Category Archives: Space missions

Space Based Weapons

Everyone of has seen Star Wars moves, but how many of us know anything about real-life space weaponry? This is so advanced tech, that it’s mind-blowing. So let’s check it out:

Space Based Weapons

The US space weapon X-37 is now circling the globe in relative secrecy. It is an unmanned space plane that looks like a smaller version of the Space Shuttle and was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on April 22, 2010. This new weapon poses threats to global peace and risks sparking an arms race in space.

“At one time, [the X-37] was going to replace the Space Shuttle,” said Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. The replacement plan was scrapped, however. In 2004 NASA handed over the X-37 to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Phantom Works at Boeing, the major aerospace player racing to develop space weapons and missile defense systems with millions of taxpayer dollars.

The X-37 officially is a US Military Space Place or MSP, and like most US space weapons, spreading anxiety across the globe. The Pentagon also has an unknown number of “dual purpose” space planes in the works; the Pentagon has publicly stated in their budgets these prototypes have been tested in wind tunnels. They might be space bombers, but no one is completely sure. They’re so secret, no one can say what they’ll be used for or how far developed they are.

A space vehicle that can repair, deploy and even attack satellites, or insert reconnaissance drones back into the atmosphere – all within hours of orders – is also desired. As one NASA official put it, the space plane will “be the key to opening and conquering the space frontier.”

To those trying to keep weapons out of space, such as Gagnon and his Global Network, the orbiting X-37 is a set-back. “I would say it is one of the first (space weapons) to be deployed, so yes the X-37 is now operating in space and should be defined as a space-based weapon,” says Gagnon. “The Pentagon though will claim it is not permanently stationed in space and thus falls outside the Outer Space Treaty – which is why we are strong advocates for a new comprehensive treaty to ban all weapons in space.”

The fear of an American space bomber, say experts, has one significant and severe backlash: other nations will develop their own space bombers or space weapons to counter any US MSP.

“There are scores of Chinese articles over the last two years that mention a U.S. space bomber,” said Gregory Kulacki, Chinese specialist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, from his office in Berkeley, California. “The Global Times and even television stations like Phoenix TV out of Hong Kong have a track record of hyping military technology and are unreliable, but the space bomber stories also appear in more reputable sources.”

Early in the Bush administration, and especially after 9/11, the Pentagon was making overtures that it desperately needed the ultimate quick-strike weapon when US forces, aircraft carriers, and even drones, are far from the target. Soon enough, the Pentagon was salivating over the prospects of acquiring a bomber that could take out a target within two hours of getting eyes-on-the-target intelligence. Katz-Hyman says the space bomber’s research is driven by the Pentagon’s desire to carry out this “rapid global strike”. Currently, long-range bomber runs using stealth bombers or B-52s take 12 to 24 hours to execute. Their effectiveness also depends whether certain nations will allow the US in their airspace.

The X-37 was born from a unique, stand-alone secretive US military program (and as its name states) referred to as the “X” series. Pinpointing how many planes are in the X-series is a challenge many investigative tech-journalists and scientists have been trying to overcome since the beginning of the Cold War.

One X-series brother of the X-37 is the X-43. Just 12-feet long, the X-43 is a scramjet or Supersonic Combustion Ramjet; its engine is designed to take oxygen from the atmosphere instead of from a huge and cumbersome liquid oxygen tank on board, like all rockets must do. In November of 2004 the X-43 broke the world record for a jet-powered aircraft by reaching Mach 9.6, or about 7,000 mph.

One of the X-series most classified descendents is the spy-plane the Aurora, which unlike the X-37, is manned. Conspiracy theorists believe the “black aircraft” – researched under the Pentagon’s black or secret budget – has been tearing through the skies since the 1970s. The Pentagon let it slip the classified Aurora existed when in 1985 the name “Aurora” appeared, accidentally, below a budget request for the SR-71 Blackbird and the U2.

Experts claim that billions have been spent on the Aurora, an aircraft that theorists stress must be hypersonic (fly between Mach 5 to Mach 20) due to all the secrecy. Speculation says the Aurora’s speed could be one-mile per second, or just over Mach 5 (3,600 mph roughly), giving an armed Aurora the ability to reach a target potentially within minutes. Theorists say the prime contractor must be Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works (now the Lockheed Advanced Development Company), one of the US military’s most secretive civilian-run research efforts.

As for Aurora witnesses, they are few and far between. In 1989, while working out on the North Sea, engineer Chris Gibson said he saw a strange triangular-shaped craft accompanied by a pair of F-111 bombers. Indeed, a similar craft has been glimpsed several times streaking over the North Pole. Satellite imagery has also captured a single, high-altitude contrail stretching from Area 51 to deep into the Atlantic.

Like the X-37 and the Aurora, the Obama administration’s future plans for exotic space weapons are cloaked in secrecy. Gagnon says President Obama is perceived as a typical Harry Houdini-like president.

“I call Obama the magician, you have to watch both his hands to understand what he is doing,” he said. “On the one hand he talks nice, says good things at times, but he is proving to be the classic politician who says one thing and does another. Obama is clearly comfortable carrying water for the weapons industry which is probably why the military industrial complex gave him more campaign donations than they gave john McCain. Obama is doing virtually nothing to reverse the militarization, weaponization, and nuclearization of space.”

The prospect of Earth being ruled from space is no longer science-fiction. The dream of the original Dr. Strangelove, Wernher von Braun (from Nazi rocket-scientist to NASA director) has survived every US administration since WW2 and is coming to life. Today the technology exists to weaponize space, a massive American industry thrives, and nations are maneuvering for advantage.

PAX AMERICANA tackles this pivotal moment. Are war machines already orbiting Earth? Can treaties keep space weapons-free? Must the World capitulate to one super-cop on the global beat?

With startling archival footage and unprecedented access to US Air Force Space Command, this elegant, forceful documentary reveals the state of play through generals, space-policy analysts, politicians, diplomats, peace activists, and hawks.

As if there weren’t enough weapons here on earth, space has become the newest arena for countries around the globe to launch their struggle for supremacy. Denis Delestrac’s film Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space is packed full of some truly startling facts — everything from the “Rods of God” (space weapons that can launch from orbit) to the fact that fifty cents of every American tax dollar goes towards military spending. The astronomical costs of arming and policing the heavens (more than $200 billion) has largely fallen to the US Air Force, but with China and other nations challenging American supremacy, there is the potential for a war to take place right over our heads.

Comparison of the space race to the sea battles of the 18th and 19th Century are apt, since so many global interests are at stake. As per usual, economics are at the heart of the struggle. Noam Chomsky draws analogies between the US weaponization of space to good old-fashioned colonialism in the tradition of empire. In the name of protecting commercial investment, the US has charged itself with being the arbiter of peace in space. But with the weapons industry replacing almost all other manufacturing in America, is this simply a ruse? Many experts unequivocally state that missile defense is the longest running fraud in the history of US defense. That it, in fact, disguises true American intentions to dominate space as a means of dominating the entire globe. (Getting rid of the anti-ballistic missile treaty was one of the first activities undertaken by the Bush Administration.)

