A Commentary on the Existence of Alien Life

This guy?  Wow, just when you think you’ve seen it all. Dang, now I’ve got to take time out of my busy day, the book reviews I want to write, and a million other things I need to do before 2023 runs out,  to offer my opinion on aliens.  Yes, I love the movie Aliens.  It is my all time favorite movie…Sigorni Weaver, Bill Paxton, et al.  “They mostly come at night, mostly”.  And on and on.  I’m a SciFi fan.  A big one.  I even use SciFi as the answer to my password question on the United Airlines flight-app. I’ll do that this morning as I fly to alien central, I mean Nevada.   It’s ok that you  know my password question.  The United app is so worthless, I can barely log onto it myself,  so good luck hackers!  I digress, I really don’t want to waste my time with nonsense, but here we go.

Many places  from Roswell New Mexico, Bishop California, to Tonopah and Rachel Nevada, I’ve been there,  done that. But not in the sense of a tourist trip, a.k.a. from the movie “PAUL”, but in the sense that they are real world places, they exist, people live there, people work there.  I work there.  Things happen there…real world things.  It's not Disney.  It’s not an imaginary place. But extraterrestrial things do not happen there.  That’s just plain crazy talk.  We call those people (the crazy people) who believe in extraterrestrials, the tinfoil hats. They also frequent those places--or at least the perimeters of those places.  For national security reasons, we restrict access to those places.  As we do with most government facilities, we are trying to keep secrets from our adversaries.  It’s a privilege to be trusted by the country to be granted access to these places. One thing the government does not burden us with, however, is to keep the existence of aliens secret.  Because there are no aliens. 

Conspiracy theories arise in two ways. 

First, when something happens that is so big, it is out of balance with its actual cause, the human mind can’t rationalize the event and bring it back into balance.  When out of balance, cause and effect, a conspiracy theory will arise.  The assassination of JFK is a prime example.  Huge impact on the country at the trigger finger of a lone gunman.  That incident is still out of balance with human nature and continues to spawn conspiracy theories. 

Second, when something is intentionally kept secret and the ego of an inquisitive person is too large to be contained outside the secret, a conspiracy is created.  This is also known by its better name, paranoia.  This happens at the local level and is the source of most family drama. Try to keep a secret in your family if another family member knows there's a secret. All hell breaks loose.  But it also happens at a grand scale at the national level, when a journalist breaks a story, and doesn’t have all the facts.  Good journalists, with their egos of normal size, fact check, and report only facts.  Bad reporters simply speculate wildly about things they know nothing about and create fictions. To be clear these are not alternative facts, they are, in fact, fictions.  That’s what’s going on now.  Grusch has an outsized ego for the limited  information for which he has access.  We are witnessing the net result.  Pure speculation giving rise to conspiracy theories.  It’s worse in this case, because, sometimes, when in possession of the facts, the decision can be made to disclose the facts, and all but the most ardent conspiracy theorists will accept those facts.  As in the first case, with the JFK assassination, The Warren Report, if you read it, dispels all rumors of any conspiracy in the President’s assassination (I’ve read it cover to cover).  

I don’t think anyone else in our Country has.  In the case of Grusch, it’s impossible to disclose all the facts because 1) the real facts are unrelated to aliens and are classified--we would damage national security to appease one man’s ego  2) there are no real facts regarding aliens.  They don’t exist so there is nothing to disclose.   This is the classic search for the black cat in the dark room.  And there is no cat in the room. This is not Schrödinger's cat, since the cat is neither alive nor dead.  There is no cat.

And now the  news has been a flutter with the latest “credible” testimony of David Grusch in a tin-foil hat.  He is a wing nut who just left NGA and announced to the world that, “We are not alone”. That leads me to wonder who “We” are.  Apparently “We” includes us and the central governments of multiple countries who have been concealing the existence of aliens from the rest of the  world--and in our country--from congress. And he’s testifying before congress. That’s him in the picture above in front of congress with a friendly visitor on the right.  To be clear, this is stone cold fuck nuts crazy.  Yes he is crazy, but so too are our fellow Countrymen in congress who allowed  for this  ridiculous entertaining theater.  This is the start of how it ends folks.  We thought we had a Banana Republic under Trump.  Now we have “tin foil hats” being taken seriously in Congress.   

Look, I want it to be true, my friends want it to be true.  We all want aliens, well PAUL, I don’t want a Xenomorph running around on our planet.  But PAUL, hell yeah, I want to have a beer with PAUL.  More than any conspiracy theorist out there, those of us in the aerospace business, would love for it to be true.  We love science and we love science fiction even more--why? Because we can dream the dream.  But I’m afraid it's not true, not in our lifetime, not in the lifetime of millions of generations of our ancestors yet to come. And it's beyond silly to think it's really true or it could even happen.  Hoping it's true is slightly different, but hope is not a strategy either.  Aliens on planet earth simply don’t exist.  Unfortunately it will be harder to convince conspiracy theorists that there are no aliens than it is to convince people of the Truth contained in the Gospels.  It's something that can’t be done.  So I might as well not try.  

Since I’ve spent the better part of 40 years running in the same circles as the whistleblower David Grusch…and I’ve actually worked with him…I keep getting the questions from my friends, family, and colleagues.  We’ve once again been distracted. There is always a red herring to chase. Similar to far more credible Chinese balloons, and just as likely to do harm, which is none.  It's just a distraction.  Let's make 2024 the year we are not distracted (not likely giving the run up to the election).   As for pure distraction, I like the NY Times article  that paints this entire thing as a conspiracy of the government to distract the population.   Well, that is also not true, but it’s actually in the space of something that could actually occur. Not probable, but inside the realm of the possible.  

So let’s start with Grusch.  First, there is no “credible” alien witness.  Anyone claiming or showing as such is wearing a tin foil hat.  Why?  Because it’s not true.  Can’t be true.  And anyone with basic knowledge of science can immediately come to that conclusion.  The fact that Grusch worked in a technology area, should suggest he knows a little science.  Clearly he doesn’t know a thing about science.  A conspiracy theory can't wish itself  into being true.  Science…science will reveal the truth. To be absolutely clear in what I am saying, a true scientist would never generate a conspiracy theory to chase the impossible.   Which is what I want to walk you through today, the impossible.  Five things stand in the way of aliens and all of it is science.  Here are the things:   1) evolutionary biology.  2) regular physics 3) space-time physics 4) large number math, and 5) social science.  There is a 6th thing as well but it’s not science.  We could attack the witness directly with regard to his critical thinking skills.  I’ve already called him a wing-nut.  That’s sufficient.  Psychology Today does a pretty good job at dismantling his critical thinking skills  so I’ll just leave it to others to attack Grusch personally.  You can read the article here.   

