You would almost certainly laugh if someone told you they saw a video of a cow floating up to a UFO in the sky. If it sounds like the stuff of fiction, maybe that’s because it once was:
“In 1979, Arthur C. Clarke’s novel ‘The Fountains of Paradise’ first brought the idea of a space elevator to a mass audience. Charles Sheffield’s ‘The Web Between the Worlds’ also featured the building of a space elevator. But, jump out of the storybooks, fast-forward nearly three decades and Japanese scientists at the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) are working seriously on the space-elevator project.” (Mike Steere, “Space elevator would take humans into orbit,” CNN, October 3, 2008)
“A new space race is officially underway,” announced a CNN report. The latest mission would be called, in simple terms, the space elevator. Andrei Kislyakov, writing in Moscow for the RIA news agency, said the construction of a space elevator would become the most grandiose project in human history. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian scientist who was inspired by the Eiffel tower, first proposed the concept of a lift into space in 1895. The Soviet engineer Yury Artsyutanov set forth in detail the concept of a space elevator in 1960, and noted a huge economic upshot that it could turn out.
“The vision has inspired scientists around the world and government organisations including NASA. Several competing space elevator projects are gathering pace as various groups vie to build practical carriages, tethers and the hundreds of other parts required to carry out the plan. There are prizes offered by space elevator-related scientific organisations for breakthroughs and competitions for the best and fastest design of carriage.” (Leo Lewis, “Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars,” The Times, September 22, 2008)
Over 300 scientists and engineers are reportedly already engaged in such undisclosed work around the globe. NASA is holding a $4 million Space Elevator Challenge to encourage designs for a space elevator. The contest challenges teams “to build working scale models of an elevator that can travel 1km vertically upwards at a minimum speed of 2 metres per second.”
If competing space elevator projects are noticeably gathering pace, might certain reports of cows being lifted into the sky from rural farms be proof of untimely or covered up space elevator experiments?
Cattle mutilation (also known as bovine excision) is the apparent killing and mutilation of cattle under unusual or anomalous conditions. UFO devotees use the term “mutilation” to describe animal corpses with unusual or inexplicable features.
A foremost authority of animal mutilations is Linda Moulton Howe, a journalist who has researched the cattle mutilations enigma for over a decade. Her book, “An Alien Harvest” (1989), explored further evidence linking animal mutilations and human abductions to alien life. In some cases, witnesses were interviewed under hypnosis. Linda Howe told of a cow abduction case in Missouri where a cow was floated up to an awaiting UFO in the sky. It is claimed that UFOs have abducted cows that were mutilated and thrown back down to earth. The blood was drained from abducted cows, or the animal’s organs seemed to be carefully and completely removed.
The far-fetched idea of an elevator ride into space by stretching a cable, or tether, from the Earth to a station in space, emerges as a scientific fact. But perhaps the most “out of this world” mystery is that its ghostlike elevator thread is purportedly made of elastic smoke. What is elastic smoke? In 2009, The Sunday Times questioned Alan Windle, professor of materials science at Cambridge University, about a thread strong enough to be used as the tether of a space elevator:
“The discovery in the 1990s of ‘nanotubes’ (a cylindrical version of carbon) meant that for the first time a material strong and light enough was possible. However, these nanotubes proved too brittle to be formed into long strands. The Cambridge team has found a way of combining separate nanotubes into web-like structures that bind to form longer strands. ‘The key thing is that the process essentially makes carbon into smoke, but because the smoke particles are long thin nanotubes, they entangle and hold hands. We are actually making elastic smoke, which we can then wind up into a fibre,’ says Windle.” (Joseph Dunn “Space elevator … and the next floor is outer space,” The Sunday Times, January 18, 2009)
In what appears to be the result of extraterrestrial encounters, dairy farmers are reporting a rash of cow disappearances in California. A woman recently captured photos of a so-called cow abduction in Argentina. And astounded scientists lay blame on a government cover up. But could abduction alarm be part of the space elevator gospel?
If a tether cord of elastic smoke doesn’t boggle your mind, consider the issue of powering the elevator’s payload as it climbs into space. “We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains,” said Professor Yoshio Aoki, a director of the Japan Space Elevator Association. “Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route.”
While reports of cow abductions reach the White House, the space elevator is seen as an eventual way of shifting human life off Earth. Breakthroughs in engineering make it possible to swap the tether nanotubes of elastic smoke with a plasma beam or power-beaming system to conduct electricity and boost the energy of levitation. FBI files allegedly reveal that up to 8000 cows have been mutilated and abducted. It is branded as “an alarming and insidious problem.” Cattle mutilations are not only associated with UFO sightings, alien abductions, and crop circles. They are also linked to black helicopter sightings:
“Gabe Valdez was a former New Mexico state patrol officer in the Dulce, New Mexico area. During his tenure, beginning in the 1970’s, he was tasked with investigating mysterious cattle mutilations. The area suffered many cases of cattle found mutilated without blood, organs that appeared carefully removed and cuts in the skin that were so precise they were believed to be made by lasers. After years of research Valdez concluded that a clandestine government agency was responsible and that they used secret underground bases in the Dulce area for their experiments.” (Alejandro Rojas, “New Mexico Cop Says Military Responsible for Cattle Mutilations,” The Huffington Post, August 22, 2011)
With cow abductions debated on George Noory’s Coast-to-Coast radio show, and the vending of such novelties as graphic abduction t-shirts and cow abduction mouse pads, is it really any wonder that space elevator securities are massively in debt with a legal cloud hanging over them? The speakers at a 2009 Space Elevator Conference took a sober view of the financial and technical resources required:
“’They’re not the rosy numbers that you hear,’ said Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation, who manages two NASA-backed contests for space elevator technologies. In a technical paper presented at the conference, Shelef concludes that the conditions required for a working space elevator are ‘actually very difficult to satisfy’ at any price.” (Alan Boyle, “Space elevator faces reality,” MSNBC, August 17, 2009)
Several observers have suggested that NASA space elevator equipment was reverse-engineered from alien technology. Disbelievers should realize that a former Pentagon consultant recently said that President Eisenhower had secret meetings with aliens. “The 34th President of the United States met the extra terrestrials at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954, according to lecturer and author Timothy Good.”
Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of the former president, gave consideration to a secret Mars colony. Winston Churchill is also said to have discussed UFO sightings with President Eisenhower:
“Conspiracy theorists have circulated increased rumours in recent months that the meeting between the Commander-in-Chief and people from another planet took place. But the claims from Mr Good, a former U.S. Congress and Pentagon consultant, are the first to be made publicly by a prominent academic.” (Anthony Bond, “President Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, former Pentagon consultant claims,” Daily Mail, February 15, 2012)
If you don’t really believe that a strand of elastic smoke can lift you into outer space, perhaps your textbooks are over 30 years old. “This is like military-grade stuff,” one technician said. “They’re doing work on the level of military contracts.” Is it real or a hoax?
Peter Fotis Kapnistos