If a space war were to happen, the effects could prove catastrophic. Since there is no way to clean up debris and space junk, it stays in orbit, circling the globe at some 14,000 miles per hour. At this speed, even a pea-sized piece of debris has the capacity to destroy whatever is in its path. This includes satellites that regulate most of the world’s information systems (everything from GPS to banking to media). But with China shooting down one of their own aging satellites, the race shows every sign of heating up. This time, the sky may indeed be falling.

In 1999, the designation of state secret was removed from the project that worked on the creation of an unusual aircraft, whose characteristics are reminiscent of a “flying saucer”.

The creation of the Lenticular Reentry Vehicle (LRV) or lens shaped aircraft, started at the end of the 1950s, as a part of the project code named Pye Wacket, whose aim was to create a flying defence system in the shape of a disc. Even though the project was cancelled in 1961, it proved that there are “healthy foundations” for the development of the lens shaped aircraft, which is a shape that has proven efficient as far as entering and returning from orbit is concerned.

The first concrete information about the LRV leaked into the public in 1999. One year later, the American “Popular Mechanics” used the Freedom of Information Act, FOIA), and launched a story that deserves a dominating position on magazine covers.

According to a report that was created by R.J. Oberto, a member of the US Air force, Los Angeles division, the LVR is an orbital war platform of an offensive character, that is capable of carrying four nuclear projectiles. The aircraft is fuelled by nuclear and/or chemical fuels, it has a diameter of 12 meters, it can remain in orbit for up to six weeks, and has a standard four member crew.

The American Army never gave official confirmation of the existence of a functioning prototype, but there is no lack of “earthly flying saucer” indications. For example, one retired employee air force employee said for Popular Mechanics that he personally saw an aircraft that fits the description of the LVR in the late 1960s in Florida.

More concrete evidence that lens shaped aircraft really flew (and are probably still flying) comes from Australia where in 1975, the farmer Jean Fraser found honeycomb-like remains of a “UFO”.

Fraser’s ranch is located near the area where the Australian, American and British forces tested some of their most secret nuclear weapons, which matches the technical characteristics of the aircraft fuelled by atomic/chemical fuel.

According to information that is being passed around, a “flying saucer” is in question, that exploded during testing in 1966. According to the sightings of the local population, the American Army then collected all of the remains of the aircraft that it could find, and returned them to the USA by plane.

However, the businessman Dick Smith found one of the pieces, and personally ordered testing of the material at the New South Wales University, where the chemical analysis confirmed that the “UFO” remains corresponds to components that are ordinarily used in the construction of aircraft.

The Secret History of NASA’s Middle Child.

With the recent groundbreaking at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, the final journey of Atlantis – NASA’s ‘middle child’ in its Shuttle fleet – has finally begun in earnest, cementing a pledge by Administrator Charles Bolden in April 2011 to “showcase” his old friend at the historic site from which all of her 33 missions began.

When the Atlantis attraction is unveiled to the public, sometime in the summer of 2013, it will see the venerable orbiter suspended in a 6,000-square-metre, $100 million chamber, with payload bay doors open, as if in orbit, backdropped by a multi-story rotating digital projection of the Home Planet. If anything can reinvigorate excitement for the space programme and inspire the next generation, then surely Atlantis’ final mission promises to do just that.

The final resting place of the craft, which achieved so much in a quarter-century of operational service, is both triumphant and saddening, filled with honour and a tangible tugging at the heart-strings. Atlantis took the Shuttle’s first planetary explorers – Magellan and Galileo – aloft and her astronauts logged several hundred hours of spacewalking time, building the International Space Station, working outside Russia’s Mir complex and upgrading the Hubble Space Telescope. She was instrumental in Shuttle-Mir, which kicked off Phase One of co-operation with the Russians, and during her watch the citizens of nine discrete nations – Mexico, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, France, Russia, Canada, Germany and the United States – viewed the grandeur of Earth and the profound emptiness of the cosmos through her windows. If the ‘International’ Space Station is part of Atlantis’ enduring legacy, perhaps she should now be honoured as an ‘International’ Space Shuttle.

However, her space career began very much as a ‘national’, rather than ‘international’, asset and of her first dozen missions, almost half were classified and dedicated to the Department of Defense. This is understandable, since the Shuttle’s original mandate was to transport large reconnaissance and intelligence satellites into orbit, with its payload bay, delta-shaped wings, cross-range and unique upmass capability specifically tailored by NASA to satisfy its key champion, the Air Force. Early plans envisaged the reusable vehicles flying single-orbit, 90-minute sorties to place secret payloads into space, whilst later in the pre-Challenger era a second launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was in the final stages of preparation for a series of polar-circling missions.

From its conception, the design of the Shuttle was dictated to NASA by the military. The dimensions of its cavernous payload bay – covered by clamshell doors, here seen during the process of opening at the start of Mission 51J – were specifically engineered to meet the needs of the Air Force, whose powerful lobbyists offered political support for the reusable vehicle.

It is therefore a little ironic that Atlantis’ maiden voyage in October 1985 should have been top-secret…and yet details of her classified payload had already trickled onto the pages of Aviation Week, before the mission had even ended. Today, images of the payload from Mission 51J have long since been declassified and are firmly in the public domain, but only because it was little more than a pair of military communications satellites and not a ‘deep black’ reconnaissance platform or imaging sentinel. For that reason, almost two decades since the Shuttle’s last classified flight, most of the Department of Defense missions remain cloaked in secrecy…and rumour continues to abound about their nature. This series of articles will seek to uncover what little is known about them.

Mission 51J began with an upset wife. Management consultant Diane Bobko was particularly irritated as her husband prepared for his third trip into space. Unlike his previous missions, this one was classified and she knew that he was permitted to tell her very little about it.

“Bo,” she said, one morning in September 1985, “you’re not telling me exactly what day you’re going to land, but I think it’s going to be pretty close to a day I have a programme in Baltimore.”

“Diane, it’s the first flight of a new vehicle,” her husband replied. “Probably the safest thing you can do is go ahead and schedule that right now.”

To this day, Karol ‘Bo’ Bobko retains a noteworthy, yet often overlooked record as the only astronaut to have flown the maiden voyages of two Space Shuttles and he was clearly reflecting on the problems experienced getting Challenger ready for her first flight in April 1983 when he assured his wife that the first flight of Atlantis would probably also meet with delay. Ironically, it did not.

The ‘open secret’ crew of 51J are pictured at the end of their Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, standing in front of an M-113 armoured personnel carrier, which would be used in the event of an emergency evacuation from the launch pad. Karol ‘Bo’ Bobko (left) was joined on the flight by Ron Grabe, Dave Hilmers, Bob Stewart and Bill Pailes.

