In order to be understood by the people and the government of Mexico why the nation needs the establishment of a national space agency, it is needed to be understood that science-driven programs lead to a real economic recovery. Much of this understanding will become publicly accepted through the historical and scientific-technological facts which were involved in the success of the Apollo Program— how true science-driven programs thrust national economies for the benefit of all.

President John F. Kennedy set the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on a visionary and precise mission: to land a man on the Moon. He plainly told the U. S. Congress that it would surely be expensive, and warned them that if the congressmen were not willing to fund it, it should not even be started at all. Kennedy implemented an investment tax credit, and other fiscal measures, to address private sector resources toward the most high-technology on research & development (R&D) and manufacturing investments, that would support the space exploration. It is how JFK’s space program at large (not only the cited Apollo Program) contributed substantially to more than a decade of technological innovation, leading to successful growth in the economy of the United States. It is such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R.-Texas) has accurately expressed during a hearing on December 7, 2001 regarding NASA’s underfunded budget that “… NASA is one of the economic engines of America”.

There are various reasons for Mexico to have a national space agency.  This paper is a draft and a review about the major reasons for Mexico to establish such governmental department, as well as the economic and other benefits it should bring into the Mexican society.

We are asking for a modest start for a governmental national space agency. By no means, we are intending to suggest to start building big facilities NASA-style or European Space Agency (ESA)-style. If anybody thinks that is our promotional effort, it is a huge mistake.

About a Visit to the Mexican Congress in 1997

 During the National Space Society’s (NSS) 1993 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) held in Huntsville, Alabama, Dr. Buzz Aldrin and I got into a conversation regarding the real need for Mexico to establish a national space agency. One of the major reasons regarding his interest for Mexico to have a national spacer agency was the need for a coherently ordered Mexican space program at once, to get rid of the lack of direction and coordination inside the aerospace-related governmental institutions, and how much Dr. Aldrin wanted for Mexico and Canada to be working along with the United States in exploration and colonization of space. I was totally in agreement with him, I had already pointed out these same issues; the lack of direction and coordination for dealing with space projects, Mexico has also opportunities to work with France, Spain, and other nations. Dr. Aldrin enormously encouraged me to work on this task, in which I was already involved with. In August 1996, Declan J. O’Donnell, Esq., Founder/President of  the United Societies in Space, Inc. (USIS) and the World-Space Bar Association (W-SBA) encouraged me a lot to reach for the same exact goals.

On April 22–24, 1997, I was in a hearing before the Comite de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Camara de Diputados del Congreso de Mexico (the Mexican House of Representatives’s Committee on Science and Technology) in Mexico City¹. The purpose of the hearing: 1)  The establishment of a national space agency;  2) in a term of eight to ten years after that hearing, to establish a launch space range or spaceport, and;  3) to obtain permission granted for a sea colony to be built in Mexican territorial waters (the last one was not taken into account at all). I was invited to make this presentation by then-Rep. Luis Ruan Ruiz (PAN-B.C.S.). Some of the Members of the Committee on Science and Technology attending this hearing and talking to me they were then-Rep. Manuel Fuentes Alcocer (PAN-Yucatan), President of the Committee and other more representatives, including LuisRuan, a non-Member of this Committee.

The highlights of my presentation were as follows: 1. We do not intend to start a NASA-like space agency or its equivalency.  2. It must be started from a tiny office, working efficiently, and as its primary goals: a) to join national aerospace-related projects into the solely management of this proposed agency;  b) said agency should  coordinate foreign domestic space programs with those foreign ones;  c) said agency should be a link between Mexican and foreign industries;  d) to declare any major aerospace project into a national goal; and so on.  They all said to me, some day it will be done.

My presentation was continued with these three of the most important motivations leading into the establishment of a Mexican national space agency:  1)  To promote all kind of sciences and technologies;  2) this means to create more substantial skilled jobs for the Mexican people;  3) which will consecuently arise a national internal economic development.

NASA Administrator James E. Webb once said that the policy on which NASA budget is based is the mastery of space, and its utilization for the benefit of mankind, among other matters. And these same aspects were applied to the establishment of the European Space Agency. In 1983, Yuval Ne’eman, founder of the Israel Space Agency, said that perhaps some of the motivation to establish an Israeli space agency may have been defense, but there was also a scientific motivation. My advisement to the government was a quotation from U. S. rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard who correctly pointed out that:  “Real progress is not a leap in the dark, but a succession of logical steps”.

Goddard’s statement is far much more important since he is called “the Father of Modern Rocketry”. Regarding “a succession of logical steps”, it is worthy to be mentioned here that there is a more or less generalized  wrong value judgement about the Apollo Program, and that is that was one-of-a-kind space project.  It actually was a long-range program. On various occasions, President Kennedy asserted the Apollo lunar mission was only a part of a bigger space program. By the way, the day JFK was shot, he was going to give a speech using that kind of approach².  Therefore, the first Moon landings were actually continuing human manned flight program. In 1966-1967, those irrational cuts to the program budget made the Apollo appear to end. It became the long-lasting frustration for NASA.

Other Very Important Proposals for Establishing a National Space Agency in Mexico

 Engineer Patricio Gonzalez-Quintanilla V., has done a remarkable work pressing for the establishment of a national space agency in Mexico. When this national institution in Mexico be formed, he must become one of the top administration staff. His submissions are very interesting— they are of the most technical and social-related submissions I have ever read for establishing such kind of national agency. His proposals and enquiries are so very much alike mine. I encourage the reader to make a review of Gonzalez-Quintanilla’s proposals.

In September 2001, he submitted a paper to the President of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada, titled “Presidential Initiative Project for the Establishment of the Mexican Aerospace Program”. At this presentation, he correctly pointed out: “At present time, Mexico does not have an actual office to be in charge of space affairs; moreover, it does exist a total lack of coordination among the concerned secretariats and offices involved in carrying out these activities”³.

In February 2003, he went again proposing another very specific paper titled “Proposal for Reactivating the Aerospace Sector of Public Interest”³, this time submitted to the Secretary of Communications and Transportation Pedro Cerisola y Weber.

