Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion (20 page)

Although the black-world scientists mentioned nothing about electrogravitics in their
Aviation Week
disclosure about the B-2, they did admit to the existence of very “dramatic, classified technologies” applicable to “aircraft control and propulsion.”
They were especially hesitant to discuss these projects, noting that they are “very black.”
One of them commented, “Besides, it would take about 20 hours to explain the principles, and very few people would understand them anyway.”
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Apparently, what he meant is that this aircraft control and propulsion technology is based on physics principles that go beyond what is currently known and understood by the general public as well as most academic physicists.
Indeed, by all normal standards, electrogravitics is an exotic propulsion science.
Nevertheless, by beginning with an understandable theory, electrogravitics becomes a lot less mysterious.
As mentioned earlier, subquantum kinetics provides one such viable theory.

The B-2’s body design also raises suspicions that the aircraft is in fact an electrogravitic vehicle.
A primary design criterion for an electrogravitic craft is that it have a large horizontally disposed surface area so as to permit the development of a sufficiently strong antigravity lift force.
As Brown’s experiments demonstrated, such an aircraft need not necessarily be disc shaped; triangular- and square-shaped forms also exhibit antigravity lift when electrified, although disc shapes give the best performance.
The triangular planforms used in the B-2 and other advanced stealth aircraft may have been deemed better for reasons of their much lower radar cross-section.

Interestingly, one of the central features of the B-2’s classified technology is the makeup of its hull’s outer surface.
Authorities tell us that the hull is composed of a highly classified radar-absorbing material.
Ceramic dielectrics are a likely choice for the B-2.
Unlike many lossy dielectrics that dissipate the energy of incident radio waves and therefore function as radar wave absorbers, ceramic dielectrics are lossless, energetically noninteractive, and, hence transparent to radar waves.
More important, ceramic dielectrics also have the ability to store large amounts of high-voltage charge.
By covering the hull with such an electric insulator, it would be possible for the B-2 to maintain a high-voltage differential between its positive leading edge and its negative ion exhaust stream.
At sea level, the breakdown voltage is about 27,000 volts per centimeter, whereas at an altitude of fourteen kilometers, the breakdown voltage drops to about 10,000 volts per centimeter.
So with its 69-foot (21-meter) front-to-back dimension, the B-2 at sea level in dry air should be able to maintain a voltage differential of up to 57 million volts before arcing over, whereas at fourteen kilometers, it should be able to maintain a differential of up to 20 million volts.
Military spokesmen have said that the B-2 cannot fly in rainy weather, giving the reason that its coating of radar-absorbing material can be adversely affected.
The real reason is that if the hull becomes wet, it can lose its insulating properties, and the leading edge electrode can short out to the rear exhaust duct.

Even after the hull’s high-voltage electrification is shut off, the hull dielectric can retain a residual charge for some time because of the dielectric absorption effect mentioned in chapter 1.
This could explain rumored incidents of ground crews having been zapped by touching a B-2 too soon after it landed.

The B-2’s positively charged leading edge, another key component of its propulsion technology, was also a matter of special concern to Northrop designers.
According to
Aviation Week
, the bomber’s leading edges posed a particularly challenging production problem on the first aircraft.
The leading edge ionizer is most probably a conductive strip or wire that runs along the B-2’s sharp prow and is electrically charged to upwards of many millions of volts.
As the craft moves forward, its electrified leading edge deflects the approaching airstream to either side, so that a large fraction of the generated positive ions are carried away from its body surface and are prevented from immediately contacting and neutralizing the negative ions in the B-2’s exhaust stream.
As a result, the B-2 is able to build up very large space charges ahead of and behind itself that would subject it to a large gravity potential gradient.
This artificially produced gravity gradient should become steeper as the B-2 attains higher speeds and deflects its positive ions outward with increasing force.
Hence the B-2’s electrogravitic drive should operate more efficiently when the craft is moving at higher speeds.

Best results should be obtained when the B-2 is traveling at supersonic speeds.
Positive ions from its leading edge should become entrained in the upwind sonic shock front and flow away from the craft through that sonic boundary layer, later to converge on the negatively charged exhaust stream.
Military sources, however, claim that the B-2 is a subsonic vehicle.
Its somewhat stubby cross-section and the angle of its wings might lead one to believe that this is so.
Yet these design features should not pose a problem for supersonic flight, considering that the B-2 uses an electrostatic field to deflect the approaching airstream.
Brown’s saucer designs similarly had a stubby cross-section and yet were intended for supersonic travel.
The Air Force probably avoided disclosing the B-2’s supersonic capability to avoid raising curiosity about how the craft would generate the required thrust.

