TIME OF CONTACT by ‘Caius Axim’. Copyright © 2018 ‘Caius Axim’ and copyright owners. Published by GTC. All rights reserved. Edition 1.5. “It is utterly absurd to allow ourselves to be so impressed by spatial elevation, by the fact that the demons live in the air while we live on the earth, as to suppose that this means that they are to be considered our betters”: De civitate Dei, by Saint Augustine, completed in the year anno Domini (AD) 426, Book VIII, Chapter 15. GTC is based in eastern England with easy access to central London and the University of Cambridge. GTC also publishes handbooks to support people who write, negotiate, or manage information and communications technology contracts and related agreements. The cover image is an impression of an evidently crewed but unfamiliar or “alien” aerospace craft, that was encountered as it hovered and then ascended between Gáldar and Agaete on Gran Canaria (Grand Canary Island) in the Atlantic Ocean opposite north-west Africa, at about 2130 hours local time on 22 June 1976: Canary Islands Landing: Occupants Reported, by Señor Jesús Maria Sánchez, translated from the Spanish language by Mr. Gordon Creighton and published in Flying Saucer Review, October 1977, Vol. 23, No. 3, pages 4 – 7. Further details of the encounter and an alternative illustration are provided in Chapter 3 (Alien craft) together with links to additional articles including The Rockefeller UFO report, The UFO Briefing Document, Part 2. Case Histories (xiii), 1976: Multiple Witness Case in the Canary Islands. Another of Mr. Creighton’s translations is an encounter report from Argentina entitled Trancas, after seven years, by Señor Oscar A. Galíndez, Flying Saucer Review, May/June 1971, Vol. 17, No. 3, pages 14 – 20, & 32. The Trancas encounters are discussed in Chapter 2 (Alien technology); further information (including new investigations and analyses of the Trancas encounters and observations) is available online, especially in the Spanish language. Reports of alien encounters and observations may be analysed in the context of our scientific discoveries and ideas, for example, we know that “by 3.465 billion years ago life was already diverse on Earth”. This knowledge, “coupled with the increasing number of known exoplanets (worlds in other star systems first discovered in the 1990s) and the sheer number of stars in the universe, points towards life being common throughout the universe” and “underscores that primitive life evolved quickly into more advanced microorganisms”: Life in the universe may be common, Snapshot section by Mr. David J. Eicher, published in Astronomy magazine, May 2018, introducing recent work by Professor J. William Schopf and his colleagues. Some scientists suggested that advanced alien civilisations may have constructed huge structures in space (megastructures) to capture most of the energy output from their host stars or to communicate across interstellar space. However, according to Professor Avi Loeb whose responsibilities include serving as Chair of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University and of the Advisory Committee for Breakthrough Starshot, “Once a civilisation is advanced enough to have the technology to build megastructures, it’s much more likely to leave its planet”: We could build a galactic internet but it may take 300,000 years, by Ms. Leah Crane, published in New Scientist, 29 July 2017, No. 3136. The reports of alien craft, aliens and their activities discussed in Time of Contact suggest that Professor Loeb is correct and that at least some alien civilisations developed or acquired transportation systems that enabled them to travel to and explore other star systems including our solar system. In addition, Breakthrough Starshot’s plans to send spacecraft to nearby stars which may have habitable planets using laser propulsion technology that we might be able to develop within a few years, suggests that aliens that were more scientifically and technologically advanced than us could long ago have visited other star systems. Professor Loeb also advises Breakthrough Listen which like the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope team, tried to detect radio signals from ‘Oumuamua a cigar-shaped object that apparently entered our solar system from interstellar space (there have been many reports of cigar-shaped or cylindrical alien craft, examples of which are discussed in Time of Contact). The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mentioned ‘Oumuamua’s “unexpected parallels to Rama, a famous fictional interstellar spaceship” in the science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama, by the inventor, author, and presenter Sir Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1973: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, 22 November 2017; these parallels are discussed in Chapter 1 (How alien aerospace craft fly). Our own journey into space began over a century ago with the pioneering work of Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. We developed spacecraft and aerospace craft including lunar