On the Relevant Importance of Establishing a National Space Institution for Mexico

A Mexican space agency should be a generator of scientific-driven minds for Mexico itself. That space agency would promote the use of the already existent national laboratories, those working with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), like the National Nuclear Research Institute (ININ), and observatories such as the one in Tonanzintla (Puebla); in Mexico City; Morelia; the Institute of Astronomy-UNAM in Ensenada, and the National Astronomic Observatory in San Pedro Martir (both in Baja California Norte); as well new observatories are going to be installed. Such kind of national space agency would even provide for the creation of new laboratories, whose laboratories, in collaboration with universities and other research institutions, should lead inquiries into the most relevant issues of science, as those as the life sciences, astronomy, macrophysics and microphysics.

The use of Mexican-self satellites in remote sensing and sensing would provide a scientific evaluation of, and increased in, the quantification of resources about oil, water, etc., as well as early identification of disease, and data on the optimal timing of planting and harvesting. Efficient discrimination of water reservoirs is needed.  Reservoirs can become polluted with bacteria and algae, they deteriorate both biologically and chemically, and in order to protect crops, we must be able to discriminate clean water from  polluted reservoirs.

Thus, such satellites could locate new reserves of raw materials and inventory the natural resources of the nation. More accurate fishing and mining areas could be detected for a better use. Small Earth observation systems with portable ground stations could provide local regions with direct downlink data, without having to wait for the information to be sent from a foreign satellite  or to be processed by central facilities. This direct access to national-owned data could be important in monitoring tropical storms, volcanic activity, earthquakes, forest fires, and other potential disasters.

Therefore, in this way, there is no money from the federal budget being “spent in space”.  It is all spent here on Earth.  We do know that the techniques developed to explore space, such as new energy sources (which are cleaner and cheaper), industrial processing medical technology, and so on have the potential to revolutionize world standards of living.

Mexican scientific-technological space-related facilities would increase the economic capability of the nation to be near the top most advances countries in the world, and promptly to begin to be a space faring nation.

1. The Launch Ranges:

¨ The Eastern Launch Range in the State of Quintana Roo, for equatorial orbit launches

¨ The Western Launch Range in the State of Jalisco, for polar orbit launches.

 Already existent rockets or those upcoming ones like engineer Ignacio Quesada S.’s rocket to orbit mini-satellites, or  Pablo de Leon’s Gauchito (Little Cowboy) of Argentina, or any other space vehicle competing for the X-Prize now. When  Cape Canaveral was designed and growing up during its early years by the late 1950s, some factors were taken into account then. Three factors determined the choice of sites for the launch complexes: a) explosive hazards, b) the dangers of overflight, and c) lines of sight.  It was done this way for new programs which were assumed to have a rate of failure on the pad or shortly after launch⁴.  Today, even when we are going to use already proven technology, we are going to take secure steps to assure safety for the audience and for the people in general.

Þ  A Mexican Spaceport Authority:

·  Operations

After a time of operating launches to orbit mini-satellites and satellites, these facilities should be converted into something bigger, as those called now “spaceports”, to operate almost as any international airport operates today.  Basically, a spaceport can be operated by 40 persons, in an extension lesser than an international airport.  It is due to rockets able to be launched and landing inside an area of 10m². An example: the now cancelled programs, Delta Clipper and Roton, and current ongoing program Kistler Aerospace Corporation’s K-1, can do this kind of manoeuvre— flights from Mexico to Japan would be done in about 3 hours.

·  Management

It should be created:

a) An “Office of the Spaceport” in the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) able to attract funds for domestic and foreign transport for commerce through space.

b) An Office for Assistance of Space Commercial Launches in the State’s Secretariat of Commerce promoting launch site in Quintana Roo and Jalisco, a site for space commercial launches related to businesses, research and assessment through permissions and activities to companies. The Mexican Spaceport should be managed as an airport is managed in many ways. Space will be then opened for trade companies and, to the Government as well, such as in its early years, in the 1930s, commercial aviation opened its doors to the private enterprise.

Also, such launch ranges would be extended in order to receive and operate future hypersonic transport aircrafts, such as the Exo-Clipper⁵ and others.

2) The Analogue Habitats:

¨ The Lunar Mexico Habitat Analogue⁶ project is intended to be supporting the establishment of a Moon Base in the site for the first permanent lunar base, approximately 85^o S latitude, the “Newton Base”, in the Malapert Mountain in the South Pole region of the Moon as emphatically proposed by the authors of The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Colonization⁷. The Mex-LunarHab (MLH) is also dealing with other aspects of incremental lunar programs, with geopolitical and economic considerations, such as Krafft Ehricke’s Extraterrestrial Imperative⁸.

The MLH simulator would be placed on the Cerro del Pajarito (Little Bird’s Mountain) close Cd. Juarez, State of Chihuahua. The MLH modules habitat will be set up on a plain ground resembling the lunar surface, which will permit to make all kind of tests with rovers (pressurized scouting vehicles) or human simulation expeditions.  The site will also include a sandbox for tourist attraction, for people to use remote-control robots.

Economist Ivan Polanco B. and I are working for the Cerro del Pajarito, located near the city of Nuevo Casas Grandes (30^o 27’ 40” latitude, 107^o 55’ 15” longitude), as an appropiated place for installing and developing the Lunar Mexico Habitat Analogue project. Near Cerro del Pajarito is the archeological site of Paquime (which was designed by UNESCO as an entire humankind’s patrimony).  The region’s minerals ore are copper, plumb, carbon, and others.  There is one of five or six existent mines, working and managed by the Bismarck company.

We already work in international cooperation  with scientists and engineers mainly from the United States, and from Argentina, Chile, Spain, Germany, India, and Japan, and we expect to get participation from China, among other nations.

As recently expressed by Elaine A. Walker, the Mars Project Director of the Space Frontier Foundation, and leader of some recognized space-related organizations, stating that:  “…I am very proud and honored to be part of the MLH team.  MLH is a very important opportunity for Mexico to get involved in serious humans-in-space research, and one that will help to fill in the many gaps in our knowledge regarding how humans can eventually live and work in space. Scientists involved in other analog projects such as the one in Devon Island, all agree on the serious need for other habitats in different areas around the world. An incredible amount of data is still needed regarding habitat design, spacesuits, crew working procedures, robotics and communications, and as one of the very few analog habitats in the world, MLH will be a focal point for important scientific research in these areas.”

Also, Dr. David G. Schrunk, co-author of the well recognized book The Moon: Resources, Future Development, and Colonization and Apollo Program veteran, has expressed that:  “… I believe that the Moon will some day be an inhabited sister planet of the Earth. One of the first steps in the ‘Planet Moon Project’ will be to test lunar conditions and technologies here on Earth. The fully commissioned international Mex-LunarHab simulator will allow us to take the first step, and it will therefore make significant contributions towards the establishment of a permanent base on the Moon.  Please let me know how can I contribute to the success of the Mex-LunarHab project”.

