	That's exciting.
	I'm going to go down the list.
	You know, there was an actual study done of the tourism industry in which the company that did it, Futron, Um, decided, let's go to likely people with high incomes and tell them all the bad things that could happen.
	Okay, but like all the TV ads I've ever seen, Robert, they say that at the bottom, you know, very quickly, they'd add, uh, slight nausea and bone loss is a possibility.
	No, no, this is, 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's nausea, possibilities, uh, 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 the 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.
	You know, 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.
	Robert, if something, well, aside from something going wrong, what do you imagine, once it's a little bit developed, ten years down the line, the price to go to orbit might be?
	I've heard numbers in the range of around $200,000 a ticket.
	$200,000, okay.
	And that seems like a lot, but when you think about it, it's not.
	It's, I guess, relative.
	It's not nearly so much as people have already paid to do it.
	Right, $20 million.
	That's right.
	So, a couple hundred thousand.
	And after you'd written the, here's what you've 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 world view may change.
	that kind of thing right?
	and you might toss your cookies and you might not. That's exactly right. And the adventure
	in itself, Mike, dude, you know the one of the
	lawyer for Bigelow's company, a guy who works in DC, one of his lawyers, Mike Gold, gave a
	presentation recently in DC in which he pointed out, why are we trying to regulate this industry?
	We let people do things like bungee jumping.
	skydiving yes how do you know millions of extreme sports which is a check it
	called climb everest we don't try to restrict people from doing that
	this is equal equal situation why people climb everest you don't pay thousands to
	the one of the people who stood at the top of that personally do it for the
	experience and that's the bottom line is
	experience uh... you know if i could afford it i would do it
	so you think there would be at say the two hundred thousand dollar mark a sufficient
	market i think that the market studies that have shown without
	question when you tell people all the negative that are involved
	the easily still get a solid market at those kind of prices
	Thank you.
	A big market!
	If that's really true, then I guess I can see them going ahead and doing it in the private sector.
	It's passing NASA right on by.
	Wave as they go by.
	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.
	And as a starting point.
	In fact, there's no doubt about it, 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.
	That's right.
	One continent to 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?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	As I said, with the jars 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 it to de-orbit, and that de-orbit doesn't have to happen until 2012 or so.
	It's orbit is such, it's high enough up that there's no chance it's going to fall back to Earth until then.
	So we've got a lot of time before it's going to fall back to Earth.
	Well, you were aware of the rumors that they're about to do away with it, let it go, let it de-orbit.
	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 that they send up at the orbiting 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.
	It could be mechanical failure, but you know... Right.
	Is there any legitimate argument that we have seen a lot or a high percentage of what's worth taking photographs of?
	And that's why we don't need Hubble anymore.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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 humble 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 when they did it one the Southern Hemisphere, they found it wasn't quite the same.
	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 has been incredible stuff.
	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 it was all the disappointment as well as excitement when Hubble was launched was 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've never really seen the stars and the galaxies clearly until Hubble got into orbit, and everyone knew it.
	And we've taken that for granted!
	Alright, so how much better is Hubble, given its date of birth and technological improvements since?
	How much better is Hubble than ground telescopes?
	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 ten times better, and there have been several multiple replacements, so the actual optical camera is ten times ten times ten better than the first camera they put in.
	And the mirror?
	Excuse me?
	Was the mirror adequately compensated for the, you know, the problem with the mirror. 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.
	Basically, folks, the mirror was not in perfect round, incredible as that sounds.
	There 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.
	Exactly.
	All right, hold on.
	We're here 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.
	There may be somebody on the corner somewhere trying to earn a couple of bucks wiping the windshield.
	I have no idea.
	We'll ask when we get back.
	We'll ask when we get back.
	Into this house we're born.
	Into this world we're thrown.
	Like a dog with no...
	...
	...
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	Thanks for watching!
	Once upon a time Once when you were mine I remember your eyes Reflected in your eyes I wonder where you are I wonder if you think about me Once upon a time In your wild To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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	My guest is Robert Zimmerman.
	And we'll get back to him in a moment.
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	From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Not necessarily a NASA guy, but definitely a very strong space advocate.
	My guest is Robert Zimmerman, and we'll get back to him in a moment.
	Don't go anywhere.
	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?
