Project Serpo Issues: Proven Factual Problems

Although our Team Members honored the privacy of the Ebens, our Team was allowed to witness births. Our team, snooping aroud, was able to capture the sexual activity of the Ebens.

So now Our Scientists With Good Looks are playing Peeping Toms on an advanced civilization. And the Advanced Civilization is too stupid to notice.

For the record (and speaking AS a real anthropologist), anthropologists DO get data on sex in societies. It's done by establishing trust with a community and with a network, by understanding taboos and cultural norms, and by asking informants.

We don't go sneaking into people's homes and filming them while they have sex.

However, this group, who apparently got their degrees from Randy Andy's Academy of Kinky Anthropology treats their host culture like a free peep show. Apparently 10 years without sex was getting to Our Scientists.

The males and females had similar sexual organs and performed intercourse. The frequency of sexual activity was not recorded as being as often as our society performed. It was believed that they performed the act for pleasure and reproduction.

More evidence of graduating from Randy Andy's Academy of Kinky Anthropology. The "scientists" had 20 years to gather this data... and even in closed societies here on Earth, that's more than enough to find out if sex is for fun or procreation or both. But Scientists Chosen For Good Looks didn't manage to find that out even with 20 years to research on the subject.

So compare "Hoaxville Science" with real science and contrast the work (and hoax "work") of the Scientists Chosen For Good Looks with a set of real scientists who are studying nonhuman societies.

SCFGL can't figure out Eben society and Eben methods of timekeeping and the Eben language after 20 years of working with a group of aliens who want to teach and cooperate. They're not sure about sexual practices. They have no data on how the society functions or where the industrial and manufacturing operations are or how they work.

On the other hand, primatologists studying gorilla societies can provide you with a wealth of data on gorilla habits, habitats, gestures, signals, hierarchies, territories, technologies, culture, and so forth. A lot of our groundbreaking work in primatology was done by three women who went out into the field (Africa) and who managed to come back with more data in less time than Our Team managed to collect in 10-20 years.

Anony-Hoaxer says of the training that the team received:

The training consisted of the following:
1. Introduction to Space Exploration (taught by NASA personnel);
2. Astronomy, identification of stars, use of telescopes and general astrophysics;
3. Eben anthropology (information received from Ebe #1);
4. Eben History (basic information received from Ebe #1);
5. U.S. Army Field Medical Training (trauma care). This was given to the non-medical personnel on the Team;
6. High Altitude training – parachute and weightless/zero oxygen environment training;
7. Survival, escape and evasion training;
8. Basic weapons and explosive training (six pounds of C-4 [Composition-4] was taken);
science.howstuffworks.com...
9. Psychological Operations Training and anti-interrogation preparation;
10. Small Unit Tactical Training (Mini 4-week U.S. Army Ranger Course);
11. Intelligence Gathering Course;
12. Space Geology – collection methods and use of specialized geological equipment;
13. Physical Stress Training;
14. Methods to cope with confinement/isolation;
15. Nurtrition course;
16. Equipment use training;
17. Individual speciality training;
18. Basic Biology;
19. Other training which is still considered extremely highly classified even after 40 years [1965 - 2005].

So... Our Team Of Scientists With Good Looks spend 10-20 years on a planet and still can't figure out the basic social rules and structure and so forth of an alien civilization after they've been briefed in the cultural anthropology AND the history and are working with a cooperative society -- while primatologists such as Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall managed to bring home far more information on species that were not terribly cooperative and could not communicate... in a fraction of the time.

This kind of stupid inconsistancy is typical of UFO hoaxes -- you get "scientists" who are beyond incompetant; "scientists" who display all the keen scientific knowledge and researh methods of a ham actor from a "B" horror/scifi movies of the 1960's. Since they're making it all up, they steal from what they know -- and they don't spend their time reading up on physics, astronomy, calculus, cosmology, primatology, social anthropology... or much of anything else.

[edit on 12-2-2006 by Byrd]

I loved this little gem from the question and answer section

: What kind of scientific calculator did they take?
A: Unless the military was ahead of the commercial world (quite possible), the best portable calculator available in 1965 was the Sharp CS-10A, which weighed 25 lbs. The first handheld pocket calculators went on sale in 1970. These were just glorified adding machines – the term “scientific calculator” didn’t come into use till a far greater degree of sophistication had been achieved

And here we catch our hoaxer in a HUGE lie. You see, we scientists WERE using calculators and had been using them since the 1600's (yes, really). They're called slide rules, and if you know how to use one (I do, in fact, and I taught competitive (UIL) slide rule in the mid 1970's) you can perform complex calculations almost as quickly as you can with a modern calculator.
www.hpmuseum.org...