Pablo De Leon of Argentina, President of De Leon Technologies LLC, an aerospace company designing and building space hardware and life support systems which is based in Cape Canaveral and competing to win the X-Prize contest, has stated that:  “I will be cooperating with the Mexican Moon Habitat Analogue Project named Mex-LunarHab (MLH) in the development of training space suits for planetary exploration. I believe that this project is an important part of the next steps for the evolution and development of planetary settlement.”

Dr. Eligar Sadeh, Assistant Professor, Department of Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, also expressed that “… Earth analog projects that advance lunar exploration are important. The Mex-LunarHab (MLH) project represents one such analog effort… I plan on serving as a policy advisor to MLH. In this capacity, I will advise on the political, economic, scientific and technological issues related to the establishment of a lunar habitat anolog.”

 ¨ The Mars Mexico Analogue Station is planned to be installed on the Pico de Orizaba Mountain at 5,747 meters over sea level, higher than the peak’s polar zone, in the State of Veracruz. The Pico de Orizaba owns a total of glacial area of 9.5 km², being the largest in Mexico, and one of the most important areas in the tropical zone  of the Northern Hemisphere. We already have international cooperation with Spain, the United States, and other countries.

The intention for the MAH project is very similar as for the MLH project. Among some other scientific subjects to be studied in the MAH simulator are, we will be researching for putting life on another planet and looking to find some other life forms. Biologist Omar Pensado D. is already committed in developing a peculiar biological plan for terraforming Mars. For the MAH project to become a reality, some businessmen as engineer Angel Chahin and Ricardo Rodriguez from Orizaba, have been interested in supporting us as much as they can. As well does Veracruz Sate Representative (PRI-Veracruz) Guillermina Esquivel.

Benefits:

The immediate benefits for the people living in those areas where these habitats are intended to be installed, will intrinsically be related to a bigger improvement in their economical, educational, and natural environment situation. For instance, in closed environments on the Moon, we will need to create some ecosystems as closer to Earth’s. Some of the benefits are:  1) Reforesting eroded areas, as the one MLH is going to stay, through using scientific techniques for deserts to stop, for keeping them to grow up.  So far, the case for the Cerro del Pajarito, this hogback is very near an archeologic site, Paquime, designed by UNESCO as a patrimony of humankind.  2) Developing new technologies or improving those already existing.  3) An increased optimization in agricultural development to generate immediate benefits to the local agriculture; an adaptation programmed for cultivating through aeroponics potatoes, onions, carrots, and other vegetables, and the utilization of high-technology for open greenhouses will be investigated.  4) A better and larger improved education for the younger population.  And,  5) an increased tourist activity.

Through about 30 years, Mexico would not have a high unemployment rate, rotted out and abandoned true-industries, neither a young population that is addicting to drugs as time passes on, or a chronic financial crisis, were economic policy organized to invest resources in science, technology, infrastructure: most historically, clearly represented by the Kennedy’s Lunar Initiative.

As the U. S. moon landing program evidently exemplify to us, the space program has always depended upon private industry for the development of new technologies, manufacturing, and development of the hardware needed for the space tasks, and, of course, including those spin-offs being spread into our human society. But the infrastructure must be provided by the nation as a whole, for the benefit of all.

Anyway, we are not asking for the Mexican government to put all the infrastructure we need for our facilities, to pay or to give everything we need in order to accomplish our goals. All we ask from the government is to provide for us the proper permissions, governmental protection, exclusion of taxes for about 10 years for the private enterprises involved in our facilities.

And, we also have to necessarily take into account that we need a third, very important project:

3) A Space Science Education Project:

Space exploration and space R&D not only have created the possibility to accelerate our rate of development, but also it engages the interest of young people to study a career on science. China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, have made much use of satellite technologies very in particular to uplift the large rural populations of their nations.

Mexico must introduce a program of space technology for education. One of the modes of introducing space technology and space science in education is The Buzz Aldrin Libraries Project. Most of the children like and are interested in Space. Witness the popularity of movies and television series as Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate SG-1, Enterprise, Apollo 13, Mission to Mars, October Sky, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and others, the crowds for these movies and books are formed of large number of children around the world who think Space is “cool”. Still, the educational institutions are not tapping into that natural interest. There are few notableexceptions around the world. In the United States, some of those are the Space Camp at the U. S. Space & Rocket Center, next to the NASA Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Another one is next to the NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida; there is a Challenger Center, and few others. Also, few places alike those can be found in France, Russia, etc. Nevertheless, each year, thousands of students are inscribed in simulated astronaut training, and they come away with a huge enthusiasm for Space. Many have earned advanced degrees in space-related fields, and some have even become astronauts.

Undoubtedly, for children, Space is real, as real as they dream even to travel in space, to go to the Moon, to Mars— same as I did when I was a child. Many children are motivated to learn science, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, geology, and so on, if they can see a definite, real purpose for their education. Many young people come to the schools without still knowing what career they really want to study, some others are underprepared, unmotivated, lacking in self-confidence. For instance, the Rocket Boys book (October Sky, the movie) gives them a more precise idea for developing their skills to study a high technology-related career or a science-related one. The rocket boys’s teacher Miss Freida Riley gave then-future rocket scientist Homer Hickam the book Principles of Guided Missile Design, and she stated to him: “You have to have the courage to learn what’s inside it”⁹. Hickam’s story teaches boys and girls that their dreams are reachable if only they want constantly to make the required work for reaching those dreams, to make sacrifices, and if they do not give up their ideals.

Therefore, we need to have much more educational institutions. We also need to dramatically improve our educational systems, basing them upon a true-science standview approach^10,11. We need to develop The Buzz Aldrin Libraries¹² for technical, scientific learning and entertainment activities for our younger people.