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/a-logical-take/202307/a-logical-take-on-the-new-news-about-aliens

This is so simple.  You don’t have to be Einstein to see the facts of science and understand the many flaws in the alien argument. Any one of these conditions rule out alien visitors.  But there are five of them.  For Grusch not  to understand a single one of them defies logic--he wouldn’t understand the 6th one  inherently--or he’s looking for a book/movie deal with Hollywood.  That might have some merit. In fact, in October the New York Times reported that Grusch’s most ardent supporters are, in fact, YouTube content gurus…if that doesn’t say it all. His attorney’s didn’t pick him up at the airport, to whisk him off to his congressional testimony, YouTube content creators picked him up and were his escorts.  This is disgusting.  You can read about all of that here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2023/10/05/ufo-david-grusch-uap-congress-yes-theory/

The other options suggest he’s no longer reasoning logically.  Which means he should seek a doctor for an immediate MRI of his brain.  Something is seriously wrong…if this were new.  But since I can tell you he was a wing nut when I knew him eight years ago,  it’s seemingly his natural state.  But let’s not worry about Grusch’s health.  He’s a wingnut…maybe he will cash in and make appearances on TV. He might crash and burn.  Fuck around and find out.  He might find out.

In order to believe in science, however, you have to believe in science.  Meaning you have to suspend all your preconceived notions about science and understand that it is possible for some things to be known.  You have to believe, for instance, that science can create gold.  Apart from the failed efforts of the alchemist, and the search to create gold, gold can indeed be synthesized in the nuclear lab (done in 1941).  You start with Platinum (or Mercury), and add a proton (or remove a proton), and you have gold.  Good luck doing that in your garage, however.  The point is that you can do it.  Science can do that…it’s not magic.   Magic, on the other hand, is magic.  Arthur Clake told us, “any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.  This is a true statement.  But the facts remain, it’s not magic.  Aliens would be magic.

Another caveat, I do 100% believe that there is other life out there in our universe. Yes we can call that alien.  But it’s just life in our universe.  It’s just like a strange life on our planet, it’s in our universe, so it still belongs.  And it’s just a matter of time until we find it. And when we do, it’s just a matter of time before the disciples of Reverend Moon will approach them and ask them if they have considered Jesus. That’s as certain as death and taxes, but I digress.   It might also be true that life on our own planet, sprang from life elsewhere.  An asteroid carrying microbes etc.   That is totally plausible.   But that doesn’t mean they are here, whipping around in flying saucers, crashing into the planet, doing us harm and staying concealed--with or without the consent of all the world’s governments.  We all came from jellyfish, by the way.  That's a pretty open and shut case.  Now the question of the Octopus.  Here we have something.  I’m hoping that science will be able to reveal to us that our life here on earth was seeded from life on other planets, and later, another seed, created the Octopus.  And then evolved from there.  This is a far more plausible solution to the question of whether or not we are alone.  We are 100% not alone.

So now we have a “credible” witness,  with no evidence, raising some sort of alarm bell based upon what he heard, formulated in his head. And people actually believe him.  People, please do your own thinking on this subject.  And base your thinking on facts, not the feeling that you want it to be true.  Before I dive in,  let’s  talk about where Grusch has worked. Isn't that what makes him credible?  He worked for the NRO and for NGA.   Those organizations have nothing to do with aliens.  The search for, the discovery of, the communication with, the concealment of.   Don't confuse these agencies with MIB.  Just because they are US intelligence organizations doesn’t mean crap.  Discover something at the CIA and then, perhaps, he would have some credibility.   But this guy would never work for the CIA.  They actually review the people they hire fairly well.  Point I’m making is that the CIA briefs the president.  If there were an alien liaison office, it would be at the CIA, not at NGA or NRO. That’s just how organizationally it would be aligned.

The world population, generally speaking, should trust science on the whole.  And as much as I don’t like Elon Musk these days, he did have a few relevant things to say recently on this subject.  He’s the guy trying to go to Mars.   He knows the physics of space travel.  It’s not just hard, it’s near impossible. But Musk has already addressed the subject,  No aliens.  It should stop right there for Musk and his followers. There are no aliens on planet earth.  So let’s dive in and walk through the five things I mentioned.

1) Evolutionary Biology 

Are we alone? The answer to that question is simple. We are not alone. Look around you. Are we alone on planet Earth? No! The Earth is brimming with life.  Life has expanded to every crack and crevice from deep ocean trenches to high mountains to deep in the ice of Antarctica.  Since every species on earth evolved from a jellyfish It's not hard to envision something like a jellyfish swimming.  We only need water.  Hydrogen and oxygen are abundant in the universe and on the surface of  ice on a moon orbiting Jupiter for instance.  Multiply that by the number of planets in the solar system and then by the number of solar systems in the galaxy by the number of galaxies in the universe and the chances that we are not alone is a very small number indeed. We are not alone.  We will find life soon.  But that doesn’t mean intelligent aliens visiting from another planet.

First, what would an alien look like should they appear on our planet?  Hollywood is full of ideas, but we keep coming back to the same gray lizard looking alien with big eyes.  Why would that be?  Alien bodies, even the ones in Peru begin to look the same.  The end result of all this hubbub about aliens at Roswell and what we believe they look like, comes down to this…the one on the left, standard issue pilot gear.  Fighter, bomber, even astronauts are going to wear gear with a helmet and supply of oxygen.  The one on the right, standard alien.  Coincidence?

But this is about evolutionary biology.  Should aliens actually look like lizards, I think they are called Sleestak’s in Land of the Lost, and they wear Tunics. They would have evolved on a water world.  In a water world, it’s doubtful you are leaving the planet.  It is too hard to make gunpowder underwater.  Which means, you would have crawled out of the soup, lived on dry earth for several million years, probably would have evolved hair and eyelids to shield the sun. Definitely fingers and thumbs. Or, as is the case of aliens that do live underwater (The Abyss), they evolved to control water with their or some type of energy.