	Well, you know, they sent two rovers to Mars.
	They had a goal to be working for 90 days each.
	We're now over a year in both cases.
	One's at 409 and the other's at like 488 days.
	Over a year.
	Pretty incredible.
	They were originally never supposed to go more than, what is it, 600 feet from their landing site.
	Right.
	And one's more than a mile, and the other one's heading out much greater distances, actually, several miles.
	Tremendous successes, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	What have we learned?
	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 the planet.
	It's very low and smooth and flat.
	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 of frozen icebergs trapped in a frozen sea that's now kind of coated with volcanic ash, which kind of protects it from sublimating away.
	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 Yes.
	75% of them said they think that Mars once had life.
	And 35% of them at the conference said, you know, 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.
	Methane, right.
	Peaks of methane.
	And methane is something, you know, it can be formed in a lot of ways.
	Volcanoes produce it.
	It doesn't have to be life.
	It gets dissipated very, very quickly by sunlight and other chemical processes, so you need to renew it to get evidence of it.
	There's not that much volcanic action on Mars, is there?
	That's right, which means that's why a lot of these scientists say, well, the only thing that could do it is biological activity.
	Is there any active volcanic activity on Mars that they know of?
	So they don't know of any?
	They don't know of any.
	There's no evidence.
	You know, they've 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.
	Dust changes, you know, dust devils and things that wind, dust storms cause slight changes to the visual surface, but no evidence of any kind of volcanic activity.
	Have we seen any evidence, or do we have any evidence, of even small life?
	No, absolutely not.
	Not at this stage of the game.
	Insect level, anything?
	No.
	There is, 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.
	What was it they were looking at that made them think that?
	Well, what happened is there were a bunch of different experiments.
	Vikings' sole goal was to see if there was life on Mars.
	In a sense, it was a misconceived mission, because to send one, two craft there on 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 set 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.
	Right.
	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.
	That's right.
	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 dismiss 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 on Mars, it's merely an opinion, and as a scientist, they would immediately agree that we don't know.
	Well, there was quite a flurry about the methane.
	Yes, methane is a marker.
	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 does mean we gotta go back and do more research and that's that's that's the exciting part. 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?
	No, well, you know, the original orbital pictures from Mariner 9 and followed with Viking showed all these meandering streams, it looked like.
	That's right.
	Similar 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 base, at the lowest points where the Spirit was, 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 it's now, once it gets higher up, it's finding evidence of water.
	Evidence not of water, but of water processes that produce the geology we see today.
	And in fact, recently, they found evidence of what looks like salt, which would be a leftover from water.
	Sure would.
	Left behind by evaporated water.
	Right.
	Now, the other opportunity, it landed in an area that, it was a hole in one, it landed right at the bottom of a little crater.
	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.
	Are they making any good educated guesses about how long ago that water would have been there?
	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... What they can do is they've done crate accounts and they have established three general epochs of history in Martian past.
	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.
	Is Mars more interesting than the moons of Saturn, like Titan for example?
	Or would Titan be a more exciting destination?
	They're all actually incredibly exciting.
	The difference is that Mars is relatively closer.
	That's right.
	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.
	Right.
	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 the vessel to get there, and that's what I talk about in Leaving Earth.
	You need to understand how to build those long-term interplanetary spaceships.
	Yes.
	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.
	Alright, well you told me a little bit about what we could use to establish a base on Mars.
	What have we, the moon rather, what have we learned so far with regard to Mars, and the same thing, will we have, we would have to have water?
	You see, that's the good question.
	We don't really know yet enough about Mars to be able to answer that question.
	It is pretty, they think, 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.
	Maybe the moon has been placed there like a tricycle for us.
	Yes!
	I mean, if you want to be spiritual about this, it sure is a convenient working place.
	You know, there are a lot of science fiction novels Well, it is.
	I mean, it's three little wheels that we can get started with.
	So, you think we can do that by, say, when?
	to work on. You can be that way if you want, but either way it is a convenient starting
	point, without question.
	Well, it is. I mean, it's three little wheels that we can get started with. So you think
	we can do that by, say, when?
	Well, once again, Bush's proposal is return to the moon sometime between 2015 and 20.
	Whether NASA will do that or not, you know, can be argued.
	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?
	That's right.
	How much more?
