“Those bloody Damn Americans do not know their place!”

Damn right! We are stubbornly optimistic and refuse to be chained to the deck of a sinking ship. America is built and will continue to be built on revolutionary improvements of many types. From John Winthrop the Younger’s 1640s organization of New England iron production using the most advanced technologies of the time, onward through the building of canals, railroads, electrification, water purification, flight, and spaceflight and so on, our lives have been pulled radically upward via deliberate, intentional leapfrogging to higher platforms of development. As we lay out in the third point of the LaRouche PAC Resolution to Re-Americanize the Economy, by pushing the frontiers of science and technology, led by fusion and space technologies, our creative (especially young) people are about to lift us up to the fantastic new level forecast by Lyndon LaRouche. Let’s delve into this.

Mastery of thermonuclear fusion, the power of the Sun, the stars, and the hydrogen bomb, means the unlimited power to produce electricity too cheap to meter (as with phones and internet connections which no longer charge per use); the power to separate dirt or trash into its constituent elements; the power to run high energy-rocket engines for years instead of minutes; and much more.  Fusion power makes human colonization of the Moon or Mars possible. It also gives us the power to turn deserts into rainforests here on Earth, and poverty into prosperity. Wherever you live now on Earth, fusion power and Mars colonization will lift your life radically upward!

LaRouche targeted these two breakthroughs as the two projects which the United States government should take responsibility for financing and stimulating. Accomplishment of these leaps would also have the not-unintended consequence of massively spreading American optimism across the world to the point of isolating the British Empire and its organized evil pessimism—a precondition for the final destruction of the Empire.

Over decades of discussions with diplomats and governments of newly independent or relatively poor nations, LaRouche insisted that poor nations should not accept imperial “appropriate technologies,” but aim to leapfrog past intermediate stages to implement the latest technologies, and even seek to make contributions in frontier fields like space and nuclear research. In some countries, national-government-sponsored research and development projects implemented over many years or decades succeeded in putting local industries into the forefront of various technologies.

However, ultimate success of LaRouche’s strategy depends upon what we do here in the United States. Politically, we must finally sever the hard-wiring between the federal government and the British Empire, in order that we may lead the charge into the fusion and space-colonization age.

President Trump’s first administration very much embodied American optimism and exposed the imperial agents within Washington, DC, and began to pull the entire world away from the intended Imperial Trainwreck now embodied in the so-called Great Reset.

But even before 2016, despite aversive political conditions, undue influence of Wall Street predators, and lack of government investment and credit, optimistic work had been ongoing in many areas of research and development. In particular, notwithstanding the black propaganda about them, the young people have already built some amazing hardware and software. Imagine what can be done once we implement our full program!

The Fusion Example

A few months back we discussed here the possibility that Helion Energy might be the first institution to accomplish practical electrical energy output from fusion reactions. Helion just raised $500 million to finish its seventh-generation machine, Polaris, which is expected to generate more electricity output than input by 2024.

In September, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology successfully tested one of the superconducting magnets which will go into their SPARC (Soonest/Smallest Private-Funded Affordable Robust Compact) reactor, which is expected to produce more energy than used to run the reactor by 2025. (This does not mean that it will produce more electricity than it consumes—that accomplishment may be a step or two further away). 

In August, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produced energy equal to about two thirds of the input energy—a very big leap forward.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government-funded test reactor, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), recently set world records for confinement of hot plasma:  120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds. 

There are many, many different approaches to achieving practical fusion power systems, but progress has reached the point that success is within reach. Fusion is no longer 30 years away. Besides the monies that governments have put into research projects such as ITER, NIF or EAST, over $2 billion in private capital has been invested into private companies which seek to produce practical fusion devices for electrical power production, space propulsion, and other uses. 

This graphical list of member companies of the Fusion Industry Association gives some idea of the breadth of independent companies working on developing fusion power. Many more are not members, including resourceful institutions such as Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works or China’s ENN Energy Research Institute.

Of course, private capital is no substitute for a fully funded national commitment to fusion power development and Mars colonization as per LaRouche’s Four Laws. Also, as a general rule, it were much better to use LaRouche's proposed new National Bank to make large scale credit available to entrepreneurs—rather than drive entrepreneurs into the hands of financiers.

The U.S. Government refused to fund the LaRouche-promoted Magnetic Fusion Engineering Act of 1980, which aimed to put a billion dollars a year into an Apollo-style fusion research crash-program in order to achieve the construction of a demonstration fusion power-plant by the year 2000. Nevertheless, and despite the aversive environment created by the Empire—even so, private monies have begun to pour into private fusion companies. How did this happen? 

Investment bankers and venture capitalists are not content to receive 5% to 10% annual returns on their investments. They seek out the venture which will multiply their input hundreds-fold. In recent decades, such returns had only been associated with early investments into software or internet companies. Then, in 2008, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the first private company not a government contractor, to place a satellite into orbit on its own new system. Investors (and NASA) took notice. Then in 2012, Musk’s Tesla introduced a battery-powered car which many perceived to be the best production sedan of the time. Both accomplishments, which had been thought to be impossible, have revolutionized their respective industries and made billionaires of early investors. 