The Old Same Obstacles We Are to Cope With

Even when the Top Ten Space Policy Problems were written in 1995, they still are with us very much alike then.  Just mentioning five of them as described by Founder/President of the United Societies in Space (USIS), the World-Space Bar Association (W-SBA), and other space-related organizations, Declan J. O’Donnell, let’s check on: “No. 10: Chronic Lack of Money. The 1995-1996 NASA budget reductions will dwarf the Agency’s size at the year 2001 to where it was in 1961. This is scandalous for America… No. 9: Chronic lack of focus.  We have a shared dream but we do not have a common plan. Nor do we have any way to achieve a common plan for space… No. 3. Debris. There is no space treaty regarding space debris so space law presumes that maritime law regarding salvage on the high seas will apply… No.2: Ownership of space Resources is a classic treaty problem is space policy… No. 1:  C.H.O.M. Not only is ownership denied by law in space, as to space resources, but the concept of Common Heritage of Mankind (also called C.H.O.M.), actually imposes an affirmative burden in possession of space resources… The Top Ten  Space Policy programs are many years old: They are simply rearranged in their order of importance…”¹³. These 10 subjects are revisited by Mr. O’Donnell at “Commercialization by Evolution in the Jurisdiction of Outer Space”¹⁴.

One of our human society’s major problems today is, there are several false arguments against exploration and colonization of space, and  many myths have been concocted for popular and governmental approbation, in order to make these arguments more convincing. Just let’s start taking into account that as soon as President Kennedy was gone above the counsel of all his advisers and started the race to the Moon in 1961, the target of attack become the supposedly negative “social impact” of such large-scale science and engineering effort. Since the 1963-1968 period, it was a deeper change in policymaking of the world’s leading powers. The U. S. citizenry has been told that excitement about space exploration had necessarily diminish because the lunar program was a “dead end”.  That the “social programs” could be accomplished only by taking money away from the space program. Does it not sound so familiar today?  Some others say the space program had to be replaced by “more realistic” down-to-Earth fears of environmental damage, “limits to growth”¹⁵, “overpopulation”, and so on, in complete direct opposition to the limitlessness of space exploration and development in space. Something is very wrong behind those proposals against human activity in space.

Our human society as large needs understand that pessimism cultural is going to put us down— statements as the follow one is an example of it: “… When we cast upon our own resources in this way we feel, we intuit, a kind of cosmic loneliness that we could not have foreseen. We become orphans. We no longer see ourselves as children of a cosmic order or the beneficiaries of the historical process. Limits to growth denies that“¹⁶. And, books like The Population Bomb¹⁷ take a fundamental pessimistic view of Mankind’s ability to solve its problems. In this way, as a cognitive species, there is no any brilliant future for us.

Rejection to the establishments in science and technology applications may say “it leads to overpopulation”, but it certainly is scientifically proven that under these said establishments population can grow without having a problem at all. The mirage of “overpopulation” precisely appears only because of that rejection. It is well proven throughout history, that human successive revolutions in scientific discovery and technological applications in the economy lead into an improved standard of living for people, and there is no need to reduce population density. Therefore, not one of these statements is precisely true, yet together they have been helping to shape our nations’s social and economic policies.

It was how reductionist ideologies suppressed the dreams of a generation of young people who had believed, along with Kennedy, that the blue sky is not the limit to what they can accomplish if they only were given a true and valid opportunity. The Apollo 11 mission to land the first men on the Moon was carried out such as JFK had outlined this project. But the other, such as developing nuclear propulsion to go further than the Moon, were sabotaged precisely due to those “limits to growth” ideologies. Most of the U. S. citizens, and most of the world population, do not realize that today the United States currently has no way to transport astronauts to the Moon as it was done by the Saturn V rockets, even if the U. S. government decided to do so today. Using the knowledge on rocketry we have now, a Saturn V-type rocket should be smaller today. Again, the impediment is not a scientific-technologic one, all that will be required is to summon the political will. The U. S. has to go back and build the infrastructure they did in the 1960s, in order for people to be able to live in space. Actually, the real physical dimension of humankind and its access to new resources are only as limited as the reach of the spaceships that would carry it throughout the Solar System and beyond.

For instance, referring to building a lunar base, Dr. Philip R. Harris has very accurately pointed out that the only way Earthkind can afford that undertaking is by means of international cooperation with major participation by private enterprise. If the today’s limited resources of the United States and other spacefaring nations were combined into a joint technological venture on the Moon, then such synergistic development there would encourage competing space constituencies to collaborate¹⁸. While James E. Beggs was a NASA Administrator, he described the aerospace agency as an “investment strategy” for the development of new technology¹⁹. Lori Garver, during her management of the National Space Society (NSS), she stated that “If the United States and humanity are to ever expand into the solar system, it will most likely be in partnership with other spacefaring nations. The experience in working together on the Space Station will create problems in everything from incompatible technical standards and logistic support to cultural misunderstandings and legal disputes… But in the process of overcoming these problems together, we will be creating the strong foundations for a truly spacefaring civilization”²⁰.

Present Human Inability to Succeed in the Exploration and Colonization of Space: A Wrong Hegemonic Economic-Policy

Essentially, the origin of our Western Culture was expansion. Western Europeans populated the American Continent in order to survive and develop themselves, it is a historical fact (many mistakes were done, of course; we are to avoid those next time, when we colonize space— this is another separated subject to deal with). But, what is very important to take into account here now is that, here on our own planet, nearly most of the Humankind’s existence, our species has been forced to adopt stagnant modes of social establishment (which work exactly against humankind), and the experience, throughout history, sadly shows and teaches us unhappiness. In our lifetime, many of us have been witnesses about how the economic policies known as Communism and Socialism are not at all the right answers for healing the social illness of our human society. Any ideology oriented to poverty can only lead to poverty, to lack of liberty, to imposition of irrational, anti-natural coercive dogmas, to authoritarian involutions.

Two race contests have been played from the early 1960s: 1. The race to the Moon and, 2. the race to undermine national economies. The race to the Moon was won by the United States. Russia won the second one, it arrived first. Then, the U. S. has been forced to run the second race too. During the last 28 years, at least,

Mexico is also running for the second one. Therefore, what is wrong in our present Western Countries’s culture? The growth of an anti-scientific consumer societies in our Western Civilization, and suppression of pro-scientific producer cultures after 1963 has been the root which mislead the whole world into the present world wide economic problem we have been got into it.

Philip R. Harris has stated that “Just before the first Apollo lunar landing, I was working at NASA headquarters as a consultant. When I asked the assembled administrators what plans the Agency had after landing ‘Man on the Moon’, I was dismayed to receive the reply: ‘We don’t know; we’re waiting for Congress to tell us what to do’. It was this lack of vision by Federal executives that may have contributed to a shutdown of Apollo missions, and a 27-year hiatus in human presence on the Moon” (The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Colonization, “Foreword”, p. xix).

