"Towards Flight - without Stress or
Strain... or Weight"
The following article is by an American journalist who
has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and
has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with
scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of
immediate interest and Interavia would welcome further comment from
initiated sources. --Editors.
Washington D. C. - March 23, 1956: Electrogravitics
research, seeking the source of gravity and its control, has reached a
stage where profound implications for the entire human race begin to
emerge. Perhaps the most startling and immediate implications of all
involve aircraft, guided missiles -- atmospheric and free space flight
of all kinds.
If only one of several lines of research achieve their
goal -- and it now seems certain that this must occur -- gravitational
acceleration as a structural, aerodynamic and medical problem will
simply cease to exist. So will the task of providing combustible fuels
in massive volume in order to escape the earth's gravitic pull -- now
probably the biggest headache
facing today's would-be "space men".
And towards the long-term progress of mankind and man's
civilization, a whole new concept of electrophysics is being levered
out into the light of human knowledge.
There are gravity research projects in every major
country of the world. A few are over 30 years old1. Most are much
newer. Some are purely theoretical and seek the answer in Quantum,
Relativity and Unified Field Theory mathematics -- Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey; University of Indiana's
School of Advanced Mathematical Studies; Purdue University Research
Foundation; Goettingen and Hamburg Universities in France, Italy,
Japan and elsewhere. The list, in fact, runs into the hundreds.
Some projects are mostly empirical, studying gravitic
isotopes, electrical phenomena and the statistics of mass. Others
combine both approaches in the study of matter in its super-cooled,
super-conductive state, of jet electron streams, peculiar magnetic
effects or the electrical mechanics of
the atom's shell. Some of the companies involved in this phase include
Lear Inc., Gluhareff Helicopter and Airplane Corp., The Glenn L.
Martin Co., Sperry-Rand Corp., Bell Aircraft, Clarke Electronics
Laboratories, the U.S. General Electric Company.
The concept of weightlessness in conventional materials
which are normally heavy, like steel, aluminium, barium, etc., is
difficult enough, but some theories, so far borne out empirically in
the laboratory, postulate that not only can they be made weightless,
but they can in fact be given a
negative weight. That is: the force of gravity will be repulsive to
them and they will -- new sciences breed new words and meanings for
old ones -- loft away contra-gravitationally.
In this particular line of research, the weights of some
materials have already been cut as much as 30% by "energizing" them.
Security prevents disclosure of what precisely is meant by
"energizing" or in which country this work is under way.
The American scientist Townsend T. Brown has been
working on the problems of electrogravitics for more than thirty
years. He is seen here demonstrating one of his laboratory
instruments, a disc-shaped variant of the two-plate condenser.
A localized gravitic field used as a ponderamotive force
has been created in the laboratory. Disc airfoils two feet in diameter
and incorporating a variation of the simple two-plate electrical
condenser charged with fifty kilovolts and a total continuous energy
input of fifty watts have achieved a speed of seventeen feet per
second in a circular air course twenty feet
in diameter. More lately these discs have been increased in diameter
to three feet and run in a fifty-foot diameter air course under a
charge of a hundred and fifty kilovolts with results so impressive as
to be highly classified. Variations of this work done under a vacuum
have produced much greater efficiencies that can only described as
startling. Work is now
under way developing a flame-jet generator to supply power up to
fifteen million volts.
Such a force raised exponentially to levels capable of
pushing man-carrying vehicles through the air -- or outer space -- at
ultrahigh speeds is now the object of concerted effort in several
countries. Once achieved it will eliminate most of the structural
difficulties now encountered in the
construction of high-speed aircraft. Importantly the gravitic field
that provides the basic propulsive force simultaneously reacts on all
matter within that field's influence. The force is not a physical one
acting initially at a specific point in the vehicle that needs then to
be translated to all the other parts. It is an electrogravitic field
acting on all parts simultaneously.
Subject only to the so-far immutable laws of momentum,
the vehicle would be able to change direction, accelerate to thousands
of miles per hour, or stop. Changes in direction and speed of flight
would be effected by merely
altering the intensity, polarity and direction of the charge.
Man now uses the sledge-hammer approach to high-altitude
high-speed flight. In the still-short life-span of the turbo-jet
airplane he has had to increase power in the form of brute thrust some
twenty times in order to achieve just a little more than twice the
speed of the original jet plane. The cost in money in reaching this
point has been prodigious. The cost in highly-specialized man-hours is
even greater.By his present methods man actually fights in direct
combat the forces that resist his efforts. in conquering gravity he
would be putting one of his most competent adversaries to work for
him. Anti-gravitics is the method of the picklock rather than the
sledge-hammer.
The communications possibilities of electrogravitics, as
the new science is called, confound the imagination. There are
apparently in the ether an entirely new unsuspected family of
electrical waves similar to electromagnetic radio waves in basic
concept.
