Backbone > Panet Waves
Mother of Invention
by Eric Francis; Illustration by Emil Alzamora

Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as the newborn Aquarius New Moon and an odd collection of planets arose Saturday morning over Texas. Disaster came during the astrology of a magnificent and unusual beginning, a moment of invention and innovation, not a sad ending. So it seems truly strange that what we witnessed had such a sense of loss and finality. But it did not surprise me. Months ago, when I saw the chart—wherein a cluster of planets had gathered around the New Moon—I thought, this chart is about big news. And then, that morning, Columbia came in like a human meteor, shattering and raining debris above the president’s personal ranch.

The loss of Columbia marks a point of change that is way too large to see now. We are still too close to the event to see the process of history clearly. It may be difficult to see even in hindsight, with Columbia only vaguely associated with the sequence of events it triggers. The astrology tells us more of the story than any speech or NASA investigation. These things exist for one reason only, which is to obscure a deeper truth that’s a little too harrowing for most people to sit with. Most of us recognize that television is a drug that obscures the way we feel, and allows us to overdose on raw blunt fear.

I introduced the topic of the Feb. 1 New Moon in my Jan. 24 weekly newsletter. Here is how I portrayed it: “On the first day of February, there is a New Moon in Aquarius. Astrologers will notice that it’s in a close conjunction to Neptune. The basic elements are: Sun, Moon, Neptune, Aquarius: this could be describing a social process of some kind, what you might think of as an activation of the effects of slow-moving Neptune (illusion, delusion, drugs, denial, mysticism, compassion, spirituality, and the power of images on the subconscious—such as television and film) in Aquarius (the population, collective ideals, ideals in general, the mass media, the intellect, group thought, the Internet). Neptune in Aquarius, which began in the late ’90s, vibrates with idealism and reeks of false ideals. True, there is always a mass brainwashing campaign underway, but we might expect to see some kind of change or shift when a New Moon shows up right there.”

It was a truly unusual combination of planets that were activated during that lunation. Added to the mix were Asbolus, a recently-discovered Centaur planet with the ability to see through psychic fog of the kind so often described by old Neptune, and with associations to manipulation and magic: television, for example. And there was Hidalgo, who helps us see through complicated, usually invisible systems of cultural lies. Icarus was also an extremely powerful influence, and when I checked back NASA charts to the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967, Icarus kept appearing prominently again and again. Icarus is the mythological figure who devises wings to fly out of a labyrinth in which he’s been trapped by the king. But he flies too high and falls into the sea. In the Feb. 1 New Moon chart, Icarus is in an exact conjunction to Mercury—exact to one 60th of a degree.

Something fell to Earth. At the same time, A layer had been peeled back from the façade of the world. We suddenly had an image of the times in which we live, where ''routine'' space travel turns out to be not so routine. This was clearly not good news for politicians. No terrorist could be implicated. Don Nelson, a NASA veteran with an impeccable reputation, who was involved with the Shuttle program since its inception, was on the air. He was saying that prior to retirement he had warned the space agency repeatedly about the need for an escape system as the Shuttle fleet grew older, and that he had never been more concerned about the safety of astronauts. The report about the chunk of debris hitting the left wing during lift-off leaked to NBC. The compulsory patriotism that has gripped the media since 9/11 was nowhere to be seen. There was a cultural process in action.

But reading, and reading, there were big pieces missing from the story.
I knew I had to talk to one person: Dr. Karl Grossman, full professor of journalism at SUNY Old Westbury and my brother investigative reporter. Karl’s specialty is the space program—in particular, the nuclear space program, which he’s tracked for 17 years. He is the author of The Wrong Stuff, an expose on the dangers of space shots where nuclear payloads are involved — such as space probes and satellites. I had one question for him: Was there an RTG aboard Columbia? An RTG is short for radioisotope thermoelectric generator. They consist of a lot of plutonium, which, when it decays, makes heat, which is then used to make electricity. They are extremely dangerous and most of the time, pointless. Another branch of NASA works with some of the most impressive solar technology ever developed.

Some of you will remember the Cassini Space Probe issue of 1999. An RTG was the specific issue with Cassini, which was launched from Earth, sent to Venus, and then sent back past Earth to ‘slingshot’ or kind of bounce it off the Earth’s gravity, eventually heading to Jupiter and Saturn. This maneuver was designed to allow the craft to pick up a lot of speed without using additional fuel. Had that probe accidentally entered the atmosphere, 24 pounds of plutonium dust would have been scattered onto every continent and latitude. Given that one-millionth of one gram is enough to induce lung cancer, that’s a lot of plutonium.
When I got through to Karl, I asked about the possibility of an RTG aboard Columbia. “There is no way to know for sure,” he said.

The near-perfect safety record of NASA belies a deeper reality, he explained. “Before the Challenger they were claiming that risk level was 1 in 100,000,” he said. “Then they lowered it into 1 in 76. NASA projects an image that it’s perfect. In many ways it’s the gang who can’t shoot straight going into space. They crucified a guy like [Don] Nelson who is trying to be an honest man. Then you mix in a bumbling bureaucracy of both corporations and the government, then to that mix you add plutonium.”

Karl said that when he saw Challenger explode in 1986, he wondered what that craft’s next mission was scheduled to be. It turned out to be lofting a satellite into orbit that would have been powered by an RTG plutonium battery.

“When NASA was founded in 1958, it was a 50/50 military/civilian operation. After the man on the moon program, because they were desperate for funding, NASA started working closer and closer to the military,” Karl explained.

In this respect, it’s my view that everything done on board the Shuttle is either an indirect rehearsal or direct preparation for some kind of military project in space, and many of its experiments have been directed at the effects of space on humans—it furthers its own cause. We might ask what that is.

The Space Shuttle program falls under the authority of something called the United States Space Command, part of the Air Force. Much of the work that happens aboard the Shuttle is classified, leaving much to the imagination. Several years ago the Air Force published a report called New World Vistas. It reads, in part, “In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict. These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills.”
General Joseph Ashy, then with the Space Command, put it this way. “It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen. Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue, but—absolutely—we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space.”

So much for the final frontier.

But that frontier just got further away. For those who see the space program as our escape hatch from Earth, from our one World Earth that we are rapidly polluting, depleting and destroying (so we can colonize and destroy other planets), we’re now grounded for a while. Those concerned about the hole that the Shuttle punches in the ozone with each launch, and for those concerned about the development of space-based nuclear weapons, can take advantage of the military bureaucracy being thrown into chaos for a while. Heads will roll and launches will pause, and that will delay the destruction of the world, if only a little, and a little time can be very meaningful, especially when that’s all we’ve got.
This event happened under powerfully Aquarian astrology, with the message of beginning, invention and breakthrough. What is it that we can create now? What intentions can we set? How about what we need most: consciousness. We need to create dedication to seeing what is really happening in the world. We need to tell the truth, but more than that, we need to stop believing lies. There’s something much better available.