21st Century Space Race – Dawn of the Great Houses

 


As the headlines proclaimed on July 11th, 2021: “Virgin Galactic owner Sir Richard Branson rocketed into space Sunday, on an edge-of-the-seat sub-orbital test flight intended to demonstrate his company's air-launched spaceplane is ready for passengers who can afford the ultimate thrill ride.” - (CBS)

At 8:40 a.m. local time (10:40 a.m. EDT; 1440 GMT), the crew of Virgin Galactic's Unity 22 test flight mission took off from the company's Spaceport America facility near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico and flew just above the boundary of space, where the four passengers and two pilots experienced about four minutes of weightlessness.

Branson and three other employees rode on a flight as passengers, marking the first time a spaceflight company founder has travelled on his own ship into outer space (according to the NASA definition of outer space beginning at 50 miles above the Earth).

As many of you know, unlike the space race of the 1960’s between the US of A and the USSR, the new space race is being run between billionaires. In a savvy media stunt, Branson’s Virgin Galactic beat Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin (the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company founded by Bezos in 2000), into Earth orbit by a week or two.


Of course, everybody’s favorite bitcoin manipulator and American Archon, Elon Musk, and his aerospace company: SpaceX has been in the news quite regularly, as of late. So these are the BIG THREE billionaire, privatization-of-space players who plan a commercial presence in space. Beyond megalomania, their justification for spending billions of dollars on the bourgeoning commercial space industry is that, as time goes by and the industry expands… costs will go down so everyone will be able to afford a vacation in space! This trickle down concept sounds somehow familiar, don't it?


In other news, the newest film version of Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction masterpiece: Dune, directed by Denis Villeneuve, is set to open in US theatres in October, 2021. Dune tells the story of a vast, feudal spacefaring civilization in which various noble houses control planetary fiefs. Set in the distant future, the galactic empire is ruled by the “Great Houses” who have overseen planetary politics since humankind first left the home world.

The Great Houses, or spacefaring dynasties... are controlled by the family bloodlines of those who dominated early space flight. The noble Atreides family, the corrupt “House Harkonnen” and other greater and/or lesser houses control planetary fiefdoms and their resources. All of these dynasties are in turn overseen by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV.

Dune, the book, came out in 1965 to much critical acclaim. The political intrigues of the book were thought to mirror (then) current earthling politics, with Dune’s precious “spice” trade, echoing international oil trade (or international drug trafficking) of contemporary Earth. As we all know, “The Spice Must Flow!”


Similar dynastic themes are echoed in other works of science fiction. Willian Gibson’s 1984 “Neuromancer” has the Tessier-Ashpool family…  Netflix’s “Altered Carbon” cyberpunk series has the uber-wealthy Bancroft dynasty… to name a couple of examples.

As science fiction has always been a cautionary tale… a genre of what may come to pass… it is not unreasonable to come to a conclusion that what we are witnessing with Sir Richard Branson’s epic space flight… is the dawn of the “Great Houses” of Earth as a spacefaring civilization. Branson, Bezos and Musk align quite nicely with Atreides, Harkonnen and Tessier-Ashpool. Apparently, Branson, et al are just itching to get off this po-dunk, backwater planet, whose resources are all-but played out, and whose environment is mostly spent.

Such recent off-world shenanigans sheds a whole new light on the term: Breakaway Civilization, doesn’t it? House Musk is clearly headed for Mars... I wonder what the other two "Great Houses" of 21st century Earth have in mind? One thing is clear... the fact that Branson's spaceport is just outside of "Truth or Consequences" has a definite synchronistic ring to it... 

Also of synchronistic note on the Virgin Galactic story... the press made a big deal over Branson's 17 year history in the space business. Of course the number 17 is a cosmic trigger number, akin to #23 in synchromystic significance. This element alone, should put this story on our sync radar... keep an eye out for further developments...







Comments

Frank said…
Programming springs to mind - Space Program, Work Program and Money Program etc.

And this speaks of shenanigans - mirrors on the moon.

'Ringed by footprints, sitting in the moondust, lies a 2-foot wide panel studded with 100 mirrors pointing at Earth: the "lunar laser ranging retroreflector array." Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong put it there on July 21, 1969, about an hour before the end of their final moonwalk.'

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/21jul_llr
Anonymous said…
You know, the man just upped my rent last night
Cause Whitey's on the moon...
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But Whitey's on the moon...

With all that money i made last year
(Whitey on the moon)
How come I ain't got no money here?
Hmm, Whitey's on the moon

- Gil Scott Heron
Lumenar said…
I read Dune by Frank Herbert and all five sequels. I found them disgusting, but just had to find out how the entire series ended. The books are all about eugenics and drugs. Disgusting!
The town near the spaceport was named after a game show. Recluse wrote about that place in 2012.
http://visupview.blogspot.com/2012/09/truth-or-consequences.html
More recently, Chris Knowles posted a series of screenshots about the launch.
https://secretsun.blogspot.com/2021/07/space-is-altar-sex-rockets.html
What do you make of Chris's take on the event? Honestly, Jack, yours is much scarier, even without the stuff about cults Chris posted. This topic is included in a discussion about the groups in governments who believe rockets were used by Jack Parsons and others to summon demons.
http://forum-alien-facts.com/index.php?p=/discussion/39/article-about-a-shadow-group-in-the-u-s-government-that-believes-ets-are-demons/p4
What was that all about? Is that when and where the extraterrestrial transmissions enter this story?
Jack Heart said…
Lumenar...

Thanks for commenting... I saw Mr Knowles post after I posted this. I think Chris has a sharp mind, and I generally listen closely to what he has to say. I thought of Chris when I mentioned the 17 sync. His post went into greater detail on the numerology aspects. As usual, he ties in a manner of wildness... he even got Ghislaine Maxwell in the mix!

The Parsons bit is interesting... the ET/Demon analogy makes sense from a mythological perspective... which is how I tend to look at the ancient astronaut/ET materials... mythologically.
Jack Heart said…
Frank...

The "programming" association is insightful. I wonder what other structures are ringed by footprints?
Dennis/87 said…
Dune, read it when I was 17 years old. Changed my world's view. The synchro's abound in and about this post Mr. Heart.
Garmr said…
I feel, in retrospect, we can forget about what was really shocking and new about Dune. Dune was the first ecological novel, in that it really was about the desert planet and its ecology. In the space age, people were confronted with images of Earth from space and were able to see it as one thing. A thin layer of biosphere wrapped around a small ball floating in space.

Then for the "mythology" Dune was a key work in the rise of the anti-hero. Compared to other "canon" fiction people read as youngsters, such as Lord of the Ring, the heroes in Dune are very morally ambivalent and dark. All they care about is power and revenge, even more so than the characters in Game of Thrones.
Jack Heart said…
Garmr...

Good point on the Ecological angle. Herbert was born in Oregon, and his Dune series was inspired by researching the Oregon dunes, near Florence...

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