EDITORIAL
What Is Science?
June 2—Man is making history before our eyes today, from day to day and even hour to hour, as all the various mutual links between Russia, China, and India become ever closer and ever more numerous, drawing in 70 or more nations comprising well over half of humanity,— as Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her May 31 TASS interview. It’s like a chained ring of magnets pulling themselves into ever-closer alignment. Think of the new revival of interest in the Kra Canal linking the South China Sea with the Indian Ocean (through the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea). In its current incarnation, this is a Lyndon LaRouche and a Japanese project. It will link India with Southeast Asia and China; it will revolutionize these waters. Lyndon LaRouche said it will be one of the greatest achievements in modern history.
On May 31, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Asian editors that, “If China and India work together and forge synergy, it will deliver benefits not only to the Chinese and Indian people, but also to Asia and beyond.” Referring to India’s recent announcement of a trade corridor deal with Iran and Afghanistan, through Iran’s Chabahar Port, Li said that China “welcomes” it.
India and China are for the first time cooperating in regard to Tibet, where in the past China has viewed India with particular sensitivity, given the Dalai Lama’s presence in India and a sizeable Tibetan community there.
Also on May 31, former Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Fenglin was speaking at a two-day conference on China-Russia relations in Moscow. He said that the bilateral relationship is at a 400-year high, but China wants an even higher level of trust with Russia.
“I have a feeling that Putin and Xi have a conceptual understanding of how we should work together, but there are problems of understanding in the mid-level,” said Ambassador Li, who spoke perfect and idiomatic Russian. “It does not matter that we have different approaches. It’s a normal thing for such big and different countries to have different approaches. The main thing is that they do not lead to contradictions.”
All this calls to mind why it was that LaRouche PAC leader Kesha Rogers of Houston wisely chose the figure of the late German-American space pioneer Krafft Ehricke to keynote her fight for the revival of the space program. Ehricke’s approach is just like that of Lyndon LaRouche, in that it is not the least bit practical, yet it is extremely effective, as has been demonstrated beyond doubt. Ehricke was one of those leaders of space exploration like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth earlier, whose courage and intellect has brought man to new worlds, beyond even what Christopher Columbus did.
Ehricke was a scientist, but his is real science, not the disgusting mathematical substitute for science which is taught in our schools, and which is represented by Obama’s degenerate Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Carter’s phony version of science brought us the F-35 airplane, at probably $200 million apiece, which doesn’t work, and will never work.
Krafft, on the other hand, among many other bold feats of science, forecast precisely the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, in a paper written in 1948. Typically for him, his 1948 paper said that it had been written in 2400, looking back 350 years to the first manned Mars mission in 2050, called “Expedition Ares.” Terence Norton, the leader of that mission, had had to answer the objection that the limitations on the technologies available in 2050,— principally the availability of only chemical propulsion for space travel,— increased the likelihood of “a departure from the normal schedule,” and with it the failure of the mission and even the death of its crew. What was his answer? To cancel the mission? In his report to the “Space Board,” he wrote:
“In considering the problem from any viewpoint, the question may arise: In what way may the challenge offered by a departure from the normal schedule be met with the technical resources at hand? Does such not improbable situation offer some chances to bring home the amazing results of human courage; or does a failure to cope with the situation mean certain death somewhere in the depths of space, to all on board?
“A study of the following pages will show that the technical group has increased the safety factor to a figure far higher than that which was considered the maximum when the project was established. The rest can be left to the character and spirit of the party. It is frankly admitted that possible dangers exist which cannot be anticipated, but the group is firmly convinced that courage, resource, and the scientific attainments of those selected to make the voyage, will meet successfully the challenge of space travel.” (See 21st Century Science and Technology, Spring 2003, p. 34)
Another factor was realistic, thorough, and diverse training, training, training,— much of it in space. Note that most of the redundancy built into “Expedition Ares” was identical to that found in the Apollo missions: namely, the clustering of different independently survivable modules, each one both tailored to a specific purpose, but at the same time general-purpose.
And just like Apollo 13, “Expedition Ares” suffered a mishap and a “departure from normal schedule.” Like Apollo 13, the mission had to be aborted, but as with Apollo 13, every one of the crewmen was rescued, and made it back alive to Earth.
Kesha Rogers certainly knows what she’s talking about.
