The Universe - or Nothing

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