In 1991, then-Rep. George Brown (D.-Ca) opened a hearing by reversing the question of the International Space Station (ISS) price: "Can we afford not to build the Space Station?”²¹ It was a very good question then!

Lori Garver, when she was a NASA’s Associate Administrator for Policy and Plans, talking before the U. S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee about the potential we have ahead of us regarding commerce, science, research, and technology in space, stated that: “However, while the promise of the space future may seem limitless, that promise will not be realized without affordable and reliable access to space. A primary goal of NASA’s investment in space is to ensure maximum safety and lower our future space transportation costs, through commercially -owned and- operated systems with very high reliability…”²².

Sen. Bill Nelson (D.-Fla), who flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in the flight just before the Challenger accident, requested a hearing which led to evaluate the impact of the $500 million shortfall in the U. S. Space Transportation System, better known as the Space Shuttle. Then, Nelson said that “decisions about NASA priorities are not coming from NASA, but from bean counters at the President’s budget office… We’ve got accountants making life and death decisions for our astronauts… We’re starving NASA’s Shuttle budget, and thus greatly increasing the chance of a catastrophic loss”. And, as the author of this article had publicly been commenting from 1986, “if another Shuttle accident occurs, I will not be surprised at all”. Among many other concerned people, so was Sen. Nelson when, during a session at the “Senate Panel studying shuttle safety”, declared: “I’m concerned if we don’t do the safety upgrades, we’re going to have another catastrophe… the manned space program cannot stand that”²³.  Therefore, this is what happened to Columbia!

On December 7, 2001, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson during her statements before the U. S. Congress about the budget cuts to NASA, she had plainly said: “… and I don’t think you can precisely budget innovative research”. And she also made clear that in this kind of endeavour, “you are going to have mistakes, and miscalculations. You’re going to learn from those… NASA is one of the economic engines of America”. After the tragedy of Columbia,  in February 5, 2003, in a speech, “Commemorating the Columbia astronauts”, Sen. Bailey said that “America is… an indomitable spirit of adventure and courage, one that defies complacency and accepts challenge… Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon also had that spirit, and so did Kalpana Chawla, who was born in India… It is that spirit which President Kennedy harnessed in 1961 when he made the bold claim: Within a decade, America would put a man on the Moon and return him safely home”²⁴.

The concept that the current U. S. Transportation System program must be more “cost effective”, that the accounts should decide what the United States can afford to spend on space exploration— that these expenditures “take money from other projects, or from other nation’s ‘needs’”, imposing limits on NASA funding, and that bringing in the private enterprise will make things cheaper, these all are false and dangerous  assumptions that precisely have brought the U. S. where it is today. Sad to say, this is the same situation remaining in the Mexican government. The general assumption is that science-driven projects, as those space projects we are dealing with, “are going to take money from other ‘needs’ the nations is lacking of”; and that is the reason leading to such statements like “we can not invest on this or that”, as well as “it is an ‘expensive’ cost”—  when quite truly is not! For instance, whenever it is said that NASA costs just 1% of the Gross National Product (GNP) is not a typical demagogical argument.

During the 45^th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) held from October 9-14, 1994 in Jerusalem, Dr. Alvaro Azcarraga from Spain, the president of IAF then, criticized those who say that “too much money is spent on space”. The IAF 45^th Congress’s main theme was Space and Cooperation for Tomorrow’s World. Dr. Azcarraga reported there that space activities in the world are equivalent $2 per person year. As a matter of fact, it is very ridicule to be complaining about “expenditures” on the space programs. The average U. S. taxpayers spends about $75 a year in taxes towards NASA’s annual budget— about $0.20 cents a day (many people spends five times more on getting newspapers each day!). If 85 million U. S. citizens are taxpayers only, then for NASA it may come to $0.43 per day or $158 per year, per capita. For manned mission to Mars, another $650, more or less. And right here we got a complain: for failed Mars Observer is no lesser than $10 for each taxpayer.  But, right here we are to take into account the “cost effective” approach which costs much more to the U. S. tax-payers, and that this approach is not very well understood, per capita, by most of the public. For instance, the genius behind those wonderful machines exploring Mars such as the Sojourner, Rodney Brooks has something to say regarding that matter in “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control”²⁵.

The Economic Impact of the Apollo Program

During the forced end of the Apollo era, what happened then? Throughout any study/report made on the economic impact generated by the Apollo Program, we find that: “when Apollo drew down, 400,000 aerospace jobs were eliminated across the country. Since each direct engineering or technical job produced between three to six additional ‘service’ jobs in the public sector (such as real estate agents, teachers, grocery clerks, fire & police, etc.), the impairment of the space program the put 2.4 million people out of work. They were affected after these aerospace workers pulled up and left town— not to mention property values went through the floor”²⁶.  The economic impact argument can be also supported by the 1973 Stanford Research Institute Report, the 1980 Chase Econometrics, Inc. Report²⁷, the 1986 Ben Bova study for the National Space Society, the 1989 Chapman Research Group Report, and the 1990 Enterprise Institute Study, and some others.

The Fabian Socialist Bertrand Russell in his 1951 essay “The Impact of Science in Society” dealt on the ridiculous fallacy of “limited resources” and “overpopulation” as if those issues were “a reality”. For instance, Russell argued: “At present the population of the world is increasing… War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued through each of the world wars… If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?” Other of his statements was: “… Agriculture was a technical advance. The way it was used should be an awful warning to our age, it introduced slavery and serfdom, human sacrifice, absolute monarchy and large wars. Both industry and agriculture, to a continually increasing degree, are carried on in ways that waste the world’s capital of material resources and sources of energy…”²⁸.

Aerospace engineer, Krafft Ehricke, the designer and developer of the Centaur upper stage correctly believed that the opposite way of thinking, using science and technology, would lead to overcoming the limitations of resources, international cooperation, an international Industrial Revolution, and the preservation of our natural environment at large, the biosphere. His Extraterrestrial Imperative proposes that the exploration of space is the road by a real economic growth should be realized.

Therefore, none of those beliefs based on “limited resources” and “overpopulation” are a true scientific fact, yet together they have been shaping our nations’s social and economical policies. All of the Russell’s complains were stated with the “moral” dogma of the old socialist (and communist) critique of romanticist with hostility to modern technology, launched in direct opposition to what through science-driven programs can benefit our human society, and also in direct opposition to the commandment of Genesis 1:28. A “Sustainable Development”²⁹ approach belongs also to the latter— taking into account, of course, it does also leave people unsustainable unemployed.