BTW, that's not MY slide rule but I own one that looks like it.

Watch a rerun of "The Right Stuff" and look closely... you'll see NASA engineers at consoles with slide rules in their hands (and yes, that's accurate. There's newsreel footage of that somewhere, too.)

Slide rules were common until the mid-to-late 1970's. The Sharp calculator mentioned by him was incapable of doing any scientific calculations although it could handle financial transactions (it had about the same kind of functionality as a grocery store cash register.)

It coldn't handle mathematical functions necessary for scientific calculations (sine, cosine, secant, cosecant, tangent, inverse, square root -- all of which we could do on our slide rules) and couldn't handle any number bigger than 8 digits.

Eight digits is not enough numbers for scientific work.

The largest number it could present to you is 999999.99 and the smallest number would be .99999999. I believe that the calculators of that time were accurate to only 2-4 digits after the period because I do remember instructions on how to round up or down to make slide rule answers fit calculator answers (the slide rules had greater precision than earliest handheld calculators.)

Here's a picture of it:
www.vintagecalculators.com...

So the hoaxer "Anonymous" (who, in one of his statements presents himself as the commander of the Serpo mission) is actually much younger than his pretended age ... and was never in the military. I caught a couple of other cultural/historic slips; enough to convince me that "Anony-Hoaxer" was probably born in the 1970-1980 decade, with 1980 being more likely than the 70's.

[edit on 12-2-2006 by Byrd]

Apparently we have galactic civilizations waiting for humans to come and figure things out for them. Here's a selection of "Ebens Are Too Stupid To Live" quotes from the Q&A section

Q: If the planet's tilt was 43°, how is it that the changing seasons (especially at the poles) weren't more marked? Anonymous says the North Pole was at a constant temperature of 33° (presumably F), with 20 feet of snow, while the South Pole was a barren desert, and says above that Serpo didn't have seasons as we know them.
A: Not clarified. It might be expected that the climatology of an alien planet might require some in-depth study before weather patterns were fully understood.

So they had 20 years. They were in contact with a galactic civilization far more advanced than ours... and the Eben mathemeticians hadn't even begun to figure out chaos theory and fractals and weather patterns. It must be the Incredible Stupidity Field around the planet.

Q: There seems to be a marked lack of biodiversity on Serpo. Why is this?
A: Not clarified. Anonymous may have only described the more dramatic animals encountered. We should also consider that because the Ebens did not evolve on Serpo and travelled there from their own home planet which had been rendered uninhabitable, Serpo itself may have been terraformed and animal and plant life introduced.

Hoaxing at its best (or worst). If you terraformed a planet, you would by gosh know what animals you put down there and would have named them and followed them to ensure the health of a planet. If, however, you were a hoaxer who slept through his science classes, you wouldn't have figured this point out.

Q: They had access to an energy device which automatically provided the proper current and wattage. But their clock stopped because they had no batteries. Why did they not rig this device up to the clock at 4.5 volts and 3 amps?
A: Not clarified

Remember that I said the hoaxer, Anonymous, was born at least in the 1970's and possibly in the 1980's? Here's another of his lies that shows him up.

We didn't have battery operated clocks then. We had windup clocks and watches.

The first watches were coming out that used your body movements to wind them, but I believe Seiko was the only one to make them for awhile. My dad brought one back from Vietnam during the war.

...and anyway, do tell me:
* how someone calculates how many batteries one will need to power a clock for 10 years (let's see if this is more believable than the "Sagan equations" bit).
* how much a 10 year supply of batteries (with backups) weighs (we're talking battery life and weight back then, folks; not today's batteries.)
* why they'd devote that weight and space to batteries instead of food.
* if they didn't take spare batteries, why bring a battery-powered clock?

The correct answer is: They're lying. This is a hoax.

[edit on 13-2-2006 by Byrd]

(...continuing my role as a plague on civilization, here...)

For example, when our first Team Member died in an accident, it was hard to communicate with the Ebens. The member died instantly, therefore, no medical care was provided. Our two doctors examined the Member's body and determined the injuries were consistent with an accidental fall. Initially, the Ebens never interfered with our care or offered to provide any of their medical care.