	This is an established basis 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, you have a situation that We won't just go back and step on it, 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... There's a vacuum and they had to fill it.
	And here, there's no other... There's no native population for conflict.
	It's whoever gets there first and possesses the territory.
	So you've got a competition going.
	It's to go and to stay, without question.
	The moon will never belong to any one nation, will it?
	Will it?
	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, 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 U.N.
	and you Earth countries decided.
	We want to have our own nation.
	Yes.
	And they might be multiple different nations who compete with each other.
	So in that law, I actually think the U.N.
	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 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 law is to back them up.
	Right now, based on the U.N.
	treaties that we've signed, American citizens on the moon are really almost forced to live on the U.N.
	jurisdiction.
	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 shove.
	So let's get this straight.
	If Americans, or if we went to the moon tomorrow, we would be under the jurisdiction of the United Nations?
	According to the UN 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 devolves down to the U.N.
	Wow.
	I had no idea.
	You can challenge it, but right now they accept the idea that it goes back to the U.N.
	Not a good situation.
	No, I was thinking of, you know, three to five acres minimum for myself.
	No, huh?
	No, they wouldn't let you.
	You see, the UN 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.
	Property rights don't exist yet in space for the citizens that will go.
	Someday, yes.
	But at the moment, no.
	Your book, Leaving Earth, and I know you've got an appearance coming up.
	Tell me about it.
	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 to give you 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 in history.
	So I'm excited about that.
	The International Space Development Conference by the International 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 Burt 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 of the National Space Society.
	That is interesting.
	Yeah, 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.
	So you might have a situation where it's a face-off.
	You get to see what the private guys are proposing versus what NASA's proposing.
	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 here they've 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.
	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.
	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?
	Why was that such a big damn deal?
	Power.
	Power?
	Power.
	It's PowerGrad.
	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 don't, 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.
	When it came to, you know, the mere flight of Dennis Tito's flight to the NASA Space Station, NASA looked like a fool.
	I know, it was crazy.
	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, well, Who has the right to tell you you're not allowed to do it?
	If Dennis Tito 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 him do it!
	Let him do it.
	Alright, 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 AL.
	I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife.
	I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife It's lonely out in space
	It's lonely out in space, on such a time as white.
	On such a time as white I miss my wife
	I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife.
	My mind had fallen in love, I'd broken deep surrender And I had met my destiny in quite a single way
	My heart had fallen to the broken feet of surrender.
	The mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself Waterloo, I was defeated once more
	Waterloo, I promise to love you forevermore Waterloo, goodness save me my Waterloo
	Waterloo, knowing our fate is to be doomed Oh, oh, oh, oh, Waterloo, finally facing our Waterloo
	I tried to hold you back but you were stronger, oh yeah And now it seems my only chance is given up on life
	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.
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	It is indeed.
	Robert Zimmerman is here.
	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.
	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.
	Robert, I wonder if you think that characterization I just made of you is a very strong space
	advocate but not necessarily one of NASA's. Generally fair?
	Yes, it is fair.
	The other thing about my approach is that 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 with a cold eye.
	I especially look at them with a cold eye because as bureaucrats, the agency does tend Play games with the truth, right?
	A lot of people do that, I hate to say it.
	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 from political movements?
	Moon colonizers should be just that, moon citizens, not earthlings, but the free people of the moon!
	Oh, 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 nations.
	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.
	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.
	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 don't, they're a far, they're a long ways away, you know.
	We need to be free, and there's going to be a moon revolt.
	You know, it's an interesting thing, Art, but in doing my research on leaving Earth, we've already seen 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.
	There has been a lot of that, hasn't there?
	Yeah, a lot.
	A lot not so publicized.
	Some publicized, but a lot of it not.
	Well, a lot of it actually has been faux.
	Yes.
	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 space station run their situation.
	But I will say that we always see indications 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 jump in a lake, without question.
	Well, at least we can say, well then, at least we've got a lake, huh?
	Well, that's true, except you know what?
	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 out to the Moon, and you've got trillions of water again.
	They're going to have the technology that we don't have, which will give them a flexibility that we don't have.
	In the end, they will actually be in a better position than us.
	And if they get really upset with us, it's probably the technology to throw a rock at us.
	You better believe it!