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ liberates Man from oppressive work, making reference to “the birds”, etc. (Matthew 6:25-34). On the other hand, He puts emphasis on man’s individual talents (Matthew 25:14-30), on the importance of putting the good use of the talents which God has given him, of which Man is ultimately the administrator. Again, such as Ehricke wrote of the “extraterrestrial imperative” that would take Humankind into Space, stating: “By expanding through the universe, man fulfills his destiny as an element of life”³⁰. This expression embodies the idea that space flight and the colonization of other worlds are natural developments of civilization and the evolution of life. We have the case that many society models have been based on a so-claimed “rigorous sharing of sacrifices and poverty” (no akin to Christian beliefs as developed during the early years of Christandom), both in the socialist and in the liberal side. On the other hand, few models (including those labeled as “capitalist”, which they are not) specific plans for a society of the abundance, such as explained in Genesis 1:28— and the Ehricke’s model is precisely one. We are not surely find such kind of model in the Socialist and Communist models such as those carried out in the Soviet Russia, the Maoist China or the Nazi Germany, neither in another popular model known in our present situation.

A very good historical example of what we have been reviewing at this paper is that the great German economist Friedrich List rejected materialism and he correctly pointed out that the mind’s capital is the real source of richness. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx promoted the idea that Man is “a materialist being with no soul” (then, how can humans achieve great tasks in life when we are committed to?, or, how can we make great art works in music, painting, etc.?— Is not Genesis 1:26 correct at all?); moreover, Marx strongly defended Smith’s “free-trade” theory against Friedrich List.

Through the 1960s until his death in 1984, Ehricke was able to concretely speak of a society of the abundance without any populism or demagogy. He pointed out that the specific road, the only one, that will allow Humanity to access practically endless resources is the road to the stars.

Today we are facing the deception of reductionism. One of these deceptive arguments is that much more of engineering and technical jobs could be produced, for instance, if instead of manned Martian program the same money would be invested in any “high-tech business-oriented programs devoted to the achievement of concrete economic or technological goals”, even space-related. For example, global satellite system for inexpensive global telecommunications, and so on.  The latter is mainly devoted for business matters— it is not really going to put us on a way into a space faring society by itself.

On the other hand, we have got here on Earth many indirect benefits from space researches, among them:  Paramedic program, robotic controllers for quadraplegics, heart rate monitor, global telecommunications, weather forecasting, breast cancer detection, search and rescue locator systems, X-ray imaging systems, body imaging, crop/oil/natural resources monitoring, fire resistant materials, “cool suites” for firefighters, improved athletic shoes, smoke detectors, composite materials, laser fax, water and air purification systems, problem solving software, color & 3D graphics, studless winter tires, and on, and one.

The Extraterrestrial Imperative

Clearly, Ehricke’s Extraterrestrial Imperative has no inherent conflict between industrialization and Nature, and rightly proposed that protecting the environment requires the use of more advanced technologies. We are to continuously turning the wonderful technology developed through space exploration toward solving die problems being faced today.

Such as Marsha Freeman has written: “The Extraterrestrial Imperative is based on Ehricke’s distinction between multiplication and growth. Multiplication is a phenomenon that abounds in nature; growth is unique to man, he proposed” (“Krafft Ehricke’s Extraterrestrial Imperative”, Space Governance, p. 21). And, she specifies that “it is most important today to recall Krafft Ehricke’s contributions, when the very idea of space exploration is being questionable by budget-balancers who claim there is no money for space; by zero-growthers who insist we live in a closed world that is shrinking and running out of resources, and by pessimistic environmentalists, who believe that mankind has not improved but destroyed his world, and can do nothing to further develop and then supersede his terrestrial home” (“Krafft Ehricke’s Extraterrestrial Imperative”, Space Governance, p. 20).

Therefore, for instance, our human society must get rid of false assumptions such as “too much development” is causing “overpopulation and environmental degradation” of underdeveloped nations.

The president of the Extropy Institute, Max Moore, has accurately stated that: “Continual improvement will involve economic growth. We see no shortage of resources to allow growth, and we find growth compatible with environment quality. Extropians affirm a rational, non-coercive environmentalism aimed at sustaining and enhancing the conditions for our flourishment. Intelligent management of resources and environment will be fostered by vastly extended life spans. An effective economic system encourages conservation, substitution, and innovation preventing any need for a brake on growth and progress. Migration into space will inmensely enlarge the energy and resources accessible to our civilization. Extended life spans may foster wisdom and foresight, while restraining recklessness and profligacy. We pursued continued individual and social improvement carefully and intelligently”³¹.

And, of course, we are not going to be thinking that such benefits given to us from the space program shall only be associated with purely scientific space missions, but with the commercial or semi-commercial space missions— yet, the scientific ones go first. This is the legacy of the Apollo Program, it is what historically Apollo teaches us about. And, evidently we are going to create much more new technologies on Earth for what is going to be “spent” in developing and building a Moonbase, or for $60 billion dollars may be “spent” for the early Mars exploration and settlements. To think that billions were wasted already on “lunar or Martian” type programs, is a very deceptive assumption, as if they may have better use as government subsidies to any important industry. An assumption: if some money were invested in technology on automobiles or television sets, we will not be forced to buy millions of Japan made TVs, VCRs, DVDs, or even toys made in Taiwan, Malaysia, or China, as well as numerous of other high-technology products. It is not the space program’s fault, at large! It is not NASA’s fault! NASA can not be blamed for every of its failures. It is an economic policy which is very wrong.

Moreover, the exploration and colonization of space can definitively not be compared to “war movements” or “arms-race” just because these last two “may be good for us because we got jet planes, rockets, submarines, nuclear plants, great advances in medicine, as indirect benefit”. Let’s face it: counter-culture philosophies, chauvinistic ideologies, anti-true-science movements (irrationality becomes the fundaments of political movements), stagnation and involutive social processes, and in this way armed revolutions and wars are fruitful  seeds of zero-growth policies in a closed system as our planet is. Space exploration, and its colonization, is a matter of survival, a survival for our species as such.

John Kennedy proposed his lunar initiative stating that Space was open to Humanity, and that “whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share”³².

The lesson of the Apollo Program:

1)  The importance to proceed step by step, instead of focusing on one-by-one remedy for some Man’s social illness;  2) the final solution: the results we can obtain by getting involved without emotions, only by reason, to solve massive problems, and;  3) the successful reward we can obtain through a great valid idea.