Atlantis was named in honour of a two-masted ketch, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 until 1966, which became the first vessel built specifically for interdisciplinary research in marine biology and geology and physical oceanography. During her time at sea, Atlantis and her scientists scored a number of impressive discoveries, not least of which was the identification and description of the first abyssal plain – the ‘Sohm Abyssal Plain’, to the south of Newfoundland – in 1947. Today, she is owned by Argentina as a naval research vessel. The construction of the spacefaring Atlantis got underway in January 1979, following a contract award to Rockwell International to configure a structural test article into the future Challenger and build two additional orbiter vehicles, OV-103 and OV-104. The names ‘Discovery’ and ‘Atlantis’ were assigned to these new orbiters a few days after the award.

In March 1980, engineers started the structural assembly of Atlantis’ crew cabin and over the next few years the vehicle grew: construction of her aft fuselage began in November 1981, her wings arrived from contractor Grumman in June 1983 and she was complete by April 1984. Rollout from Rockwell’s Palmdale plant in California in March 1985 was followed by an overland transfer to Edwards Air Force Base and arrival in Florida, atop the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, in early April. By September, after installation on Pad 39A, Atlantis was ready to fly; on the 5th, her three main engines burned at full power in a Flight Readiness Firing, one of the last milestones to prepare her for her voyage. All told, the new ship required less than half as much time to assemble as did the queen of the fleet, Columbia, and historian Dennis Jenkins pointed to the greater use of thermal protection blankets, rather than tiles, on her airframe as one of the principal reasons for this.

Atlantis’ crew for 51J had been in place for some considerable period of time. As early as November 1983, NASA had identified a ‘standby’ crew for Department of Defense flights. It consisted of Bobko in command, together with pilot Ron Grabe and mission specialists Bob Stewart, Mike Mullane and Dave Hilmers. In February 1985, this group (save Mullane, who had been assigned to another flight) were named to 51J. The final crew member, payload specialist Bill Pailes, was only the second member of the Air Force’s corps of manned spaceflight engineers to fly the Shuttle…and, as circumstances transpired, he would also be the last. In the wake of Challenger, the military steadily distanced itself from the orbiters, moving more payloads onto expendable rockets, and the cadre was disbanded.

Command of this new flight posed something of a problem in the spring of 1985, particularly when Bobko’s previous mission was cancelled and he ended up leading his crew into orbit in April, under a different designation. The inevitable consequence was that Grabe, Stewart and Hilmers were forced to train without him for a time. What really made 51J a pain was its classified nature, in which the astronauts had to conduct virtually their entire training in secret, filing misleading flight plans to training destinations…and then finding out through the pages of Aviation Week and Flight International that details of their supposedly ‘secret’ payload had leaked and been exposed.

In fact, the twin-satellite cargo of 51J became something of an ‘open’ secret and details were published as early as 7 October 1985, the very day that Atlantis touched down. A single Inertial Upper Stage booster carried a pair of $160 million Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS)-III spacecraft, stacked one atop the other, images of which were finally declassified in the summer of 1998. They lend credence to Bobko’s claim that, for all its ‘secrecy’, 51J was little more than a ‘vanilla’ deployment flight.

Not until the summer of 1998 were any images from this most ‘vanilla’ of Department of Defense flights revealed…although the nature of the flight had long since trickled into the public domain. A pair of Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS)-III satellites, mounted atop a Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage, are here raised to their deployment angle in Atlantis’ payload bay.

The DSCS – nicknamed ‘the discus’ – has long been an anchor for the Pentagon’s global communications network, operating in geostationary orbit with half a dozen super-high-frequency transponders for secure voice and data transmissions and high-priority command and control links between officials and battlefield commanders. The Air Force later admitted that it had launched two DSCS-IIIs in 1985 and, according to space analyst Dwayne Day, “the only launch that year that fit was the Atlantis mission”. Subsequent documents highlighted that the DSCS-III satellites had been deployed during a Shuttle flight, but refused to reveal the name of that flight…even though it could be quite easily inferred. “Military secrecy can be bizarre at times,” wrote Day, “like acknowledging that there is a sky, and that the sky can be blue, but never saying that the sky is blue!”

Physically, the satellites were roughly cube-shaped, with a pair of articulated solar panels which produced 1,240 watts of electrical power. They measured 2 m in height, spanned 11.5 m across their expansive solar ‘wings’ and weighed 2,600 kg. Day considered it significant that 51J’s payload was so readily revealed, but the natures of the other classified satellites launched between 1988 and 1992 have been kept under wraps to this very day. “If the suspected identities of the other classified Shuttle flights are correct,” he speculated in an article for the Space Review in January 2010, “then they are intelligence satellites. Considering the secrecy that remains about American intelligence satellites, it seems likely that these other flights will continue to remain secret for a long time to come.”

Launch of Atlantis on Mission 51J came at 11:15 am EST on 3 October 1985, following a 22-minute delay to deal with a power controller in one of the main engines’ liquid hydrogen prevalves that showed a faulty indication. As with all classified Shuttle missions, the assembled spectators at the Kennedy Space Center were only aware that launch was imminent when the blank face of the famous countdown clock suddenly came to life and started ticking from T-9 minutes.

Yet there was still a degree of uncertainty about 51J. Flight International suggested (correctly) that if the rumours about the presence of DSCS-III satellites were accurate, then an Inertial Upper Stage was the most likely booster, but suggested the possibility that other instruments might also be aboard, such as the Cryogenic Infrared Radiance Instrument for Shuttle (CIRRIS) and a laser retroreflector for ‘Star Wars’ research. The Air Force cleverly refused to confirm or deny any of the rumours. After four days – one of the shortest Shuttle missions to date – Atlantis touched down at Edwards Air Force in California at 10:00 am PST on 7 October.

As it turned out, Diane Bobko was in California to meet her husband on the runway. Astonishingly, Atlantis had met with no significant delays, launched on time and landed on time. “So she was there to meet me in California,” Bobko remembered, “gave me a hug and then she had to leave right away to…drive down to Los Angeles to catch the airplane to go to Baltimore.” Later that evening, Bobko was startled out of his sleep by a telephone call. It was his wife. Surely, he thought, if a vehicle as complex as the Shuttle could launch and land on time, on its maiden voyage, then her domestic flight would have been trouble-free.

“You’re in Baltimore?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, glumly. “I’m still in Dallas, trying to get to Baltimore!”

No system of missile defenses can be fully effective without placing sensors and weapons in space. Although this would appear to be creating a potential new theater of warfare, in fact space has been militarized for the better part of four decades. Weather, communications, navigation and reconnaissance satellites are increasingly essential elements in American military power. Indeed, U.S. armed forces are uniquely dependent upon space. As the 1996 Joint Strategy Review, a precursor to the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, concluded, “Space is already inextricably linked to military operations on land, on the sea, and in the air.” The report of the National Defense Panel agreed: “Unrestricted use of space has become a major strategic interest of the United States.”

