Free Republic

June Malone Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, Ala. (Phone: 256/544-0034) RELEASE: C02-gg NASA AWARDS CONTRACTS FOR FLIGHT DEMONSTRATORS NASA today awarded contracts under the Cycle 2 Space Launch Initiative (SLI) solicitation to two companies for flight demonstrator technologies. The awards for flight demonstrators are required at this stage to mature technologies needed to support full-scale development design of a future competitively selected Orbital Space Plane under the restructured SLI effort. The Boeing Company-Phantom Works Division, Seal Beach, Calif., was awarded approximately $301 million (including options through 2006) to continue the development of the X-37 flight demonstrator. This contract includes a...

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE -- NASA will select two teams of aerospace companies to compete for a contract to build a new manned spaceship that will anchor President George W. Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon. A year after Bush announced his initiative to return man to the moon, NASA's top official says the agency will seek proposals this spring from the aerospace industry for the new spacecraft, called the crew exploration vehicle.

NASA's Controversial Gravity Shield Experiment Fails to Produce By Jack Lucentini Special to SPACE.com posted: 11:50 am ET 10 October 2001 After a second round of tests, NASA researchers have failed to detect signs that a machine can weaken gravity’s pull. But they plan to continue the research – shocking some mainstream physicists, who call it junk science. The researchers say a device that loosens the clutch of gravity, sometimes called a gravity shield, may be the only way to enable human spacecraft to blast off to other star systems. But the research lies on the fringe of accepted science. ...

<p>Antigravitational devices developed by a computer geek could eventually change the world as we know it.</p> <p>Or they may just blow a few holes into some barn roofs.</p> <p>The devices are known as "lifters." When charged with a small amount of electrical power, they levitate, apparently able to resist Earth's gravitational forces.</p>

Gravity control investigation raises hopes 10:20 18 August 02 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Controlling gravity will probably never help us launch a spacecraft, but that does not mean we should give up on the idea, says the European Space Agency. It is calling for missions that might one day enable us to harness gravity, however weakly, for the benefits we will reap back on Earth. ESA has never got involved in gravity-control research before. But NASA's highly theoretical Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project in Cleveland, as well as recent announcements of unusual experimental findings in major science journals, have...

NASA officials hope the door to a solution for a cheap round-trip ticket to Mars was opened at Marshall Space Flight Center on Thursday. The center's new $32 million Propulsion Research Laboratory was built to help local researchers unlock the secrets of efficient, cheaper spaceflight. "This is an important cornerstone" of propulsion research, said Marshall Director Dave King. "We are unveiling our future here."

Einstein's special theory of relativity predicts that nothing can exceed the speed of light. But special relativity applies when spacetime is flat. When spacetime is curved, the theory applies only "locally"--that is, over regions of spacetime small enough to be considered flat. Consider the analogy of a plane that is tangent to a sphere. The flat geometry of the plane is a good approximation to the geometry of the sphere when the size of the plane is very small compared to the sphere's radius of curvature.

Speed of light broken with basic lab kit   10:03 16 September 02 Charles Choi   Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department. Scientists have sent light signals at faster-than-light speeds over the distances of a few metres for the last two decades - but only with the aid of complicated, expensive equipment. Now physicists at Middle Tennessee State University have broken that speed limit over distances of nearly 120 metres, using off-the-shelf equipment costing just $500. Jeremy Munday and...

AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government. The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine. The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late...

A Look at the Scaling The ideal interstellar propulsion system would be one that could get you to other stars as quickly and comfortably as envisioned in science fiction. Before this can become a reality, three scientific breakthroughs are needed: discovery of a means to exceed light speed, discovery of a means to propel a vehicle without propellant, and discovery of a means to power such devices. Why? - Because space is big, really, really, really big. Space takes up a lot of space! Interstellar distances are so astronomical (pun intended) that it is difficult to convey this expanse. Consider...

AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government. The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine. The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late...

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light. New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts. Felber's antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges to space travel near the speed of light: identifying an energy source capable of producing the acceleration; and limiting stresses on humans and equipment during...

Many expect it to be one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of our age: "There'll certainly be a Nobel Prize in it for somebody," says Jim Hough. The UK professor is standing on a farm road in Lower Saxony, Germany, with a crop of beet on one side and sprouts on the other. But the real interest lies at his feet - with some shabby, corrugated metal sheeting. For a moment, it looks like an upturned pig trough until you realise it stretches for hundreds of metres. The sheeting hides a trench and, within it, the vacuumed tube of an...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. patent office has reportedly granted a patent for an anti-gravity device -- breaking its rule to reject inventions that defy the laws of physics. The journal Nature said patent 6,960,975 was granted Nov. 1 to Boris Volfson of Huntington, Ind., for a space vehicle propelled by a superconducting shield that alters the curvature of space-time outside the craft in a way that counteracts gravity. One of the main theoretical arguments against anti-gravity is that it implies the availability of unlimited energy. "If you design an anti-gravity machine, you've got a perpetual-motion machine," Robert...

Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science underpinning them 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 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...

Boeing confirms research to defy gravity Boeing has confirmed it's carrying out tests on several anti-gravity devices which could allow almost fuelless aircraft and huge spacecraft. The company wants to join forces with a Russian scientist who claims to have developed a way to shield objects from gravity. Dr Yevgeny Podkletnov was ridiculed by sections of the science community when he released details of his research in 1996. He claimed objects above a spinning, superconducting disc lost weight, but other researchers say they have been unable to validate the results. A Boeing spokesman said: "We feel there is a basic...

Monday, 29 July, 2002, 03:23 GMT 04:23 UK Boeing tries to defy gravity An anti-gravity device would revolutionise air travel Researchers at the world's largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull. Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists. They have not been able to reproduce his results. The project is being run by the top-secret Phantom Works...

Issue 6.03 - Mar 1998 Breaking the Law of Gravity By Charles Platt Skeptics had a field day when a scientist claimed in 1996 that gravity could be negated. Now his findings are being investigated in laboratories worldwide. In 1996, Russian émigré scientist Eugene Podkletnov was about to publish a peer-reviewed article in the respected British Journal of Physics-D - proving, he claimed, that gravity could be negated. Then a London newspaper publicized his conclusions, and the skeptics had a field day. Everyone knew you couldn't mess with the law of gravity - Einstein himself had said so. Podkletnov...

"Don't call it antigravity research," Ron Koczor pleads. He's a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and he's talking about a project he's been working on for almost a decade. "Call it 'gravity modification.' 'Gravity anomalies.' Anything but antigravity. That's a red flag." When people find out that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has researchers working on sci-fi stuff like antigravity—or rather, "gravity modification"—the red flags do indeed start waving. Reputable scientists like Koczor earn polite disdain from colleagues (or worse, from funders of research). But truth's truth: NASA has been studying the manipulation of...

> Laws are made to be broken. Or so the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seems to think. After an almost two-year wait, the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is poised to take delivery of a machine that proponents hope will counteract the laws of gravity. At the heart of the device is a purported effect so radical it could change the way we interact with one of nature's most fundamental forces. We're talking revolution, not evolution. A revolution in spaceships would be just one spin-off. Back here on Earth, the internal combustion engine could become an...