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Anti-gravity propulsion comes ‘out of the closet’
Jane's Data Service ^ | 29 July 2002 | Nick Cook

Posted on 07/30/2002 8:22:27 AM PDT by Fitzcarraldo

Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science underpinning them can be engineered into hardware.

As part of the effort, which is being run out of Boeing’s Phantom Works advanced research and development facility in Seattle, the company is trying to solicit the services of a Russian scientist who claims he has developed anti-gravity devices in Russia and Finland. The approach, however, has been thwarted by Russian officialdom.

The Boeing drive to develop a collaborative relationship with the scientist in question, Dr Evgeny Podkletnov, has its own internal project name: ‘GRASP’ — Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion.

A GRASP briefing document obtained by JDW sets out what Boeing believes to be at stake. "If gravity modification is real," it says, "it will alter the entire aerospace business."

GRASP’s objective is to explore propellentless propulsion (the aerospace world’s more formal term for anti-gravity), determine the validity of Podkletnov’s work and "examine possible uses for such a technology". Applications, the company says, could include space launch systems, artificial gravity on spacecraft, aircraft propulsion and ‘fuelless’ electricity generation — so-called ‘free energy’.

Although he was vilified by traditionalists who claimed that gravity-shielding was impossible under the known laws of physics, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) attempted to replicate his work in the mid-1990s. Because NASA lacked Podkletnov’s unique formula for the work, the attempt failed. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will shortly conduct a second set of experiments using apparatus built to Podkletnov’s specifications.

Boeing recently approached Podkletnov directly, but promptly fell foul of Russian technology transfer controls (Moscow wants to stem the exodus of Russian high technology to the West).

The GRASP briefing document reveals that BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin have also contacted Podkletnov "and have some activity in this area".

It is also possible, Boeing admits, that "classified activities in gravity modification may exist". The paper points out that Podkletnov is strongly anti-military and will only provide assistance if the research is carried out in the ‘white world’ of open development.


TOPICS: Front Page News
KEYWORDS: antigravity; boeingantigravity; electrogravitics; evgenypodkletnov; podkletnov; space; superluminal
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To: Matchett-PI; thinden
Do we see a pattern? Seems like UFO stuff is coming out of the woodwork. Anything to distract from the dismal stock market.

Let's see with antigravity machine, I can lose weight and with time travel, I can turn back the clock. Soon to be retirees won't need IRA pensions. (Enron is behind the crop circles);-)

61 posted on 07/31/2002 5:04:56 AM PDT by rubbertramp
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To: Cultural Jihad
No, this ain't it. First, it is not portable enough to be an "anti-grav" button that you wear, but it is not solid enough to be "parked" like a car. It is far more expensive than a bike. It isn't as fast or maneuverable as a motorcycle or roller blades. It is a good try, but not the answer, and certainly not a "breakthrough."
62 posted on 07/31/2002 5:56:43 AM PDT by LS
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To: Jordi
If there's a sort of potential 'repulsive' gravity (like the 'dark force' of wich the universe seem permeated), go on,

Actually, standard gravity does have a repulsive phase. (Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with these antigravity claims, for which there is neither theoretical support nor verified experimental evidence.) If we postulate a scalar field (such as electric potential, but with a fixed global energy minimum at some value of the field), and further postulate that it is possible to place a region of vacuum stably into a higher potential state (that is, that there would exist a deep local energy minimum at some different value of the field), then gravity becomes repulsive. This causes the region of space to inflate--a new Big Bang!

I've heard that some theorists now believe that such a metastable "false vacuum" is not necessary for inflation. If a region of vacuum can be kicked unstably into a higher potential, it can "surf" along at the higher potential as the space inflates, just as a surfer maintains his elevation on a wave while falling down its slope the whole time.

63 posted on 07/31/2002 6:06:58 AM PDT by Physicist
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To: RightWhale
"How do quirky little projects with no hope of success get funded?"

You're JOKING .....

.... right?

64 posted on 07/31/2002 6:28:54 AM PDT by Matchett-PI
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To: Physicist
It's also worth noting that this is not doubt bogus because if you could invent an anti-gravity machine, you could control time. The world as we know it, excuse the pun, would be turned upside down.

It's fun to read and think about being a boy in a band who spends a summer with a wacky scientist in a time-travelling Delorean, but other than that--phooey.
65 posted on 07/31/2002 6:36:17 AM PDT by Viva Le Dissention
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To: rubbertramp; Physicist
"Let's see with antigravity machine, I can ...."

.... REARRANGE THE UNIVERSE"!!!

Taking all bets from those with the "belief gene" who _feel_ that the "useful idiots" --- or even (like Karl Marx), the cynical opportunists --- in Congress have a clue.

Those with the "belief gene" engage in the futile process of "feeling outside the box". LOL

66 posted on 07/31/2002 6:56:53 AM PDT by Matchett-PI
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To: Matchett-PI
"How do quirky little projects with no hope of success get funded?"

I propose a study of "How quirky little projects with no hope of success get funded", which would cost, say, $5 million.

