For many years I have listened to and watched the stories of UFO's. Yet there is one thing that has always puzzled me. If UFO's do exist, where could they come from? What would they have to know to be able to get here? This is the question that I will address in this book. So lean back, kick off your shoes, open your mind and let us begin.

The evolution of the idea that there may be other civilizations beyond our planet, must have started very soon after our ancient ancestor's first looked up at the night sky.

We as a Civilization, have always asked the questions, what, why, and how. Our curiosity has been around since the beginning. Those who possessed the answers to these questions, were able to lead and control the less informed. Knowledge therefore has always been the key to control the masses.

Once early humans were established into large family groups, food could be gathered by just a few people in the family group. This left time for some in the group to contemplate their surroundings. They must have seen many strange things, both on the earth as well as in the sky. Trying to explain such things as sun rise and set, the moon, shooting stars, volcanoes, rain, storms, snow, and ice, must have been very perplexing, to early civilizations. To us these are all identifiable objects. But are they?

Not long ago I was on a trip, from Seattle Wa. to Vancouver B.C., with my granddaughter who is four years old. As we rode along I noticed, that she kept looking out of the windshield, but she was looking up, though it. She looked puzzled, then came the question, that all grandfathers dread. She said, with a most serious look. "Paw Paw, why is the sky blue?" There I was, Keeper of all knowledge, as far as she was concerned. You guessed it, I didn't have an answer for her. So as it has been with all Keepers Of Knowledge, I said to her, "I'll look into it and get back to you".

At that point, I was able to understand what it must have been like for the Ancients. Every new generation has to learn all of the basics from their experiences, and the knowledge of others. I was able to empathize, with all Keepers Of Knowledge, for as far back as when the first four year old, asked that and many other questions like it.

People soon turned to the Keepers Of Knowledge, with questions very much like the ones that a typical four year old would ask.

Why is there more light in the day, and not at night? What is the sun? Who lives there? Where did it come from?

The ancients soon saw patterns in the stars and gave them names. Many civilizations saw the stars, moon and planets as the places where the gods dwelled. I believe that early civilizations conceived the concept of heaven and hell from observing the volcanic actions of the earth, and saw that they were so hot that they could not support life and that this must be hell. In hell there would have to be a god of the underworld who dwelled there. This god was the keeper of the flame, all who did not lead a good life, would be sent to the underworld and dwell with the god of the underworld.

The actual name's heaven and hell, would have been called something else but their meanings would be the same. Some kind of punishment and reward system was necessary, in order to get civilization up and running on the earth. If we did not have a belief in Divine intervention in our lives, we would be less likely to follow the right path in life.

By contrast the cool of the night, was associated with a more likely environment that could support life. There was evidence that it was inhabited. We saw the streaks across the night sky. It must be the vehicles of the gods who lived there. Their movements were at random, so they weren't stars or planets, some even landed on the earth. The first UFO's had been sighted. I can imagine the early people of earth trying to figure out what the streaks really were. Just imagine that you didn't have the information, about the heavens that you now possess. And on a cool summer night, you are sitting on the ground, looking up into the sky. You see a bright object about 20 degrees up in the sky. It is bright and shinny in the front and has a long fiery tail, you watch it all night, and watch it go low into the western sky and disappear over the horizon. All through the night you have seem smaller objects, with the same configuration, landing over the horizon. You are the Keeper of knowledge. The people that are with you ask. What are they? Now as Keeper of the Knowledge, you know how to tell the seasons, guide them by the north star, showed them how to make fire, and even cured them when they are possessed of demons and evil spirits. They are waiting, you say that you will consult with god and get back to them. As it is now early in the A.M., and you have been up all night, you go into your cave to consult with the god of the heavens.

You think and think. It could be the gods shooting at each other, (but you wouldn't come to that conclusion, since you only have rocks and sticks to do battle with), then again it may be really fast moving stars, (but they are landing on earth and we would have found anything that big), then EUREKA! It comes to you, it is the way the gods get around in the cosmos. That evening, all of the people gather around, and you tell them what you have found out. They are impressed with you, such a learned person.