Since then, investors have become convinced that it is possible to make money on physical production in America, if a technological leap can be achieved. So, many have been looking for “the next big thing”—even though it may appear to be impossible upon first examination. On the other side, entrepreneurs are happy to get capital investment money in return for partial ownership of the enterprise, but such money comes with some loss of independence, and often leads to conflicts between engineering and investors. Direct government funding and National Bank lending are sorely needed to accelerate progress and remove retrograde influences. 

Space

Many people have the idea that building a city on Mars is some kind of stunt or race to be accomplished or won in a “Big Bang.”  Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a steady process which involves pioneering people and technologies, developing space infrastructure and economic processes which promise a sound basis for profitable activities, and thus a self-sustaining basis for human colonization of Earth orbit, the Moon and then Mars. 

Right now, there are thousands of communications, navigation, Earth observing satellites and astronomical observatories in orbit around the Earth. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) now has a small telescope on the far side of the Moon, and if all goes well, in December, NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency will launch and deploy the most powerful telescope ever, the James Webb Space Telescope, out near the L-2 Lagrange point (roughly 1.5 million kilometers away). We have ten astronauts/cosmonauts/taikonauts living in two space stations above our heads. This summer we saw the first completely private orbital flight without a professional astronaut aboard. Completely fictional movies are being filmed in space. In a week, NASA will launch a mission to test changing orbits of asteroids as the first steps in developing an active defense of Earth from incoming objects. The first launch of NASA’s Space Launch System/Orion spacecraft combination is scheduled in February as Artemis I. Civilization is moving outward.

The pace of the movement outward is governed primarily by the pace of improvements in lowering the costs of space access, miniaturization of spacecraft, and a little bit of a goad from an impressive array of missions accomplished by the CNSA.

SpaceX, which has racked up quite a number of firsts, has been accelerating its efforts to build a completely and rapidly reusable two-stage rocket system, the Superheavy/Starship combination. This project aims to cut the cost of putting a kilogram of mass into orbit by a factor of 100. Besides the private uses of this system, NASA is counting on it to land astronauts back on the Moon with plenty of payload to allow the process of Lunar development. As with other blatant efforts by the Biden collective to slow or stop President Trump’s Artemis Program, the FAA is taking its sweet time putting together an Environmental Impact Statement which will precede the approval of the first Superheavy/Starship orbital launch test from Starbase, Texas. SpaceX hopes to fly its first orbital test flight in January.

Rocket Lab, the second company to have privately built a launch system from scratch and to have successfully placed small satellites into orbit, is following in SpaceX’s pathway in many respects. There are many more such small companies with big ideas working on developing low-cost launch systems based upon unique technologies. One of the most interesting is SpinLaunch, recently covered in Space News. SpinLaunch’s design is in many ways related to the StarTram superconducting maglev launch system proposed by Dr. James Powell and advocated by LaRouche PAC over the years. In both designs, a spacecraft is accelerated to high velocity on the ground in a vacuum chamber, and then released upward into the atmosphere. A relatively small onboard rocket boost suffices to put the spacecraft into orbit. On October 22, SpinLaunch successfully tested its subscale suborbital system. Watch the launch here. 

Next year will see the first launches of the Sierra Space Dream-Chaser spaceplane and the Boeing Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station. Next year will also see the first launches of two new partially reusable rockets capable of launching either of those two spacecraft:  the United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket and the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket.

Also in 2022, the Indian Space Research Organization may launch its first uncrewed Gaganyaan human spacecraft to orbit, and Roscosmos will launch its first partially reusable rocket system: the Krylo-SV, the spent first stage of which will deploy a wing and jet engine to allow redirection of the first stage back to a recovery area. 

Axiom Space is building a private space station to be appended to the International Space Station, then expanded and eventually separated as a separate station. Blue Origin and Sierra Space have developed a plan for a new and very large private space station to be called the Orbital Reef. 

In 2023, Varda Space Industries will launch the first unmanned space factory. Also in 2023, Orbital Assembly Corporation will launch its first experimental artificial gravity experiment called the Gravity Ring. It plans to assemble very large “von Braun style” rotating ring stations with artificial gravity.

Finally, addressing the growing problem of space junk, in 2023 Kurs Orbital of Ukraine will launch the first orbital vehicles designed to service existing spacecraft in orbit, and to remove space junk.

Apologies to all the unmentioned great projects—much, much more is ongoing. We have not even dealt with Lunar and Martian developments, as we are approaching our post limits here. To generalize: the impossible is becoming routine on a huge scale.

To the Nation’s Young 

We have barely scratched the surface of the coming new world of space and fusion development; nor have we mentioned other important areas of revolutionary progress in the auto industry, biotechnology, machine learning, maglev transport, supersonic commercial aviation, urban air mobility, etc. If you are a young person, the optimistic future I have sketched here is wide open to you if you study as much science/engineering and manufacturing as you can.  If your educational institution seems more interested in spreading “Empire approved” pessimism, unnecessary conflict, and despair—go to another institution, or seek out one of the companies developing completely new technologies. In these companies working to do the impossible, there is no “accredited” curriculum for what they are trying to do. They are looking for people willing to work hard and look at problems in new ways. There is no limit to what you can do—and you don’t need imperial “approval” to do it!

As President Trump said the other day, we are going to “make the United States better than it has ever been before.”  In the process, we are going to finish off the British Empire and fulfill our role in leapfrogging humanity up to its highest potential and out to new worlds. American optimism is powerful and infectious!