Given the advantages U.S. armed forces enjoy as a result of this unrestricted use of space, it is shortsighted to expect potential adversaries to refrain from attempting to offset to disable or offset U.S. space capabilities. And with the proliferation of space know-how and related technology around the world, our adversaries will inevitably seek to enjoy many of the same space advantages in the future. Moreover, “space commerce” is a growing part of the global economy. In 1996, commercial launches exceeded military launches in the United States, and commercial revenues exceeded government expenditures on space. Today, more than 1,100 commercial companies across more than 50 countries are developing, building, and operating space systems.

As exemplified by the Global Positioning Satellite, space has become a new ‘international commons’ where commercial and security interests are intertwined.

Many of these commercial space systems have direct military applications, including information from global positioning system constellations and betterthan- one-meter resolution imaging satellites. Indeed, 95 percent of current U.S. military communications are carried over commercial circuits, including commercial communications satellites. The U.S. Space Command foresees that in the coming decades,

an adversary will have sophisticated regional situational awareness. Enemies may very well know, in nearreal time, the disposition of all forces….In fact, national military forces, paramilitary units, terrorists, and any other potential adversaries will share the high ground of space with the United States and its allies. Adversaries may also share the same commercial satellite services for communications, imagery, and navigation….The space “playing field” is leveling rapidly, so U.S. forces will be increasingly vulnerable. Though adversaries will benefit greatly from space, losing the use of space may be more devastating to the United States. It would be intolerable for U.S. forces…to be deprived of capabilities in space.

In short, the unequivocal supremacy in space enjoyed by the United States today will be increasingly at risk. As Colin Gray and John Sheldon have written, “Space control is not an avoidable issue. It is not an optional extra.” For U.S. armed forces to continue to assert military preeminence, control of space – defined by Space Command as “the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space” – must be an essential element of our military strategy. If America cannot maintain that control, its ability to conduct global military operations will be severely complicated, far more costly, and potentially fatally compromised.

The complexity of space control will only grow as commercial activity increases. American and other allied investments in space systems will create a requirement to secure and protect these space assets; they are already an important measure of American power. Yet it will not merely be enough to protect friendly commercial uses of space. As Space Command also recognizes, the United States must also have the capability to deny America’s adversaries the use of commercial space platforms for military purposes in times of crises and conflicts. Indeed, space is likely to become the new “international commons,” where commercial and security interests are intertwined and related. Just as Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote about “sea-power” at the beginning of the 20th century in this sense, American strategists will be forced to regard “space-power” in the 21st.

To ensure America’s control of space in the near term, the minimum requirements are to develop a robust capability to transport systems to space, carry on operations once there, and service and recover space systems as needed. As outlined by Space Command, carrying out this program would include a mix of reuseable and expendable launch vehicles and vehicles that can operate within space, including “space tugs to deploy, reconstitute, replenish, refurbish, augment, and sustain” space systems. But, over the longer term, maintaining control of space will inevitably require the application of force both in space and from space, including but not limited to antimissile defenses and defensive systems capable of protecting U.S. and allied satellites; space control cannot be sustained in any other fashion, with conventional land, sea, or airforce, or by electronic warfare. This eventuality is already recognized by official U.S. national space policy, which states that the “Department of Defense shall maintain a capability to execute the mission areas of space support, force enhancement, space control and force application.” (Emphasis added.)

In the future, it will be necessary to unite the current SPACECOM vision for control of space to the institutional responsibilities and interests of a separate military service.

In sum, the ability to preserve American military preeminence in the future will rest in increasing measure on the ability to operate in space militarily; both the requirements for effective global missile defenses and projecting global conventional military power demand it. Unfortunately, neither the Clinton Administration nor past U.S. defense reviews have established a coherent policy and program for achieving this goal.

As with defense spending more broadly, the state of U.S. “space forces” – the systems required to ensure continued access and eventual control of space – has deteriorated over the past decade, and few new initiatives or programs are on the immediate horizon. The U.S. approach to space has been one of dilatory drift. As Gen. Richard Myers, commander-in-chief of SPACECOM, put it, “Our Cold War-era capabilities have atrophied,” even though those capabilities are still important today. And while Space Command has a clear vision of what must be done in space, it speaks equally clearly about “the question of resources.” As the command succinctly notes its long-range plan: “When we match the reality of space dependence against resource trends, we find a problem.”

But in addition to the problem of lack of resources, there is an institutional problem. Indeed, some of the difficulties in maintaining U.S. military space supremacy result from the bureaucratic “black hole” that prevents the SPACECOM vision from gaining the support required to carry it out. For one, U.S. military space planning remains linked to the ups and downs of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. America’s difficulties in reducing the cost of space launches – perhaps the single biggest hurdle to improving U.S. space capabilities overall – result in part from the requirements and dominance of NASA programs over the past several decades, most notably the space shuttle program. Secondly, within the national security bureaucracy, the majority of space investment decisions are made by the National Reconnaissance Office and the Air Force, neither of which considers military operations outside the earth’s atmosphere as a primary mission. And there is no question that in an era of tightened budgets, investments in space-control capabilities have suffered for lack of institutional support and have been squeezed out by these organization’s other priorities. Although, under the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the mid-1980s, the unified commanders – of which SPACECOM is one – have a greater say in Pentagon programming and budgeting, these powers remain secondary to the traditional “raiseand- train” powers of the separate services.

Therefore, over the long haul, it will be necessary to unite the essential elements of the current SPACECOM vision to the resource-allocation and institution-building responsibilities of a military service. In addition, it is almost certain that the conduct of warfare in outer space will differ as much from traditional air warfare as air warfare has from warfare at sea or on land; space warfare will demand new organizations, operational strategies, doctrines and training schemes. Thus, the argument to replace U.S. Space Command with U.S. Space Forces – a separate service under the Defense Department – is compelling. While it is conceivable that, as military space capabilities develop, a transitory “Space Corps” under the Department of the Air Force might make sense, it ought to be regarded as an intermediary step, analogous to the World War II-era Army Air Corps, not to the Marine Corps, which remains a part of the Navy Department. If space control is an essential element for maintaining American military preeminence in the decades to come, then it will be imperative to reorganize the Department of Defense to ensure that its institutional structure reflects new military realities.

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Jack Parsons – Sorcerous Scientist

Now we start a serie, which tell you about black magick and persons around it. Here’s a very interesting person called Jack Parsons a close friend of Aleister Crowley:

Excerpted from:
Jack Parsons: Sorcerous Scientist
1990 by Douglas Chapman
Strange Magazine #6, ISSN 0894-8968
P.O. Box 2246, Rockville, MD 20847
(301) 881-3530

“The [Babalon] Working began in 1945-46, a few months before Crowley’s death in 1947, and just prior to the wave of unexplained aerial phenomena now recalled as the ‘Great Flying Saucer Flap’… Parsons opened a door and something flew in.

