December 27, 2003: Space Programs - James McCanney

Art Bell welcomes Professor James McCanney to discuss private space ventures, Tesla technology, and the future of space exploration. McCanney reveals that Russia's Cosmos program conducted some 1,600 missions between 1962 and 1977, dwarfing the United States' roughly 300 astronauts sent to space. He argues that private entrepreneurs like Burt Rutan and Paul Allen will prove far more efficient than government agencies burdened by overhead costs.

The discussion shifts to Nikola Tesla's tower, with McCanney explaining how the device drilled an electrical hole through the atmosphere to tap the ionosphere's virtually limitless energy. He describes the process of flipping atmospheric molecules in unison until a self-sustaining current path forms from the ionosphere to the ground. McCanney contends this technology remains suppressed because free energy would upend the global oil-based economy.

McCanney also presents his controversial argument that the Apollo missions never reached the moon, citing the Van Allen radiation belts as an impassable barrier. He claims Russian scientists have privately confirmed their own cosmonauts were harmed attempting to cross the belts, and that NASA's radiation badges measured only alpha and beta particles, not the X-rays generated when a metal spacecraft discharges the local capacitor in those intense magnetic fields.