As we progressed and were able to distinguish the planets from the stars, the Greeks gave names to the planets. They became places where the different gods lived. This is surely where our first beliefs, of other civilizations on other worlds must have begun. These gods had unimaginable powers, super strength, weapons of great power and of course love. So with that knowledge, the Keepers of the Knowledge of Greece, could answer most of the questions of early Greeks. From before that time to present day, we continue to revise and update information at an astounding rate. The more we provide for the Keepers of the Knowledge, the more time they have to ponder what is and what will be. This is where specialists were needed. The amount of knowledge was starting to get out of hand. The Keepers of the Knowledge, were having trouble learning all of the old knowledge as well as thinking up answers for all of the new stuff that was happening. This has created many openings for assistants to the Keepers of the Knowledge. They have been broken down into different departments astronomy, science, mathematics and so on. Today we would call this system a University. The reason we need a University type system is that individual Keepers of the Knowledge no longer have sufficient knowledge of all things. In the early days a single person could be the Keeper of the Knowledge but as we have added knowledge (and it has been growing geometrically) we have had to take a team approach in securing the knowledge we have obtained. The university system has a dean that heads up the system and various professors heading up the different departments. There are so many specialists in every field, from quarks to the cosmos, information is growing geometrically. In many cases the Keepers of the Knowledge, can only talk to people in the same field of study.

There are so many new things to be named and defined, we look for Alfa and Omega, at the same time. The number of questions and answers between the two, can't be numbered. We wouldn't have a number large enough, and if we did, we wouldn't be able conceive its size. We are fast approaching the time, of the story in the Old Testament, about the Tower of Babel. We will again separate into different Nations based on language differences, not so much in kinds of languages, but in the content of the languages. We are discovering so many new things all at once and there is no way to get all of the information out. Even if we could, we will soon reach an information over load. I can imagine a conversation between the dean and a professor of gizmology.

Dean: Well Professor, so you want to start a department of gizmology.

Prof.: Yes Dean, I think that the time has come to fund a department of gizmology.

Dean: What amount of funding do you think you will need, and by the way what is gizmology?

Prof.: Well I have it all figured out, I think that a budget of a million will do for a start. Gizmology is the study of gizmos and gizmaches.

Dean: I see. (He really doesn't) What exactly is a gizmo?

Prof.: A gizmo is the support for a gizmache and they hold up a chain of thingamabobs and whatumaycallits.

If this conversation hasn't taken place I believe it will and sooner than you think. As an example think of what you need to know now. All of the Federal laws, State laws, city and county laws. Federal tax laws would fill a large library. Remember that ignorance of the law is no excuse. We have "outlawed" our selves and we have only just begun.

We are a civilization that has a need to explain everything. When we thought the earth was flat, because the moon and the sun looked like a dish. A flat plate, so they surmised that the earth must be the same way. It is somewhat of a myth that Christopher Columbus thought that the earth was flat. Some of his crew may have believed that, but he didn't. Most people today still think that he believed that it was flat. Great scholars were punished by the church for teaching that the earth was not the center of the universe. So what we believe to be the absolute answer to any question today, will be no more than child like thoughts to Keepers of the Knowledge in the far future. The whole exercise here, is that there are no absolutes. What is defined today as absolute, will be redefined by later Keepers of the Knowledge as false, and a new truth will take its place, to be replaced by yet another truth, and so on, and so on.

So much for early background. Lets slip forward to a more modern time. I don't know when the first UFO, as we define beings from outer space, was sighted. We tend to guess at many things, like the ancient drawings in caves and on rocks. We even find them in the deserts. There are also statures and dwellings, that many people attribute to or are at least influenced by beings not from the earth. They are not local to any one continent or country.

Examples of this can be found in Egypt, where the pyramids with their triangular shape, and relationship to Pi ( the early Egyptian builders of the Pyramids did not know about Pi ) are thought by some to have been guided by or maybe even built by colonist from outer space. But a closer look at what did happen in Egypt, was that they used a wheel as a measuring device. Therefore we assumed that they must know about Pi. But this doesn't have to be, if they used a wheel to measure. They start at a stake on one corner, then count off the number of times the wheel revolves. Then place a stake at that corner, and turn 90 degrees, and count the number of revolutions to the next corner, and so on. Crude by today's standards but very effective, if you need to measure long distances and be accurate. So they didn't have to know about Pi, only how to use a wheel to measure. All circles have a relationship to Pi. If you had to build a very tall structure, with only raw manpower, then a triangle shape like the Pyramids, would be the best choice. A ramp system that gets smaller and smaller moving inward as you go up. Until it finally meets at a point at the very top. Still they are quite impressive, but I think that the first Pharaoh that ordered a pyramid for his tomb, took bids from the master builders of the time. They would have built models of the tomb, and in so doing, dictated how they could be built. A bit mundane perhaps, but I think that it is closer to the truth than, spacemen. The next example would have to be Ezekiel's vision as told in the Old Testament. The key word here is," vision ". He describes all sorts of brass, wheels, faces, and movement not common to his time. There are other biblical references also which some consider alien influenced; Jacob's ladder to heaven, is said to be his climb into a waiting spacecraft. Or Moses on the mountain to receive the Ten commandments. Some would describe the cloud that descended on the mountain as a cloud of smoke from a spacecraft, also later when the Ark of the Covenant was built. It had components about it, that suggested it was a communication device with which, they could talk to its designer. Now the Bible is a wonderful and mysterious collection. In its own text it says that, although many will read it, few will understand its true meaning. I agree.