“A Gateway for the Great Old Ones has already been established — and opened — by members of the O.T.O. who are en rapport with this entity [Lam, an extra- terrestrial being whom Crowley supposedly contacted while in America in 1919].”

Kenneth Grant, O.T.O.


The Sorcerous Scientist

“I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine, I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine.” (1)

-John Whiteside (Jack”) Parsons (1943)

The preceding poem is the most famous written work of John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952). He helped make science fiction into fact, yet this dark and handsome man, born of a well-to-do Los Angeles family, made his private life “visionary” in a different way, being as involved with ceremonial magic outside of working hours as he was with rocketry research during the day. In the mid-to-late 1940s, his major accomplishments behind him, magic came to obsess him all the more.

Frank Malina, one of his colleagues at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena, has chronicled John (Jack) Parsons’ contributions to rocketry. (2) In 1936, Parsons and Edward S. Forman came upon a report of a GALCIT (Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory-Caltech) lecture concerning the idea of a rocket-powered airplane. Parsons, though a self-trained chemist, had powers of imagination that proved to be invaluable in all of his pursuits (whether scientific or magical). He and Forman (a mechanic) bad together been making small black-powder rockets.

They wanted to experiment with a liquid propellant rocket motor, so (lacking the funds) they approached Caltech. As a result, Malina (in 1936) came up with a proposal for his doctoral thesis on rocket propulsion and performance in-flight. Theodore von Karman (who headed GALCIT) gave Malina permission to collaborate with Forman and Parsons, even though the latter two were neither students nor staff members of the institute.

Even so, funds were scarce, and the three experimenters chipped in necessary funds for the materials. They conducted the tests at Arroyo Seco, behind the Devil’s Gate Dam in Pasadena (very near the present-day Jet Propulsion Laboratory), a site that, unbeknownst to them, had previously been used by rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard. (Forteans should make special note of the ‘Devil’s Gate‘ place-name.)

 

The “Suicide Squad”

Weld Arnold and Hsue Shen Tsien soon joined GALCIT rocket research, completing the well-remembered team. The group became known as the ‘suicide squad” because of a 1937 test misfire in which a nitrogen dioxide/alcohol cloud caused a thin layer of rust to appear on much lab equipment. Henceforth, the small scale rocket motor responsible was moved from the building. The failed experiment, providentially, gave Parsons an important idea (to be recounted shortly).


In the summer of 1938, the staff decreased, leaving Malina, Forman and Parsons as remaining core members. A few months later, the National Academy of Science (NAS) Committee on Army Air Corps Research commenced study with the GALCIT rocket research group, with the express interest of finding ways to assist the takeoffs of heavily-laden aircraft by using rocketry.

A $10,000 contract was thus awarded by the NAS to Caltech to develop “jet” (actually rocket) propulsion to be used to provide “super-performance” for propeller aircraft. Liquid and solid propellant rocket engines were part of this research. Von Karman took charge, with Malina, Parsons and Forman being the major members of his staff. In 1940, Parsons was able to show the Air Corps that red-fuming nitric acid was a better oxidizer than liquid oxygen (making use of knowledge gained from the 1937 misfire). (3) This led to important later developments.

As can be seen, Parsons was already invaluable to the development of the technology that eventually got America into outer space.

 

The Secret Parsons

But he had a secret life, which appeared totally at odds with his public one, and it came to further dominate his life as the ’40s progressed.

Jack Parsons and his wife Helen bad come into contact with the Agape lodge of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis international magical fraternity) in Los Angeles in 1939, and had joined it in 1941. It was under the leadership of Wilfred Talbot Smith, a Britisher who had founded this particular lodge about a decade earlier, circa 1930.

 

Smith and Parsons’ wife hit it off nicely and he was soon not much in evidence around the house and the O.T.O. Gnostic Mass temple in the attic. This latter space was fully fitted out, and even had a copy of the Egyptian ‘Stele of Revealing,’ venerated by followers of the famous magician Aleister Crowley. It was the only such temple in the world at that time which was properly functioning.

Crowley, the world head of the O.T.O., took action that increased Parsons’ stature in the Order. Circa 1943-44, he convinced Smith, via a paper entitled ‘Is Smith a God?’ that astrological research had shown that Smith was not a man, but actually an incarnation of some deity. Taking the hint that Crowley wanted him out, the “god” went into private magical practice, eventually with reportedly rewarding results, remaining head of the lodge in name only.

 

Parsons became acting master of the lodge. (4) Why did Crowley in effect kick Smith upstairs? The ostensible reason seemed to be the danger that the man was turning the Order into (as Crowley put it) ‘that slimy abomination, a love cult’.” (5)

Actually, Crowley, who was unable to emigrate to the United States, was isolated from the only successful O.T.O. lodge in the world. Because of this frustration, bad blood resulted, despite the fact that Smith was probably the best field commander Crowley ever had.

Parsons had lost his wife to Smith, yet remained on good terms with her. He was kept busy by Order activities, one of the most important of which was the sending of money to Crowley, for both the old man’s minimal upkeep and the O.T.O. publishing fund. A good percentage came from Parsons’ own pocket.” (6)

 

Crowley, who brought actual fame to the O.T.O. (which was already well-known in Masonic circles), was one of Parsons’ major inspirations in life. The elderly man’s accomplishments had been many: as a poet, publisher, mountain climber, chess master, and bisexual practitioner of sexual magic (or “Magick,” as he termed it). Made famous by yellow journalists as the “Wickedest Man in the World,” he considered his central identity to be the “Great Beast 666” as referred to in the book of “Revelation” in the Bible, though he was not leaning on that work particularly in his religious ideas.

Needless to say, Crowley felt that the Bible had misconstrued the meaning of the Beast and the Whore of Babylon necessary elements of the succession to the Aeon of Horus, the Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child.

 

Crowley synopsized human development thusly:

“Within the memory of man we have had the Pagan period, the worship of Nature, of Isis, of the Mother, of the Past; the Christian period, the worship of Man, of Osiris, of the Present. The first period is simple, quiet, easy, and pleasant; the material ignores the spiritual; the second is of suffering and death: the spiritual strives to ignore the material…. The new Aeon is the worship of the spiritual made one with the material, of Horus, of the Child, of the Future.” (7)

Renowned as the most noted master of the occult of the last century, Crowley’s work is still influential (his books are sometimes stocked even in New Age bookstores).

According to most accounts, when Parsons’ father died (circa the early ’40s), Parsons inherited a mansion and coach-house at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena, California. To the shock of the neighbors, the place became a haven for Bohemians and atheists, who were the sort of people to whom Parsons liked to rent out rooms.