The Science-Technologic Potential of Mexico as a Nation

Mexico has the National Nuclear Research Institute (ININ), and also an Electrical Research Institute, which has a part devoted to technological support for the nuclear electricity utilities. Nuclear now represents about 4% of electricity production. Electricity is generated, maintained, and distributed by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which operates all kinds of power plants, nuclear and nonnuclear. There is also another institution, the Mexican Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is under the Secretariat of Energy and is in charge of regulatory matters at nuclear facilities, any installations using nuclear sources, X-rays, and so on. For our projects to become more efficient in space, we need to develop and testing nuclear-powered installations and rockets in Mexico.

Nuclear is one part of the development of a nation, but if we can handle nuclear, we can handle other technologies. In the early 1970s, it was decided to construct two reactors in collaboration with General Electric. These are two reactors of 650 MW each. Both units are at Laguna Verde in the State of Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. The Nuclear Center is near Mexico City and has a research reactor, a 1 MW Triga reactor which is used mainly for research activities; there is also an irradiation facility for food and medicine, which has a cobalt-60 source, and a program for molybdenum-99 production. Still, in order to obtain satisfied its present and future energetic needs, Mexico is behind schedule having other nuclear plants operational— the nation needs at least four more facilities. One would be placed near Puerto Penascos, State of Sonora; another one near Puerto Vallarta, State of Jalisco; and so on.

A Mexican national commitment into space, addressed by a national space agency, involving a broad range of technological R&D, would expand the nation’s total technological base, not only getting seriously involved with the most advanced nations, but even with the creation of many innovations. This major national commitment approach to research and development tends to uncover previously unforeseen new technologies useful in the private sector. Electrical engineers were satisfied with vacuum tubes prior to the development of integrated circuits for Apollo.

Put together all science-driven, high technology Mexican national projects, with special emphasis on breakthroughs-oriented R&D, and these all together would lead to the creation of thousands and then millions of good paying private-sector industry jobs, and expansion of goods and services, an expanded national tax base, the opportunity to lower individual taxes, a rise in the public standard of living, a reduction in inflation, and increased opportunity to reduce the national debt. These benefits could be worthy many times the cost of the major space projects commitment that made them possible. The lack of determination to any commitment for developing the benefits as explained here, is the problem. As for the Mexican government’s best intentions today to provide jobs to reduce poverty, this goal is only a dream if there are no new productive jobs and real growing economy for newly trained entrants to the workforce.

Now. If all the above explained is coupled with improved economic and educational opportunity for the general population, development of new marketable technologies, could help lift the desperately poor people out of poverty. And, of course, we are to take into account:  the space economic-impact studies have also shown that it takes from five to ten years for a major research and development-oriented national space commitment to bring about a significant impact on the national economy— therefore, just as President Kennedy did in the United States, in order to truly be successful, any space national program must be a long-term program!

The government leadership would benefit politically from the promise of an expanding national economy and impressive space achievements, with very little short-term loss in tax revenue, and a very low risk of failure.  The investors would have nothing to lose and everything to gain in the long term. The first returns on investments would come from the licensing fees associated with the spin-offs that would be created. In 1985, former NASA Administrator, James Beggs, argued that the United States could maintain leadership only through new projects³³. This is a great true for Mexico too; if Mexico wants to stay ahead, keeping going ahead! This was also my actual presentation in the University of Burgos in Spain which is tittled as “Why Does Spain Need a Long-Range National Space Program?”³⁴. Our national sovereign governments have to eventually make a decision regarding this so debated issue.

More funding on measures allowing the younger population to study a career on science, to create more scholarships to support the students to reach a doctorate degree. And to get their future respective jobs assured in the scientific-technologic field.  To make a promotional campaign is not enough.

The Science-Driven Program Models to Follow

The U. S. rural South of the 1960s might be a very good example for the Mexican government to consider on. But, in the United States during the second half of the 1960s there was no understanding among President Lyndon B. Johnson’s economic advisers that the most important event of impact on poverty in the rural South was arised by the space program.  The establishment of science and engineering centers by NASA in Huntsville, Houston, Cape Canaveral, Bay St. Louis, and others, transformed these rural communities into regions of attraction for high-technology industry.  People who had picked cotton in Alabama could fill application forms in semiskilled positions at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and son.  Later, their children could attend upgrated public schools and brand new colleges to become the scientists and engineers of tomorrow. Today, Huntsville, Alabama, posses the highest I. Q. in the United States’s younger population and the world; which means that a high cultural and educational environment is influential to the masses.  Therefore, as we have been reviewing so far, this is not a “populist tendency” in economic policy-shaping; this is a competent scientifically-designed economic policy. Looking at an economy through a different way, such as a kind of a form of gambling game, is certainly anti-scientific. But, even those whose intention was the economic uplifting of the nation’s poor through the War of  Poverty during the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s did not understand that economic opportunity for the poor could be achieved only with overall growth in the economy.

In the United States, the great project that some analysts have compared to the economic impact of the U. S. space program has been the Tennessee Valley Authority. Founded in the grief of the Great Depression, this authority transformed a large region, about seven States, where people had standards of living comparable to the so-called Third World nations.  The introduction of electricity, transportation infrastructure, large-scale dam-building project, libraries, and health care brought this part of the rural South into progress. As also pointed out by the authors of The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Colonization⁶: “The Tennessee Valley Authority was constituted to conserve assets for public benefit and to provide electric power in a region that crossed seven states and numerous local jurisdictions. TVA was authorized by the U. S. Congress in 1933 (16 U.S.C. 831 et se) with a Board of Governors appointed by the U. S. President and the country’s Senate.”³⁵ By the way, nuclear engineers of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee designed entire new cities for the developing nations in the 1960s, based on the nuclear-centered agroindustrial complex, joined around a group of high-temperature reactors.  The causes of poverty were wiped then by providing the infrastructure that put that region into a path of economic growth.

In rural sites of Mexico today, what a great impact on poverty the establishment of science and engineering centers could be. For instance, for Quintana Roo and Jalisco counting with a future launch site, then a spaceport, a spaceport authority, would generate a very similar situation for their Indian and countrymen population as so generated by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the State of Tennessee. Likewise, the establishment of a such kind of station as Mex-AreoHab (MAH) in Veracruz and the Mex-LunarHab (MLH) in Chihuahua are going to get those same results as envisioned for Jalisco and Quintana Roo.