Electrogravitic waves have been created and transmitted
through concentric layers of the most efficient kinds of
electromagnetic and electrostatic shielding without any apparent loss
of power in any way. There is evidence, but not yet proof, that these
waves are not limited by the speed of light.
Thus the new science seems to strike at the very foundations of
Einsteinian Relativity Theory.
But rather than invalidating current basic concepts such
as Relativity, the new knowledge of gravity will probably expand their
scope, ramification and general usefulness. It is this expansion of
knowledge into the unknown that more emphasizes how little we do know;
how vast is the area still awaiting
research and discovery.
The most successful line of the electrogravitics
research so far reported is that carried on by Townsend. T. Brown, an
American who has been researching gravity for over thirty years. He is
now conducting research projects in the U.S. and on the Continent. He
postulates that there is between electricity and gravity a
relationship parallel and/or similar to
that which exists between electricity and magnetism. And as the coil
is the usable link in the case of electromagnetics, so is the
condenser that link in the case of electrogravitics. Years of
successful empirical work have lent a great deal of credence to this
hypothesis.
The detailed implications of man's conquest of gravity
are innumerable. In road cars, trains and boats the headaches of
transmission of power from the engine to wheels or propellers would
simply cease to exist. Construction of bridges and big buildings would
be greatly simplified by temporary induced weightlessness, etc. Other
facets of work now under way indicate the possibilityof close controls
over the growth of plant life; new therapeutic techniques, permanent
fuel-less heating units for homes and industrial establishments; new
manufacturing techniques; a whole new field of chemistry. The list is
endless ... and growing.
In the field of international affairs, other than
electrogravitics' military significance, what development of the
science may do to raw materialare more prone to induced weightlessness
than others. These are becoming known as gravitic isotopes: Some are
already quite hard to find, but others are common and, for the moment,
cheap. Since these ultimately
may be the vital lofting materials required in the creation of
contra-gravitational fields, their value might become extremely high
with equivalent rearrangement of the wealth of natural resources,
balance of economic power and world geo-strategic concepts.
Townsend Brown's free-flying condenser. If the two
arc-shaped electrodes (on the left and right rims) are placed under
electrostatic charge, the disc will move, under the influence of
interaction between electrical and gravitational fields, in the
direction of the positive electrode. the higher the charge, the more
marked will be the electrogravitic field. With a charge of several
hundred kilovolts the condenser would reach speeds of several hundred
miles per hour.
Author's diagram illustrating the electrogravitic field
and the resulting force on a disc-shaped electrostatic condenser. The
centre of the disc is of solid aluminium. The solid rimming on the
sides is perspex, and in the trailing and leading edges (seen in the
direction of motion) are wires
separated from the aluminium core chiefly by air pockets. The wires
act in a manner similar to the two plates of a simple electrical
condenser and, when charged, produce a propulsive force. On reaching
full charge, a condenser normally loses its propulsive force; but in
this configuration the air between the wires is also charged; so that
in principle the charging process can be maintained as long as
desired. As the disc also moves - from minus to plus - the charged air
is left behind, and the
condenser moves into new, uncharged air. Thus, both charging process
and propulsive force are continuous.
Author's sketch of a supersonic space ship roughly 50
ft. in diameter, whose lift and propulsion are produced by
electrogravitic forces. The vehicle is supported by a "lofting cake" L
consisting of "gravitic isotopes" of negative weight, and is moved in
the horizontal plane by propulsion elements T1 and T2.
How soon all this comes about is directly proportional
to the effort that is put into it. Surprisingly, those countries
normally expected to be leaders in such an advanced field are so far
only fooling around. Great Britain, with her Ministry of Supply and
the National Physical Laboratory,
apparently has never seriously considered that the attempt to overcome
and control gravity was worth practical effort and is now scurrying
around trying to find out what its all about. The U.S. Department of
Defense has consistently considered gravity in the realm of basic
theory and has so far only put token amounts of money into research on
it. The French, apparently a little more open-minded about such
things, have initiated a number of
projects, but even these are still on pretty much of a small scale.
The same is true throughout most of the world. Most of the work is of
a private venture kind, and much is being done in the studies of
university professors and in the traditional lofts and basements of
badly undercapitalized scientists.
But the word's afoot now. And both Government and
private interest is growing and gathering momentum with logarithmic
acceleration. The day may not be far off when man again confounds
himself with his genius; then wonders why it took him so long to
recognize the obvious.
Of course, there is always a possibility that the
unexplained 3% of UFOs, "Unidentified Flying Objects", as the U.S. Air
Force calls "flying saucers", are in fact vehicles so propelled,
developed already and undergoing proving flights - by whom.... U.S.,
Britain.... or Russia? However, if this is so, it's the best kept
secret since the Manhattan Project, for this reporter has spent over
two years trying to chase down work on gravitics and has drawn from
Government scientists and military
experts the world over only the most blank of stares.
This always the way of exploration into the
unknown......
By INTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C.