ADDENDUM I
Extracts from
Aviation Report
A
NTI
-G
RAVITATION
R
ESEARCH
The basic research and technology behind electro-anti-gravitation is so much in its infancy that this is perhaps one field of development where not only the methods but the ideas are secret.
Nothing therefore can be discussed freely at the moment.
Very few papers on the subject have been prepared so far, and the only schemes that have seen the light of day are for pure research into rigs designed to make objects float around freely in a box.
There are various radio applications, and aviation medicine departments have been looking for something that will enable them to study the physiological effects on the digestion and organs of an environment without gravity.
There are however long-term aims of a more revolutionary nature that envisage equipment that can defeat gravity.
Aviation Report
, 20 August 1954
M
ANAGERIAL
P
OLICY FOR
A
NTI
-G
RAVITICS
The prospect of engineers devising gravity-defeating equipment—or perhaps it should be described as the creation of pockets of weightless environments—does suggest that as a long term policy aircraft constructors will be required to place even more emphasis on electromechanical industrial plant, than is now required for the transition from manned to unmanned weapons.
Anti-gravitics work is therefore likely to go to companies with the biggest electrical laboratories and facilities.
It is also apparent that anti-gravitics, like other advanced sciences, will be initially sponsored for its weapon capabilities.
There are perhaps two broad ways of using the science—one is to postulate the design of advanced type projectiles on their best inherent capabilities.
And the more critical parameters (that now constitutes design limitation) can be eliminated by anti-gravitics.
The other, which is a longer term plan, is to create an entirely new environment with devices operating entirely under an anti-gravitic envelope.
Aviation Report
, 24 August 1954
T
HE
G
REATER THE
E
ASIER
Propulsion and atomic energy trends are similar in one respect: the more incredible the long term capabilities are, the easier it is to attain them.
It is strange that the greatest of nature’s secrets can be harnessed with decreasing industrial effort, but greatly increasing mental effort.
The Americans went through the industrial torture to produce tritium for the first thermonuclear experiment, but later both they and the Russians were able to achieve much greater results with the help of lithium 6 hydride.
The same thing is happening in aviation propulsion: the nuclear fuels are promising to be tremendously powerful in their effect, but excessively complicated in their application, unless there can be some means of direct conversion as in the strontium 90 cell, But lying behind and beyond the nuclear fuels is the linking of electricity to gravity which is an incomparably more powerful way of harnessing energy than the only method known to human intellect at present—electricity and magnetism.
Perhaps the magic of barium aluminum oxide will perform the miracle in propulsion that lithium 6 hydride has done in the fusion weapon.
Certainly it is a well-known material in dielectrics, but when one talks of massive-k, one means of course five figures.
At this early stage it is difficult to relate k to Mach numbers with any certainty but realizable k can, with some kinds of arithmetic, produce astounding velocities.
They are achievable, moreover, with decreasing complexity, indeed the ultimate becomes the easiest in terms of engineering, but the most hideous in terms of theory.
Einstein’s general theory of relativity is, naturally, an important factor, but some of the postulates appear to depend on the unified field theory, which cannot yet be physically checked because nobody knows how to do it.
Einstein hopes to find a way of doing so before he dies.
Aviation Report
, 31 August 1954
G
RAVITICS
F
ORMULATIONS
All indications are that there has still been little cognizance of the potentialities of electrostatic propulsion and it will be a major undertaking to re-arrange aircraft plants to conduct large-scale research and development into novel forms of dielectric and to improve condenser efficiencies and to develop the novel type of materials used for fabrication of the primary structure.
Some extremely ambitious theoretical programs have been submitted and work towards realization of a manned vehicle has begun.
On the evidence, there are far more definite indications that the incredible claims are realizable than there was for instance, in supposing that uranium fission would result in a bomb.
At least it is known, proof positive, that motion, using surprisingly low k, is possible.
The fantastic control that again is feasible, has not yet been demonstrated, but there is no reason to suppose the arithmetic is faulty, especially as it has already led to a quite brisk example of actual propulsion.
That first movement was indeed an historic occasion, reminiscent of the momentous day at Chicago when the first pile went critical, and the phenomenon was scarcely less weird.
It is difficult to imagine just where a well-organized examination into long-term gravitics prospects would end.
Though a circular planform is electrostatically convenient, it does not necessarily follow that the requirements of control by differential changes would be the same.
Perhaps the strangest part of this whole chapter is how the public managed to foresee this concept, though not of course the theoretical principles that gave rise to it, before physical tests confirmed that the mathematics was right.
It is interesting also that there is no point of contact between the conventional science of aviation and the New: it is a radical offshoot with no common principles.
Aerodynamics, structures heat engines, flapping controls, and all the rest of aviation is part of what might be called the Wright Brothers era—even the Mach 2.5 thermal barrier piercers are still Wright Brothers concepts, in the sense that they fly, and they stall, and they run out of fuel after a short while, and they defy the earth’s pull for a short while.
Thus this century will be divided in two parts—almost to the day.
The first half belonged to the Wright Brothers who foresaw nearly all the basic issues in which gravity was the bitter foe.