However, once the Ebens – a very benevolent and caring people – saw our team members crying, the Ebens stepped in and offered to attempt some sort of medical care. Although our doctors felt the Team Member was medically dead, they allowed the Ebens to try their own medical care. Most of this was either through sign language or speaking to the Travelers who could understand some English.

The Ebens transported the Team Member's body to a remote area of the largest community. They took the body into a large building, apparently their hospital or medical center. The Ebens used a large examination table to view the body. The Ebens ran a large bluish-green light beam over the body. The Ebens watched a display, that appeared on a large screen that looked like a television screen. The readouts were in the Eben written language and thus our team could not understand it.

Let's go through this one again...

However, once the Ebens – a very benevolent and caring people – saw our team members crying, the Ebens stepped in and offered to attempt some sort of medical care.

Let's touch on crying and military culture just briefly. This is something that was ingrained in me; something I grew up with.

IF YOU ARE AN OFFICER, YOU DO NOT CRACK IN PUBLIC.

Remember how Jackie Kennedy stood proud and quiet at the funeral of John. F. Kennedy? It's that kind of control that was ingrained in the culture of that time.

Men in general in the 1950's and 1960's did not cry in public and the injunction was even deeper if you were in a public (diplomat/politician) position or in a military position. That was the rule of the 1950's/1960's... and it holds strongly today among those who grew up in military families. It's still a part of our ethic.

When we buried my mom two years ago, my brother (who was still in the Army) took the folded flag from the honor guard (mom was a veteran) and handed it to my dad. It took everything he had to keep from crying... and he didn't cry in public, because he was an officer. His son (also in the Army, and a young lieutenant) did cry briefly but this emotion was acceptable because of his rank and his age.



So...back to the Serpo story. We have 12 (or 10 or maybe 9 or 8 by now) military officers who have been in the military for long enough to get a very solid security rating and be proveable experts in a field -- and suddenly they're all breaking down and sobbing.

By some miracle (in literature this is called a "deux ex machina" and is considered a Lame Plot Device), the Ebens -- who would never have seen ANYONE crying before, suddenly intiut that these facial expressions and odd vocal noises mean that the team is grieving. They don't ask "what does this mean" and they don't assume it's some sort of cultural display at death or some sort of ritual. No, one of them suddenly "intuits" that humans are in emotional distress and are grieving -- and offer the "appropriate comfort."

Why is that odd? Well, appropriate comfort depends on your culture and your upbringing (for instance, I don't like to be hugged by strangers or anyone other than immediate family if I'm terribly upset. Hugging is not a part of the military culture. Hugging IS part of the Southern culture, however. What may be comforting to one Earth culture group is annoying or irritating to another one -- yet the Ebens suddenly know how to give group hugs.

...to the military.

Now... Anony-Hoaxer and Clown2 try to get away with the "intuition"/"ESP" angle, conveniently forgetting that they provided us with a striking example of just how UN-intuitive the Ebens are.

Or maybe the Ebens left their probes in their other uniform pockets.

The Ebens used a large examination table to view the body. The Ebens ran a large bluish-green light beam over the body. The Ebens watched a display, that appeared on a large screen that looked like a television screen.

So this great civilization, which can "intuit" grieving in an alien culture, hasn't bothered to look at the anatomy of its visitors (even in diagrammatic form) and can't figure out that the organs are smashed and there's internal bleeding and the organism is dead. When Fearless leader (aka Anony-Hoaxer) comes up and gets into a snarling fit at The Leader of The Ebens, the magic Eben intuition/ESP suddenly goes into hiding because they don't understand why he's mad and they can't come to a quick agreement. Nor can Eben medical personnel tell the difference between an embolism and a bacterial or viral disease but in spite of that, they're allowed to treat the humans for medical problems:

Ebe1 brings some fluids and something looking like a biscuit. Fluid tastes like chalk and the biscuit doesn’t have any taste. We all eat it and drink the fluid. Almost instantly we feel better. Ok, get organized. Told 203 to round up all crew. Found 308 missing. Must be the dead crew member. Ebe1 came back and lead me to 308. He was in bowl, something like coffin. 700 and 754 will examine 308. Ebe 1 cautioned us no to take 308 out. Don’t understand the caution. 700 and 754 is here. I try to tell Ebe 1 that these guys are our doctors and must examine 308. Ebe 1 said no, because of infection. I guess 308 must have had some sort of infection and it could be contagious.