It took millions and millions of years for us to evolve in a way we did to breathe air and not have the air kill us…or gravity kill us…or anything else like the sun, which could easily kill us.  You can’t just wish an “M” class planet into existence.  If an alien shows up and can fly in our atmosphere…and breathe our air…that would  be an astounding bit of luck.  

Biology takes time.  A lot of time.  And biology evolves to what is here, the environment.  Take any biology out of its environment and it doesn’t last long.  Eco systems are very fragile.  Evolution is not.  But the single ecosystem is fragile.  Destroy one and another one will take its place, that’s what evolution does.  So let’s hope, aliens don’t arrive anytime soon.

A good book to read here would be Jared Diamond’s classic “Guns, Germs, and Steel”.  The best take away from this book would be the true alien invaders would be the Conquistadors who showed up in the new world with guns, and decimated the indigenous population with germs.  There were perhaps 20 million indigenous people living in the new world, when the aliens arrived.  One need only look at a map of Indian tribes in North America to realize, Diamond is far more right than wrong.

2) Regular Physics 

First let's start with flying saucers.  Why am I so confident there are no aliens whipping around our planet in HG Wells flying saucers?  And I just watched Cowboys and Aliens!!  Great flick, Oliva Wilde is beautiful…just saying.  But I digress yet again.  Because of the laws of physics.  Regardless of what the world thinks they are seeing in those Navy videos that can’t be explained, things that defy physics are not physically possible.  It might be true that any significant advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic but that only applies to a pig looking at a wrist watch. It’s not true that it is indistinguishable from physics, so anyone with half a brain can see the facts of the real world.  We are all not pigs, some of us are, in fact, scientists.   The world population doesn’t have to become like Albert Einstein to study a few principles and know what can and cannot happen. Or the alien craft said to exist by Grusch that our government and other governments are in pursuit of in order to reverse engineer and weaponize in order to gain advantage on our adversaries

The ability to fly was invented just over 100 years ago the desire to fly has been around ever since humans observed organic things taking flight and documented it which is on a scale of thousands of years   Whereas evolution has had a millions of years to produce the natural things in our environment that use the air.  That includes insects, birds, and even plant life such as spores and those really annoying seeds from maple trees that fill the gutters.  Whereas a large portion of science has moved in the direction of mimicking natural animals and their evolutionary successes most of  our flight has happened by brute Force…originally we started with light  things then went to fabrics then moved towards aluminum and titanium and now we are headed in the direction of composites me.. there's not too many other choices in the periodic table of elements from which to choose our materials. It's important to note that everyone in the universe including the aliens on the planets have the same periodic table of elements...they also do not have many choices…there are about 100 useful elements...just because you're an alien scientist doesn't mean you can invent a new element…transparent aluminum from Star Trek, or Adamantium  (X-Men), or the stuff called Vibranium from Wakanda or what we call in the business Un-obtainium.  Many good ideas die on the drawing board because of the availability of the element of obtaining. Alien engineers have the same problem.  It's not that we haven't tried to create new elements we certainly have but the ones we've been able to create are at the tail end of the periodic table and tend to only live for seconds or less before they deteriorate back into something stable. It's hypothesized that there are up to 170 elements...most of those additional 70 will not be useful.  Other elements simply are not possible.  The wagon is full.  Study up on the periodic table…gaps for these extraordinary new things simply don’t exist. Of all the things we do, the material science is pretty well understood.  There is no “transparent aluminum”.  If you don’t know this reference it’s to the material used in Star Trek 6 to transport whales to earth from another planet.  They created huge light weight tanks to carry the beasts.  I think it was more important for Hollywood to have clear tanks so we could see the creatures rather than realize that tanks of water (at 7 lbs a gallon) will quickly outweigh any material used to contain the water.  But that’s what we love about science fiction and the imagination of Hollywood writers.

And as hard as we try we can't do much better than tungsten for density titanium for strength. But that’s not really the direction we are heading in.  We are not heading in the direction of anything metallic.  We are heading in the direction of composites and nano structures.  Any of the alien machines are going not going to be made of some strange metallurgy…they will be made of the same things we make them out of…something composite in the air, something strong and with tiles, if it’s coming into air (heat of friction), and something very large with a lot of shielding if it’s coming extra terrestrially.  The best shot at an extra terrestrial spaceship would have been something like that asteroid shaped like a cigar that passed by a few years ago.   Repurposing an asteroid, and living on it…inside…propelled by a nuclear something, is probably our best shot, in the next few hundred thousand years, at least. Or seeing something from our galaxy. Forget about seeing something from another galaxy.  Unless they are bending space time…and we know what’s required for this…a sun sized space ship with that much power, conceivably, has a shot.

Propulsion

Birds flap their wings - it took millions of years to evolve on this planet.  A bird will not be able to fly on Mars.  We know it’s not going to be an internal combustion engine…those breathe air.  Those evolved to live in our atmosphere just like we did, and run on carbon.  Coincidence?

So to leave the planet, we need a rocket.  Not internal combustion, but something that requires carbon.  Our rockets tend to be a mixture of ignited hydrogen and oxygen.  With the most powerful engine we’ve built, it would take a long time to reach the speed of light.  Accelerating at 1 g, which would not be comfortable for humans, we would have to accelerate for a full year to reach the speed of light.  Rocket engines burn for minutes, not months and months.   So propulsion will have to be something else.   We slingshot around the solar system…that takes a lot of extra time…but we can move really fast doing that…   The fastest thing we have and the thing fathers from the earth, Voyager 1, has only recently left the solar system. It's taken…42 years to travel that far…and is only traveling at about 10% the speed of light.  So humans or aliens are not getting out of the solar system that way.   What’s next?

A nuclear reactor that generates electricity that can activate an ion propulsion system.  The nuclear reactor, particularly if its fission/fusion will last a long long time.   But even ion propulsion requires some sort of propellant.   

The Sun itself can propel things using solar sails…but we are never going to transit long dark portions of the galaxy where there is little energy from a star, let alone, between galaxies.  But it doesn’t matter…the distances between stars is great enough to make this an impossibility in any useful time scale for us humans.

Traveling the galaxy on a planet or in a star is the way to do it.  Even an asteroid would be too small.  When a planet from outside our solar system enters our solar system, we are being visited.

