Voyage Beyond Apollo Cruise, 4th Planetology and Space Mission Planning Conference in 1972
This historic cruise in 1972 on the Statendam to witness the last launch and only night launch of the Apollo had on board some well-known characters, and some not well-known but very important characters. This conference disappeared from public knowledge for reasons that will eventually become known. For now, here is the material in the fourth seminar of this forgotten fourth conference.
Not since Prometheus have men dared so much to gain the fire of the gods. It seems fittingly appropriate therefore that man’s first true golden age shall be ushered in amid the glare of heaven, the harnesses power of the stars themselves.
Fusion, the inexhaustive pollution-free and almost costless energy that lights the sun and stars across the night, is on the eve of being tapped for civilization and societies in dire need.
Imagine power plants the size of coffee pots – no belching stacks, unsightly wires, no blackouts due to snow or over usage, no worries about radiation, no strip mining scars, no more pollution over cities due to power generation, and no more pollutants due to auto exhaust emissions, as fusion engines operating with but one gram of fuel could take a car from coast to coast ten times over – some 30,000 miles – for less than fifty cents, the cost of fusion fuel.
Imagine the nearly perfect recycler. Old cans, bottles, bags, cars, and sundry trash would vanish into one end. Out of the other, good new supplies of raw materials would flow. This is possible within a future now foreseen and it will happen sooner than you think.
Consider: with power from the stars (as efficient compared with present fossil fuels as gasoline to matches) what is to prevent man from attaining his age-old dream, and reaching out to touch the stars themselves?
Consider vast and stately liners carrying a thousand people from Earth to the Moon, from Mars to sites amid the glories of the rings of Saturn. Such a ship, a direct descendant of our ship, the S. S. Statendam, will fly within our lifetimes, and many present here will see sight s never seen before. These vessels are preclusive to the grandest ships of all, descendants which will, ultimately, carry 10,000-year traditions on the widest sea of all, the waiting sea of stars.
Participants in discussions for the Fourth Seminar include:
- Robin Anderson, executive, Space Research Corporation
- Donald Banks, systems design and management
- Ben Bova, editor of “Analog”
- Bruce Hunt, consulting physicist
- Frederick Pohl, author
- Werner Rambauske, physicist
Topics include:
- Energy as the foundation of civilized cultures
- Energy production within the biosphere, and its unwanted side effects
- Sources of energy historically available to man, and current new options
- The impact of essentially free energy in portable form, and with no appreciable side effects, on the world’s major environmental problems
- Utilization of stellar energy sources for propulsion of multi-ton space ships throughout the solar system
- The social consequence of available energy and its usage to increase the quality of life
- Optics: Man’s sensory contact with the energy emitted by the Universe