Ebens and the Scientists With Great Hair also don't know much about water (it really sounds as though this particular section was lifted from some travelogue of Africa, the Southwest, or the Gobi Desert though I can't put my finger on where this is being lifted from.):

Another problem was water. The water on Serpo contained a number of unknown chemicals found by our team. Our Team eventually had to boil the water before drinking it. Seeing this, the Ebens built a large plant that processed water for our Team.

The water contains "unknown chemicals"... so apparently there was no chemist around and Ebens (with their galactic civilization, advanced materials and science) apparently haven't discovered the atom yet. There are only 100 or so possible elements in this universe and they only combine in certain ways. Any kid with a high school chemistry hobby kit could have told the Team Of Scientists With Great Hair what was in that water.

By the way -- boiling water gets rid of germs -- not "unknown chemicals" and it only gets rid of a certain set of germs. You'd think scientists would know this, but this bunch apparently slept through chemistry as well.

As a gesture of goodwill, the Ebens build "a large plant that processed water for our Team." How much water DOES a 12 man (well, 10 since two of them died) need??? I don't think I go through a hundred gallons per day.

Are they doing their laundry every 5 seconds?

Are they watering the desert?

Are they bootlegging it to the miners to cool off the planet "otto" and get it to solidify back into at least liquid rock?

We humans with our not-ready-for-galactic-prime-time can build filters and slap them on a faucet to eliminate just about everything, or run the water through a processor and make plain old H2O with nothing added. EBENS, with their galactic technology have to build "a large plant" to handle what we can create in the 2000s with something smaller than the size of a washing machine.


[edit on 12-2-2006 by Byrd]

The Good Kind Of Plague

Originally posted by Byrd
(...continuing my role as a plague on civilization, here...)

Hey, this is good stuff. Some of your observations express what I have been too lazy to point out (I just called it patently absurd), and a lot of this stuff is educational irrespective of Serpo.

I say go for broke!

[edit on 2/10/2006 by Majic]

Byrd, that was great reading. If you're a plague on civilization, then I pray that we can get a few more plagues going.

i haven't read absolutely everything that Anonymous wrote, but i didn't see anything about photographic documentation/evidence, he did mention a camera (but with no means to develop it..of course) save the film and bring it back..no?

just a thought...if this was properly refined it would make a hell of a sci-fi flick...taking up where C III left off kinda thing!!!!

also i agree, as i was reading through this i was getting the impression of someone "youngish" was writing this, lots of spelling mistakes and very simplistic terminology as far as all the tech talk goes

what a laugh

Today I'll get into some of the other science errors on a fairly basic level. Although I will express things in simple terms and not bring up all the background, this could be beaten to death in eve greater detail.

So... onward!

We had a serious problem. How do we explain our science to an alien entity, who doesn't know Einstein, Kepler or any of the other scientists of our time. Simple mathematics, seems so foreign to them.

Ah, inconsistancies... how do I count the ways...?

We have a civilization
- that has navigation and therefore measures distances
- through space, yet
- that builds machines with parts that fit together so well that they don't leak air into space
- that builds huge water processing plants
- that build car-type devices
- that build flying devices "somewhat similar to helicopters"
- that has industry
- that has agriculture

...and it has no concept of 2+2?
...and can't figure out the speed of light even though they travel faster than it?
...and can't figure out how to calculate how fast their ships descend?
...that has no way of determining how much to turn the heat down if they're baking a cake and the oven is too hot?
...that has no way of figuring out how fast a car-vehicle is going? (look, ma! No speeding tickets!)
...that has no formulas to determine how much energy is derived from a certain mass of fuel of a certain composition?
...etc?


This is where you catch hoaxers such as Anony-Hoaxer in their stupidiest science. The reason they give for all that is "well, they have a different math that we don't understand!" But what we have is a lame hoaxer like Anony-Hoaxer who doesn't know anything at all about math and who's trying to pull the wool over your eyes.


I'm going to try and write this for the person with a high school understanding of math, so those of you with more advanced math please forgive the dumbing down of things.

Math is a universal. If I hold up one object, every sentient being in the galaxy understands that I have one object. If I hold up ten objects, every sentient being in the universe can count them (if they use a base 2 system, they would say that I had "1010 objects." If they use a base 8 system, they would say I had "12 objects").

If I hold up 3 objects, they can count that and if I take away 1 object, they can count those and tell me how many are left (even crows, chimpanzees, dolphins and many other animals can do this.)