No search for an answer to UFO's would be complete if it did not look at the large drawings of the Nazca Plains or the Monolithic Statures of Easter Island. Both have been eluted to as messages to spacemen, wanting to land their craft at that location. There can be simple answers to what the Nazca figures were for. Like messages to the god of the heavens. We have discussed how early man viewed the heavens and what they thought about all of the objects they saw in the night sky. I suggest that these figures were their way of trying to make contact with the gods. A more complex answer would be, that they were indeed visited by aliens. If that was the case, then we should have found artifacts and unmistakable technology, from such profound contact with the alien encounters, of that time. As an example, take the discovery of the Americas. There was an exchange of gifts and technologies, between the natives and the explorers. I have seen nothing of substance that would make me believe, such an encounter took place in early times. Of course there are things that deserve mention. The Maya left behind tablets that depict some sort of craft with a pilot. Other paintings and petroglyphs with pictures that could be construed as space related. But I think that this is from the Keepers of the Knowledge, trying to give a more detailed description of how the lights in the night sky work. Many of these people were far a head of their time. Not unlike Jules Verne, he wrote about things as they would be. His stories about journeying to the moon, to the center of the earth, and to the bottom of the sea, were all way a head of the technology of his day. For someone to dream up a nuclear submarine is hard to believe, but he did. I think that Jules Verne is a good example of what a controlled imagination, can yield. I think that there have been many such controlled imaginations, going back as far as when that 4 year old, asked the first question.

Moving on to more modern sightings. We have since the 1940's had many sightings of UFO's, abductions by aliens, and other encounters of the third kind. Most have been explained away. Other abductions have either been disproved, or rely on testimony of a single individual, or group of individuals, that are connected in some way. There are many reasons for faking a sighting or abduction. Notoriety, money, and in general, a chance for you to be noticed on a world wide stage. For those who believe that they did in fact, have contact with aliens, I view them with envy. They know that we can leave our planet and our solar system. If we do not find a way to leave, we are destined to die out, in a few billion years, when our sun dies. ( A question to ponder. I wonder how the authors of the Bible knew that our sun would glow so hot that it would burn up all things on the earth? ) After the sun's death our planet will be frozen. We will have the largest shrine to knowledge that ever was.

Most sightings have either been explained as naturally caused, like fog, clouds, objects blown by the wind, and so on. Some have been shown to be reflections inside of the camera lens. Others were reflections of the shutter inside the camera. Some were just plain hoaxes, any thing from hub caps thrown into the air, to hot dogs, thrown across the camera's path. I can empathize with those who have seen things and can't explain, just what they were. I have an example of just that sort of thing. On an evening in June of 1978, I was going to Roanoke, Va. to attend a staff meeting. As I turned off of Interstate 64 on to Interstate 585 at Roanoke, I saw up ahead a bright light. It just hung there for the longest time. It was about one thousand feet up in the air. I tried my darnest to figure out what it could be. I finally pulled off to the side of the road, so that I could get a better look. It was still hanging there. There was plenty of day light, but this thing was a bright white light, it was almost too bright to look at. As I stood there it started to move to my left, as it turned I was able to see what it really was. A 727 Jet Air Liner, on its final approach to the Roanoke Airport. Had I not stopped to investigate the light, I would have believed that it was a UFO.

The upper level winds, called the jet stream, may even contribute to the problem. A couple in England once had a rain storm of butter beans. I suppose that a tornado can pick up all sorts of things, and raise them up to the level of the jet stream. The jet stream circles the earth at rapid rate. If an airplane got caught in the jet stream, it would have trouble breaking out of its force. The jet stream could be the answer to some of the stories that I have read about airplanes that were held in one spot for many minutes. If the plane could do 200 mph and it met a jet stream wind of 200 mph head on it would appear to stand still. The pilot would think that some strange force had hold of his plane.

But of all of the UFO reports that I have seen or read about, there is one that stands out as a true UFO. In 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, a UFO crashed in a farmer's field. The farmer went and looked in the field, and saw things that he had never seen before. Not knowing what it was, he went to the local sheriff with his problem. The sheriff took a look at the wreckage, and was as puzzled as the farmer. So the sheriff called the Air Force Base, that was near by Roswell, to see if they had any missing or downed air craft. The Air Force went to the scene of the crash, and secured the area. They removed the debris, and took it to a hangar at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio. ( There was a movie, about this incident called Hanger 18 )

The local coroner and his nurse were called in to do an autopsy, on the body taken from the crash. The nurse later described some parts of the body. She said that the hands didn't have thumbs, there were only four fingers on each hand. The most unusual thing about the hands, was that the fingers had suction cups on the tips of the fingers.

