To Slip The Surly Bonds

To Slip The Surly Bonds—NASA, The Shuttle Disasters and the Demise of the U.S. Manned Spaceflight Program: To Slip the Surly Bonds—enters into the world of NASA and tells the story of not just why the shuttle disasters happened, but exposes NASA’s inner workings and what actually led up to the two most horrifying space accidents known. It explores the new CEV and explains the need for the United States to pay more attention to space. NASA’s budget had been gutted many times by various Presidential administrations and Congress, following the halcyon days of Apollo and the Moon. NASA was short on money and mission profile after we landed on the moon. The Space Shuttle was truly a successful program and the ISS gave the shuttle an excuse for being. Congress was also having a field day with budget cuts, not to mention devastating the programs with pork barrel projects that were hooked into the NASA budget. NASA too, had been its own worst enemy due to its static, bureaucratic, way of doing its internal business. China, and Japan, and India are forging their way to the stars while NASA sits on a lonely launch pad, waiting for the next crumb to fall from the Congressional table. The U. S. Commercial Aerospace sector has had some brilliant successes with reaching the space station with robotic cargo flights, but there is nothing that is now man-rated for travel to the ISS or anywhere else. The new CEV or Crew Exploration Vehicle is in the process of testing, but the money is again short. NASA must continue to struggle for its needs while other nations reach higher. To Slip the Surly Bonds explores the intricacies of how and why NASA was created, the Manned Spaceflight program, how the shuttle disasters happened and why the United States’ position in the space frontier is in jeopardy.

The West is entering its final phase, like the fall of Rome or the Late Merchant Phase of the various Chinese empires. It is slowly grinding to a halt as the inevitable problems multiply, with no obvious will to counter the decline. One man dreams of humanity becoming a multiplanet species in the hope of preserving the basics of human knowledge through the coming dark ages. The Great Powers have turned inward, and there is little political will for further space exploration. Funding is minimal, and technological innovation has slowed dramatically. He uses his skills as a fighter to fund his dreams and is, for a time, the heavyweight champion. Using his notoriety, he slowly gathers friends, seeking to find those who can make the dream a reality. Manon, who claws her way up from nothing to wealth; Elizabeth, the miner turned politician; and others help fund the space project. They set up a foundation to search for scientific geniuses in the most unlikely places, looking for children who perhaps can make the journey into space possible, but it is not clear that Earth has any interest in returning to the high frontier. Against a background of indifference, competing interests, and active discouragement, they do manage to establish small independent colonies on the moon and Mars; but the odds are great, protection is difficult, and long-term success is by no means assured. And there are malevolent forces moving in the world.

The development of fusion power in the small colony established on Mars leads to an explosive outward emigration from Earth to the moons of the solar system. On Earth, increasing civil unrest in Europe has led to the election to positions of authority of three strong women: Leda in Germany, Madeleine in France, and La Marquesa in Spain. With the assistance of others--including Tomiko from Japan and Hinchcliffe, with her paramilitary organization, the Legion--order is restored, at least temporarily.The lives, loves, and deaths of these women are set against a world of conflict, hope, and despair, as they struggle to maintain civilization and allow further immigration to the high frontier in the face of malevolent opposition forces.

The West continues its precipitous decline. The ancient, magnificent, awe inspiring Christian Churches which had taken centuries to build, are burning all over Europe, and that tragedy and violence on the streets are becoming so commonplace that it barely is mentioned by the media. Even the most egregious terrorist outbreaks are passed over by politicians as something which occurs in big cities and the indigenous population should simply get used to it. Policing in most of the West has sunk to an all-time low. Rape of women and children has reached unprecedented levels. Crimes against property and person are largely ignored. Break and Entry now no longer even merits a police inspection. Horrifying acid attacks, where acid is thrown on a young woman, destroying her face, never before seen in Europe, are barely mentioned. Any vestige of ‘Free Speech’ has become a thing of the past and there is a return to the Thought Police of the Communist era. The Prometheus Group, a disparate collection of people who fear for the future of civilization, especially the unlikely Enlightenment concept of intrinsic individual human worth, have established small colonies on Mars and the moon. They continue to fly under the radar of public attention, as much as they can, while quickly expanding these colonies. The economic collapse of countries such as Greece had long been anticipated. Unsurprisingly, the economic situation in Canada suddenly deteriorates and the US President is forced to step in to prevent complete anarchy, which would threaten the undefended US northern border. Unwilling to involve the United States government directly, she asks the Prometheus Group for personnel to help oversee and assist the economic rescue of Canada, which the group agrees to with exceeding reluctance. More of the exceptional children continue to be sought by the Prometheus Group, and continue to be found in the most unlikely places. As before, they are mainly seeking girls whose genius would otherwise be missed. These children are enlisted into the effort to produce the science which will get as many people as possible into space, and speed the terraforming of Mars, before the cataclysm of civil war, which is now inevitable in Europe, and will likely spread to involve the world. Any extension of war outside Europe will inevitably result in a nuclear exchange with unimaginable destruction, as a single nuclear airburst could produce such an electromagnetic pulse as to wipe out all computers within the blast area. This disaster, multiplied many times over, and almost certainly aided by biological warfare, would produce a possible reversion to primitivism, tribalism and savagery or the establishment of a dystopian rigid unchangeable medieval philosophy.

The following is a biography of John Magee, a remarkable poet-pilot whose soaring spirit and talent echoed through the skies. In this book, explore his formative years at Rugby School, where his passion for poetry and flight began to intertwine. Witness his journey of first love and his memorable summer in America, which shaped his perspectives on life and art.

A noir novel of love, intrigue, and violence amid the declining and increasingly chaotic Western world. Lauren, a professional assassin, now married and with a child, attempts to walk away from her previous life. Unfortunately, a series of events forces her to use her old skills, again and again. Qian, leader of a triad based in Hong Kong, one of her previous employers, seeking to separate Vancouver from Canada to create an independent country, like Singapore, forces her to carry out further assignments. Jazz, a Toronto born budding artist was taken prisoner in the UK and forced to be a sex slave in the Middle East. Rescued by Qian’s son, Jazz is now her daughter in law. She finds herself playing an increasing role leading to Vancouver’s independence. The tensions and mistrust among these three women gradually worsens with time. Who will die or make die?

Shaken, not stirred--cultural critics look at the many faces of 007 and his creator.

Why do human beings behave the way they do? What governs how they act out their daily lives? It is not difficult to provide the traditional argument that it’s largely a matter of the culture in which we live, a product of the influences of family, peers, teachers, religious leaders, the movies we see, the books we read, and so forth. Such behavior often contradicts the independent nature of the human spirit, demanding a certain compromise—we depend on others for our needs, and to obtain these, we must behave accordingly. Evidence grows, however, that, in addition, much of our behavior has its roots in biological processes. Such information indicates that, whether we like to accept it or not, our conduct is often governed by biochemical agents within in the brain, an expression of our animalistic ancestral past, governed by our genetic inheritance, and all beyond the level of our conscious decision-making. This book addresses a series of such behaviors—love, jealousy, travel, suicide, etc.—and examines new-found perspectives that speak to a biological component in explaining just why we behave as we do. Certainly, such scientific insights are limited and currently provide only a narrow insight into human behavior. However, this information clearly forecasts the coming of a greater appreciation that, as members of the animal kingdom, we remain biological beings as well as members of a cooperative society.