3) Space/Time Physics

The radio astronomers in Bishop California, the facility that belongs to Caltech, I think Jody Foster and Carl Sagan's book Contact will be the first to tell you that they're not searching for alien life. They're working towards making better and better maps of the universe with a secondary mission to contribute to studying gravity waves and the bending of space time. Not only will they be able to see deep into the universe and create images they will be able to exclusively time the arrival of energy from these distant objects with such.  Precision there will be able to correlate it back to other observatories that search for the feeling of gravitational waves as they make their way across the universe.  Forty years ago it was SETI.  Now, it’s to firmly establish the physics of space time.  Corroborate Einstein, or debunk him.  Feels like he will be corroborated.

Plus…we are a very advanced civilization…however, most advanced civilizations, like us, will have depleted the resources on their planet in a few thousand years.  If they progress, according to the laws of physics, if they are lucky, they will have an earth sized planet circling next to them…another Earth like heaven that was slow to develop a civilization that would eat their planet…  something just like earth, close by, with nothing more than a few dinosaurs, something easily dealt with, or not that easy, like an Avatar civilization that can fight back..   A planet we could pillage for another few thousand years while we get our act together…  With a third planet, that the aliens could rape, for another period of a few thousands years, before beginning to leap frog through their local galaxy…until they could harness an asteroid, and then, perhaps a planet, and then a very small sun,  and then a larger sun, and then maybe a tiny black hole…it will take space/time physics to be harnessed if there ever will be visitors…It took us 14 Billion years to get to the point where we even understand and can consider the possibilities.  It will not  happen any faster anywhere else.  

4) Math.  

The universe is so big it defies human understanding.  14 billion light years across, and we may be off by 2x based on some recent work.  It’s helpful to write all those zeros out.  Here goes, 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.  That’s a 40 with 19 zeros after it.   

I can’t imagine numbers that large.  One look at the deep space field from the Hubble telescope should give you that impression as well.  And then multiply  by a thousand when you see the same deep field images from the new James Webb telescope.  In a few years, hopefully,  images will be processed by the  DSA 2000.  DSA 2000 will be the largest radio telescope ever constructed.  So big, with so much data, that it will actually make images from radio waves.   It’s not magic.  They just use a lot of processing, a lot of data, a lot of math, and ten minutes of a supercomputer's time for each image. 

  

Not unlike how images of the first black hole were constructed -- a lot of images and a lot of processing time.  It's important to note that the scientists from CalTech building the DSA 2000 in Bishop California,  will not be searching for ET, unlike the scientists who built the radio telescope in Arecibo who were looking for extraterrestrial life, most scientists have given up on this pursuit.  They haven’t given up on life, or the possibility of first contact in the local galaxy, they certainly have given up on the possibility of a visit.    The universe is too big.  China built a bigger one. They will not have any luck.   The  scientists at Bishop, however, will be imaging the universe as well as assisting the science into  gravitational waves.  Other sensors will be feeling around for events that cause warping in space time, and when they literally feel that happen, the DSA 2000 will be able to measure the timing sensing the stretching of space time by timing the reception of radio emissions.  This  are very physical things and physical things can be described by physical laws that we can measure and captivity using that math

Since there are billions of galaxies, there is a change. Webb had 13 billion years.  

So the real inconsistency is that the only way to do it was considered by Carl Sagen already.  Something like a machine that pushes us through space time…it’s not a spaceship at all.   It’s some sort of portal where we can communicate…with another species.   So no aliens…  could we be talking with aliens…and thus could they have found a way to send us instructions to communicate with them…   That is more probable than spaceships…   It wouldn’t look like a flying  saucer…

5) Social Science

There are no secrets.  It’s hard enough for anyone to keep a secret, let alone there be a collusion amongst governments to keep the secret of worldwide research into the existence of aliens by multiple governments, across decades, in the can.   This is either the greatest secret ever kept, or the solution is somewhat simpler.   There is no secret.  I personally prefer the simpler solution.  Since the movie “Men in Black” depict MIB as a secret organization with flashy things that make people who leave MIB forget, or lose their memory of all things alien, I guess we should believe those exist, because that’s literally what it would take.  Through the decades, thousands of people, ultimately, must be in the know.  But, we still don't have a shed of proof.  The reason is so simple.   There is no evidence because there are no aliens.  And why is it a secret, to begin with?  Because if the population actually knew of their existence, we would lose our collective shit? It’s interesting that MIB treats both of those symptoms.  They have a magic flashy device that erases memories, thereby helping keep the secret.  And…the world is always about to end, at the hands of these aliens, thus it must remain a secret, otherwise the population would lose its collective shit.  So not only must MIB exist, they also must be highly effective because they have, in fact, kept the world safe.  We have not been destroyed.  

So, friends and family, no aliens. Sorry.  The rest of you.  Think what you want, but, and I’m glad to quote Elon Musk on this one, “no aliens”.

I Was Canx'd by Amazon - The Shit-Heads

Well, after many years (since 1998) and 125 book reviews written (and over 360 books purchased from them), I was cancelled by Amazon. What a bunch of shit-heads.  Or maybe it's their AI?  No explaining other than I violated community standards.  The only thing I've been able to figure out is that I called UBL (Usama Bin Laden) a douche bag who deserved to die.   Yes, if that's hate speech, I violated community standards.  I'll concede it is hate speech, but I can't think of another human who deserves hate speech as well as a bullet in the brain (which I'm glad he received). To say anything different wouldn't be American.

I'm assuming that's the reason, I said it twice, in two separate book reviews specifically about, the killing of OBL by special forces.  One by the Seal involved in his killing (No Easy Day), and one by the Navy Admiral who set the killing in motion (Sea Stories).

I intend to pursue Amazon to speak to me about censoring me or I will use this platform to speak out about Amazon, the shit-heads. I also will slowly and painfully repost 25 years of work here on this blog.

24 Nov update -- I've posted 95 reviews on the link below, but you can find most of them to the right.  I found 32 more and have appeared to have lost 5 but I will keep searching.   So of the original 125 lost to Amazon...I will be reposting 127.  The math is weird because I found 8 reviews I never posted!  Bonus!!

Here is my checklist...

Dec 11 update - All done.  127 book reviews posted.  Enjoy.