The lodge headquarters was moved to this location, making use of two rooms in the house: the bedroom (which became a properly decorated temple), and a wood-paneled library dominated by an enormous portrait of Crowley.

According to a story told by L. Sprague DeCamp (most recently appearing in the June 24, 1990 Los Angeles Times, p. A35), at one point the police — who had heard neighbors’ reports of a ritual in which a nude pregnant woman jumped nine times through a fire in the yard — came to investigate, but Parsons put them off by emphasizing his scientific credentials.

His Career Rockets


Returning to the events of 1940, the explosions of many of Parsons’ rockets on the test stand caused second thoughts among many involved in the government-financed project. After work by Von Karman and Malina on the differential equations involved on the theoretical side, Parsons was given permission to keep on with his tests, and a few months later the earliest “jet-assisted takeoff” rockets were created. These were the direct forerunners of the modern large solid-propellant engines.


The first American rocket-assisted takeoff (August 12,1941) made use of a Parsons-developed solid-propellant (GALCIT 27 — which provided a 28 lb. maximum thrust for 12 seconds). But tests showed that GALCIT 27 would explode when stored for long periods, so Parsons, Mark M. Mills and Fred S. Miller came up with a more stable fuel (GALCIT 53) in June 1942.

At the same time, others were working with Parsons’ idea for a red-fuming nitric acid-gasoline engine (a liquid propellant rocket). On April 15, 1942, the first American flight of an aircraft making use of such rocket engines to assist takeoff was accomplished.

The previous month, Malina, Parsons and Forman, with the advice of von Karman’s attorney, had set up the Aerojet Engineering Corporation in March 1942, for the express purpose of properly exploiting the developments that they had been making. Jack Parsons was one of the vice-presidents at the time of incorporation and helped supervise the changeover to full-scale production.” (8)


Parsons’ High Ideals


Also a science fiction enthusiast, Parsons met fellow fan Alva Rogers, who romanced another resident of Parsons’ house.

“I always found Jack’s insistence that he believed in, and practiced, magic hard to reconcile with his educational and cultural background,” Rogers opined.

He originally thought that Parsons was just doing it to shock his friends until he saw letters from Crowley, and evidences of Parsons’ funding of the guru. (9)


Parsons‘ magical idealism becomes clear if one peruses his writings. In the 1946 essay “Freedom is a Two Edged Sword” (newly reprinted in an anthology of the same title, published by Falcon Press) he writes of the deeper meanings of his quest:

“[The individual] must go down like Moses, into his unknown self …into the labyrinths of the dark land. There he will meet the Mother and hear her final question, which is not a silly riddle but the most wonderful and terrible of all questions: ‘what is man?’


“And thereafter …he may find the Graal, ultimate consciousness …For it is he, wonderful monster, embryo god, that has swum in the fish….peered from the eyes of serpents, swung with the ape, and shaken the earth with the tramp of the tyrannosaurus hoof. It is he who has cried out on all crosses, ruled on all thrones, grubbed in all gutters. It is he whose face is reflected and distorted in all heavens and hells, he, the child of the stars, the son of the ocean, this creature of dust, this wonder and terror called man.” (10)

After having lost Helen Parsons to Smith in 1944, Parsons soon fell for her younger sister, Sara Northrup (a.k.a. Betty), who was 18 year old and a student at USC. Parsons encouraged her to drop out of school and come live with him (not exactly thrilling her parents). She joined the O.T.O. and was not monogamous, since she agreed with Parsons that jealousy was a base emotion not fit for the illuminated.

Delineating such beliefs, he once wrote that,

“…by debasing the mother image into a demon-virgin-angel, it has denied each daughter the possibility of her fulfillment,” and that “…by imputing the concepts of nastiness, dirt, shamefulness, guilt, indecency and obscenity to the entire sexual process, it has poisoned the life force at its source.” (11)

He tried his hardest to live up to his philosophy, but events put him to the extremist possible test, leading as they did to his eventual estrangement from Betty.

During this period, also (circa 1945), Parsons became friends with science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, with whom he shared many interests. Details of their friendship can be found in the biographies of Hubbard.

The Scarlet Woman


Parsons and an associate attempted to bring about some sort of incarnation of the goddess Babalon. To understand Parsons’ attitude towards Babalon, one can refer to his “Freedom…” essay:

“She will come girt with the sword of freedom, and before her kings and priests will tremble and cities and empires will fall, and she will be called BABALON, the scarlet woman….And women will respond to her war cry, and throw off their shackles and chains, and men will respond to her challenge, forsaking the foolish ways and the little ways, and she will shine as the ruddy evening star in the bloody sunset of Gotterdamerung, will shine as a morning star when the night has passed, and a new dawn breaks over the garden of Pan” (12)

Parsons performed rituals (reportedly to the background music of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff records) for 11 days in a process known as the “Babalon Working.” On the second and third days he got an unwanted result, writing to Crowley that “the wind storm is very interesting, but that is not what I asked for.” (13)

On the seventh day of the Working, Parsons was awakened by seven loud knocks. Getting up, he soon discovered a smashed table lamp.

Other phenomena occurred on subsequent nights, including an (alleged) attack by an entity against one of their group which knocked a candle out of the man’s hand and paralyzed his right arm overnight. Parsons banished – by gesturing at it with a magical sword – what they took to be a seven-foot-tall, brownish-yellow light. It is rumored that he thought the apparition to be Wilfred T. Smith. (14)

On January 18, 1946, Parsons returned from a magical undertaking, finding the needed “Scarlet Woman” (Marjorie Cameron) waiting for him at the house. Parsons was overjoyed and wrote to Crowley:

“I have my elemental! …She has red hair and slant green eyes as specified.” (15)

Parsons, on February 28, 1946, went out into the Mojave Desert in order to invoke Babalon, thus taking down 77 clauses of what came to be known as his Book of Babalon.

Further work at the home temple produced more instructions for an imminent ritual, the directions for which were supposedly emanating from the astral plane.

The rituals (whose objective was to produce a magical child, “mightier than all the kings of the earth”) continued for two days. Parsons was confident of their effectiveness, and wrote an exultant letter to Crowley, whose response was not what would have been wished. Parsons was upset by his mentor’s lack of comprehension. Crowley immediately wrote a letter to Karl Germer (who was the head of the O.T.O. in the U.S. at that time) stating that,

“Apparently Parsons…or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts.” (16)

Crowley reorganized the lodge on the basis of these actions removing Parsons from power.

Stormy Relationships


Parsons, Betty, and a key magical associate activated Allied Enterprises (a yacht business of theirs), the intent of which was to buy boats in the East in order to sail them to California — where they could command a higher price.


