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Weighty Implications: NASA Funds Controversial Gravity Shield
By Jack Lucentini
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 11:00 am ET
28 September 2000
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/anti_grav_000928.html

Brushing aside controversy and a few glitches, NASA officials are forging ahead with plans to build a device that they say could work as an antigravity machine.

Most scientists say the idea of such a gadget is ludicrous. But given the stakes, NASA officials say, it's worth a try.
A machine that even slightly reduces gravity at spacecraft launch sites, agency officials believe, could save significant amounts of money.

The opportunity to try out such a machine is expected to come this May, when an Ohio company is scheduled to finish a prototype of the device for NASA.

Not that the space agency's officials themselves have high hopes.

"To say this is highly speculative is probably putting it mildly," acknowledged Ron Koczor, assistant director for science and technology at the Space Science Laboratory in NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama.

Nonetheless, NASA awarded a $600,000 contract last year to Superconductive Components Inc. in Columbus, Ohio to build the device.

Critics say the notion of a "gravity shield" violates Einstein's fundamental laws of physics.

"The theory of gravity is fairly well established, and I don't see it reversing itself," said Francis Slakey, a professor of physics at Georgetown University. The NASA project is "wasted money that could have been used to do legitimate space science," he added.

Koczor portrayed that view as closed-minded.

Scientists such as Slakey "don't seem to be amenable to observing that maybe the laws [of physics] are incomplete," Koczor said.

Throughout history, new discoveries have rocked old assumptions, he pointed out. "People used to talk about laws of conservation of mass, conservation of energy. Then all of a sudden, Einstein comes along and says those are really parts of the same thing."

Einstein wrote that gravity can be considered a bending of space-time that inevitably occurs around massive objects such as planets and stars. That, the conventional view holds, means no mere machine or invention can make it go away; it is not a "force" that can be counteracted.

The conventional scientists aren't the only critics of the NASA project. The agency is also drawing fire from some of its former collaborators in the effort. To see why, it helps to start from the beginning.

In 1992, a Finnish scientist, Eugene Podkletnov, claimed to have built a device that produced a gravity-shielding effect.

It consisted of a hot, fast-spinning, 12-inch (30-centimeter) disk of a superconducting ceramic, levitating within a magnetic field. Objects above the disk, Podkletnov reported, showed a loss of weight of between about 0.5 percent and 2 percent.

In 1996, researchers at Marshall Space Flight Center decided to investigate the claims. "The fact that it had appeared in a credible scientific journal is what really caught our eye," Koczor said.

Actually, Podkletnov had withdrawn his most recent article from publication under unclear circumstances. But he and others had published research on antigravity phenomena in several peer-reviewed journals.

Koczor assembled a team that worked together with scientists at the nearby University of Alabama at Huntsville, to build a device partially simulating the one Podkletnov had used. But the researchers were unable to replicate Podkletnov's results, and the partnership fell apart last year with bad blood between the two sides.

The university's Larry Smalley, a physics professor, says NASA simply failed to assemble a competent team of scientists who could give the project a serious chance.

The events "amused me, stunned me and upset me," said Smalley, who said he was involved as an observer of the project at the time. "It made me feel like they wasted time, a lot of money and a really golden opportunity to do something."

Smalley said he remains skeptical that Koczor and NASA have the know-how to do anything meaningful with the project.

The main university professor involved with the project, Ning Li, has since left the school. She said she has founded a company in Huntsville that also will market a gravity-shield device.

Li said she dropped the NASA collaboration and decided to work independently after the agency "wasted" the project's money and resources.

Koczor said the project fell apart not because of incompetence, but because Li was primarily interested in proving her theories of why the "gravity shield" would work. That differed from NASA's goal of simply building a working device, he said.

"She wanted the research to focus on her particular theory. Our intent was simply to show there was a gravity effect, without saying 'theory A is right' or 'theory B is right,'" he explained.

Last year, NASA decided to try again, this time by contracting out the construction of the device. Superconductive Components is in communication with Podkletnov as they attempt to build it, Koczor said.