Mooch's Book Reviews

https://moochbookreviews.blogspot.com/

The Fear of No Oil Pressure

Everyone knows I'm afraid to fly.  That's no secret. I've detailed the six phobias that contribute to my fear elsewhere.  I had the opportunity to fly in a helicopter the other day. Could I be brave and take that ride?  I typically summon the courage to do things like that because my internal risk-analysis tells me my fear can be overcome when there is any opportunity to learn something important or do something cool. But the math works only if I take the risk one time.  Risk accrues after multiple exposures to the chancy behavior; the law of large numbers applies. But I believe in Toby Keith and therefore, as he might say, ”I'm not as [brave] as I once was, but I’m as [brave] once, as I ever was”.  Helicopters, however, enjoy a special place in my personal Parthenon of phobias because I took engineering dynamics in college.  We did the math in class on the material strength necessary for the central hub of a helicopter's main rotor to stay intact during flight.  Suffice to say the central hub of a helicopter's main rotor experiences hellish stress.  It's one of those things that shouldn't be possible and it's clear to me that one of the gifts from our alien zoo-keepers must have been the design of that central hub.  As I think back to that dynamics class, my professor (name and address withheld) looked like an alien with soda bottle glasses.  A weak disguise if you've ever seen "Men in Black".  I know the aliens were laughing when they gave us that design.  They were probably thinking and chuckling amongst themselves, let's see what these idiots do with this! (Insert alien emoji for LMFAAO!)

If you study the history of helicopter design, and the multiple engineering problems that had to be solved, and continue to be solved, most people would never set foot in a helicopter.  I don't want to be a hater...but helicopters just shouldn't be able to fly.  But fly is a bad word.  They don't really fly.  They are called rotary-wing aircraft because before the rotary-wing aircraft, there were fixed wing aircraft.  And those motherfuckers dominate the air domain.  As Malcolm Gladwell would say, “Winner Takes All”.  So the fixed-wing world dominated the lexicon. Thus we have rotary-wing aircraft.  Perhaps rightfully so.  These newcomers, the rotary-wing set, don't respect the air and they shouldn't be allowed to use the word fly.  The community calls them choppers.  They don't fly.  They chop.  I'll try to explain that later but first some background.  

The history of choppers does indeed date back to the same time frame as the Wright brothers were using the Bernoulli principle to design their Wright Flyer in 1903. This would be an aircraft that actually flys.  Over in France, another bicycle builder (just like the Wright Brothers)  who was no doubt trying to find a way to win Le Tour de France by cheating, was a Romanian engineer named Paul Cornu.  He is credited with the first helicopter that lifted off the ground.  Solving all the design problems with this truly unconventional way to slip the surly bonds of earth took another twenty years. In 1923, Thomas Edison, who earlier had built a helicopter design of his own for the US government--but never flew it because he was a smart man--gave credit to George de Bothezat, another Romanian, for the first real helicopter that worked.  It would take another twenty years with credit given to Igor Sikorsky and Arthur Young (at Bell), for solving many of the hard problems and integrating their solutions into usable designs that could be mass produced. The Henry Fords of the helicopter age were finally upon us.  That was in the 1940's, with the necessity of war upon us, that their two designs, the Sikorsky R-4 for military purposes and the Bell R-47 for commercial, made helicopters a real thing.

Now something philosophical.  You know when you are flying in an airplane. This goes without saying.  There are so many indicators of flight. You're strapped in your seat.  You hear the roar of the engines spinning up.  You feel the forward motion of the jet as the pilot pushes up the throttle and you are pushed back in your seat.  You sense the acceleration as physics pushes against the inertia of your fat-ass and you begin gaining speed; faster and faster and faster, until the wings of the aircraft begin feeling the effects of Bernoulli--the higher pressure of slower moving air beneath the wings, pushing up into the lower pressure of the faster moving air on the top of the wing.  The nose of the aircraft comes up. The wheels leave the ground and retract.  And then you are pointed to the sky, moving faster and faster until you begin leveling out and you hear the chime. The pilot turned on the Wifi at about 10,000 feet.  At that point you forget  that you are hurtling along at 500 mph in an aluminum death tube.  Hearing that chime means you can log-on to your Android and check to see if anyone has sent you pictures of puppies on Instagram.

Recently--and the point of our story today--I had a chance to fly in a helicopter.  I got to sit in the cockpit to see what it really was like to take off in this machine I swore, since my engineering class, I would neve set foot in.  So, there I was, sitting between the two pilots and watching the events unfurl.   Lift off in a helicopter is completely different from an airplane.  First, engine run-up is very strange.  The cockpit looks similar to an aircraft but don’t let it fool you.  Yes, a lot of buttons and lighted switches…in modern craft expect to see glass screens, like iPad touch screens made to look like analog gauges with icons made to look like real touch switches. The pilots are coordinating with one another and running their checklist.  That doesn’t change.  They are checking all the mission systems and consulting their numerous screens, dials, and gauges.  To me, it was telling, however, when the aviator in the left seat (the one in charge) had a singular focus on oil pressure.  He called out the oil pressure multiple times.  Almost as if, the single most crucial element of a safe flight, is the successful maintenance of the oil pressure of the system.  That immediately struck me as new but also made complete sense.  The system, I thought, is a giant spinning fan.  The spinning of the rotor blades has to be maintained if flight is going to be successfully achieved. The rotors themselves are wings, with the Bernoulli principle in play.  As the blade spins the higher pressure below the blade pushes up on the lower pressure of the faster moving air over the top…lift is what it’s called when that happens. The spinning of the rotary wing, however, is a very deliberate and a very mechanical thing.  Mechanical things require lubrication.  An aircraft with fixed wings, on the other hand, can achieve some level of flying success, by just gliding.  If wings have motion in the air, they still have lift. No motor required.  There is no lift produced in a rotary-wing aircraft if the rotors stop turning.  Oil to keep the mechanical system spinning seems critical. For the love of God please maintain the oil pressure, I thought silently. Particularly if I’m on board.  I imagine on future flights, my friend, the pilot, may post a sticker on his tail bumper that reads, “Coward on Board”.  Nevertheless, maintain the Goddamn oil pressure please!

