The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Universe — or Nothing, by Meyer Moldeven

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Title: The Universe — or Nothing

Author: Meyer Moldeven

Release Date: April 25, 2006 [eBook #18257]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNIVERSE — OR NOTHING***

Copyright 1984 Meyer Moldeven

THE UNIVERSE — or nothing

by Meyer Moldeven

Copyright 1984 Meyer Moldeven [email protected] This work is under a Creative Commons License.

Table Of Contents

 THE UNIVERSE — or nothing
 Table Of Contents
 About Meyer Moldeven
 Also by Meyer Moldeven
 The Preface
 The Prologue
 Chapter ONE
 Chapter TWO
 Chapter THREE
 Chapter FOUR
 Chapter FIVE
 Chapter SIX
 Chapter SEVEN
 Chapter EIGHT
 Chapter NINE
 Chapter TEN
 Chapter ELEVEN
 Chapter TWELVE
 Chapter THIRTEEN
 Chapter FOURTEEN
 Chapter FIFTEEN
 Chapter SIXTEEN
 Chapter SEVENTEEN
 Chapter EIGHTEEN
 Chapter NINETEEN
 Chapter TWENTY
 Chapter TWENTY-ONE
 Chapter TWENTY-TWO
 Chapter TWENTY-THREE
 Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
 Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
 Chapter TWENTY-SIX
 Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
 Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
 Chapter TWENTY-NINE
 Chapter THIRTY
 Chapter THIRTY-ONE
 Chapter THIRTY-TWO
 Chapter THIRTY-THREE
 Chapter THIRTY-FOUR
 Chapter THIRTY-FIVE
 Chapter THIRTY-SIX
 Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
 Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
 Chapter THIRTY-NINE
 Chapter FORTY
 Chapter FORTY-ONE
 Chapter FORTY-TWO
 Chapter FORTY-THREE
 Chapter FORTY-FOUR
 Chapter FORTY-FIVE
 Chapter FORTY-SIX
 Epilogue
 Afterwords
 Appendix
 The References
 Words With(Out) Diacritics
 Creative Commons License
 about "zen markup language"

About Meyer Moldeven

Meyer (Mike) Moldeven was a civilian logistics technician with the United States Air Force from 1941 until 1974. He was an aircraft emergency survival equipment specialist in the Pacific Area during World War II and a technical writer for several years afterwards. During the Cold War he transferred to a USAF base in North Africa where he developed logistics plans for USAF-NATO emergency maintenance of disabled aircraft that would land along the North African coast after returning from missions in any future war with the USSR. During the U.S. post-Sputnik initiatives to create a national space program, he critiqued aerospace industries' logistics concepts on future space systems organization, infrastructure and support. Among the studies he critiqued was 'Space Logistics, Operations, Maintenance and Rescue' (Project SLOMAR). During the Viet Nam War, he was the senior civilian in the Inspector General's Office at McClellan Air Force Base, a major logistics installation near Sacramento, California. As part of his 'added' duties during 'Viet Nam' Mike was a hotline volunteer in a suicide prevention center and consequently, an advocate for professionally-staffed 'suicide prevention' capabilities throughout the entire Department of Defense. He compiled documentation, published, and widely distributed copies of his book, "Military-Civilian Teamwork in Suicide Prevention" (1971, 1985 and 1994.) Mike's updated essay on suicide prevention in the U.S. Armed Forces has been included in his collection of memoirs, "Hot War/Cold War — Back-of-the-Lines Logistics", which is at: http://hometown.aol.com/yarnspinner7191/ myhomepage/military.html

Also by Meyer Moldeven

                 Military-Civilian Teamwork in Suicide Prevention
                 Write Stories to Me, Grandpa!
                 A Grandpa's Notebook

The Preface

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." — Dr. Robert H. Goddard

"There is no way back into the past; the choice, as H. G. Wells once said, is the universe — or nothing. Though men and civilizations may yearn for rest, for the dream of the lotus-eaters, that is a desire that merges imperceptibly into death. The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close." — Arthur C. Clarke

The Prologue

The Present

A conclusion in the Report to the Club of Rome: The Limits to Growth states: "…within a time span of less than 100 years with no major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships that have traditionally governed world development, society will run out of the nonrenewable resources on which the industrial base depends. When the resources have been depleted, a precipitous collapse of the economic system will result, manifested in massive unemployment, decreased food production, and a decline in population as the death rate soars. There is no smooth transition, no gradual slowing down of activity; rather, the economic system consumes successively larger amounts of the depletable resources until they are gone. The characteristic behavior of the system is overshoot and collapse."

Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, in Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century (Crown Publishers, New York 1991) reports how industrialized and developed nations exploit the sea beds of the world for their rich deposits of industrial minerals and metals. He notes that the struggle between rich and poor nations and multinational corporations over minerals in the vast oceanic seabed is likely to be heated in the years to come, especially as reserves of land-based minerals approach exhaustion.

News media reported in October 2000 that the People's Republic of China announced plans to explore Earth's moon for useful substances. On October 15, 2003 the PRC launched into Earth orbit its first manned rocket.

In a speech on January 14, 2004 the President of the United States of America unveiled a new vision for space exploration. He called on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to "…gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own."

"We do not know where this journey will end," said the President, "yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos." White House Press Release,