Posted on 04/22/2024 9:04:07 AM PDT by Red Badger
I did not refer to NASA. When a credentialed physicist claims that he and his colleagues have experimental proof and working devices, I am inclined to take him seriously enough to give him a hearing. After all, it is not as if they are brothers who are bicycle mechanics in Ohio claiming that they have invented a flying machine.
Reminds me of those old Popular Mechanics ads where you could get 153 miles per gallon with some little plastic device.
My God! I miss the old Popular Mechanics of my Dad’s.
I read and loved every one
They could use it to propel the Dale car.
It is not a 1/100,000 of G. It is gravity exerted on one gram of matter. Easy to measure.
Making absolutely sure there is no electrostatic or magnetic or atmospheric or ionic force should not be too difficult with this level of force.
Moreover, there are times when nay-saying experts are wrong about new things. When the New York Times famously (and wrongly) debunked Robert Goddard's work and asserted that space flight using rockets was impossible, they did so in reliance on the views of scientific authorities in that era. As it was, Goddard had the better understanding of physics -- as did the German scientists and technicians who developed and extended his work.
With degrees in physics, work records in the nation's aeronautics agency, and a claim of a device that apparently works on a test rig, Buhler and his colleagues merit a hearing. In practical terms, that requires not a trip from Dayton to the dunes in North Carolina, but millions of dollars in outside funding to build a device and put it into orbit. Otherwise, as happened with Goddard and his rockets, a hostile nation may first reap the benefit of pioneering work by Americans.
If not for my metrology professor saying at the beginning of the semester “All measurements are wrong”, I would not be as skeptical. Then there’s actual metrology to contend with, as well as the lack of independent verification ad nauseam.
At the end of the day, this measurement, whatever it is of, proves nothing.
If this is real, it should be replicable.
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Photons, while massless, have momentum, and are absorbed or reflected in different proportions on the light and dark sides of the Crookes radiometer. This difference leads to a net torque on the radiometer, causing it to spin.
As much thrust as he is talking bout should be easily detectable here on earth.
There is a valuable immediate market for even a small thruster to maneuver satellites and keep them properly oriented. If it did not use propellant and lasted indefinitely, it would radically simplify satellites and make them last much longer.
The revenue and experience in that market could then facilitate the development of better and more powerful thrusters that could be used in manned spaceflight.
That professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
Goddard scrupulously refuted the editorial in the Scientific American based on Newton's Third Law, but the Times nevertheless damaged his reputation. That prompted him to retreat from public life and from engagement with scientific colleagues. This impaired Goddard's ability to pursue his work, to the considerable detriment of America's scientific and technical base in rocketry.
Buhler and his team deserve a hearing. They have made a bold claim, assert that they have experimental proof, and are soliciting interest and funding to pursue it. Notably, a key benefit of capitalism is that innovators can solicit private risk capital. That requires though that innovators not be reflexively denounced as fools and frauds because they say something that contradicts current scientific thinking.
Why insist that Buhler and his associates limit themselves to work "on a reasonable scale." Just who is to determine and enforce such a limit? The SEC? The Smithsonian? The US Department of Commerce? Why not instead let investors make their own assessments and take the risk?
Excellent and thoughtful comment.
Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error. …By “on a reasonable scale”, I meant in the case of Buhler actually securing taxpayer money, i.e. like people such as Solyndra did. Private capital, if he can get it, would know the risks and the way to mitigate that is of course via as much knowledge as possible of the subject soliciting the money.
Is this right there with a pill you put in the gas tank for increased mileage? Or anti-gravity? Perpetual motion?
Your explanation that "reasonable scale" means only no recourse to taxpayer funds seems a bit late. In any event, the US government has legions of scientists on the payroll who are capable of assessing whether new ideas merit public funding. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is especially good at it.
I see no reason in principle why the Department of Defense ought to be barred from investing in Buhler's project if they think it has potential. After all, considering the billions of dollars we have invested in defense satellites, Buhler's device would be highly valuable to the DoD right out of the box. If it works, it could actually save quite a bit of money for them. Notably, China is pursuing such technology.
For what it's worth, a late friend of mine worked with the DoD finding, evaluating, and financing new technologies. He was at Sandia National Labs on such business when the Phoenix Lights UFO flap was underway. The assessment of their scientists was that the objects seen were real, which means that some form of electro-gravitic or electrostatic craft are already flying in our skies -- their craft, not ours.
So if electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force do they work with Solar Panels?
Can we use big giant solar farms on Earth to generate enough force to push the Earth farther from the sun and thus SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING????
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