The business had been founded some time earlier. But, as it eventually worked out, Parsons was undergoing financial hardship in the West, and went after his partners to find out why they had not shown up in California. They were nowhere to be found. He soon discovered that they were out at sea. From within a Miami, Florida hotel room, Parsons invoked Bartzabel (the spirit of Mars and war). A squall forced his associates back to port. (17)

Dade County, Florida court records reveal that Parsons filed a lawsuit. (18) The result: Parsons got two of the boats back and made an arrangement with his partners, so that they could pay him off for the third. He never saw them again. Betty continued to think well of Parsons (despite their estrangement), calling him a “truly great man.” Even so, she married the other business partner. One can easily imagine Parsons’ feelings about this turn of events. Both had been key people in his personal, magical and business lives.

Because of the O.T.O. disaster, Parsons changed his magical emphases to “the Witchcraft.” (19)

He sold the main house at South Orange Grove, moving (with Marjorie Cameron – whom he later married) into the coach-house on the property.

Several of the original incorporators of Aerojet sold out their stock in the company to General Tire in 1952. Frank Malina did not do so, and became, as a result, very rich. (20) It is rumored that Jack Parsons had sold his shares in the mid-1940s.

In 1949, with, surprisingly, Wilfred T. Smith as witness, Parsons took the Oath of the Abyss, to unite himself with the Universal consciousness, taking the magical name of Belarion Armiluss Al Dajjal AntiChrist. John Symonds, a biographer of Crowley, has stated that Parsons had by now become psychotic (21) (but it should be kept in mind that Symonds is a man of generally harsh judgments). On the contrary, Parsons’ writings from the late 1940s and early 1950s show a sparkling lucidity.

Take, for example, this again-timely comment from “Freedom…”:

“Religious groups, backed by a publicity conscious press, are constantly campaigning for the prohibition of art and literature which, as if by divine prerogative, they term, ‘indecent,’ immoral or dangerous.


“It would seem that all organizations are devoted to one common purpose, the suppression of freedom. Nor is their sincerity any excuse. History is a bloody testament that sincerity can achieve atrocities which cynicism could never conceive.” (22)

In a 1950 Introduction to the essay, he writes: “We are one nation, and one world….We cannot suppress our brothers’ liberty without murdering ourselves. We will stand together, as men, for human freedom and human dignity, or we will fall together, simians all, back to the swamp.” (23)

Parsons’ answer to the dilemma was magick, discussed in his essay “On Magick.”

“It may be stated,” he writes, “that magick is the method of training individuals towards total consciousness by the stimulation of various centers of the mind and by the cultivation of field thinking. The object of this training is the manifestation of initiated leadership towards a more conscious, better integrated, and more interesting and significant social culture. In short the object of magick is the unfoldment of the individual in all the ways of love; and the enlightenment of society to accept all the commitments of this unfoldment as the necessary conditions of progress.” (24)

If these are the writings of a madman, then many people are mad, including a number of those promoting the New Age way of life.

Sorcery And Science: An Explosive Combination


On June 20, 1952, Parsons was working in the private experimental laboratory in his garage. At 5:08 p.m., the place exploded. The general opinion was that he had dropped fulminate of mercury (25). His shattered body lay within the destroyed edifice.

The Homunculous
a tiny artificial man with magic powers

It has been rumored that this was the end result of building psychological pressures. Otherwise, why would he have dropped what he was said to have, when a trash can containing cordite and wrappers of fulminate of mercury was nearby? Especially since he was about to travel to Mexico to test a new explosive he had devised, which was “more powerful than anything yet invented.” George Santmeyers, who had worked with him for five years on industrial projects (and did not believe in the rumors of his magical activities) did not think an accident plausible, considering Parsons’ technical knowledge. (26)

But there were other theories. In Nat Freedland‘s book The Occult Explosion, Renate Druks, an artist and educational filmmaker (who once, at her Malibu beach house, hosted Marjorie Cameron) related an alternate version:

“I have every reason to believe that Jack Parsons was working on some very strange experiments, trying to create what the old alchemists called a homunculus, a tiny artificial man with magic powers. I think that’s what he was working on when the accident happened.” (27)

As magical work does not usually lead to explosions, nor deal with explosives, this seems unlikely. Having lost his security clearance because of providing Israel some secrets of his wartime work, Parsons was doing movie special effects work at this time, but of the explosive variety, not the fantastical. (28)

There were rumors of self-inflicted death or even murder connected with Parsons’ demise. Sources close to Parsons have suggested that there was not just one explosion, but two. It is said that Parsons and Cameron would mix dynamite and other explosives in the many vats in the lab. Why then, it has been asked, was the first explosion supposedly from under the floorboards?

This would seem to hint that a bomb bad been planted there. There has been some speculation that the rumored perpetrator was neither a friend nor associate of Parson’s, but rather an individual who must have bad a strong motive such as revenge.

Nevertheless, if Parsons‘ death was not a suicide, it becomes even sadder. He and Cameron had many plans for the future, having intended to travel to Mexico-and next perhaps to Spain or Israel, according to what Cameron told others. (29)

Whatever actually caused Parsons’ death, and whether there was any public distortion of the truth or not, in regard to what happened next there has been no dispute. His mother, Ruth Virginia Parsons, after hearing the tragic news, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping tablets, in front of a frightened, crippled friend who could not move to help her. (30)

Many men of genius have behaved quirkily in their private lives. Parsons’ tragedy was that his brand of idealism was often ‘rewarded’ by betrayal. Yet, while his delvings into magic may not have been as beneficial to society as his rocketry research, they have left us with some points to consider. Frater H.H.D. introduced his contribution thusly:

“By applying to occultism the scientific acumen so intrinsic to his professional research, he anticipated the ontological implications of current quantum physics concerning the nature of reality.” (31)

While this claim may be debatable (and similar ones have been advanced towards other modern mystics), Parsons did keep careful records of his magical work, thus allowing the generations that follow to have some chance of evaluating his magick experiments, designed to make use of alleged unknown aspects of reality.

Some have tried to make sense of it already. Kenneth Grant, a British magician, has made some — to say the least — astounding inferences about Parsons’ Babalon Working. He writes that:

‘The Working began in 1945-46, a few months before Crowley’s death in 1947, and just prior to the wave of unexplained aerial phenomena now recalled as the “Great Flying Saucer Flap.” Parsons opened a door and something flew in….” (32)

Crowley’s 1919 Portrait of LAM


Grant’s associates have kept busy in this regard. Grant states that:

“A Gateway for the Great Old Ones has already been established — and opened — by members of the O.T.O. [an English splinter group] who are en rapport with this entity [Lam, an extra-terrestrial being whom Crowley supposedly contacted while in America in 1919 – click image right].

Crowley’s portrait of Lam has been reproduced in [Grant’s] The Magical Revival….(33) Crowley’s rendition, by the way, resembles the typical representation of an UFO entity.