As the people around Roswell started to talk about, what happened. The Air Force Police, went back to the farmer, and told him to keep his mouth shut. The farmer told the Police, that he was not in the Military, and they didn't have any right, to tell him what he could say. The Air Force Policeman, looked him in the eye, and said. "If you don't keep quite about what happened, you might turn up missing. We have the power, to shut you up."

Since that time until now, the Air Force has shut up, all of the wreckage and paper work, related to this incident. Many attempts have been made to have the information released, by UFO hunters and even one congressman. But the National Archives just gives them all the run around.

I can not imagine what it could be. It may very well be a true UFO. It could be some Air Force secret weapon. Although I can't imagine, any 1947 technology that would have to be kept secret this long. There is of course, much more to this story. I will leave it up to the reader to dig into to it, if they so desire. This and no doubt, many more stories like this one, are around for the reader to really get involved in. The hunt for beings from another world, is an on going thing. This particular incidence, is still to this day being looked into. Some of the witnesses are still living. They have some interesting stories to tell. But always keep a grain of salt, handy. There are so many reasons, to start a story like this. Money, prestige, and money. Until this story, of mid summer 1947, in Roswell New Mexico is finally put rest, don't be surprised if some night, a 4 foot, big headed, almond shaped eyed, Alien, says, "smile you are on the candid camera of the universe."

Now the granddaddy of all. The Bermuda Triangle. "If you fall in you'll get wet." This area stretches from New Jersey down the entire east coast, and out into the Atlantic Ocean for some distance. In all about five hundred thousand square miles. More strange phenomena and disappearances have happened in this area than any where on earth.

When we started to arrive here from Europe, many ships have gone down in the area. Most were thought to have been lost in storms in the beginning. I am sure that the hurricane season has claimed its share of missing ships. This tends to add to the confusion about the Bermuda Triangle. Most of the wrecks due to storms will leave signs that point to storms. There will usually be wreckage or bodies floating on the sea or wash up on shore after the storm passes. But we are talking about the strange things that seem to happen on calm days and nights. Of course night time adds a mysterious aura to things that are already strange or unusual. We have always had a fear of darkness.

I will deal with more modern occurrences attributed to the Bermuda Triangle. We start in the mid 1940's. A flight of Army Air Corp planes are on a routine training flight out of Florida. It takes a course east flying towards Bermuda. After some time passes the command pilot radios back to Florida and says that he has flown the squad into a strange cloud bank. He also said that his "compass has gone wild." He can't navigate without it. They are in a yellowish cloud and can't determine where the sun is located so they can't even make a good guess as to which direction they should fly. They are totally lost. There is no way to tell if they are even flying a straight course with the compass spinning out of control. Frantic radio transmissions go on between the squadron and the base in Florida. Finally the last message from the squadron. They were totally lost and confused about where they could be. After all contact with the squadron was lost and their fuel status figured and found to be depleted they were presumed down in the sea and lost. The next day a full sea and air search was started to find the lost flight. This search covered several thousand square miles. To add to the mystery a PBY air craft (sea plane) was lost in that search without a trace. No wreckage or sign of the flight was ever found. Surely you would think that pilots trained in flights over open water would have bailed out when they ran out of fuel, or would have made a landing at sea. That should have left some sign of where they ditched their planes. There should have been some life jackets or rubber rafts in the area where they went down. They were well trained in sea survival, World War II had just ended and we had vast experience with survival at sea, from our recent encounter in the Pacific. Nothing has ever been found to help explain the disappearance of the planes or their crews.

Remember the strange cloud it will come into play later.

There are stories about UFO' that land and takeoff from the area. There are many missing ships and private boats. They have disappeared without a trace. Just like the airplanes that are missing.

A few have survived the Bermuda Triangle. They all have stories to tell. A gist of what most say, who have come back from the brink is as follows. The weather is usually very calm, little or no wind. The sea is flat calm. The clouds are either non existence or white and fluffy. At night the same applies except that the moon and stars are out and bright. One such description was of a pleasure boat off shore at night near Miami in an area of the Bermuda Triangle.