67 posted on 07/31/2002 9:05:45 AM PDT by RightWhale
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To: Andrew Wiggin
Or maybe this is all a conspiracy to get the Chinese to waste billions of dollars, and years of their top scientists' time in a wild goose chase?

Or decided (perhaps incorrectly) that the thing worked so she would sabotage it here to take it home and give it to momma.

I often wonder how many little discoveries are made by communist Chinese (and other nationalities) in American labs with American equipment and then quietly exported back to the motherland with said researchers?

68 posted on 07/31/2002 9:29:23 AM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: Andrew Wiggin
Einstein basically defined the field of relativistic
thought. Of course, Michelson/Morley and their
interferometer experiment was a classic foundation
in the then budding field of relativity. But
Einstein's postulates more or less defined the
field.

Mad Vlad

69 posted on 07/31/2002 11:29:45 AM PDT by madvlad
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To: OBAFGKM
Pardon my skepticism; however, it does not
take that much to be published in 'respectable
journals'. I have myself co-authored papers
in Science, Proceedings of the Natl Academy
of Sciences, Journal of Immunology. Journal
of Clinical Investigation & Cancer Research to
name but a few.

Anything that is published in a respectable
journal MUST be grounded in some basic scientific
principle. Unfortunately, it does not guarantee
that the work will lead anywhere.

On that basis, Judah Folkman made apparent
advances re the use of vascular angiogenesis
inhibitors in the treatment of cancers, esp
advanced-stage cancers. Will this method
provide the magic bullet for cancer? Maybe,
I doubt it however.

Hmmmm. We have cured cancerous tumors in mice
but have failed to cure a single human subect.
I submit that we go public w/ a murine oncology
clinic and cure mice far and wide!

Mad Vlad(calls em as he sees em)
70 posted on 07/31/2002 11:41:16 AM PDT by madvlad
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To: LS
Many scientists will take a serious look
at an area which appears to offer a rich
source of funding. Its called staying
employed. We scientists bullshit it all the
time. Its all about money. And, in a number
of cases, reputation and ego. And why you ask is
this method so successful?? Because 99.5% of
the population wouldn't know their ass from a
hole in the ground when it comes to having
even one iota of understanding of the subject
matter, whether it be biological, physical
or chemical research. And I don;t mean to leave
out the engineers. My lab gets so much money
simply be indicating that we do 'HIV research'.
And no, the two courses you took as an undergrad
DO NOT prepare you nor do they provide you
with a firm grounding in sciences regardless
of what the university admin said. And reading
the NYT or the Wash Post or Time mag at best
enriches your vacabulary on the subject matter.

I'll bet you believe that the magic bullets
for cancer, HIV and old age are stored in
a refrigerator at the NSF just waiting for the
appropriate time or for FDA approval, which ever
comes first. Progress in these areas has been
and will continue to be made incrementally,
until the one big breakthrough, the EUREKA.
You can be a significant player in your field
(or considered so)via either one of two
routes: you can be the EUREKA dude or you
can be an incrementalist accumulating as much
specialized info as possible. And not someone
else's info, your own.

next lesson: Lies, damn lies & statistics

This is not a personal attack, simply the way
that science works.

Mad (science type) Vlad


71 posted on 07/31/2002 11:56:03 AM PDT by madvlad
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To: Lancey Howard; Fitzcarraldo
To: Fitzcarraldo
I would like an anti-gravity belt.
Or boots.
# 55 by Lancey Howard

*************************

I would avoid the anti-gravity boots, Lancey Howard.

Imagine what would happen if your boots suddenly flew into the air.
Where would your head wind up, above or below your boots?
Just how good is your balance?

I can see major advantages to using an anti-gravity harness instead of boots or belts.

72 posted on 07/31/2002 12:26:13 PM PDT by exodus
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To: Physicist
Actually, it was the photoelectric effect.

I believe you are mistaken. He received the Nobel Prize for describing Brownian motion.

73 posted on 07/31/2002 12:32:56 PM PDT by andy_card
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To: andy_card
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
74 posted on 07/31/2002 12:47:25 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: madvlad
I'm not a scientist. I did work on the National Aerospace Plane project for 7 years, and saw real technology---if not science---at work. There is a VERY thin line, I found, between the "eureka" people you disparage and the true breakthroughs.

You only have to look at Einstein's biography to see that while he had in fact grounded himself in all the theory of the day, he nevertheless made three "eureka" breakthroughs in a matter of a few years.

I base everything on historical trends, and the trends are that dramtic breakthroughs of all types have accelerated---only 100 years ago we didn't even have airplanes, computers, lasers, or microwaves. Just based on that, history tells me that barring a cataclysm, the next 100 years will bring proportionately great breakthroughs, including even cheaper, more abundant energy and some advanced travel---anti-gran? I don't know, but definitely far beyond what most people contemplate now.

75 posted on 07/31/2002 12:56:03 PM PDT by LS
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To: Physicist
You're right. My source was wrong. (Word to the wise: laymen shouldn't get into arguments about physics with people who know what they're talking about)

But, if you read the speech, you'll see that they at least credited Einstein's description of Brownian Motion as a contributing factor leading to the award of the prize.