The project is on or ahead of schedule, said J.R. Gaines, vice president of Superconductive Components.

"The superconductor is built. The rest has been designed and fabrication is proceeding," Gaines said. However, he said, he can't offer an opinion on whether the device will actually work. The company's job is simply to build it to the assigned specifications.

"We don't necessarily have a technical opinion," he said, though "we would certainly love to see this work."

Date Posted: 29-Jul-2002 JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - JULY 31, 2002

Anti-gravity propulsion comes 'out of the closet'

NICK COOK JDW Aerospace Consultant London

Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted that it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science that underpins them - science that senior Boeing officials describe as "valid" - 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 'high-' and 'low-power' 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 briefing document on GRASP obtained by Jane's Defence Weekly sets out what Boeing believes to be at stake. "If gravity modification is real," it says, "it will alter the entire aerospace business." The report was written by Jamie Childress, principal investigator for Boeing's propellentless propulsion work at the Phantom Works in Seattle.

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'.

But it is also apparent that Podkletnov's work could be engineered into a radical form of weapon system. The GRASP paper focuses on Podkletnov's claims that his high-power experiments, using a device called an 'impulse gravity generator', are capable of producing a beam of 'gravity-like' energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g on any object - enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.

Podkletnov maintains that a laboratory installation in Russia has already demonstrated the 4in (10.16cm) wide beam's ability to repel objects a kilometre away and that it exhibits negligible power loss at distances of up to 200km (JDW 24 July). Such a device, observers say, could be adapted for use as an anti-satellite weapon or a ballistic missile shield.

The GRASP paper details the beam's reported characteristics: that it is immune to electromagnetic shielding, that it can penetrate any intermediate barriers (objects placed between the generator and the target), that it propagates at very high speed ("possibly light speed or greater") and that the total force is proportional to target mass - that its effect, in other words, is exactly the same as gravity's.

Podkletnov's claims first surfaced in 1992 when he published a paper detailing his low-power experiments into gravity-shielding using superconductors, materials that lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures. The original experiments were conducted at the University of Technology in Tampere, Finland, before moving to Russia.

Podkletnov, who has a PhD in materials science from Tampere and the University of Chemical Technology in Moscow, declared that any object placed above his rapidly spinning superconducting apparatus lost up to 2% of its weight.

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) went on to attempt a replication of his work in the mid-1990s.

Because NASA lacked Podkletnov's unique formula for the 30cm yttrium-barium copper oxide (YBCO) superconducting ceramic discs - a formula the Russian maintains is critical to the experiment's success - the attempt failed. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will shortly conduct a second set of experiments, this time using apparatus built to Podkletnov's specifications.

In August 2001, Podkletnov published a paper revealing his experimental high-power work and it is this that forms the focus of the GRASP report. Boeing wants to build its own impulse gravity generator at Seattle but admits that it lacks vital knowledge in the area of the YBCO emitter - Podkletnov's special superconducting apparatus - which forms the heart of the generator.

As a result, Boeing recently approached Podkletnov directly, but promptly fell foul of Russian technology transfer controls. George Muellner, the outgoing head of the Boeing Phantom Works, confirmed that attempts by Boeing to work with Podkletnov had been blocked by Moscow, which is seeking to stem the exodus of Russian high-technology to the West.

Muellner is convinced, however, that the science underpinning Podkletnov's work is real. "The physical principles - and Podkletnov's device is not the only one - appear to be valid," he said. He confirmed that Boeing had conducted tests on a number of other anti-gravity devices, some of which were detailed in JDW 24 July.

"There is basic science there. They're not breaking the laws of physics. The issue is whether the science can be engineered into something workable," Muellner said.

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.

GRASP concludes that a "positive result from experiments would give Boeing a substantial advantage in the aerospace industry".

Reported operation of high-power gravity device: the YBCO emitter is cooled to superconducting conditions and the inner electric coil produces a magnetic field inside it. A very high voltage pulse is input to the emitter which then discharges to the collector. The discharge is guided and contained by the magnetic field in the outer coil