They said all was well, as they cruised along. There was a fog bank up ahead, but that didn't bother them. They had radar and other navigation aids. So there wasn't any concern at that point. The boat slipped into the fog then suddenly the engine on the boat went dead and all other electrical equipment went dead also. The compass went crazy. The boat was dead in the water. After a little while they saw something approaching from the stern of the boat. It was just under the water. It looked like a submarine of some sort maybe even a torpedo. It closed in on the boat and when it was abeam of the boat it turned right ninety degrees and sped out of sight leaving a phosphorus trail of light behind it. A little while after that the fog lifted and the boat started to work just fine. They restarted the engines and headed home, what a story they had to tell.

I suppose it would be nice to leave the Bermuda Triangle to its mysteries. There are so many good mysteries from there, it is almost a shame to finally know the cause of most of the mysterious happenings in the area.

It seems that there was a geologist working for an oil company. Looking for oil deposits in the area. In doing so he located what he called Methane Hydrates. Methane Hydrates are made up of Methane Gas frozen into crystals. Even in warm water, when the right pressure and temperature is present this can occur. Methane Hydrates are not something new they have been known about for years. The methane gas is formed from decayed material on the ocean floor. It is the same as swamp gas. What happens is this, there are under water mud slides on the east coast from time to time. They go from west to east. The mud slides can be as much as one hundred forty miles wide and two hundred miles long. When mud slides move the Methane Hydrates what happens is it frees the methane gas and the bubbles rise to the top. The whole area boils with the gas bubbles. Ships and boats can not float in the bubble mix. They drop straight down and are covered over by the mud slide. They don't have time to send a distress call or anything. People can't swim in the bubbles either, even with life jackets on. They drop just like the ships and are lost in the mud. The rising bubbles also do something else. They create negative ions. The same kind that are formed when you run water to take a shower, some people have negative ion generators to make their homes feel fresh, like it feels after a summer thunder storm. The negative ions also do something else. When they are generated in sufficient quantities they will cause all kinds of interference with electrical systems. Engines stop running, radios go on the blink and so forth. Remember I said not to forget the fog. This fog is a mixture of methane gas heavy in negative ions. It can rise up many thousands of feet and this is why it can effect airplanes, by causing all kinds of electrical malfunctions. The magnetic fields are so strong they make a compass spin out of control, and leave them useless to the pilot.

Many people firmly believe that other populated worlds, exist in the Cosmos. There are billions of galaxies, each having billions of stars, each having multiple planets. Mathematically, if you take the number of stars, in the Cosmos, (They number in the trillions) add just a few Planets for each star. You would then have a number, in the neighborhood of, lets say one hundred billion just for the sake of argument. Now if only one out of a million planets, was at the same distance to its sun, and developed in the same way our earth did. You would end up with a figure of approximately one million planets able to support life. The number of possible worlds, is much larger than this number, but it will give you an idea of just how large of a scale, we are talking about. The Cosmos is so huge that I don't think that the best minds from the beginning of human population to present day can conceive its size.

This first chapter is only intended to give a brief back ground, for what lies ahead. To start out on a journey unprepared and ill informed would surely invite disaster. But we have been prepared by the knowledge we have gained from all of the Keepers of the Knowledge past and present.

Now we voyage on!

Let us now suppose that another world does exist. Time and distance, are two of the factors that we and other worlds are governed by. I believe that the laws of physics are the same through out the Universe. We have all heard of super space travel. Warping by Star Ship Enterprise of Star Trek fame. Einstein's general theory of relativity kind of puts a limit on warping. He believed that we could approach the speed of light but not pass it. In order to warp we need to exceed the speed of light. Warping would create some effects that would be difficult to deal with. Traveling forward in time is impossible since it hasn't happened. If we could warp then we could go back in time. By traveling faster than the speed of light we could past light waves. If we then looked back in the direction that we just came from, we could see the light waves catching up with us. We could see our blast off from earth, however we would not be part of the picture. It would be like watching a motion picture, we could see each frame as it approached us. We could not change the picture or alter any action in it. In order to go back in time we have to fly away from time. What would happen if we flew forward in time? Lets say that we have flown back in time two light years. In order to fly into the future we fly a reverse course at twice the speed of light. Under that example we would arrive before we left. Not so, once we caught up with the present the future would progress normally. Actually we never left the present, we only watched light wave pictures of the past. I am sure that there are many who would disagree with me on this. I wish them success in their ventures, but physics is physics, is physics and that is that.

Therefore if they are able to use space travel, then they certainly would have developed radio waves. That being the case, and assuming that they are on the same development time frame as we are. Now, radio waves travel at 186,000 miles per second, if you multiply that times 60 sec, times 60 minutes, times 24 hours, times 365.25 days. You will get an answer of 5.9 trillion miles. That is the distance light or radio waves will travel in one year. Better known a light year. Radio was developed in the early 1900's. The early radios weren't very powerful, it wasn't until around the 1940's that radios had powerful signals. So our radio and television signals have been streaming out for about 60 years. If we received an answer by the year 2000. Then the closest that they could be to us is 30 light years, or 177 trillion miles away.