	You know, think about it a minute.
	Which country dominates the world right now?
	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.
	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.
	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 gotten that or are trying to abandon that idea, the richness of the culture is one of the reasons people like Burt Rutan succeeded recently.
	And their success can lead to greater successes down the road.
	All right.
	Plug your book.
	You told us about where you're going to be.
	Tell us about your book.
	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 Stations, Rivals, 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 Wernher 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 planet.
	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.
	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.
	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, but how much of that has been legitimately shared with America?
	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've spent hard... Look, I'll give you an example.
	I interviewed 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 spaceflight.
	He was in orbit for fourteen and a half months.
	He's also a doctor who was focused on space medicine his whole life.
	Right.
	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, Project Cross says that he has worked out the exercises and equipment to reduce the bone density loss to less than a 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, you want to, 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 the 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.
	Um, and I've seen this repeatedly from NASA people, how they just do not take what the Russians have done seriously.
	All right.
	And I think it's a terrible mistake.
	All right.
	Listen, your book is available at Amazon.com and such.
	It's... Yeah, it's available on the website, absolutely.
	You know, and if you go to the bookstores, you can... If they don't have it, they should, but if they don't, you just demand that they order it.
	All right.
	We're going to the phone.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hello.
	Hi there.
	I wanted to bring up some points.
	I didn't hear the beginning of your guest talk, but when you were talking about the role of business, I guess, and I think we're all skeptical about NASA and its ability to bring us into space, but I'm just concerned because, I mean, we're literally talking about the future of billions of people for thousands of years, the future of our species, and it seems like if we limit the potential 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 XPRIZE business, and which I was really excited about, but a kind of almost market fundamentalism that suggested 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 environment, the negative effects of untrammeled private enterprise.
	And my concern is sort of, am I going to see a McDonald's Well, you know, one of the fundamental questions I ask in Leaving Earth is, the decisions we make today will determine how future generations live in space, what kind of societies they have.
	you brought up that point commercialization well you know uh...
	one of the follow-up questions i have to be part of it
	the decisions we make today will determine how
	future generations living space for conspiring and it's a question that these americans
	used to ask routinely because we came from a car series of colonies that all
	were experiments and we recognize what worked and what didn't and one of the
	reasons the nation grew so successfully with new states because we had applied
	experiments to them new territories and they were able to join the nation
	prosperously We don't ask these questions anymore.
	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.
	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.
	What about the commercialization of space?
	Freedom once again!
	You know, America used to be proud of the fact that we were a little bit garish and commercial and innovative and creative, and so what if you had a little bit of billboard here and there?
	It showed productivity and excitement and creativity.
	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.
	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 alright?
	Well, it might be alright with me, except in this case, I don't have a say in it, and no one else does.
	Congress passed a law a few years ago that makes it illegal for Americans to do that.
	Oh.
	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.
	Well, then it might probably be American money that finances the French.
	It'll say, La Coca-Cola.
	Well, you know what?
	The Russians might do it.
	Yeah, they might.
	And they might get some American company that'll pay them to do it.
	That's right.
	You're absolutely correct.
	And what it'll do is there'll be a lot of whining and complaining on Earth, and it might not be a great thing, but if it finances the exploration of space, They're going to thumb their noses as they wave at us as they go by.
	Well, that's big money.
	You get a sign up there in the night sky and that's pretty hard to beat.
	I think that kind of thing is not a real worry for a lot of technical engineering reasons.
	There are other things they can do that are more effective and have been doing, like Coca-Cola and Pepsi have done repeated commercials in orbit with the Russians.
	Yes.
	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.
	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.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hello.
	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?
	Describe it for me.
	Give me some details, because I might know, but not by name.
	It's a condition that causes the bones to become significantly more dense than they should be.
	Oh, no, I'm not familiar with the 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 there's a direct tie-in between trying to solve the bone density loss problem in space with providing medical research to reduce the loss of bone density on Earth, things like osteoporosis, and also bed rest.
	Weightlessness is an exact analogy, almost an exact analogy, to the symptoms of long-term bed rest on Earth, which causes some of the same problems You're also atrophy.
	They actually kill people as they get older.
	Yeah, they atrophy.
	You atrophy.
	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 it very well.
	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.
	Well, you know, the truth of the matter... This is once again getting back to what I said to you earlier, Art.