If I hold up 5 objects and then another 5, they can count those and tell me in their language and number system how many objects I'm holding.

Those two things, addition and subtraction, are the foundation of math and even our most primitive societies and even mentally damaged people can understand and count. Any galactic civilization can count how many miles or kilometers or whackamoleinches one star is from another.

When you have addition and subtraction, you also have multiplication and division (multiplication is adding the same number a lot of times (12 x 84 means "add 84 to itself 12 times") and division is repeated subtraction of the same number.) It doesn't matter whether you're using a base 64 or base 72 system or a base 3.5 system... adding and multiplication and division and subtraction are still the same.

The measurement of a right angle is still the same and the way to derive it (remember agonizing over geometry?) is still the same whether you measure in degrees or decans or purplecows. Call it what you like, the process is still the same (find a flat line, draw a line perpendicular to it.) Even the ancient Egyptians had this one.

Originally posted by lost_shaman

There is no third Star for one thing.


[edit on 9-2-2006 by lost_shaman]

There is indeed a red dwarf appropriately named SIRIUS C

I'm breaking the math into chunks. I'll do the same with chemistry and the other sciences, which I'll get into detail with later on today.

So... continuing... any group of creatures with basic intelligence above that of a common Earth flatworm can count and understand 'how much more' and 'how much less.' I'm not too sure about Anony-Hoaxer's abilities in this arena, however.

Galactic aliens HAVE to be able to do this or they can't build machines and fly or even find their way out of a dark corner at night.

And I think you'll have to concede that any civilization capable of interstellar or galactic flight is one that didn't just suddenly happen when a large squid-oid on a distant planet suddenly woke up one day and said "I'm tired of mud and clams. Today I'm going to get together with a bunch of my buddies and form a civilization and build a Faster Than Light (FTL) transport and go out and conquer the stars." That any civilization must have had a period of organization (from roaming bands of whatever to small villages to towns to cities) and technological development (roads precede automobile-type-things, etc.)

In order to develop industry, you need math and you're starting to need something like calculus. By the time you start building something like rockets (and BTW, I do a bit of flying of hobbyist rockets), you start to need real math to figure out how high it's going (because you want it to reach a certain height reliably) and where it will probably land when it comes down. In order to communicate using any part of the electromagnetic spectrum ("waves", or folds in space or whatever), you need to know wave forms and propogation and direction and by this time you're tinkering with what WE call "de Broglie's equations" and other types of equations.

You can call them something else, use different terms and measurements and the formula doesn't really change... just as everyone understands that if I ask them to count my four fingers, everyone will be able to determine how many fingers I'm holding up.

Now...

Not only would these galactic civilizations have these formulas, they would have had centuries or milennia to work with them and to refine them so that the constants were more accurate and the variables were better. They would have these formulas and they would also describe what happens in unusual areas of space or under unusual conditions.

As a result, OUR mathematical body of work would suddenly leap ahead as we get these equations and observations. While these formulas wouldn't be understandable to me (there's a limit to what I can do in math), they would be as understandable to the average mathemetician as my holding up fingers to count is to you.

(more on math)

Another trick that Anony-Hoaxer and his ilk try to pull is "well, the math is different and not understandable because space is different and they're Aaaaaliennns!"

Yeah, that's unbelievably lame, too, but the reason is a bit more obscure this time. It has to do with mathematics and dimensions.

In mathematics, there's a field of study that involves dimensions. I'm not going to go into this in much detail because it's really very complex. However, a basic overview is that "a dimension represents a set of qualities and you can invent a universe that uses this quality and do math on this to explore it."

So theoretical mathemeticians have modeled things like "what if the speed of light isn't a constant in a dimension of 3 spaces" and "what happens if gravity doesn't work in a dimension" and "what happens if a universe has only length and width and redness" and so on and so forth (actually, I'm giving silly examples because it would take a very long time to explain the real examples.)

The bottom line is "any stupid rule you inflict on a universe can be dealt with by our mathemeticians."

That's how they study the possibilities of time travel. Weird as it sounds, this theoretical branch of math has a lot of real-world applications to it.


Oh... this is how we know that aliens haven't shown up and blessed us with their presence -- our theoretical math hasn't suddenly taken a vast leap. Instead, it's proceeded at the same pace as the rest of civilization.

I need to sign off, but will get onto the anthropology and more fun science (and the personnel on the team!) later on.

This is what turned me off right away.. dont need to be a science major or a mathmatician.

