Historical research guide · 0260 · 1999
NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings
Millis, Marc G. · Williamson, Gary Scott
In one minute
In August 1997 NASA put eighty-four people in a room in Cleveland for three days and asked a question the agency had never formally asked: what in physics could eventually make a propulsion breakthrough possible? Marc Millis chaired the workshop and edited these proceedings. Fourteen invited talks were given — Puthoff on whether the vacuum can be engineered, Milonni on the Casimir effect, Haisch and Rueda on inertia as the vacuum’s reaction to acceleration, Forward on cycling a Casimir cavity to draw energy out of the vacuum, Noever and Koczor on the rotating-superconductor weight-loss reports, Chiao on tunnelling that appears superluminal, Kheyfets and Miller on the Alcubierre warp drive, Miley on low-energy nuclear reactions. Krauss and Tipler were invited to argue the sceptical side and did. Thirty poster papers followed, and six breakout groups produced a list of ninety-five candidate next-step research tasks. This is the founding document of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program.
Connection
This is where the threads of chapters 3, 4, 6 and 11 were first laid on one table by a government agency, with names, affiliations and a funding line attached. It is also where the standard chapter 1 asks for was said out loud and in public: affordable, near-term, credible tasks that make measurable progress.
From the source
NASA funded the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program out of the Advanced Space Transportation Program managed by Marshall Space Flight Center, and this workshop set its agenda: 14 invited presentations, 30 poster papers and 6 parallel breakout sessions that generated a list of 95 candidate next-step research tasks.Foreword, p. iii
Puthoff argues that the zero-point energy quantum theory predicts and experiment verifies already plays a role in large-scale phenomena of interest to technologists — the inhibition of spontaneous emission, the generation of short-range attractive forces such as the Casimir force, and possibly sonoluminescence — and that recent advances indicate potential application in every area of spaceflight interest, from where inertia comes from to whether the vacuum can be mined for practical use.Can the Vacuum be Engineered for Spaceflight Applications?, abstract, p. 7
Milonni gives the Casimir force between two parallel conducting plates as F = −π²ħc/240d⁴: about 0.013/d⁴ dyn per cm² with d in microns, so two square plates 200 feet across and one micrometre apart attract each other with about a pound of force.Casimir Effects: Evidence and Implications, p. 83, equation 1
Forward shows that Ambjørn and Wolfram’s 1983 plots of the vacuum energy density in a rectangular Casimir cavity are double-valued — cavities with the same value of one dimension ratio but different values of another can carry the same total energy — and defines from those regions a Casimir Vacuum Energy Extraction Cycle which apparently would allow endless extraction of energy from the vacuum by cyclic manipulation of the cavity dimensions.Apparent Endless Extraction of Energy from the Vacuum, abstract, p. 51
Haisch and Rueda present a properly covariant derivation of the connection between the zero-point field and inertia which yields the relativistic equation of motion from Maxwell’s equations — and which, on the same basis, rules out Bondi negative inertial mass as an impossibility while leaving a differential space sail a distinct possibility.The Zero-Point Field and the NASA Challenge to Create the Space Drive, abstract, p. 55; Inertial Mass Viewed as Reaction of the Vacuum to Accelerated Motion, abstract, p. 65
Noever and Koczor report NASA Marshall’s gravimeter test of the rotating-superconductor weight-loss claim: bulk YBCO stably levitated in a DC magnetic field and exposed without levitation to low-field-strength AC magnetic fields showed changes in the observed gravity signal of less than 2 parts in 10⁸ of the normal gravitational acceleration, against the 0.05 to 2.1 percent weight loss reported elsewhere.Granular Superconductors and Gravity, abstract, p. 31
The way in
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19990023204How to cite it
Millis, Marc G., Williamson, Gary Scott (1999) NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19990023204