So the second thing I noticed, as the main rotor began to turn, was that the helicopter began to vibrate.  Vibrate is another bad word.  The helicopter began to shake violently.  The entire craft was being buffeted by the main rotor as the weight of the blades began to turn.  Up and down the massive blades shift their weight 360 degrees around the aircraft as they slowly spin up.  As they spin faster, the helicopter body strains beneath as that weight of, not just one blade, but four ginormous blades.  They slowly lurch around the alien provided central hub as they begin to gain speed shifting their weight around as they go.  If you happen to be in a helicopter with two main rotors, as I was (a CH-47 Chinook),  this weight shifting is occurring during the front rotor spin up as well as the back rotor spin up.  That a total of eight ginormous blades shifting their weight all around the rosy of yet a second alien rotor hub.  Every part on the helicopter was shaking and the noise from the engine and rotor blades became deafening despite the fact that I was wearing foam ear plugs along with aviator headphones tightly packed in place beneath the flight helmet I was wearing. I already had a headache, not to mention a neck ache.   Since I was connected to the intercom, I was able to hear the pilot's voice above the din and violent shaking, the words he was saying were easy to make out as he was continuously providing the one piece of useful information I wanted to always hear: "The oil pressure looks good".  Check.  Was he talking to someone?  Or was he reassuring himself?  I, for one, was glad to hear it.

As the violent shaking continued and increased, I watched the extent of the vibration with what can only be described as a vibrational measuring stick.  The Chinook I was in is equipped with an aerial refueling probe.  This probe is thick, perhaps 15 inches in diameter and at least 60 feet long (That's what she said).  This refueling probe doesn't extend beyond the tip of the main rotor that spins above it.  I have questions regarding the ability of these helicopters to refuel, in flight, but those will have to wait.  At the moment, as we shook violently, the tip of that probe was moving in the vertical up and down direction by as much as two feet...or maybe more.  I was hypnotized by the sight.  The violent vibrations were unnerving. Apart from the millions of thoughts flooding my brain as well as the physical sensation of neck pain, caused by the weight of my helmet, equipped with Night Vision Goggles or NVGs--seemingly designed to maximize my torture--came one weird thought.  When I saw the long refueling probe slapping up and down like Lexington Steele’s dick on a PornHub video, I was thinking, what the everlasting fuck?  Mechanical systems cannot vibrate like this...at least not for very long.  It felt like we would shake completely apart and there were only seconds left. As I was preparing for the worst something truly amazing happened.  I could feel the rotors above me taking control of the creature I was now sitting in.  As they reached a rotational speed close to their operational level, they were now in charge.  The two gigantic rotary systems above me transformed into two huge winged gyroscopes.  The helicopter was not yet flying but the rotors were.  They had taken flight and were now governing the mechanics of everything.  The noise I was hearing subsided, the vibration stopped, and I checked the Lexington Steel gauge out in front of me. The probe had become rock steady, pointing the way forward.   The mechanical system was now in its true designed state, the beast was alive, it was large and in charge.  Two giant counter-rotating masses of kinetic energy stabilizing the entire system.  Our frame of reference was now governed by the rotational mass of those two spinning weights and their winged chop into the air.  The feeling was similar to when a wave catches the surfer beneath their board, you are surfing.  Or when the wind fills the sail of a sailboat, you are sailing.  Now, with the rotors in charge, we were not flying yet, but doing something else altogether.   This is not a flight.  Not even close.  It's something else, I have yet to define.  The closest thing I have experienced is when racing a motorcycle at high lean angles.  With two giant gyroscopes for rims and tires, governing the coordinate frame of a racing bike, particularly on the up and down twisting roads in the mountains of western Virginia, gravity ceases to be a thing. The gyroscopes govern the physics of your motion. It’s why you can take the high vertical wall at Daytona and stay in the seat, even though, in motorcycle riding parlance we always say, “keep the rubber-side down”. Trust me, when you are on a banked surface at a high lean angle, the rubber is not in the down direction according to gravity, it’s at some other weird angle defying gravity.  Now, with the rotor system in full life it was clear to me what rotary-wing flying was all about.  We were about to go for a ride in a gyroscope.  I had no fear.  The beast had me in its grip. We were stable and solid as a rock.  We were chopping.   And then I heard the pilot say, "Oil pressure looks good". Check.

A few more calls on the radio, and we were ready to start moving. This is no airplane.  When lift-off occurs, there is no sensation whatsoever of flying.  If you are not paying attention, you wouldn't even know you have left the ground.  If the ascent is slow enough, you wouldn't even know it even when you are looking out the window.  You just start lifting.  It's much more akin to being in an elevator.  You are just being lifted up.   But it would be more like  "Charley's Great Glass Elevator'' from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. You don't just go up and down.  You get to go sideways and forward and backward.   It doesn't matter.  A helicopter is free from the surly bonds of earth, but not covered by Bernoulli’s requirement to get lift over an aircraft's wings using constant forward motion--like a shark requires constant motion so water moves across its gills to breathe--a helicopter needs none of that.  It’s making its own lift.  And since it brings its own lift, it brings its own physics and reference frame. A helicopter gets to do what it wants to do in the air...beholden to nothing.   Except oil pressure. Check.

Later while heading home, I deeply considered the many differences between rotary-wing flight, and fix-winged flight.  Fixed-wing flight requires the momentary use of the air as the wing passes through it.   It’s a very subtle and passing thing, unless the air is angry and you have turbulence.  If you look out at the wing of an aircraft on a calm clear day, the wing is motionless as it passes through the invisible ether.  It’s almost polite in some way.  Perhaps wings are actually Canadians in their nature.  The wing is probably apologizing to the air, or at least thanking the air for being there, as it passes by enabling it to slip the surly bonds of Earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings, as well as touch the face of God. To paraphrase John Gillespie's gorgeous poem about High Flight once more.  Rotary-wing aircraft do nothing of the sort.  There is no slipping the surly bonds of Earth as politely as their fixed-wing Canadian brethren.  They are not in the same family whatsoever.  The helicopter is the black sheep, the rude Cousin Eddie who shows up for Christmas.   Helicopters, with their rotary wings are not polite Canadians, rather they are most clearly, and without apology, rude.  Rotary-wing aircraft make the air their bitch.  To me, it is clear, that is what chopping is all about and that is what choppers do.

