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Night vision actively makes visible things
hidden in darkness. It is a subliminal technology that projects an
infrared beam onto obscure objects, which appear through digital
lenses as phosphorescent ghost-like images. Conventional optical
devices, in contrast, are passive, receiving light from external
sources such as stars and street lamps or the sunlight reflected
off surfaces. Telescopes, even powerful ones, become grainy in
low-light, low-contrast situations.
This is why farmers and sawmills around the
world burn their fields and scrap wood on damp days. Optical
air-pollution monitors in nearby towns cannot detect the smoke
plumes through the mist. Likewise, anyone trying to dispose of
waste gases – from chemical-weapons laboratories, for instance
– uses the same technique of releasing emissions under cloud
cover or at nighttime to evade detection by spy satellites.
The only way to spot such "smoking-gun
evidence," as in the case of Iraq's alleged chemical weapons
program, is to mount a beam-generating technology, basically a
souped-up version of night vision, on to a platform circling over
the suspect territory.
Thus, for 16 days in orbit, Israeli astronaut
Ilan Ramon made earth observations with a cluster of instruments,
which NASA called "a multi-spectral telescope." Designed
to survey the air quality over the deserts of the Middle East, his
"telescope" was built by a research team at Tel Aviv
University and a U.S. company, Orbital Sciences Corp. His research
project was called MEIDEX (Mediterranean-Israel dust experiment).[1]
According to Israel Line magazine,
MEIDEX "called for Ramon to observe and take pictures of
atmospheric aerosols in the Mediterranean area using ultraviolet,
visible and near-infrared array-detector cameras." The
acronym seems disingenuous because the letters ME are usually
employed by Israeli research projects to stand for "Middle
East."
The computer-controlled cameras were pointed
earthward to detect desert dust and "pollution aerosols . . .
to provide scientific information about atmospheric aerosols and
the influence of global changes on the climate." The data was
directly transmitted to Tel Aviv University and, according to
investigative journalist Gordon Thomas, on to the Israeli
Biological Institute, the hub of Israel's nerve-gas and bioweapons
programs.[2]
With computer enhancement, the collected images
reveal the chemical composition of the stew of gases and droplets
swirling over the desert. The ultraviolet and visible rays,
originating from the sun, showed the normal background of the
atmosphere – mineral particles, methane, car exhaust fumes and
oil well burn-off – during daylight hours when Saddam Hussein's
laboratories don't dare release their toxic wastes (assuming if
indeed these are being produced or destroyed). The important data,
however, must be gathered during chemical releases at night or
under clouds, and this is where infrared cameras come into play.
Infrared cameras pick up the heat waves
generated by artificial sources such as power plants and oil
refineries. What if, however, Saddam's chemists were to take the
precaution of cooling toxic emissions before dispersing them into
the air? To detect cooler gases, an effective night-shot camera
needs to generate its own infrared beam. It would have to be an
extraordinarily powerful beam to penetrate the clouds far below.
Night vision, as any special-forces soldier or
video enthusiast learns, is limited by the infrared beam's range.
More power means more range. A space shuttle, however, simply
cannot generate the staggering amount of extra power that the
MEIDEX telescope requires on the sun-blocked side of Earth. To
eliminate the risk of a power shutdown to the other experiments
and the spaceship itself, a multi-spectral telescope requires an
independent source of power, and the obvious solution is nuclear
power.
During the search for Columbia debris, one of
the sheriffs in Texas told reporters about the danger posed by
radioactive equipment from the shuttle. NASA repeatedly warned of
hazardous substances without disclosing any specifics. Most media
commentators assumed that the space agency issued the bogus
warnings to discourage souvenir collectors. Maybe the sheriff
wasn't lying.[3]
Americium-242
The Russians have been known to install nuclear
reactors aboard their mammoth satellites. The shuttle, however, is
a lighter craft with a human crew – not the place for a
lead-lined thermonuclear chamber. It turns out, however, that Ben-Gurion
University's nuclear physics department has produced an exotic
type of fissionable fuel called americium-242.[4] According
to a university news release, americium-242 "requires only 1
percent of the mass of uranium or plutonium to reach its critical
state. It was found that this fuel could sustain fission in the
form of extremely thin films of these elements, less than a
thousandth of a millimeter thick. In this form, the exceedingly
high-energy, high-temperature fission products can escape the fuel
elements and be used for propulsion in space - either by heating a
gas for propulsion, or by fueling a special generator that
produces electricity."[5]
Searching for these radioactive wafers across
the state of Texas goes one better than the proverbial needle in
the haystack.
NASA is reportedly considering nuclear-fueled
spacecraft for future missions, since an americium-242 engine is
expected to 10 times faster than current rocket technology.[6]
A more immediate application of this exotic nuclear fuel is to
provide the kick for space-based weapons, including laser cannons
and electromagnetic pulse weapons. (Not by coincidence perhaps,
Ilan Ramon and Commander William McCool were both specialists in
electromagnetic warfare.)[7]
Space weaponry mounted on orbiting platforms,
however, is illegal under several United Nations treaties;
international law is the major obstacle to their deployment.