Lets try and put the size of the Cosmos into perspective. Our closest neighbor is Alpha Centauri, it is a star and is 4 light years away or 23.6 trillion miles away from us. The distance across the Milky Way galaxy (which is our home galaxy) is one hundred thousand light years or five million nine hundred thousand trillion miles. In order to go to another galaxy you would travel over a billion light years.

We at present can travel at about 50,000 mph, that converts into about 13.9 miles per second. That is about 1/13381th of light speed. This is more than 13 thousand times slower than light speed. What's more we have to bounce off of the outer planets gravity fields to go that fast.

But lets say that Aliens could inhabit Alpha Centauri, or rather one of its planets. They start out on the journey to earth. and they are at about the same development stage that we are. If they are traveling at fifty thousand miles per hour, they will cover about four hundred thirty eight million six hundred fifty thousand six hundred forty miles in one year. I hope that they have AAA cause the trip will take, Fifty three thousand eight hundred an one years. That is only one way. (I wonder if they give frequent flyer miles).

If you wanted to go across to the other side of the Milky Way it would take One billion three hundred forty five million and twenty five thousand years one way. A trip to another galaxy would be a futile effort at the present. Picture the Universe this way. You have a balloon that is half full of air, stick small patches of paper on the outside of the balloon to represent the galaxies. As you continue to blow up the balloon you will notice that the galaxies are getting further and further apart. Not too impressive on a balloon Hugh. This is a model of how the universe is expanding. the rate of this expansion is 373 miles per second. As we can only make 13.9 miles per second, We have a good deal of work on propulsion systems before we could even attempt an intergalactic trip.

So I think we need to look a little closer to home for the likely hood of other civilizations. Lets say that the other civilization has a hopped up Mustang for the outbound journey, and they are coming from half way across our galaxy. The trip would be lets say 20,000 years long.

Some of the things that they would have to over come are, food for the crew. That would mean that they would have to carry:

14,610,000 Eggs 1,040,000 lb. Bacon 70,000 lb. Coffee 1826250 loaves of bread 456562 gallons of OJ and that's just breakfast for one crew member.

Fuel : I will assume that they have developed nuclear power (fusion) for the power plant and engine and would need no more fuel. Water: 36,525,000 gallons per crew member.

Clothes: 40,000 pairs of jump suits per crew member

20,000 pairs of shoes per crew member

As you can see this would be quite an undertaking. I have only covered the high spots of supply. In addition it would be 250 to 300 generations before they reached us. And you thought Adam had a lot of begats.

So trips only half way across our galaxy seem to be out of reach. A trip like this would be an exploration by some civilization and I think that they would come across other worlds long before they got to us.

However I do believe that such a trip is possible. I will cover it in a later chapter.

If aliens came from within our solar system, based on one of the other planets we would be able to track them on the inbound journey with radar and radio waves. So I don't think that they inhabit any of the known planets of our solar system or any of the moons. We surely would have seen some kind of activity by now. We have sent probes to the most likely planets to have life on them. The results have been negative so far. I think that we need to send exploration parties to Mars to do a thorough search for life or signs that there had been life at one time on the planet. A journey of that kind is well within reason. It would give us a chance to see if we can make another world inhabitable. A space station or a moon base should be the first step. From a moon base we could launch space ships that are larger than the ones we now launch from earth. The lower gravity would save much fuel, in addition larger ships would allow enough space to create a biosphere. We are just beginning to understand what the consumable items are. On earth we have had all of the things needed for life furnished to us by Mother Nature. Only in recent years have we started to look at what is used up, and never to return. Oxygen, water, and food are the essential elements needed for life anywhere. There is work being done in this area and I think that they will find that we may not have the time to wait for our sun to do its thing. . In the next 4 or 5 billion years if we haven't found a way to go to the other star systems in our Milky Way Galaxy we will be lost as a civilization. Our sun will glow red hot in that time span and anybody on Earth or Mars will be toast. So lets go to Chapter 3 and see if we can leave this doomed planet.

We live in a world where the extraordinary seems like yesterdays newspaper. We invent new things everyday on a whim. When we have a problem we assume that there will be someone who will fix it with a new machine, medicine or tool. On television we see the deepest parts of our oceans, remote locations deep in the Amazon Jungle, even moon landings. We have seen it all, there isn't anything left to do. We can reach any destination on earth in about 5 hours. A trip to the moon and back in about 6 days. Just think we did all of this in only 12,000 years of civilization. Not bad when you consider that the peoples of earth have been at war with one another for all of those 12,000 years.