If these suggestively “Lovecraftian” details turn out to have any merit, Parsons may have helped us contact outer space in more ways than one. At the present time, however, such ideas seem highly debatable. Certainly, neither Crowley nor Parsons were of the opinion that their work concerned extraterrestrials of the Lovecraftian or the UFO varieties (though Cameron once sighted a UFO). (34)

Yet, having turned what had been termed “science fiction” into science fact, is it conceivable that Parsons’ work may someday do the same for elements of “fantasy?”

His imaginative powers had solved tricky scientific problems and thus paved the way for space travel. Yet, perhaps because of his lack of accredited training, and the fact that the scientific papers to which he contributed were often unpublished (due to wartime secrecy), his name is not to be found in the scientific “who’s who” (though a crater on the moon — 37′ N. 171′ W. was in 1972 named for him). But his name has often been noted in the histories of magic.

Will further examination of the full extent of his work make him more of a name to conjure with-a man who led the way to inner as well as outer space?

Some corrections and clarifications by OTO’s Bill Heidrick


Footnotes:

  1. John W. Parsons, from a poem printed in the Oriflamme, Journal of the O.T.O., 21 February 1943.
  2. Frank J. Malina, “Origins and First Decade of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” in The History of Rocket Technology, ed. Eugene Morlock Emme. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964), pp. 46-59.
  3. Ibid., pp. 46-54.
  4. Francis King and Isabel Sutherland, The Rebirth of Magic (London: Corgi Books, 1982), p. 180; and Hymenaeus Beta, in 22 July 1990 telephone conversation with Mark Chorvinsky and Douglas Chapman.
  5. John Symonds, The Great Beast (Frogmore, St. Albans, Herts: Mayflower Books, Ltd., 1973), p. 445.
  6. lbid; and Hymenaeus Beta, 22 July 1990.
  7. Aleister Crowley, “Synopsis,” The Holy Books of Thelema (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1983), p. xxxi.
  8. Malina, pp. 54-59.
  9. Alva Rogers, Darkhouse, 1962.
  10. Jack Parsons, “Freedom is a Two Edged Sword,” in Freedom is a Two Edged Sword, ed. Cameron and Hymenaeus Beta. (Las Vegas: Falcon Press, 1989), p. 35.
  11. Jack Parsons, “On Magick,” in Freedom is a Two Edged Sword, ed. Cameron and Hymenaeus Beta. (Las Vegas: Falcon Press, 1989), p. 48.
  12. Parsons, “Freedom,” pp. 43-44.
  13. Symonds, p. 447.
  14. Hymenaeus Beta, 22 July 1990.
  15. Symonds, p. 447.
  16. Ibid., p. 448.
  17. King and Sutherland, p. 181.
  18. Case No. 101634, Circuit Court, Dade County, Florida.
  19. King and Sutherland, p. 182.
  20. The Frank J. Malina Collection at the California Institute of Technology — Guide to a Microfiche Edition, ed. Judith R. Goodstein and Carol H. Bugd. (Pasadena, CA: Institute Archives, Robert A. Millikan Memorial Library, California Institute of Technology, 1986), p. 17.
  21. Symonds, p. 449.
  22. Parsons, “Freedom,” p. 18.
  23. Ibid., p. 10.
  24. Parsons, “On Magick,” p. 47.
  25. Symonds, p. 449.
  26. Nat Freedland, The Occult Explosion (New York: Berkley, 1972), pp. 163-164.
  27. Ibid., p. 164.
  28. Hymenaeus Beta, 22 July 1990.
  29. Ibid.
  30. Pasadena Star News, 21 June 1952 and 5 July 1952.
  31. Magick, Gnosticism and the Witchcraft. Ed. Fra. H.H.D. (South Stukely, Quebec: 93 Publishing, 1979).
  32. Kenneth Grant, Outside the Circles of Time (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1980), p. 50.
  33. Ibid., p. 228. [Grant also reproduces this picture on Plate 13 of this book.]
  34. Hymenaeus Beta, 22 July 1990.

Source

Real-life Prometheus & Mona Lisa in space

Many of you maybe watched the Ridley Scott’s latest sci-fi movie Prometheus. I waited that movie many many years and was a little bit dissapointed. The movie was awesome but it left too many questions to be answered. Second it was way too short for that kind of script. Ridley should have made trilogy out of it. The best thing was that he gave the respect back to H. R. Giger, maybe the best sci-fi illusionist on the planet. Did you know that he got nothing out of Aliens, Alien3, Alien resurrection, AVP, AVP2? Those bloodsucking moviemonsters didn’t even add his name to the end credits. Ok, without Giger there wouldn’t be the fucking alien saga at all. But still his role on Prometheus was too little, because Ridley thought that he was too slow for modern time movie production, phew the man is 73 years old.

Ok, but now for the bomb. What would you say if I told you, that there is a real-life Prometheus (ancient space ship), which is lying on the back side of the moon? Ahaa got your attention. I had heard about this before I saw the movie and started my investigations. All is based around the Apollo space missions and especially Apollo 18,19 and 20 missions. Official story is that those missions were cancelled. But of course there is another story, that tells that those were awesome missions were they tested Saturn V rocket and studied an ancient space ship on the moon.

The most interesting one of these Apollo missions is Apollo 20 and the testimony of one of it’s crew members William Rutledge.  Here is a little exceprt of his story:

William Rutledge (according to his story, a man of 76 years old who lives in Rwanda, former of Bell Laboratories and employed by USAF) is the name of the “deep throat” who, since April 2007, has been disclosing information and spreading a lot of video and photographic material on YouTube, about the presumed Apollo 20 space mission. His user name on YouTube is “retiredafb”, and the most amazing footage he released so far is the presumed flyover of an ancient alien spaceship found on the backside of the Moon by the Apollo 15 crew.

Source (whole interview of William Rutledge)

The main thing is that they scouted the object on Apollo 15 and in Apollo 20 mission they landed on the back side of the moon and investigated that space ship. There is evidence of this trip and some are claiming that it is a hoax and some are saying that it is authentic footage. Here is couple of pictures and the videos.

MonaLisa11
The Pilot of the ship “Mona Lisa” as the crew named her

apollo20-2
Here they have removed the psychic piloting gear from her face

Then there is the actual video footage of this mission. First one is a flyover of the craft:

 

And then there is videos of recovering the space “Mona Lisa” and some other footage of writings inside the space ship etc. Oh and the hidden city on the moon (just like H. R. Gigers art):

 

 

There’s also a book of this case called Apollo 20 The Disclosure by Luca Scantamburlo. I have read this book and you can find pretty much everything about this case in that book.

And again this is jus a snippet of this story, because I don’t want to make too long postings. Just to provide a starting point where everyone can check the footage themselves. But this is awesome case and if it is a hoax it is a beautifully built one and again it would make a hell of a movie… heh heh some more moon hoax cases coming so stay tuned… same Blogtime… same Blog-channel.