In both subsonic and supersonic flight, the deflected positive ions would form an ellipsoidal sheath as they circuit around the B-2 (figure 5.4).
The B-2’s forward positive ion sheath would act very much like an extended positively charged electrode whose surface has a parabolic shape.
Thus, the electrogravitic force propelling the B-2 would arise not just from the leading-edge electrode, but also from the entire positively charged forward ion sheath.
The positive- and negative-ion space charge distributions would very much resemble the charge configuration that Brown employed in some of his later electrogravitic experiments.
Compare figure 5.4 with the parabolic electrogravitic devices shown in figure 3.7 that Brown had been testing.
Brown noted that he obtained a greater electrogravitic thrust when the positive electrode was curved and made much larger than his negative electrode.
At the time they exit the B-2’s exhaust nozzles, the negative ions should be spatially much more concentrated than the positive ions emitted along the B-2’s leading edge, so the field gradient from front to back would be very nonlinear.

Figure 5.4.
A side view of the B-2 showing the shape of its electrically charged Mach 2 supersonic shock and trailing exhaust stream.
Solid-line arrows show the direction of ion flow; dashed-line arrows show the direction of the gravity gradient induced around the craft.
(P.
LaViolette, © 1993)

As mentioned in chapter 3, in describing the operation of his vertical-lift test rigs, Brown had voiced the necessity of establishing a nonlinear field gradient across the intervening dielectric to maximize thrust.
As in these laboratory test rigs, the B-2 would have established a highly nonlinear field from aft to fore while in flight.
The field lines would have a very high flux density at the negatively charged exhaust stream exiting the rear of the craft and would have diverged out to a much lower field flux density at the greatly dispersed, positively charged ion sheath surrounding the front of the craft.
This same asymmetry would characterize the polarization of the B-2’s ceramic dielectric hull, the field lines being most concentrated toward the negatively charged exhaust ducts and most dispersed toward its positive leading-edge electrode.

The electrostatic field produced by the ions surrounding the B-2 would exert forces on the B-2’s polarized dielectric body that would produce a net forward thrust, as shown in figure 5.5.
The high concentration of negative charges at the rear end of the craft would repel its negatively charged tail forward.
Electrostatic attraction forces would also assist the craft’s forward thrust by pulling its negatively charged stern toward its positively charged bow shock.
The electric field would fan out and therefore drop in intensity toward the B-2’s bow, so opposing forces acting on the front of the craft would be weaker and would have force components vectored mainly crosswise to the craft’s direction of travel.
The rearward slant of the B-2’s positively charged bow shock would also assist the craft’s forward propulsion by producing forward vectored repulsive forces on the B-2’s nose and wing leading edge.
At faster velocities, the craft’s bow shock would bend back to a steeper angle, thereby increasing the forward thrust delivered by these repulsive forces.

Although the charges are moving away from the aircraft at a very high velocity, they are continuously being generated and dispersed into the surrounding air.
Consequently, their space charge distribution remains stationary relative to the craft.
It follows the craft and continues to exert its propelling force.
The electrostatic forces depicted in figure 5.5 are arrayed quite differently from the electrogravitic forces shown in figure 5.4, but both would assist the craft’s forward propulsion.
Not enough is known at this point to say which of these sets of forces would be more important in propelling the craft.

Figure 5.5.
Side view of the B-2 showing the direction of the electrostatic
repulsion forces (large white arrows) developed between the craft’s charged
body and the surrounding ion space charge.
(P.
LaViolette, © 2006)

As seen in figure 5.6, both of the B-2’s leading edges are segmented into eight sections separated from one another by 10-centimeter-wide struts.
Quite possibly, the struts electrically isolate the sections so that they may be individually electrified.
In this way, through proper control of the applied voltage, it would be possible to gravitically steer the craft.
Brown had suggested a similar idea as a way of steering his saucer craft.

The leading-edge sections positioned in front of the air scoops are, most likely, sparingly electrified so as to prevent positive ions from entering the engine ducts and neutralizing the negative ions being produced there.
These two nonelectrified leading-edge sections would be ideal places to mount forward-looking radar antennae, since the ion plasma sheath produced by the other leading-edge sections would form a barrier that would interfere with radar signal transmission.
In fact, the B-2’s two Hughes Aircraft radar units are mounted precisely in these leading-edge locations, right in front of the air intakes.
The ellipsoidal ion plasma sheath that envelops the B-2 would strongly attenuate incoming radar pulses as well as any signal reflected back by the craft, thereby substantially reducing the B-2’s radar visibility.
This ion sheath might actually attenuate radar signals better than the ceramic radar-absorbing material that composes the B-2’s hull.
In fact, the military continues to research ways of using plasmas to absorb radar signals in the hope that a plasma-enveloped plane would be radar invisible.
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