Chariots of the Gods (21 page)

The Huntsvillites have every reason to be proud of their 'Germans' and the NASA, for Huntsville has grown into the biggest NASA centre of all. Here the rockets that make headlines all over the world are thought up and designed, from the little Redstone to the gigantic Saturn V. Up to now the USA has invested around 10 milliard pounds in the Moon programme. 15 Saturn V rockets have been commissioned for £54,000,000. At launching the tanks are filled with some 880,000 gallons of highly explosive fuel, which develops a propulsive force of 150,000,000 horse power. The giant rocket weighs almost 3,000 tons. In Huntsville some 7,000 technicians, engineers and scientists of related disciplines are working under Wernher von Braun towards the great goal, the conquest of space. In 1967 around 300,000 scientists of all kinds were working on the USA's global space programme. More than 20,000 industrials firms are working for the greatest research undertaking in history.

The Austrian scientist Dr Pscherra told me during a visit to Huntsville that the research groups constantly had to develop new 'articles' which had never before been produced anywhere in the world.

'Look here!' he said and showed a large cylinder from which came a humming, rumbling noise. 'In there we are conducting lubricating experiments in an absolute vacuum. Do you know that we cannot use any of the countless lubricants produced in the world? They lose all their lubricating qualities in space. With available lubricants even a simple electro-motor stops functioning after at most half an hour in airless space. What else could we do but invent a lubricant which works perfectly even in an absolute vacuum?'

A terrible groaning and whining came from another room. Two tremendous vices, firmly anchored to the floor, were trying to pull a 4-in.-thick sheet of metal to pieces.

'Another series of experiments that we would willingly dispense with,' said Dr Pscherra, 'but our experience has shown that existing metal alloys do not stand up to the stresses of space. So we must find ones that meet our requirements. That is the reason for these tensile probes and fatigue experiments under every conceivable kind of space situation. We also have to develop new welding techniques. The welded joints must be subject to cold, heat, vibration, tensile-strength and pressure tests, so that we can find out the limits at which a welded joint breaks.'

The hostess who accompanied me looked at her watch, Dr Pscherra looked at his watch, everyone was looking at their watches. The NASA personnel, of course, don't notice it any more; the visitor finds it curious at first, but he soon gets used to it, for looking at one's watch is a standard gesture of the NASA personnel at Cape Kennedy, Houston and Huntsville. They always seem to be making a countdown: four ... three ... two ... one ....ero.

Rides and walks through the halls, corridors and doors led, after many more security controls, to a Mr Pauli, who also comes from German-speaking Europe and has been working for NASA for thirteen years. I had a white helmet bearing the NASA symbol crammed on my head; Mr Pauli took me to the testing platform of the Saturn V. The simple words 'testing platform' mean a concrete colossus that weighs several hundred tons, is several storeys high, has lifts and cranes leading to it, and is surrounded by ramps in which a bewildering network of many miles of cables is installed. Once it is ignited, Saturn V makes a din which can be heard 12 miles from the launching ground. The testing platform, deeply anchored in rock and concrete, rises as much as three inches from its base during such trials, while 333,000 gallons of water per second are pumped through a sluice for cooling purposes. Merely for cooling trial rockets on the testing platform, NASA had to build a pumping works that could easily supply a city the size of Manchester with drinking water. A single firing test costs a cool £500,000! Space does not come cheaply.

Huntsville is one of the many NASA centres. The reader should note them because later they may become the departure stations for space flights:

Army Research Centre, Moffet Field, California.

Electronics Research Centre, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Flight Research Centre, Edwards, California.

Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, MD.

Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

John F. Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

Langley Research Centre, Hampton, VA.

Lewis Research Centre, Cleveland, Ohio.

Manned Spacekraft Centre, Houston, Texas.

Nuclear Rocket Development Station, Jackass Flats.

Pacific Launch Operations Office, Lompoc, California.

Wallops Station, Wallops Island, VA.

Western Operations Office, Santa Monica, California.

NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

The space-ship industry has long overtaken the automobile industry as a pace-setter in the market. On 1 July, 1967, 22,828 people were working at the Cape Kennedy Space Centre; the annual budget for this station alone amounted to 475,784,000 dollars in 1967!

All that because a few crazy people want to go to the moon? I think I have already given sufficient convincing examples of what we owe research into space travel today (and these only as by-products), ranging from objects in everyday use to complicated medical apparatus which save people's lives every hour of the day all over the world. The super-technology in the course of development is truly no scourge of mankind. It is carrying mankind into the future which begins anew daily with seven-leagued boots.

The author had a chance to ask Wernher von Braun for his opinion of the hypotheses put forward in this book:

'Dr Von Braun, do you consider it possible that we shall find life on other planets in our solar system?'

'I consider it possible that we shall come across lower forms of life on the planet Mars.'

'Do you consider it possible that we are not the only intelligences in the universe?'

'I consider is extremely probable that not only plant and animal life, but also intelligent living creatures exist in the infinite reaches of the universe. The discovery of such life is a most fascinating and interesting task, but considering the enormous distances between our own and other solar systems' and the still greater distances between our galaxy and other galactic systems, it is doubtful whether we shall succeed in proving the existence of such forms of life or getting into direct communication with them.'

'Is it-conceivable that older, technically more advanced intelligences live or have lived in our galaxy?'