	I think things are changing.
	I don't get that kind of question that often anymore.
	You get more questions like the caller just had, where they're asking about a disease.
	Now, I'm not familiar with this.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm actually unfamiliar with this.
	But it sounds interesting that medicine could be used...
	Maybe solve the bone density loss problem in space.
	If you can figure out what causes the density increase in the disease, you can maybe apply that to preventing density loss.
	She might have been thinking space would be just a great place for her if she had over-dense bones.
	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 orbit.
	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.
	But they don't remember that.
	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 the battle is becoming won.
	I'm an optimist in this respect, but I actually think, based on my experience, that These questions are... The question now comes out, how can we use space to benefit us, rather than why should we bother going?
	Gotcha.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmer.
	Good morning, Art.
	Good morning, Robert.
	Good morning.
	This is Dan from Modesto, California, listening to you on 780 KOH.
	Yes, sir.
	I've got a question for Robert.
	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 ride it to?
	Oh, here we go.
	All right.
	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 this 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 Robert Zimmerman is my guest from the desert in the middle of the night.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	that gives you the education that you want there's your answer robert zimmerman is my guests
	from the desert the middle of the night's this is close to close to a m
	and the
	the the
	the I get up, get up, get up
	I've got words in my head so I say them.
	Don't let life get me down.
	Catch a hold of my blues and just play them.
	Do Talk With Art Bell. Call the wildcard line at area code 7.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
	at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
	International callers My guest this night, Robert Zimmerman.
	You could say he's very up on space travel.
	It's been fascinating.
	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.
	My guest this 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.
	All right. It's back to the phones with Robert Zimmerman.
	Robert, are you there?
	Oh, I'm here.
	Lots of people want to talk to you.
	On the international line, you're on the air.
	Hi, where are you calling from, please?
	I'm calling from north of Baghdad, in Iraq.
	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?
	Some guys playing it over on CB Radio here.
	I'm with a trucking firm called Brown & Root.
	They're doing some contracting over here.
	They just played over the two-way on Channel 18.
	You know, I heard they were doing that over there.
	It's really cool.
	I'd never heard the show before, like two weeks ago.
	I like both you, Mr. Bell, and Mr. Norrie.
	You guys are just...
	Cool.
	You're totally different, and you're pretty cool.
	It's kind of a neat show.
	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?
	It's hot.
	It's kind of hostile.
	You don't want to mess around a whole lot.
	Nobody's really friendly to me.
	It's way hot.
	I guess that sums it up pretty well.
	Well, stay safe.
	Do you have a question for Robert?
	I do.
	Mr. Zimmerman, we were over at the OTF, the Officers Club, back on base, 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, and that it's already been being bid out by civilian contractors.
	The only bad part is that I can't have a gun.
	The contractors aren't allowed any weaponry.
	gonna probably barbecue state status of this gravity that's true or you know that's gonna really happen is for
	my there are people are going to let me tell you thank you for your doing
	all that i know actually cash over here and over my eyes open
	late only bad part is that uh... i can't have a god uh... the contractor a lot of weapons that's a bad part
	that that that yeah i think i don't know
	well yeah i don't work over here They've begun to do a real good job.
	We've got 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.
	There you are.
	All right, now, to answer your question... Same reason we're going to go to the moon.
	Yeah, 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... They tend to be partisan Democrats, to be very honest.
	If you look at it, 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 Lockheed 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.
	It's not the plan.
	I don't think they're even going to take over the Moon.
	He just said it was going to be their job, that NASA was going to take care of the domestic issue, and they were going to make the Moon 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.
	Well, I don't know.
	You would think the moon would have strategic value.
	Very strategic is what it boils down to, is what they're saying.
	And the reason they were going to pull it away from NASA is the bureaucratic reason.
	They can use, you know, I don't know exactly all the terminology, I'm not really military, you know, executive privilege or something that they could use to get the money to go... The moon has 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 civilians.
	All right, I want to thank the caller from Iraq.
	I kind of agree with him.
	It seems to me it would have tremendous strategic value.
	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 ICBMs on Earth.
	That's true.
	So, the moon has strategic value, but from a civilian perspective now, and I was talking about that earlier, you know, to compare competition to game territory, but that's not necessarily military at this stage of the game.