I sometimes wonder if we may have been this far before. In the 4 billion years that the earth has been around there would have been enough time for us to rise to the level that we are now. Just to be wiped out and start all over again. Or they could have up and left on the journey that I am about to propose.

THE NEW FRONTIER: A journey to the stars.

We will become the aliens. Other worlds will see us as we have seen them. Wonder, fear, and anxiety is what they will feel towards us.

First we have to get there. What will it take to go to the stars? I think the thing to do is to set a first stop on our journey. Since Alpha Centauri is the closest star we should aim for it as our first stop.

The next question that comes to mind is how long will it take to get there. Lets see 4 light years is 24 trillion miles at 50,000 mph. That will take about 480,000,000 hours. That's about 54,756 years. Kind of hard to pack enough sandwiches for a trip like that. But one day you may look up into the night sky and see an interstellar ship. It would be 8 miles long, 2 miles in diameter. It will be totally self contained. A biosphere that can renew its self, where recycling will be the highest order of the day. It will be (as far as we know) the first such entity made in the Universe, its calendar will be based on the beginning of the Universe and start with the Star date 15 billion and some odd years. Sitting in high earth orbit, would be spaceship Earth II. Its hull is made of high impact ceramic and would shin in the night sky like a small moon. At the front of the ship would be a hemisphere 2 miles across and 1 mile deep. The main hull would be 6 miles long and 2 miles across and the engines would be 1 mile long and 2 miles across. Its weight would be about 2.8 billion pounds and have a population of ten thousand people.

The engine compartment will house 5 nuclear engines. The main engine will be fixed and used for forward thrust. 4 smaller engines will be able to be moved from horizontal to 90 degrees perpendicular and can be used for steering and to be used to get Earth II up to cruising speed. In the engine area there will be power stations to supply the ship with unlimited electrical power. The rough industrial shops to make all of the heavy items that wear out. In space metals can be made better and stronger than in an environment that has gravity present. The repair of tools and vehicles necessary to the ship will be built and repaired here.

Earth II will have a fleet of smaller short range ships designed to explore other worlds along the way and to ward off any bad guys that they may meet along the way.

The main hull is divided into 6 sections, 1 mile wide and 2 miles across. Each section would be like a donut with square corners. The section nearest the stern will be a salt water ocean 1 mile wide and 1/4 mile deep, complete with sand, seaweed, and fish.

Section 5 will be the same size and will be layered with rocks, minerals and earth. A forest of the trees and shrubs of the kinds that will be needed to make paper, medicines, and other things that will be needed for the trip. Animals and other creatures native to forest will be found here.

Section 4 is the same size and will house a farm. Again it will be layered with rocks, minerals and earth. This would give the ship 4.71 sq. miles or put another way 3014 acres of farmland to grow the staple foods. Chickens, pigs, rabbits and other suited animals will be raised here. The crop yield from this farm land will determine the size of the crew. With the food from the sea, freshwater, and livestock, I figure on a crew of about 10,000.

Section 3 would be a fresh water sea of the same size as the saltwater ocean. It would have all kinds of fresh water fish and other fresh water animals.

Section 2 will be meadow lands. It too will have live stock, grazing on the lust grass lands. Cattle, horses and sheep can supply many useful foods and raw materials necessary to the ship. This area could have parks and recreational areas, maybe even a golf course.

Section 1 Most of the crew will be housed here. In this section there will be shops to make and supply dry goods. From clothes to toothpaste.

The main hull will rotate just fast enough to produce a gravitational force of 1G. Thus all of the water, plants and animals will stay in place just like they were indeed still on earth.

The front of the ship is a hemisphere and will be used as the command deck. It will house the navigation and ships controls. It will be a zero G environment. A place where you can go and know that your are really in space. Much of the space in this area will be used for storage of food, that has been processed from the harvest in section 3.

On the outside of the ship from section 1 to section 6 there is a sleeve, one and a half miles wide that can slide up and down the hull. It will be used in an emergency if the hull has a breach in it. Sections 1 to 6 can be sealed until the hole can be repaired. Loss of the vital elements will have to be protected at all cost.