But now, as we lifted off the ground, straight up, without the sensation of flying, I can no longer say it’s flying and that I am fearful of it.  I may be fearful of chopping, but I haven’t decided yet. I had no fear of lifting straight up…as I watched the ground recede beneath us.  There was no sense of flying, I couldn’t even tell we were going up. It was more like floating…also a bad word.  And as we moved forward, there was very little sense of that forward motion either.  Had I not been looking out, I might not have sensed we were moving at all.  We belonged to the gyro’s spinning above us.  We were in their reference frame.  Now, I was in a very big helicopter, so perhaps it is a far more stable ride, but my sense is that it has to be similar to other choppers, it’s the same physics at work.   It now became clear why helicopters can hover and fly so close to each other in formation, etc.  They are not constrained by this requirement to move continuously forward to maintain flight.   If you can control the winged gyros that make the air their bitch you get to do what you want to do.

We moved down the runway, and now I’m not sure why there is a runway, yet another artifact from the fixed wing community.  Helicopters don’t need such things. We proceeded on our way.   We were scheduled to fly about 30 minutes and so far the experience was awesome…not in the Mountain Dew fueled sense of the word when adrenaline is in play, but awesome nonetheless.  As we left the runway and headed into the desert, I kept moving my eyes between looking out of the NVGs at the terrain before me and flipping them up to see the avionics in the cockpit.  Later I adjusted them to look up and out with my eyes to see through the NVG’s and then simply look  down with my eyes to see the screens looking below the NVGs.   Without them, it was pitch black, I couldn’t see a thing.  Darkness doesn’t bother fixed wing pilots because they are going to quickly climb away from the ground (a source of impact they want to avoid) and use their instruments to fly.  They have to do this because they have to know how to fly in the clouds anyway.  And when they land they know there is going to be lighting on the runway.  Helicopter pilots are going to fly much lower…thus seeing the ground and obstacles in the way becomes very important.  I’m happy to report that over the past several decades we have come a long way in the design of NVGs to the point where darkness ceases to be a problem. With the NVGs I could see the entire desert floor, runway, and valley beyond, all the way to the mountains, as clearly as I could during the day.  Maybe better.   When I looked up at the sky, without the NVGs, I couldn’t see a single star with my naked eye. There was minimal light pollution in the desert--but we had a hazy sky that night.  I couldn’t see many stars, they were still almost invisible to my eyes.  However, with the NCG’s on,  the number of stars in the sky became biblical.  Too many stars to count.  Impossible.  I was transfixed by the brightness of the night sky beneath the NVGS, and couldn’t stop staring at it.  Picking out my favorite constellation, Orion’s belt, was impossible amongst the billions and billions of them now within my field of view.  Our alien zoo-keepers are safe, we will never find them amongst that many stars.  And as God said to Abraham, Genesis 15:5,  “Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them”.  I was not.

So we were chopping….we lifted off to about 500 feet above the desert floor and simply moved forward.  Like a giant box in the sky we just moved along.  I had more of the sensation of drifting, or floating along.  It’s hard to define.  It wasn’t drifting or floating, it was like Wonka’s fictional elevator, but it wasn’t fiction, I was inside. We were simply deliberately moving in the direction the pilot desired, albeit, 500 feet off the ground.  Or higher, as we went to 1000 feet, or lower, we simply went down.  As we tracked across the desert, it was also clear we were affected by the wind, much more than a fixed wing aircraft….in that sense, we were more like a balloon, drifting at the discretion of the wind, but not really, the pilots had full control.  The ground trace of our track in a thirty-knot cross-wind had the nose pointing 35 degrees to the right of our direction of flight.   The pilots seemed unconcerned about the ground passing beneath us at such an odd angle because their rotors had us in their reference frame and on the right course.

Apart from this odd angle a few more things occurred to me.  Like helicopters don’t care about what’s happening in front of them…fixed-wing aircraft have to constantly predict the future…where they will be and what time they are getting there.  They have to know their speed and time of flight  and they have to know in advance that a runway that they can see will be waiting there to greet them when they land.  Helicopters do not have such constraints.  If something is in their way, they can simply stop. They can, in a very real sense, go backward in time.  A luxury not afforded to the fixed-wing community. Fixed-wing pilots are made or broken simply based on their ability to work issues in advance of the timeframe they are permitted to take action.  Fixed-wing jet aircraft pilots who land fast on aircraft carriers have perhaps the most rigorous checklist: they must work fast, in order to land safely and screw up their spinal column.  That’s a special skill and physically demanding.  Helicopter pilots have the luxury of time. This ability to reset the clock and move backward in time is of extreme value.  The capability is so valuable, the fix-wing community has tried for decades to bring some of this magic to their side.  Their failures are legion.  The Harrier is perhaps the most successful of these efforts.  A fixed wing aircraft that can hover and take off vertically.  The Osprey V-22 has certainly gained traction over the past 20 years, but it took years to work out the engineering.   It’s still not clear that the V-22 is superior to a Chinook.  I think most of the community has sided with the Chinook.  The maintenance requirements of that tilt-rotor aircraft, not to mention simply the sketchiness of its design has yet to win favor in most of the flight community--fixed-wing or rotary-wing.  And of course, last but not least, the F-35B, the version being built for the USMC has the ability to take off and land vertically….somewhat. However, it’s a very precarious operation and not for the faint of heart.  That is not to say that chopping doesn’t mean risk. If the rotor’s fail, there is no gliding down on silver wings.  It’s a straight drop out of never-land right to the ground.  And that’s a jolt that would exceed the tolerance of your spinal column.  Hence, the rotors must spin.  Check the oil pressure.  Protect that oil pressure like the front wheel of your bicycle while riding in the peloton. Without your front wheel, you are no longer a bicycle.  Without oil pressure, you are no longer a helicopter. 

After a long career in the USAF, where the mantra has always been, flexibility is the key to airpower, I have now been introduced to another form of airpower that, seemingly, does not have to play by the same rules. Even at the very end of my flight, I was introduced to this flexibility.  As we came in on our approach for landing, again on the runway…all the terminology was set up to conform to the requirement for fixed-wing aircraft.  You must be cleared for landing, you must enter the pattern, and do so with perfect timing, so as not to interfere with others entering the pattern or those in the process of landing and taking off.  Each one predicting in advance where they will be in the next few seconds, while their brethren do the same.  So as the helicopter enters the pattern, it doesn’t have to set up a decent profile, to stay in their glide slope.  White over white, you're high as a kite, etc.  The helicopter simply descends.  Then as we entered the pattern, this time to fly beside the runway to land from the direction the control tower indicated, I braced for what I knew would be the worst, getting to the break, breaking left, then descending rapidly, into the landing pattern for landing. In a fixed-wing aircraft this maneuver will typically impart negative g forces on my stomach, this is what makes your middle ear tweak and you end up getting nauseous.  No such thing in a helicopter, unless you are prone to sickness in an elevator.  No negative g’s and were already close to the ground.   And do we continue in the pattern to approach the runway from the end directed by the tower?  Hell no!  Once cleared to land, the runway belongs to us…we stop the journey to the end runway and simply turn to the left, hop across the runway at its midsection, turn our nose in the direction of the required landing, and drop straight down to land. By making the air its bitch, bringing Bernoulli with you, helicopters cheat flight and most of its daunting requirements.