 A Special Statement

Special thanks to Declan O’Donnell, Esq., engineer in mines Brad Blair, Gary Rodriguez and everyone named at this paper for believing in our Mexican initiative and supporting our projects in Mexico. And my apologies to all those other also supporting our effort whose great interest is not show cast at this paper.

Conclusion

Mexico needs the establishment of a national space agency as an asset to reactive its scientific, technologic, and financial abilities. What must be understood is that in order to put the nation on a way of real prosperity requires overturning the entire set of anti-science reductionist postulates in economical policy of the last 30 years.

Different that old times, today the relationship between powerful nations and dependent nations is one of technological dependence. In past times, nations were controlled by military invasion. In our age, advanced technology plays this role. If Mexico does not move now forward to be a developed country, it is putting into risk its national security. On the other hand, it is very important today to have relations with other nations, to share resources, to share experiences in order to try to get further to meet the needs of our populations.

The quality of government support is more important than the quality of money to be spent by the government itself.  There is no money from the national budget “spent in space”; all that money is “spent” here on Earth, in our nations. Yet, a very important aspect to take into account here is, we are to certainly recognize that in Mexico there are skilled people, so good as anywhere in the world. The main resource of a nation is its own people. Therefore, it is very well worthy to put the talented people of the nation to work in the space endeavour.

In the Apollo era, the greatest inspiration to the industrializing nations of Ibero-America was not precisely foreign aid programs, but the space program.  This is a historical fact.

References___________________________________________________________________________

¹ Jesus Raygoza B., “International Branch Report: USIS-Mexico”, Space Governance, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1998, pp. 31,

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² John F. Kennedy, Impact of the War in South East Asia on the U. S. Economy: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign

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Office, Washington, D. C., 1970, p. 142.

³ Patricio Gonzalez-Quintanilla V., “Proyecto de Iniciativa Presidencial para el Establecimiento del Programa Aeroespacial

Mexicano”, submitted to Vicente Fox Quesada, President of Mexico, Mexico, D. F., September 2001, p.

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Cerisola y Weber, Secretary of Communications and Transportation, Secretariat of Communications and

13

Transportation (SCT), Mexico, D. F., February 2003.

⁴ Herman H. Koelle, ed., Handbook of Astronautical Engineering, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, pp. 28-44.

⁵ William A. Good and Gary J. Rodriguez, “Exo-Clipper: An X-Prize Concept Launches a Commercial Opportunity”,

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Colonization, Praxis Publishing/John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1999, pp. 26, 91, 121.

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20-23, 31.

⁹ Homer H. Hickam, Jr., October Sky (aka Rocket Boys: A Memoir) Dell Publishing, New York, 1998, p. 232.

¹⁰ Jesus Raygoza B., “Space Continuing Public Education”, Space Governance, Vol. 15, No. 1, January 1998, pp. 80-85, 89.

¹¹ Thomas W. Becker, “Space Education and the Silence Conspiracy”, Ad Astra, Vol. 2, No. 8, September 1990.

¹² Declan J. O’Donnell, “The Buzz Aldrin Space Collection for Public Libraries”, International Space Development

Conference (ISDC), National Space Society (NSS), Marriot Tech Center Hotel, Denver, May 27, 2002,

www.angelfire.com/space/usis/

¹³ Declan J. O’Donnell, “Survey of the Top Ten Space Policy Problems at 1995”, Space Governance, Vol. 2, No. 2,

December 1995, pp. 40-43.

¹⁴ Declan J. O’Donnell, “Commercialization by Evolution in the Jurisdiction  of Outer Space”, Space Governance, Vol. 4,

No. 2, July 1997, pp. 33-34.

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Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, Universe Books, New York, 1972.

¹⁶ Thomas Vargish, “Why the Person Sitting Next to you Hates Limits to Growth”, Technological Forecasting and Social

Change, 16, 1980, pp. 179-189.

¹⁷ Paul & Ann Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, Ameron, River City Press, Mattiuk, New York, 1975.

¹⁸ Philip R. Harris, Living and Working in Space, 2^nd Edition, UK-Praxis/Wiley Publishing, New York, 1996.

¹⁹ James Beggs, “Technology, Imagination, and Faith”, in Space Station: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Theodore

Simpson, ed., Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Inc., New York, 1984, pp. 89-94.

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Committee, Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, United States Senate, Washington, D. C.,

26 March, 1996, p. 4.

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Technology, Government Printing Office, 1991, p. 1.

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Envisioning a Sustainable Future, Post Mills, Chelsea Green, Vermont, 1992.

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Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1962, p. 404.

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Washington, D.C., 1985, p. 1.

14

³⁴ Jesus Raygoza B., “Por Que Necesita Espana un Programa Espacial a Largo Plazo?”, University of Burgos/Lunar

Economic Development Authority (LEDA) Conference, University of Burgos (UDB), Burgos, May 28,

1999.

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Tennessee Valley Authority Act, 1933-1983, p. 23; Tennessee Valley Authority - 6 ½ % Global Power

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Jesus Raygoza B., in January 1968 (at 17 years-old), he outlined a theory for tentatively diminishing the “sonic boom”, drag and heating in supersonic and hypersonic flight; in December 1973, by the first time, he submitted his concepts to the U. S. Air Force. In 1975-1977, he was a private pilot. In 1983, his “Cone Surfer” concept, a derivation from his 1968 theory, was a device to be adapted to a hypersonic aircraft for diminishing the sonic boom, and reducing drag and heat transfer. He is the creator and the general director of The Mex-LunarHab (MLH) Project (a real habitat) and The Lunar Mexico Habitat Analogue Project (the MLH simulation habitat); as well as one of the Directors for The Mex-AreoHab (MAH) Project (a Mars simulation habitat). He is also engaged in pursuing for a permanent establishment in Mexico of a national space agency; two space launch ranges, one in Jalisco State, and another one in Quintana Roo State; and the Buzz Aldrin Libraries Project. He is the Founder/President of the Mexican Space Society (SEM); an International Director of the Lunar Economic Development Authority, Inc. (LEDA); a Regent and Secretary of the United Societies in Space, Inc. (USIS); a Member of the Board of Directors of the Space Orbital Development Authority, Inc. (SODA); a Member of the Institute for Advanced Sciences (ICA), National Space Society (NSS), and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

August 2003

Presented at the Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the United Societies in Space (USIS) and Affiliate Authorities, Trusts, and Associates. Best Western Hotel. Denver, Colorado, August 3, 2003.