Space Vanguard

There is a SIG hospitality room reserved for The Space Vanguard SIG at the 2011 Mensa Annual Gathering in Portland Oregon, on Saturday July 2, just from 1 to 2 PM, and everyone who is curious is welcome to come out and mingle and discuss future Earth and space colony designs and systems. Then from 3 to 4:15 I will be lecturing and demonstrating items about the Space Vanguard SIG ideas to the general crowd in a conference room, not yet assigned. I am excited about the chance to share my ideas (and some of yours) and enjoy a spirited discussion. I will be modifying several of my systems to make them easier to adopt so watch these pages and go back to the earlier articles to see the updates.

"Another Mensan and I are working to bring in a credit union that will be for people who are interested in science fiction/fantasy and/or space exploration, which I think might relate to your SIG's space perspective. Would you or any of your SIG members be interested in helping us bring this in? Also, would you like me to post this on your SIG's blog? Thanks very much for considering this, Pat Crepeau, Mensan" catalyst.pat@gmail.com I endorse this in concept, credit unions save consumers a lot of money. I do not know Pay and I caution everyone to be careful with their deposits wherever. The financial turmoil that I predicted seems to be playing out now. Pat, best of luck.

I have been thinking abstractly about how like-minded people in a community could band together to assist each other and to advance the cause of private space exploration. This is a concept only, and I want to hear your ideas. A religious organization seems like a very flexible structure to promote new ideas. Here is what I personally would like in benefits from joining a church: a very short positive sermon about God, followed by a free Sunday lunch with one pint of beer or cup of wine and a folk music sing-along with dancing and socializing, and free all-week country club benefits including tennis, basketball, volleyball, and swimming. For additional individual donations the different church rooms could be rented out for members' weddings, funerals, and concerts. You would probably have to expect a $500 donation per person per year for the church to be able to provide these benefits. Then I thought about blood donation as a fundraiser. The church could provide a blood banking ser...

The Sun usually has a cyclical increase in solar flares about every eleven years. It has been slowly ramping up lately and now it is getting very violent. David Sereda says that the worst flares start with a long filliment hanging out of a sunspot and when it collapses back into the sunspot it creates a large hydra-flare eruption of a charged plasma wave that hits the Earth about 3 to 4 days later. These plasma waves spin up the Earth's magma core and the timing is linked so they probably caused the large recent earthquakes in Chile, Haiti and in Alaska. It is probably also firing off the new undersea volcanoes around the world. Get ready for some major Earth Changes.

The Japanese government has made a committment to developing a robotic moon base at the lunar south pole by 2020. I think that is a noble goal but I doubt that robots can learn to pick up dropped tools, fix crossthreaded bolts, and solve other complex tasks by then. The amateur experimental scientists around the world are advancing the robotic art by developing printing machines that can lay down layer upon layer of sprayed on plastic until a whole 3 dimensional plastic part is created. But much more work needs to be done before robots can pick up these created plastic parts and assemble them into useful machines in outer space. And the fabrication of necessary metal parts is much more difficult than plastic. I think a good strategy for the Japanese would be to find a crater near the lunar south pole and place two tempered glass domes over it. Small meteorites might crack the first dome but the second one should be able to resist the remaining impact force and still contain the artifi...

I am not a saint by any means but I have noticed a few common moral lapses in people that generally end up causing harm, revenge, and overall lost happiness and productivity.  For example, while you should not deliberately hurt someones feelings many times people will continuously ignore the truth and tell little white lies or omit some pertinent information to try and save another person’s feelings about trivial things that cause that person to act on incorrect information and ends up causing the small initial problem being blown up into a much bigger problem. Happy people are productive people. I think that people would be happier and society would be better off if people adopted this short new moral code of conduct: Be friendly to others but remain cautious and observant because other sentient beings are not always loyal to your friendship. You should not lie. It is usually better to remain silent than to lie. People should occasionally, gently give their friends const...

The economy is in rough shape right now and there is a cyclical trend going on. The price of precious metals has been artificially depressed by Central Banks leasing out their gold to banks and hedge funds. It creates a new temporary supply of gold for the banks to sell futures contracts on. The problem is that futures contracts buyers eventually want to take delivery on the gold that they have contracted for and then there won't be any to return to the Central Banks at the end of the leases. That is the artificial situation that has been dumped on us now. It is going to cause a five year super bubble in precious metals prices. Silver is the metal that has been depressed the most. As silver runs from $18/troy oz to maybe $80 the common stock of established silver mining companies will skyrocket even farther. They are already covering their production costs so any increase in silver prices will drop straight down to the bottom line as pure profit. Again, this is an temporary engine...