Now you maybe thinking that sounds like a good idea but how in the world can we possibly accomplish such as enormous undertaking. I say that you tackle the problem just as an ant would when it is about to eat an elephant. One bite at a time. An undertaking of this kind will have to involve the entire planet. One good example of such an undertaking is the Great Wall of China. The Chinese think in terms of multiple life times and as such have set the example that we need to follow. It starts with the forming an institution called Earth II in every country on earth. This will be made up of as many fields of science that a country can afford. From each of these Earth II countries one member will be sent to the Earth II world center. The first meeting will be to nominate a moderator. Someone other than the members of the Earth II organization. Someone like Lee Iacocca of Chysler. Someone who always says I Can Do that.

First to be built is the engine platform and all of the industrial shops that go on it. Next a tube starting from the center of the engine platform and extending forward 6 miles with a diameter of 660 ft. The inner part of this tube will be used for transport to different parts of the ship. In it will be shuttles, waterlines, electrical, and sewage. The outer part of the tube will have electromagnets, the counter parts to the electromagnets that will be on the donut shaped sections of the hull. These will be used to power the rotation of the main hull so that no bearings will be needed between the hull and the hull. Sections 6 through 1 are then installed over the tube. Then the control section is built. At this point the rotation of the hull is started and the interior construction is begun. Water lines, electrical, elevators, and sewage are installed. Next the freighters start arriving with their loads of bed rock for each of the sections. The hull will be rotating just fast enough to hold the rock in place on the bottom of each section. This should make the unloading and leveling of the bedrock much easier. Then the sand and earth is brought on board along with the different kinds of water for each section. We have made good progress so far and to think only 75 years have passed. Just think of it not one of the people who started the project is still alive.

The first of the crew start arriving. Mostly they are biologist, to test and condition the environment in each section. All of the bulky things have been brought up so the hull has been revived up to speed gravity is now at 1G. The air pressure is at good old earth's 14.1 pounds per square inch. The crew so far about 500 of them set out to check all of the sections and make sure that they are up to standard. Great ceremonies are held at the first planting of a tree in the soon to be forest. The first fishes put in the ocean was a biggie, just about everybody on the ship was there.

Another 25 years have passed, the rest of the crew has been on board for about 10 years. The ship has been on its own for 15 years now. The biological and mechanical systems are within safe limits. At last the big day is here. Last night 2 space tugs hooked on to Earth II. They are the last time we on Earth II will see liquid fuel rockets. At 0:00:00 universal time on January 1. 2100 the tugs and Earth II will fire up the engines and pull Earth II out of earth orbit and accelerate it up to 34,000 mph. The course will be 10 degrees left of earth's orbit around the sun.

Finally it is here. The captain looked around the command deck, as if to say everybody ready, but he never said a word. His crew was made up of the best people the world had to offer. Everyone well trained and ready to go. An adventure too unreal to believe was about to start. He looked out of the command deck windows on the left and right he could see the 2 tugs with their tow lines connected to each side of the ship. The tugs would fire their rockets in 10 seconds. the time counted down and then it happened the rear of the tugs grew bright the lines pulled straight as the power increased, Earth II moved forward. Nobody knew what to expect. they had imagined that there would be a big jerk or something. but you could hardly tell that Earth II had moved. Earth II had been at 17,000 mph in earth orbit and was starting to climb up 20,000 now then 25,000 and at 30,000 the tugs shut down their engines and gave a cheer as Earth II began to pass them. It would be 10 more minutes before Earth II fired its 4 auxiliary engines to take it up to 34.000 mph, enough time for the tugs to get out of the way of the nuclear blast of the 4 engines.

On this course they would intercept Neptune in 12 years. Then sling shot off of its gravitational field, engage the main engine at the same time. This would bring Earth II up to top cruising speed of 50,000 mph.

The months have passed and Earth II is 119,940,000 miles from earth. A knock on the captains door woke him from a deep sleep. He opened the door to find his aide standing there looking awfully white and pale. You are wanted on the bridge at once he said. The captain got dressed as quick as he could. The aide had left the elevator in the off position, they entered the elevator and the aide flipped the switch. He entered the bridge, the first officer said come quick and motioned him over to the port window. The first officer pointed, the captain looked where he was pointing. He looked for a moment and then said "Well, I'll be damned." They have been there along. His mind wandered back 10 years ago to a book that he had read, "UFO's CAN THEY REALLY EXIST". He had been right, there it was as plain as day, earth had a twin planet. It was in the same orbit path but 180 degrees from earth. It looked so much like earth, all blue with clouds strung about. The astronomy department turned the telescope on it. You could tell that there was life on it even with the glare of the sun. They must have come around the sun and then kept it at their backs on the trips to earth. With the sun at their backs we would never have seen them coming. We couldn't hear their radio transmissions, the sun noise blocks out all of that.

The first officer looked at the captain with a quizzical look. The captain said WHAT!!! Then the first officer said. "Well, do we tell earth?"