Therefore, the anti-missile missiles developed by the U.S. and
Israeli militaries serve as a convenient ploy to sell the National
Missile Defense program to a technology-illiterate public. The
Arrow and Patriot series are hopelessly clumsy ground-based
technologies.
How then can the Bush and Sharon
administrations win public support for space-based weapons? A
cynical solution is to make martyrs of an Israeli-American space
shuttle crew. Show them to be victims of outmoded technology and,
more important, obsolete thinking in NASA and in Congress about
keeping space free of nuclear power and potential war-making
technologies. Is it conceivable that an American president would
deliberately sabotage the Columbia? If his agenda is to affect a
shift of NASA from a hybrid civilian-military space agency to an
arm of the Pentagon's ballistic missile defense program, then no
sacrifice could be too great – especially if Ilan Ramon's
telescope had failed to detect any smoking guns over Iraq. As for
the Israeli leader, it must be recalled that the Likud movement is
built on the cult of martyrdom – from ancient Masada and the
Warsaw ghetto to the Irgun fighters killed in fratricidal violence
by Haganah militiamen at the birth of Israel, from Yonathan
Netanyahu's demise in Entebbe to – now – the death of Colonel
Ilan Ramon, nonchalant bomber of Iraq's nuclear plant repackaged
as a hero of science.
An Experiment Gone Awry?
Undoubtedly, the official investigation will
determine the Columbia disaster was not an accident by design.
Blue-ribbon committees will piously give their independent
endorsements, even if martyrs were made to order. Instead of
jumping to conspiracy theories, even a harsh critic of NMD must
admit that the Columbia disaster could have been an accident –
though not one caused by loose tiles but by an experiment gone
awry.
Ilan Ramon's telescope was
"multi-spectral." This is an interesting word because it
could refer to either the electromagnetic spectrum or ghostly
apparitions. Taking a cue from Derrida's "Specters," the
mission may have been haunted, though not in the way those of
apocalyptic mindset have linked the Columbia's destruction to the
over-flight town of Palestine, Texas.
Naomi Elliman, in her article "Israel in
Space" posted on the Israeli Ministry of Finance website,
disclosed "Ramon also investigated sprites."[8]
Sprites and Ramon! His was a fascination resembling Nabokov's
obsession with butterflies. Sprites, like butterflies, fly but
they are traditionally classified as UFOs or as avenging angels.
These spectral lights composed of ionized plasma (gas atoms
stripped of electrons) are, Elliman explains, "rare forms of
lightning that occur above thunderstorms at heights of up to 90
kilometers," or 55 miles above sea level.
As Columbia swung down to 36 miles altitude, an
amateur astronomer in California snapped five shots of the
descending shuttle with his Nikon. The photographs, according to
the San Francisco Chronicle, showed a mysterious orange
aura tinged with purple hovering over the ship's left wing.[9]
Was this phantom-flame merely a trick of light or was it the
luminous sprite that pilot Ilan Ramon had been chasing for years?
If Ramon had switched on his multi-spectral
cameras – probably with childlike delight – as Columbia
traversed the Pacific, he did not foresee the fatal consequences.
The negative charge of the high-energy electron pulse from the
americium-242 would attract the positive charge of the gas plasma
generated by sprites (lighting is positive in the upper
elevations). The strange attraction – half natural, half
artificial – would have been as powerful as a Star Trek traction
beam reeling in a Klingon interceptor.
A lightning burst would account for the sudden
surge in temperature, the immediate shutdown of heat sensors and
communications systems (why the ghostly "last words"
were never transmitted to NASA monitors), and for the tumbling
that sent Columbia, a flaming chariot of the heavens, to her doom.
Notes
1. Does the ME in MEIDEX stand for
Mediterranean? According to the Israel Space Agency: "In
1999, ISA and NASA established in Israel the 'Middle East
Interactive Data Archive (ISA-MEIDA)' in order to create and
maintain an Earth observing data center."
2. Gordon Thomas, Ireland-based intelligence
expert.
3. Comments by Nacogdoches County Sheriff
Thomas Kerss on the threat of radioactive cargo aboard the
Columbia were reported on CNBC-TV on Feb. 3 and later on PBS.
4. Americium-242m or 242Amm: Americium is used
in chemical-weapons detectors and superconducters. The
Americium-242m isotope is described in: SpaceDaily
2001.01.06. Journal: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics
Research No.455 pp. 442-451 December 2000 Yigal Ronen &
Eugene Shwagerous
5. Ben-Gurion University (2001): "Space
vehicles are about to receive a very large (and quite literal)
boost from Israeli research, according to scientists at Ben-Gurion
University. They have shown that a new type of nuclear fuel could
cut the travel time from Earth to Mars from 10 months to only two
weeks. 'It has long been known that the less the nuclear reactor
which powers a space vehicle weighs, the more efficient space
travel is,' says Prof. Yigal Ronen, of the university's Department
of Nuclear Engineering. To meet the challenge of a light nuclear
reactor, Ronen examined one element of reactor design - the fuel.