	No, not at all.
	Okay.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Hello, this is Michael.
	Hi, Robert.
	Hello, good morning.
	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.
	And also recently that China has been testing long-distance space rockets to take what they call Taikonauts, which means space in Chinese, to also land on the moon as early as the year 2012.
	Yeah, they're really rocking, no question.
	I believe that both China and Japan, as well as a few other developing countries, but I used the two Asian countries, for example, have the most technology, the most funding, and the most enthusiasm.
	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?
	You know, as I mentioned earlier in the show, I would also add India to this.
	China... 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.
	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 there to send an experiment.
	So those three countries are undoubtedly going to be players in this future effort.
	The Chinese sure are.
	I've been watching them, and space-wise, 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.
	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 Better than anything we've got, because we're not in space yet.
	Still, the shuttle returns.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Yeah, good morning, Walt, from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
	Yes, sir.
	WNTJ and a fellow ham operator at that.
	All right.
	Awesome show, me as well.
	Yes, sir.
	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?
	You know, the truth of the matter is that no one really knows.
	It's very far away.
	We have to remember... But not impossible.
	Nothing is impossible.
	When someone 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 the Huygens and Cassini of Titan are incredibly tantalizing.
	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.
	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... But there is an amazing mystery at Titan.
	Oh yes.
	It's incredibly tantalizing.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello?
	Hello there.
	Hello.
	Yes sir, you are there.
	This is Elbert.
	How are you doing?
	Okay.
	Am I on air?
	Yes.
	Okay, I have a question.
	I want to have a question.
	I'm calling from Cleveland, WKM 1100, Cleveland, Ohio.
	Yes sir.
	And I have a question for your guest.
	Is there a possibility that we could use a The moon to protect us, a base on there to divert an asteroid from hitting our Earth.
	Good question.
	It is.
	Good question.
	It is.
	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 to the planet.
	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.
	So you can't just blow them up, because they'll just be a pile of rubble still coming right out.
	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?
	Five years, that would be really difficult.
	Let me inject some Some knowledge into this.
	Based on 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 small but dangerous that could hit us at any time in the next 10 to 20 years.
	I think in that time frame, we could put together technology to fix it.
	Five years... Were dead?
	Difficult.
	Five years would be impossible?
	I didn't say that.
	It would be extremely challenging.
	But if survival is 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 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.
	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?
	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 on to it and you could actually treat it like a ship and push it.
	But rubble piles, it just kind of like dissipates.
	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, of solutions.
	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.
	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 make up, their density, shape, you know, 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, I'm sorry, a probe 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 Robert, I've seen a lot of news stories saying something, 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.
	This worries me.
	There is a, there has been an aggressive effort paid for 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.
	Well, I was just wondering why they so often find out about them only after they have passed.
	You see that?
	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 that 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, three years.
	And I would expect that, yes.
	So you're seeing that slow process.
	I recognize your memory is correct.
	Often it used to be, oh, it just passes.
	But that's happening less, and it's more happening.
	We now see it 30 years down the road.
	So the odds are not that high that the one that gets us, we would not see at all?
	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.
	But not gone at the moment?
	Not yet, no.
	They're not gone yet.
	It still could happen, yes.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hi.
	Good morning, Art.
	Mr. Zimmerman, your enthusiasm for Return to the Moon is certainly contagious.
	Thank you.
	It sure is, isn't it?
	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, we had an unpopular war.
	Countries seem to be tearing itself apart from the inside.
	But people seem 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.
	One of the things... Real quick, sir.
	Mars stated that on each Apollo mission, they planted an extensive array of seismic sensors.
	And that when the LM 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.
	Ring like a bell, yes.
	Is that... Do you have to put much credence in that?
	All right, we're so short on time.
	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 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.
	All right, Robert, we're out of time.
	I could go on forever.
	I can tell you could, and you will be given another chance to indeed.
	You'll be invited back.
	My friend, thank you.
	Pleasure.
	Good night.
	Robert Zimmerman.
	I'm Art Bell.
	From the high desert, what a weekend it has been!
	I love it.
	Good night.
	Good night in the desert.
	Shooting stars across the sky This magical journey We'll take this on a ride Filled with belonging Searching for the truth Will we make it till tomorrow?

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