Despite popular opinion and the lies of the mass media about a recovery, is there a way to actually know that we are in fact in the throws of a global economic collapse, which has recently entered a new phase, as LaRouche had forecast. In this installment of an economic class series being delivered to an audience in New York City, the fundamental metrics for measuring economic progress are presented, including LaRouche's notion of Energy Flux Density, and Potential Relative Population Density, with their implications for developing a new way to think about time and space. These ideas are then concretely established from the vantage point of the evolutionary development of rocketry, up to the latest potential for fusion driven propulsion systems, as would be necessary to achieve the one-gravity acceleration flights to Mars, that is central to the long view economic recovery mission proposed by Lyndon LaRouche.