The study focused on the nuclear fission fuel americium-242m,
which requires only one percent of the mass of uranium or
plutonium to reach its critical state. It was found that this fuel
could sustain fission in the form of extremely thin films of these
elements, less than a thousandth of a millimeter thick. In this
form, the exceedingly high-energy, high-temperature fission
products can escape the fuel elements and be used for propulsion
in space - either by heating a gas for propulsion, or by fueling a
special generator that produces electricity. There are still many
hurdles to overcome before americium-242m can be used in space -
examining reactor design, refueling, heat removal and safety
provisions for manned vehicles - as well as the high cost of its
manufacture. Americium-242m is already available in small
quantities, and Ronen believes that the fuel will eventually be
used for space travel."
6. NASA Nuclear-powered space vehicles: Los
Angeles Times, 2002.01.17 article by Peter Pae "NASA 2004
budget to include funding for Nuclear Space Initiative" Also
known as "Project Prometheus".
7. Electromagnetic warfare: Ilan Ramon was part
of the 8-jet squadron that attacked the Iraqi nuclear power plant
in 1981. His mission was to deceive the Iraqi radar by sending a
false signal that made the jets appear to be a single commercial
airliner.
Cmdr. William McCool (US Navy commander)
trained on and flew Prowler electromagnetic warfare tactical
aircraft at Whitbey Naval Station in Washington State.
NOTE: Kalpana Chawla (the Indian-American
woman) was the only non-military crew member of the Columbia, but
she was a defense-technology researcher.
NASA: EDUCATION: Graduated from Tagore School,
Karnal, India, in 1976. Bachelor of science degree in aeronautical
engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, 1982. Master
of science degree in aerospace engineering from University of
Texas, 1984. Doctorate of philosophy in aerospace engineering from
University of Colorado, 1988.
EXPERIENCE: In 1988, Kalpana Chawla started
work at NASA Ames Research Center in the area of powered-lift
computational fluid dynamics. Her research concentrated on
simulation of complex airflows encountered around aircraft such as
the Harrier (vertical takeoff assault jet) in
"ground-effect." Following completion of this project
she supported research in mapping of flow solvers to parallel
computers, and testing of these solvers by carrying out powered
lift computations. In 1993 Kalpana Chawla joined Overset Methods
Inc., Los Altos, California, as Vice President and Research
Scientist to form a team with other researchers specializing in
simulation of moving multiple body problems. She was responsible
for development and implementation of efficient techniques to
perform aerodynamic optimization.
8. Sprites: Ilan Ramon's interest in sprites
indicates that he may have been part of the Israeli Air Force team
specializing in chasing UFOs.
9. San Francisco Chronicle 2003.2.2
David Perlman "Photos show odd images near shuttle"
[Secret Search Note: Encryption can be done with
SOFTWARE. No need for a special piece of black hardware. They
are looking for something else.]
Yahoo! News - Secret Shuttle Part Sought in
Texas
Secret Shuttle Part Sought in Texas Search
Thu Feb 6, 4:00 PM ET Top Stories - Reuters
By Rick Wilking
BRONSON, Texas (Reuters) - Hundreds of National Guardsmen,
federal agents, state troopers and volunteers closely searched
this tiny Texas town on Thursday, looking for what was believed
to be a top-secret device that fell from the shuttle Columbia
when the spacecraft broke apart last week.
They formed long lines to walk through block-by-block and
used machetes to hack their way through the thick woods that
envelope the town, which is near the Texas-Louisiana border, 125
miles northeast of Houston.
The shuttle fell in thousands of pieces on Saturday, killing
the seven astronauts on board. NASA (news - web sites) is trying
to recover shuttle parts from Louisiana to California in hopes
of understanding why the disaster occurred.
Written instructions given to the searchers in Bronson showed
a picture of a faceplate from the device, which in white letters
on a black background spelled out "Secret Government
Property."
People involved in the search told Reuters they had not been
told what the device was, but said that they had found lots of
shuttle debris in Bronson, including a high number of circuit
boards and other electronic items.
A report in the Houston Chronicle on Thursday said
searchers were looking for a communications device that handled
encrypted messages between the shuttle and the ground.
It said the device was in a government
"telecommunications security" category that normally
allowed handling only under the tightest of restrictions.
Texas state troopers stood guard over the operation and told
photographers to keep their distance. They said they would be
asked to leave the area if searchers found something they did
not want photographed.
Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss, asked about the item
at a Thursday news conference in nearby Nacogdoches, would only
say that he was aware of the search for it.
Searchers were hampered on Thursday by a cold, heavy rain
that turned the east Texas forest into a muddy bog.
They said there was an urgency about the hunt for parts
because the area was prone to flooding.
Yoichi Clark Shimatsu is a Hong Kong-based
journalist and former general editor of The Japan Times Weekly
in Tokyo. His email address is yshimatsu@yahoo.com.
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