Posting Two by Anonymous (4 November, 2005)


Every Eben was issued what they needed. No stores, malls or shopping locations. There were central distribution centers where Ebens went to obtain items of needs. All Ebens worked in some capacity. Children were kept very isolated. The only trouble our team members got into was when they attempted to photograph Eben children.

Posting Four by Anonymous (9 November, 2005)

Why does the Eben population number only about 650,000? The Ebens have a very stable, structured civilization. Each male has a mate. They are allowed to reproduce (in somewhat the same sexual way we do), but are limited to only a specific number of children. Our team never saw a family with more than two children.

The Eben civilization was so structured that they planned the birth of each and every child, spacing them apart to allow the proper social grouping of the civilization. Eben children matured at a super rate, compared to Earth children. Our team watched live births, attended to by an Eben doctor, and then watched the development of the child over a period of time, team member's time. They matured at an alarming rate.

Posting Six by Anonymous (14 November, 2005)

The Ebens live in a very simple society. The individual Eben family contained a male, female and at least one child. Our team did find some families with as many as four children. We later learned those families were caring for children of Ebens who were either on Traveling Missions (exploring the universe) or dead Ebens.

Originally posted by nukunuku

Originally posted by lost_shaman

There is no third Star for one thing.

[edit on 9-2-2006 by lost_shaman]

There is indeed a red dwarf appropriately named SIRIUS C

But not in the system Zeta Reticuli, which is where Anony-Hoaxer said they went. Anony-Hoaxer said the system had three stars.

thank you Byrd for your informative, unique and scientific analysis. Like Majic said, many of us noticed these oddities, but not many of us can explain or put it together in a well presented context and format as you are doing.

thank you again.


(I hate it when I forget entire words )


[edit on 2-10-2006 by worldwatcher]

Originally posted by Byrd

Originally posted by nukunuku

Originally posted by lost_shaman

There is no third Star for one thing.

[edit on 9-2-2006 by lost_shaman]

There is indeed a red dwarf appropriately named SIRIUS C

But not in the system Zeta Reticuli, which is where Anony-Hoaxer said they went. Anony-Hoaxer said the system had three stars.

well we dont know that do we since its so small it cant be seen with a telescope. It has quite a gravity pull though, so its very dense. Anywayz....keep dissecting

Originally posted by Byrd
There's no water, either -- no oceans, some "underground rivers" that come up into a valley. Oh yes... it occasionally rains.

That would be a miracle of cosmic proportions.


Now, I know we all suffered through the hyrdologic cycle in elementary school... you remember this: the sun draws up water from the oceans, the moisture in the atmosphere collides with a cooler area and rain falls. Remember? With the bright yellow sun and the blue sea?

Well, if you don't have an ocean, how are you going to get water into the air for rain?

This is my first post on this colossal-waste-of-time-topic... I couldn't resist laughing out loud at Byrd's observations. Well done, man. Well done.

Next hoax please! This one has utterly lost my interest.

[edit on 10-2-2006 by loam]

Thanks Byrd! I'll grant you that you have vastly more patience than I do in dissecting all that cock-and-bull.

I enjoyed your quips and incite a hell of a lot more than that fraudulent hogwash from the anonymous hoaxster(s).

Two thumbs up



Beware of advanced aliens that
can't quantify our reality or their's



[edit on 10-2-2006 by Regenmacher]

Just a little one:

The Ebens don't understand our time, how we measure time, our units of time, etc.

Yet they measure time with a sundial type device = Solar Calendar

They measure time based upon the movement of their planet through space... Exactly like we do.

rock on
twj

Excellent read Byrd! I laughed until my sides hurt!

Your social insights left me wondering who, in 60s America, would volunteer to leave this planet without asking, "How's the drugs there, man?"

16 pallets of drugs might account for lack of scientific invesitgation......or this fanciful flight of Randy Andy Academy of Aero-naughty-ics?

G

As someone points out on the Serpo comments board, using the figures given for Serpo's mass and diameter, the gravity should be 9.96ms2, not 9.6 as given.

And it's not "38.43" light years away either, nor are the stars anything like the age suggested, or Wikipedia is a liar...

"The Ebens had to relocate to Serpo in order to protect their civilization. This occurred some 5,000 years ago." and "The Ebens have been space travelers for the past 2,000 years. "

How did they move between planets 3,000 years before they had space travel? A good taxi service, or did they just hitch-hike?