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.
Nuclear chain reactions surely must have made that list, but Enrico Fermi was already a world-famous physicist at the time he did it. Perhaps that loses on a technicality, however, as Fermi was reknowned as a theorist before he changed the world with his experiment.
The theory of superconductivity may not have made that list, although it arguably should have; John Bardeen had already received the Nobel Prize for the invention of the transistor (a strong contender for #1 on any list) when he, Cooper and Schrieffer developed it, earning him another Noble Prize.
D'oh! A typo. I meant to write "Noble Gas", of course. Yep. Pretty much. <g>
The guy who left ITT because they nixed his sustained fusion reaction work?
I, with one undergrad course in Modern Physics, think these Free Energy/Anti-gravity knobs might be onto something. They just discredit themselves with bad vocabulary. The Lifters are producing a thrust, and I believe they have shown to produce a thrust in a vacuum chamber (Purdue?). But to claim Anti-gravity is premeture or worse, sensationalism. Propellentless propulsion is a holy grail in it's own right, it doesn't need the hype.
The free-energy guys are claiming to extract energy from some sort of background radiation flux, it's no more free than solar or hydro-electric. Yet again, they sell it as a something for nothing scheme.
God bless FR!
Yes.
Propellentless propulsion is a holy grail in it's own right, it doesn't need the hype.
Claiming to break Newton's third law constitutes hype, IMHO.
The free-energy guys are claiming to extract energy from some sort of background radiation flux,
Claiming in effect to break the laws of thermodynamics constitutes hype, too. You can have all the energy in the universe, but if you can't get it to flow from a hot reservoir to a cold one, you can't use it to do work. Background energies are almost by definition "cold".
Why, sure you could! Don't stand on ceremony.
:-)
Related to zero-point energy. Energy is useless, work is what counts. Zero-point energy and free-energy can't do work. There is no free lunch.
Wow, a fallacy, a grammatical error and a spelling error all in the same sentence!
Isn't that what Little Tommy Daschle stands on to see over the podium?
It ain't conspiracy bud, just human nature, and 'nothing personal, it's just business.'
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