'Up to the present we have no proof or indication that older and technically more advanced living beings than ourselves live or have lived in our galaxy. However, on the basis of statistical and philosophical considerations, 1 am convinced of the existence of such advanced living beings. But I must emphasise that we have no firm scientific basis for this conviction.'

'Is there a possibility that older intelligences could have paid a visit to our earth in the dim mists of time?'

'I won't deny this possibility. But to the best of my knowledge no archaeological studies have so far provided any basis for that kind of speculation.'

Here my conversation with the 'father of the Saturn rocket' ended. Unfortunately the author could not tell him in detail about all the remarkable discoveries, the absurdities, the old books handed down to us as unsolved puzzles —the countless questions that archaeological finds force upon us when considered with space eyes. But Dr Von Braun awaits the documentation of this book.

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Where do we stand today?

Will man dominate space one day?

Did unknown beings from the infinite reaches of the cosmos visit the earth in the remote past?

Are unknown intelligences somewhere in the universe trying to make contact with us?

Is our age, with its discoveries that are taking the future by storm, really so terrible?

Should the most shattering results of research be kept secret?

Will medicine and biology discover a way of restoring deep-frozen men to life?

Will men from earth colonise new planets?

Will they mate with the inhabitants they find there?

Will men create a second, third and fourth earth?

Will special robots replace surgeons one day?

Will hospitals in the year 2100 be spare-part stores for defective men?

Will it become possible in the distant future to prolong man's life indefinitely with artificial hearts, lungs, kidneys, etc?

Will Huxley's Brave New World come true one day in all it's improbability and chilling inhumanity?

A compendium of such questions could easily get as big as the London telephone directory. Not a day passes without something brand-new being invented somewhere in the world—every day another question can be struck from the list of impossibilities as answered. Edinburgh University received a preliminary grant of £270,000 from the Nuffield Trust for the development of an intelligent computer. The prototype of this computer was put into conversation with a patient and afterwards the patient could not believe that he had been talking to a machine. Professor Dr Michie, who designed this computer, claimed that his machine was beginning to develop a personal life.

The new science is called futurology! Its goal is the planning and detailed investigation and understanding of the future by all the technical and mental means available. Think tanks are springing up all over the world; what they amount to are monasteries of scientists of today, who are thinking for tomorrow. One hundred and sixty-four of these think tanks are at work in America alone. They accept commissions from the government and heavy industry. The most celebrated think tank is the Rand Corporation at Santa Monica in California. The US Air Force were responsible for its foundation in 1945. The reason? High ranking officers wanted a research programme of their own on intercontinental warfare. 843 selected scientific authorities now work in the two-storeyed magnificently laid-out research centre. The first ideas and plans for the foundations of mankind's most improbable adventures are born here. As early as 1946 Rand scientists evaluated the military usefulness of a space-ship. When Rand developed the programme for various satellites in 1951, it was called Utopian. Since Rand has been functioning, the world can thank this research centre for 3,000 accurate accounts of hitherto unobserved phenomena. Rand scientists have published more than 110 books, which have advanced our culture and civilisation immeasurably.

There is no end in sight to this research work, and there is unlikely to be one.

Similar work for the future is being done in the following institutes:

The Hudson Institute at Harmon-on-Hudson, N.Y.; the Tempo Centre for Advanced Studies belonging to General Electric at Santa Barbara, California; the Arthur Little Institute at Cambridge, Mass., and the Battelle Institute at Columbus, Ohio.

Governments and big business simply cannot manage without these thinkers for the future. Governments have to decide on their military plans far in advance; big businesses have to calculate their investments for decades ahead. Futurology will have to plan the development of capital cities for a hundred or more years ahead.

Equipped with present-day knowledge, it would not be difficult to estimate, say, the development of Mexico for the next fifty years. In making such a forecast, every conceivable fact would be taken into account, such as the existing technology, means of communication and transport, political currents and Mexico's potential opponents. If this forecast is possible today, unknown intelligences could certainly have made such a forecast for the planet Earth 10,000 years ago.

Mankind has a compulsive urge to think out in advance and investigate the future with all the potentialities at its command. Without this study of the future, we should probably have no chance of unravelling our past. For who knows whether important clues for the unravelling of our past do not lie around the archaeological sites, whether we do not trample them heedlessly under foot, because we do not know what to make of them.

That is the very reason why I advocated a 'Utopian archaeological year'. In the same way that I am unable to 'believe' in the wisdom of the old patterns of thought, I do not ask others to 'believe' my hypothesis. Nevertheless, I expect and hope that the time will soon be ripe to attack the riddle of the past without prejudice—making full use of all the refinements of technology.

It is not our fault that there are millions of other planets in the universe.

It is not our fault that the Japanese statue of Tokomai, which is many thousands of years old, has modern fastenings and eye apertures on its helmet.

It is not our fault that the stone relief from Palenque exists.

It is not our fault that Admiral Piri Reis did not burn his ancient maps.

It is not our fault that the old books and traditions of human history exhibit so many absurdities.

But it is our fault if we know all this, but disregard it and refuse to take it seriously.

Man has a magnificent future ahead of him, a future which will far surpass his magnificent past. We need space research and research into the future and the courage to tackle projects that now seem impossible. For example, the project of concerted research into the past which can bring us valuable memories of the future. Memories which will then be proved and which will illuminate the history of mankind—for the blessing of future generations.