76 posted on 07/31/2002 12:58:05 PM PDT by andy_card
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To: LS; madvlad
Here is an interesting link: http://www.ideationtriz.com/

I believe the company was founded on old Soviet-era work which showed there was more structure to scientific/engineering innovation than was commonly believed. Of course, this might have been Marxist b*llsh*t (i.e. 'carefully planned and predictable revolutions'), but there is a journal associated with it as well.
77 posted on 07/31/2002 1:11:52 PM PDT by NukeMan
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To: NukeMan
Well, this was my point, that you can "control" and "drive" SOME innovation, but the genuine breakthroughs never come from leaders in the field (at least, none of the top 50 technological breakthroughs in the U.S. in the 20th century did, according to Burton Klein's rather thick study.)
78 posted on 07/31/2002 1:20:18 PM PDT by LS
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To: madvlad
Pardon my skepticism; however, it does not take that much to be published in 'respectable journals'. I have myself co-authored papers in Science...

Well, you're undoubtedly a better judge of your own scholarship than I. I'll grant you, however, that Science has occasionally published some pretty far out stuff.

I take it you have some nodding acquaintance with electrochemistry. If so, you should look at Pons and Fleischmanns paper: M. Fleischmann, S. Pons, "Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium", J. Electroanal. Chem., 261, 301-308, and erratum, 263, p187 (1989). (It's transcribed several places on the Web, but I can't vouch for accuracy. Here: Pons & Fleischmann, for example.) Point is, their work was solidly based in theory. That being said, about everything after that could have made a good Keystone Kops plot.

On the basis of their studies, Pons and Fleischmann applied for a DOE grant in the late 80s. The DOE forwarded the proposal for review to Stephen Jones, who was working somewhat similar lines at BYU. Jones contacted Pons suggesting that they "collaborate," i.e., he wanted to pick their brains. Pons and Fleischmann agreed because they wanted to pick back.

Shortly after, Pons and Fleischmann, fearing that Jones was about to scoop them, went public in advance of publication of their J. Electroanal. Chem. article. (The article itself was premature; again, because they were trying to beat Jones to the gate.) Jones was furious, and went whining to his sponsers at the DOE. Meanwhile, everybody with (and some without) access to palladium and heavy water was trying to reproduce the results whether or not he had an inkling of what was going on. The DOE sent some major bucks to their pet hot fusion physicists at MIT, again to the consternation of Jones, who by this time was grinding away on his ax.

The MIT folks, who figured they already knew everything there is to know about D-D fusion, were more dismissive than skeptical. After all, fusion is always attended by lots of high-speed neutrons, and what does an electron chemist know about nuclear reactions anyway. So they came up with a bunch of experiments designed to detect the same sorts of phenomena they had been monitoring in their Tokamaks.

Well, MIT didn't see any neutrons or tritium, so they concluded that cold fusion must be bovine droppings, but they already knew that. Oh, there was some odd excess energy in some of the experiments designed to detect it, but that was explained away (actually swept under the carpet) by redefining the goals of the experiments. Anyhow, it wasn't very much of an excess. MIT's chief science writer at the time, Eugene Mallove, was so offended about this breech of science ethics that he resigned in protest.

Since then, the DOE hasn't coughed up any more cold fusion money and MIT has continued with its hot fusion work. Elsewhere, notably in Japan and Italy, but also in the USA under private funding, cold fusion work has continued and does continue to produce intriguing and increasingly reproduceable results. Seems it may be a matter of technique, and the MIT crew, although superlative nuclear physicists, are rather mediochre chemists. Current wisdom is that the crux of the problem is how densely you can load the palladium (or titanium, or whatever) with deuterium. If you aren't skilled and meticulous, you won't see results.

MIT based most of their conclusions, or rather, preconceptions, on the fact that the reaction D + D -> He leaves He with a lot of energy. So much, in fact, that it almost always spits out an energetic neutron. No neutrons, no fusion, unless the He can somehow unload its energy to other atoms. That never happens in MIT's hot plasma because the time scale of the nuclear reaction is many orders of magnitude faster than the time scale of the atom-to-atom Coulomb interactions.

But, something else may be going on in Pons and Fleischmann's palladium crystal. The impetus for their work was an estimated 2ev chemical potential for deuterium in the palladium lattice. As they point out in their article, that corresponds to an "astronomically high" pressure -- some 10^24 atmospheres. That's high enough to drop Coulomb interaction times down to the required nuclear interaction times, thereby inducing D-D fusion and at the same time providing a means for the resulting He to unload its energy to the surrounding crystal lattice. The MIT physicists were thinking to much "in the box."

Sorry for the long post. It's just that I don't believe the last chapter has been written on cold fusion, and that there has been an awful lot of disinformation disseminated against it. Besides, if cold fusion's for real, it'll be raining soup! I'm just not ready to give it up.

79 posted on 07/31/2002 1:25:22 PM PDT by OBAFGKM
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To: Uncle George
JFK Jr. tried that.

Once.

80 posted on 07/31/2002 1:38:11 PM PDT by metesky
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