In part of the second half, gravity will be the great provider.
Electrical energy, rather irrelevant for propulsion in the first half becomes a kind of catalyst to motion in the second half of the century.
Aviation Report
, 7 September 1954
E
LECTRO
-G
RAVITICS
P
ARADOX
Realization of electro-static propulsion seems to depend on two theoretical twists and two practical ones.
The two theoretical puzzles are: first, how to make a condenser the centre of a propulsion system, and second is how to link the condenser system with the gravitational field.
There is a third problem, but it is some way off yet, which is how to manipulate kva for control in all three axes as well as for propulsion and lift.
The two practical tricks are first how, with say a Mach 3 weapon in mind, to handle 50,000 kva within the envelope of a thin pancake of 35 feet in diameter and second how to generate such power from within so small a space.
The electrical power in a small aircraft is more than in a fair sized community the analogy being that a single rocketjet can provide as much power as can be obtained from the Hoover Dam.
It will naturally take as long to develop electro-gravitic propulsion as it has taken to coax the enormous power outputs from heat engines.
True there might be a flame in the electro-gravitic propulsion system, but it would not be a heat engine—the temperature of the flame would be incidental to the function of the chemical burning process.
The curious thing is that though electrostatic propulsion is the antithesis of magnetism,
*41
Einstein’s unified field theory is an attempt to link gravitation with electro-magnetism.
This all-embracing theory goes on logically from the general theory of relativity, that gives an ingenious geometrical interpretation of the concept of force that is mathematically consistent with gravitation but fails in the case of electro-magnetism, while the special theory of relativity is concerned with the relationship between mass and energy.
The general theory of relativity fails to account for electro-magnetism because the forces are proportional to the charge and not to the mass.
The unified field theory is one of a number of attempts that have been made to bridge this gap, but it is baffling to imagine how it could ever be observed.
Einstein himself thinks it is virtually impossible.
However Hlavaty claims now to have solved the equations by assuming that gravitation is a manifestation of electro-magnetism.
This being so it is all the more incredible that electro-static propulsion (with kva for convenience fed into the system and not self-generated) has actually been demonstrated.
It may be that to apply all this very abstruse physics to aviation it will be necessary to accept that the theory is more important than this or that interpretation of it.
This is how the physical constants, which are now regarded as among the most solid of achievements in modern physics, have become workable, and accepted.
Certainly all normal instincts would support the Einstein series of postulations, and if this is so it is a matter of conjecture where it will lead in the long term future of the electro-gravitic science.
Aviation Report
, 10 September 1954
E
LECTRO
-G
RAVITIC
P
ROPULSION
S
ITUATION
Under the terms of Project Winterhaven the proposals to develop electro-gravitics to the point of realizing a mach 3 combat type disc were not far short of the extensive effort that was planned for the Manhattan District.
*42
Indeed the drive to develop the new prime mover is in some respects rather similar to the experiments that led to the release of nuclear energy in the sense that both involve fantastic mathematical capacity and both are sciences so new that other allied sciences cannot be of very much guide.
In the past two years since the principle of motion by means of massive-k was first demonstrated on a test rig, progress has been slow.
But the indications are now that the Pentagon is ready to sponsor a range of devices to help further knowledge, In effect the new family of TVs would be on the same tremendous scope that was envisaged by the X-1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and D-558s that were all created for the purpose of destroying the sound barrier—which they effectively did, but it is a process that is taking ten solid years of hard work to complete.
(Now after 7 years the X-2 has yet to start its tests and the X-3 is still in performance testing stage).
Tentative targets now being set anticipate that the first disc should be complete before 1960 and it would take the whole of the sixties to develop it properly, even though some combat things might be available ten years from now.
One thing seems certain at this stage, that the companies likely to dominate the science will be those with the biggest computors to work out the ramifications of the basic theory.
Douglas is easily the world’s leader in computor capacity, followed by Lockheed and Convair.
The frame incidentally is indivisible from the engine.
If there is to be any division of responsibility it would be that the engine industry might become responsible for providing the electrostatic energy (by, it is thought, a kind of flame) and the frame maker for the condenser assembly which is the core of the main structure.
Aviation Report
, 12 October 1954
G
RAVITICS
S
TUDY
W
IDENING
The French are now understood to be pondering the most effective way of entering the field of electro-gravitic propulsion systems.
But not least of the difficulties is to know just where to begin.
There are practically no patents so far that throw very much light on the mathematics of the relation between electricity and gravity.
There is, of course, a large number of patents on the general subject of motion and force, and some of these may prove to have some application.
There is, however a series of working postulations embodied in the original Project Winterhaven, but no real attempt has been made in the working papers to go into the detailed engineering.
All that had actually been achieved up to just under a year ago was a series of fairly accurate extrapolations from the sketchy data that has so far been actually observed.
The extrapolation of 50 mph to 1,800 mph, however, (which is what the present hopes and aspirations amount to) is bound to be a rather vague exercise.
This explains American private views that nothing can be reasonably expected from the science yet awhile.
Meanwhile, the NACA is active, and nearly all the Universities are doing work that borders close to what is involved here, and something fruitful is likely to turn up before very long.