and planetary orbiters, landers and exploration vehicles, communications and surveillance satellites, space telescopes, etc. Our crewed craft carried spacesuits so that we can exit our craft and work for hours in space, and explore the surface of our Moon: Cosmic couture: The urgent quest to redesign the spacesuit, by Ms. Leah Crane, published in New Scientist, 6 January 2018, No. 3159. Other systems provided long-term, reliable life support that enabled us to live and work for months wearing relatively ordinary clothing inside the International Space Station and its predecessors. We have navigated and communicated with some of our uncrewed spacecraft at and beyond the dwarf planet Pluto. Initiatives including Breakthrough Starshot and Starlight may enable us to send very small, uncrewed craft travelling at up to 25% of the speed of light to potentially habitable planets in other star systems, for example, Proxima b or GJ 273 b or Ross 128 b which are relatively close to us: Spreading life to other planets and Interstellar travel (II) - Life in the fast lane plus Space travel – Starchip enterprise, all published in The Economist, 14 April 2018, 4 November 2017 and 16 April 2016, and Could spacecraft make it to Proxima Centauri? by Dr. Monica Young, published in Sky & Telescope magazine, December 2016. Mars is the second closest planet to us (after inhospitable Venus) so it can be reached relatively quickly compared with most of our solar systems’ planets or their moons, for example, NASA’s Insight lander will arrive at Mars in November 2018 after a journey lasting only six months and 21 days. Mars’ surface environment is benign enough that our landers and exploration vehicles (rovers) have operated there for years. Humans should be able to explore Mars using suitable spacesuits, habitats, ground and air vehicles, etc. Mars’ thin atmosphere offers little protection from space radiation so we will need protective technologies and techniques (for example, living below the surface of Mars) to survive. In addition, the strength of Mars’ gravity at its surface is lower than on the Earth and may harm our health, based on the effects of a microgravity environment on people who stayed on the International Space Station. Despite these challenges Mars has large amounts of “relatively pure water ice” close to the surface that may be accessible to and usable by human explorers; Mars also has at least one “lake” of probably very salty liquid water that is deeper under the surface and therefore less accessible: Astronomers have found a lake on Mars, published in The Economist, 28 July 2018, Mars Express detects liquid water hidden under planet’s South Pole, 25 July 2018 and Steep slopes on Mars reveal structure of buried ice, 11 January 2018. If we develop or acquire the technologies needed for us to travel to and live on Mars in reasonable comfort and safety, it seems to be a natural choice for human colonisation: Making Life Multiplanetary, a presentation by Mr. Elon Musk who founded and leads SpaceX, at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), 29 September 2017, Making human settlement of Space a reality, issued by the U.S. government on 11 October 2016, Mars – Race to the Red Planet, published in National Geographic magazine, November 2016, and Interplanetary settlement, published in The Economist, 1 October 2016. Dr. Valentina Tereshkova the first woman we sent into space, said we “desperately need new engines and new spacecraft” for a crewed Martian expedition, during her appearance for the Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age exhibition of Soviet-era space achievements at the Science Museum in London which Dr. Tereshkova formally opened in 2015: In conversation with Valentina Tereshkova, at about 27 minutes into the video file, and Cosmonauts exhibition launch. Time of Contact aims to help us to develop or acquire advanced spacecraft in which we can explore the solar system rapidly, economically, and in relative safety and comfort. Missions to other star systems may be possible that take only a few years, months or even weeks according to our starships’ on-board clocks. We will expand our manufacture of high technology products in space that are difficult to make economically on the Earth: Manufacturing in space, published in The Economist, 8 September 2018. We will also revolutionise many of our other, Earth-based transportation propulsion and energy generation and storage products, systems and industries. However, if we fail we may share the fate of pre-human industrial civilisations that may have developed and subsequently collapsed on the Earth millions of years ago, based on evidence that includes previous periods of global warming which were accompanied by abundances of metals that we also use in technological processes and products: The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record? by Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt and Professor Adam Frank,10 April 2018, introduced in the article Could an industrial prehuman civilization have existed on Earth before ours? by Mr.