I still have other phobias that might inhibit me from future helicopter rides.  I like being in control, I’m still afraid of heights, and I am claustrophobic. But the experience was so different from that of flying, I can’t call it fear of flying, if later I am inhibited.  Regardless, it was an awesome ride, and I must rescind any negative thoughts, real or imagined, about the world of rotary-wing aviation.  I still think aliens gave us the technology to build helicopters.  But I am glad they did, and perhaps, they are no longer laughing at us. But now I have a new phobia...the fear of no oil pressure...

An Art, Not a Science

 

With a title as bold as “The Art of Intelligence” Henry Crumpton is trifling with the orthodoxy of warfare by riffing on Sun Tzu’s  timeless classic, “The Art of War”.   To say he is the best theorist to describe the art of intelligence to an intelligence expert, let alone a student of intelligence, or even a lay person, would be to cast shade on the heretofore already deeply understood notion in statecraft, that in war, beyond the Clausewitzian doctrine that demands logistics as the foundation for all we do,  he has given us an understanding that both the fog of war (also Clausewitz), as well as what Sun Tzu has told us, “to know our enemy” brings intelligence to the fore of everything that happens in warfare.  The best news about this book is that Crumpton isn’t just theorizing about intelligence.  He was an operator with a full career doing the things that intelligence persons do.  He is an authority on what he writes.  As always, however, speaking about actual intelligence, and intelligence operations, collection, and reporting, remains a sticky subject because of the need to protect everything about it.  The art itself, often described as tradecraft, is a closely guarded secret.  The sources and methods required to obtain intelligence, as well as the intelligence itself, often called by various names based on how it was collected, IMINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, MASINT etc. is highly classified.  Most of the time declassification cannot occur until 75 years into the future.  That perhaps is an arbitrary number of years, nevertheless, that is the length of time our Country has deemed the sensitivity of classified information must remain in the dark.  That means, for those able to quickly do math in their head, things classified in 1948 should soon be reaching the light of day.  Things have changed significantly in the past 75 years, so those hoping to learn about modern day intelligence, should not be looking for secrets in this book.  Rather, they should read this book with an eye towards what intelligence means in the general sense.  Basically, stealing secrets from our adversaries.  Wishing to reveal that which our adversaries do not wish to reveal about their preparations for war, and more importantly, revealing to us their intentions, specifically the intentions, as George Orwell has been attributed as saying, of those who wish to do us harm.

With that said up front, Crumpton has succeeded in giving us a pertinent view into the machine that produces intelligence.  Some may disagree.  Others will bemoan the very notion that spying is somehow a noble endeavor, believing that no one should keep secrets from anyone.  We should live in an open society and all activities related to intelligence are so nefarious as to strike at the core of what should not be allowed to exist in a free world.  That naivete will not be addressed today.  A free country will not remain free if it doesn't prepare for, and seek out, the information about threats, both foreign and domestic, that strive to remove that freedom from us. Topically, we failed to heed the known threats coming from Vladimir Putin, and the hard fought freedoms of the people of Ukraine and now in a battle for their lives.  It has been the nature of war since the inception of human society that aggressors exist.  We must always prepare.

Intelligence is hard work.  It doesn’t come for free.  It can’t be passive.  It must be active.  Always looking and always listening.  Attempting to figure out in the complex machine of human endeavor what is happening and why.  It starts with the human eyeball and is as simple as the effective sound bite attempting to combat terrorism, “if you see something, say something”.  That is, in the simplest of terms, what intelligence is all about.  Discovering something and reporting on it. It’s not glamorous. It requires both vigilance and endurance.  We’ve tried to automate the tedium of discovery with technology.   Crumpton reminds us that the best intelligence comes from human’s in the know that reveal what is really going on.  And that requires human to human relations. Our intelligence operatives are not the spies as we might believe. The spies are the human’s in other countries who must be recruited by our operatives and turned into willing sources of information about their people, their organizations, and their countries.  The art of intelligence is, at its core, the way in which we must turn those in other countries against themselves, in essence to become traitors to their own flag.  It is not an easy business.  That is what Crumpton has made his career and for which every American should be grateful.  That is what Crumpton has written down for us…as much as he could…and he succeeds in giving us a recipe for what it takes.

In the first half of his book he describes this art from the training of operatives, the recruiting of spies, how collecting is done and then reported.  In the second half of his book he demonstrates in the real world, though the scenario we are well too familiar with, the intelligence failing to detect the threat from Al Qaeda and the subsequent attacks on 9/11.  He follows through with the intelligence necessary to conduct the war in Afghanistan, the pursuit of Al Qaeda and in the epilogue, the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his subsequent death.

He also devotes a chapter to the art of diplomacy with other countries requiring the participation and close alliance with the State Department.  In a particularly insightful chapter he takes on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and explains the difference between the two organizations.  He explains how they are similar and should cooperate more openly, but more importantly he describes how they are dissimilar, and must be for a reason, but that which has led continuously to a misunderstanding of how the two organizations can work in concert can be at odds with one another.  Nevertheless both organizations are maligned for the work they do in favor of freedom by Bozos  who can’t fathom how  critical both organizations are to the existence of the freedoms they enjoy. Those Bozo’s should read this book.

I am going to give Crumpton Four-Stars for this book.  Yes he is bold with the title yet a book of this sort simply doesn’t exist.  With a little back-ground on the subject it is easier for many to fill in the holes where we have knowledge.  It helps to know a few things and therefore acknowledge that Crumpton is right on the money.  For those who do not, whereas I don’t agree with their criticisms, I hope they find other ways to build their knowledge to understand that Crumpton has deep experience in the things for which he speaks.  And it is an art, not a science.  We are better for these practitioners of this crucial art and can hinge our way of life on the existence of these fine Americans.