Replies

Any experts in such things have any comments?

From:

HERE: http://www.enterprisemission.com/Von_Braun2.htm

From part 2:

So, precisely as predicted by the HD model (and DePalma!) -- a key section of von Braun's rocket, in fact, did rotate that night ... as it placed Explorer I into space!

Mystery of "the unexplained higher orbit" ... finally ... solved.

Well ... not quite, of course.

For, this "confirmation" only deepened the real mystery:

Why does "spinning" a steel pinball, or ... rotating a one-ton, high-tech "tub" -- containing 15 solid rockets -- allow both to climb SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER against gravity ... than if they were NOT spinning!?

One of the first reactions I had to this fascinating confirmation -- that portions of von Braun's rocket HAD to spin, inevitably (from DePalma's experiment ...) resulting in the higher orbit for Explorer I -- was a feeling of intense gratification for Bruce; for, this simple engineering detail proved that Bruce DePalma has been absolutely right all along ... for over 34 years ... in insisting that "spinning a mass" also creates "some kind of anti-gravitational, anti-intertial field ..." which allows the object to fly higher against gravity than if it was NOT spinning!

Von Braun -- decades before Bruce DePalma ever conceived of his elegant little "spinning ball experiment" -- had already PROVED Depalma right ... with easily the most expensive "spinning ball" demonstration one could possibly imagine (Explorer I cost the American taxpayer approximately 20 million dollars, in 1958; today, allowing for inflation, that would be something like "half a billion ... ").

Further, it was now obvious that this is why von Braun also missed the Moon ... by those "pesky ~37,000 miles" with Pioneer 4.

Again he was using, in his Juno-2 "moonrocket" (a further modification of the Jupiter-C ...), EXACTLY the same "spinning tub" arrangement for the four solid-rocket upper stages that he'd used in the previous Earth-orbiting Explorer launches; and (from what we now know ...), the "DePalma Effect" struck again ... neatly over-accelerating the Pioneer 4 spacecraft to a slightly higher velocity than JPL had calculated using only standard "Newtonian dynamics" ... thus, causing the spacecraft to arrive at the Moon's orbit slightly sooner than it should have ... passing ahead of the Moon itself (which, of course, hadn't reached the "rendezvous point" yet ...) by those disappointing "37,000 miles (below) ...."

It all fit -- beautifully.

Of course, the reason why simply "spinning an object" should so dramatically change its "Newtonian dynamics" -- against all current mainstream theories (including, "sacred" Relativity ...) -- was still as profound a mystery as ever ....

It is hard to overstate both the scientific and political significance of von Braun's initial Explorer I discovery (swiftly confirmed, as we have documented, by Explorers III and IV, and all three Vanguard launches!) -- as well as all their confirmed connections now to DePalma's totally independent, rotating laboratory experiments.

Oh, did I forget to mention--

The US Navy Vanguard three-stage rocket also utilized a solid-propellant in its third stage ... so, it also had to be spun during the burn ... for "stabilization" -- at ~100 rpm (below)!

And, of course, then there was Allais ....

ALL these independent, dynamical results revealed "huge, gaping holes ..." in conventional "Newtonian mechanics" ... to say nothing of what they did to "General Relativity!" Yet, mainstream science -- and the mainstream science press, including those covering the space progream for the last 50 years -- blithely went on ... as if nothing was amiss!

DePalma himself, trained as a mainstream physicist for decades at two of the premier universities on the planet -- MIT and Harvard! -- wrestled with the extraordinary implications of his "spinning ball experiment" (first carried out in 1972 ...) for years -- before finally publishing some tentative, but far-reaching conclusions ....

"... the beginning of this author's work with rotating objects began with moment of inertia measurements of constrained gyroscopes undergoing forced precession. The increased moments of inertia discovered for precessional motion were translated into a series of measurements on pendula with rotating bobs. Although the discoveries of the inertial effects associated with precession and pendulum oscillations of rotating bob weights were highly suggestive, this author greatly resisted [for several years] attempts to force him to drop a rotating object for two reasons.

"Firstly, he had no reason to be able to predict the motion of a freely falling object on the basis of the inertial alterations he had measured which had concerned themselves with constrained situations of rotating objects. Second, there was no reason to expect inertial alterations [because of Einstein's inviolate "Principal of Equivalence"] to affect the rate of fall of a released object and there was no available theory which could in any way be applied to the situation or a falling rotating object in a gravitational field. This is a situation known in religious terms as a "leap into the dark."

"Since the author and his assistants are experts in the application of stroboscopic lighting techniques to the study of high speed motions, the first experimental cut at the situation was to photograph the trajectories of a steel ball bearing rotating at a high speed together with an identical [non-rotating] control object moving at a similar initial velocity. The result of the experiment was so startling and anomalous as to have taken me five years to understand.

"... Basically, the spinning object going higher than the identical non-rotating control with the same initial velocity, and, then falling faster than the identical non-rotating control, presents a dilemma which can only be resolved or understood ... on the basis of radically new concepts in physics [distinct from the existing "Laws of Thermodynamics" ... "Newton's Laws" ... or "Special and General Relativity"] ...

"We know when we can alter the properties of mechanical objects, i.e. change their inertia, we have contravened the conservation of energy, because we have associated the properties of an object with the space which contains the object. The space which contains the object also contains energy and we can go at the project in two ways: we can attempt to extract the energy without worrying where it came from, or we can attempt to understand physics, ourselves, and the Universe by a new formulation of reality.

"... The behavior of rotating objects is explained [after much thought] simply on the addition of free energy to whatever motion the rotating object is [already] making. [Thus] the spinning object goes higher and falls faster than the identical non-rotating control.

"... In terms of the dropping of the spinning ball, the understanding of the experiment involves the results of many other experiments as well as the resolution of a mind picture of the Universe which is our best approximation to understanding at the present time. What makes it difficult for other experimenters to understand the experiment is that it is not simply the results which are important. Without a theoretical foundation of understanding to make the experiment comprehensible -- to fit the results into a context of rational understanding and harmony with the facts of other experiments -- the data become trivial and worthless, and, worst of all, subject to misinterpretation.

"The [technological] availability of free energy from as simple an experiment as colliding a rotating object with a non-rotating one opens up the development of other machines for energy extraction and propulsion which may be more convenient to handle than the extraction of energy from the collision of a rotating object with a non-rotating one [emphasis added] ...."