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The Antigravity Underground
Wired ^
| August 2003
| Clive Thompson
Posted on 07/10/2003 8:22:21 PM PDT by sourcery
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:09:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson.
[history]
The fantastic floating device called a lifter has no moving parts, no onboard fuel, and no shortage of wide-eyed admirers. Even inside NASA.
It's time for liftoff, so I pull on my thick, elbow-length rubber gloves and put the fire extinguisher within reach.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
TOPICS: Technical
KEYWORDS:
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1
posted on
07/10/2003 8:22:22 PM PDT
by
sourcery
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; Libertarianize the GOP; Free the USA
FYI
2
posted on
07/10/2003 8:22:53 PM PDT
by
sourcery
(The Evil Party thinks their opponents are stupid. The Stupid Party thinks their opponents are evil.)
To: All
DANG FREEPERS KEPT ME FROM BECOMING THE WORLD'S GREEN KING!
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3
posted on
07/10/2003 8:26:38 PM PDT
by
Support Free Republic
(Your support keeps Free Republic going strong!)
To: sourcery
Well, the acid test would be to stick the thing into a vacuum chamber and see if the performance is substantially the same.
4
posted on
07/10/2003 8:31:08 PM PDT
by
Poohbah
(Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.)
To: Poohbah
Vacuum chamber?
Did you say "vacuum chamber?"
From the article:
.... He created two capacitors that are tubular, like tiny jet engines - with the hot wire on one end, a gap, and a metal tube for the ground. Each capacitor is mounted on the end of a rotor, driving it like a pinwheel. Last fall, they tested the contraption in regular air - shooting it with 27,000 volts at 20 microamps. Bingo: It generated 3 millipounds of force, and the rotors spun at 60 rpm. Then, in December, they finished tweaking their vacuum. They were able to get the pressure inside the bell jar down to the equivalent of low-Earth orbit - 10-7 torrs, to be precise. They put the device inside and hit the juice.
Nothing happened.
It wouldn't budge an inch. They jammed the voltage up to 50,000 volts, and still nothing. They repeated the tests several times but didn't dare use higher voltage. "We had lightning coming out the back of it," says Andy Finchum, Campbell's assistant, pointing to a set of plastic guards he set up after nearly frying himself. "You could start hearing the hiss at those voltages, and that's when you don't want to get close!" He hands me a thick gray pressure gauge. "These are $1,500 apiece, and we toasted one."
To check if it was an equipment error, they brought the bell jar back to sea-level pressure - and the rotor started spinning again. The device itself wasn't malfunctioning.
Campbell folds his arms and declares antigravity dead.
"There's no performance in a vacuum," he concludes. [snip]
To: longshadow
OK.
He's got a point. If it only happens in atmosphere...then it's some sort of atmospheric phenomenon, and not antigravity per se.
6
posted on
07/10/2003 8:43:57 PM PDT
by
Poohbah
(Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.)
To: sourcery
I need a circuit diagram before I can evaluate or make a comment.
7
posted on
07/10/2003 8:52:15 PM PDT
by
RLK
To: sourcery
I do one last check of my DC transformer, which I bought online from a guy who specializes in energy systems that are illegal in several states. He put a sticker on this one: DANGER: ANTIGRAVITY IN DRIVER.A power suppy from an old computer moniter works just as well. I built a lifter last year and it really does work.
8
posted on
07/10/2003 8:55:42 PM PDT
by
Moosefart
To: sourcery
I remember reading about this back in the 1960's in either POPULAR MECHANICS or POPULAR SCIENCE. The cover of the magazine showed an anti-gravity "flying machine" monitoring road trafic.
To: sourcery
To: sourcery
bump
11
posted on
07/10/2003 9:08:20 PM PDT
by
GOPJ
To: chaosagent
The 1964 explanation sounds correct. What essentially exists is a particle accelerator that produces secondary movement of neutral particles.
12
posted on
07/10/2003 9:13:02 PM PDT
by
RLK
To: sourcery
It is ionic wind. Once you approach a voltage gradient of about 20,000 volts per inch, air molecules start ionizing. You can put "pin points" on one side of a charged grid. The charged grid has a slightly lower gradient, so it doesn't ionize air molecules. The pin points do ionize the air around them. Once ionized, they are either repelled or attracted to the grid depending upon the charge. This creates a wind, or in rocket terms, a reaction mass. It is just like rocket exhaust. It heads one way and the "craft" moves the other way.
13
posted on
07/10/2003 9:34:41 PM PDT
by
jlogajan
To: jlogajan
Trouble is, once you get the generator of the 20,000 volts onboard the craft, it won't be able to overcome the weight of the mechanism.
'Lifters' won't be going anywhere, unless they can go beyond the length of umbilical wiring they presently use.
14
posted on
07/10/2003 9:45:53 PM PDT
by
spoiler2
To: sourcery
It's nice to see that science and experimentation is still practiced so jubilanyly at the amateur level. And conversely, sad to see NASA acting like the old, wheezy protectorate that we read so much about- in investigations of tragedies.
15
posted on
07/10/2003 9:49:04 PM PDT
by
thegreatbeast
(Quid lucrum istic mihi est?)
To: Poohbah
acid test Huh? How about not scraping the remains off one of the walls that still moves with earth's rotation?
To: sourcery
There are some great instructions on how to build lifters at the site below. I built one last year using an unused CRT as a power source and maybe 5 bucks worth of parts. Lifters are also awesome science fair projects.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm
17
posted on
07/10/2003 9:58:05 PM PDT
by
gaucho
(People used to come to the US for prosperity and now we just export it to them.)
To: sourcery
Good article, and they were honest about the ion-wind effect too.
18
posted on
07/10/2003 10:11:40 PM PDT
by
Brett66
To: sourcery
Thanks for the article. Great read.
To: Moosefart
Did you have a room to do it in? I would like to make a lifter but I don't have a spare room to use. Suppose I could do it in the yard. Then again I'm a little leary of 20kV.
20
posted on
07/10/2003 11:00:08 PM PDT
by
lelio
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