About the Basement Project

The Basement Project began in 2006, with a study of Kepler's New Astronomy, where he goes to Mars, in a sense, to figure out the shape of the orbit of the Earth, something which was praised by Albert Einstein as quite a creative feat.

The Basement Project, under Lyndon LaRouche, has now developed over the years into a scientific project with an explicit economic edge to it—implementing a policy to actually colonize Mars, landing there not only in our minds, as Kepler did, but in reality.

This project should begin with lunar industrialization, and then the terraforming of Mars by the end of this century. It is completely contrary to the thinking of economic policy makers to think in these terms, of making policy now which is determined by a 100 year future goal to be achieved.

Competent economic policy making is not determined by making short term investments to make cash; it is not even necessary to refute this now, as this method has clearly brought about the real collapse of our physical economies, and our banking system.

However, good economic policy making is also not simply a question of doing what is necessary to make people comfortable. Basic economic infrastructure can serve this function, like having access to cheap and efficient transportation, clean water, nuclear power, etc. However, the ultimate aim of providing economic infrastructure is for people to support real creative activity and to foster scientific discovery.

One of the most profound discoveries we can make in attempting to colonize Mars, is what is actually required to support a human mind on another planet. In pursuing this question, we hope to answer questions about the fundamental principle of life itself, and how it is intrinsically linked with the structure of the universe as a whole.

Many people have the conception of man living on earth, a sort of accidental phenomena, shielding himself from external phenomena which are hostile to him, such as radiation, especially Ultra violet radiation, gamma radiation, and cosmic radiation. In the 1920's biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadksy insisted that the Earth's biosphere was in fact intrinsically linked with these cosmic forces; we are exposed to 40 octaves of radiation here on Earth. While we won't deny that some of this radiation is destructive, we have been finding that low intensity radiation and electromagnetic fields actually support crucial functions of the living organism. In addition to these, one other thing which we will need to add to our category of necessary infrastructure, are the different isotopes of elements. One simple way to define isotopes is that they are atoms of elements which have different weights. The living organism seems to require a very specific kind of diet of isotopes. Even if the soil on Mars has similar elements to what we have here on Earth, if the kinds of isotopes which make up those elements are different, the living organism may not respond well. As you see, we are dealing here with weak forces which the living and cognitive being requires. We must enlarge our concept of infrastructure to include these things which are so weak and small, that they are easy to disregard.

This kind of infrastructure is practically invisible to the senses, much less obvious than some of the other things we consider as infrastructure. The method of discovering causes in the domain of almost invisible yet efficient principles requires the method of Plato, Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz, and later scientists like Gauss, Riemann, Einstein, and Vernadksy. All of these scientists developed upon a science of dynamics, of power, where often times the power to produce an effect is not a brute force kind of power, but something more subtle.

Something else which we must include in our growing category of basic economic infrastructure, which is the unique requirement of a human living thing, is the culture. A scientist who is not driven by a sense of a love for humanity, and a sense of beauty in general will not be moved to make discoveries, nor will he look in the right place. It is not a coincidence that many great scientists, like Einstein and Planck, and Alexander Gurwitsch, were also accomplished musicians.

All of our great composers were intellectual descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music utilizes the great principle of irony and counterpoint. A scientific mind must be able to respond to irony! The same holds true for all of our citizens. Without a population whose minds are free and whose souls respond to beauty, we will not succeed in changing the orientation of our economic policies toward the future. As classical composer Robert Schumann said, “The laws of morality are also those of art.” The considerations of these powers needed to support life and human cognition is really the subject of our “Cosmic Radiation” project here in the basement. Posing this problem to ourselves as though we were on another planet, like Mars, reveals to us some of the considerations more easily than in trying to solve it on Earth. So, like Kepler, we have our minds on Mars, but we do hope that some real human beings will arrive there in time!