ELECTROGRAVITICS FOR ADVANCED PROPULSION

(c) 2000 Thomas Valone, M.A., P.E.

Integrity Research Institute

www.integrity-research.org

Recently, two 1956 military documents, "Electrogravitics Systems" and "The Gravitics Situation," originally published by the Gravity Research Group of London (Special Weapons Study Unit), were declassified. Outlining T. Townsend Brown's antigravity discovery (see Atlantis Rising, Number 22, p.35; AIR International, Jan., 2000; Jane’s Defence Weekly, 10 June 1995, p.34), and the subsequent Project Winterhaven, they were a vital new chapter in aviation research. For example, the documents state, "Unlike the turbine engine, electro-gravitics is not just a new propulsion system, it is a new mode of thought in aviation and communications, and it is something that may become all-embracing."

To explain, "electrogravitics" is the science of using high voltage electricity to provide propulsive force to aircraft or spacecraft of certain geometries. Or as Jeane Manning explains, "The apparatus is pulled along by its self-generated gravity field, like a surfer riding a wave." Its discovery is often credited to Thomas Townsend Brown, a physicist who was encouraged by his professor, Dr. Paul Biefield, a former classmate of Albert Einstein. However, there are those who say that Professor Francis Nipher's experiments, electrically charging lead balls, published in the Electrical Experimenter, in 1918, predates Biefield/Brown. Unknown to many unconventional propulsion experts, T. Townsend Brown's electrogravitics work after the war involved a multinational project. American companies such as Douglas, Glenn Martin, General Electric, Bell, Convair, Lear, and Sperry-Rand participated in the research effort. Countries such as Britain, France, Sweden, Canada, and Germany also had concurrent projects from 1954 through 1956.

Furthermore, through the investigative effort of Dr. Paul LaViolette, it has become clear that electrogravitics became an integral part of the B-2 Stealth Bomber today, giving it an unlimited range. LaViolette challenges us with the question, "Could the B-2 really be the realization of one of mankind’s greatest dreams – an aircraft that has mastered the ability to control gravity?" LaViolette’s investigation is summarized in an article "The U. S. Antigravity Squadron" which has been reprinted, along with both reports mentioned above, in the book, Electrogravitics Systems, A New Propulsion Methodology. LaViolette’s book, Subquantum Kinetics: The Alchemy of Creation includes a chapter on the theory of electrogravitics and a plot of applied voltage versus disc speed from Naval Research Lab data, which starts around 40 kilovolts and 2 miles per hour.

A curious fact revealed in T.T. Brown’s first article "How I Control Gravity" (Science and Invention, 1929) is the alignment of the "molecular gravitors". These massive dielectrics provided the most propulsive force when the "differently charged elements" were aligned (with the voltage source). This sounds like crystal plane alignment and perhaps explains the article "Gravity Nullified: Quartz Crystals Charged by High Frequency Currents Lose Their Weight" which appeared two years earlier in the same magazine in September of 1927. The editors had a change of heart however, in the following issue, and rescinded the article.

T.T. Brown's first patent, #1,974,483 issued in 1934, "Electrostatic Motor," is a fascinating free energy machine as well as a propulsion source. Claiming an efficiency of a "million to one", Brown causes the massive dielectrics to be the workhorse of the motor, exceeding, in his words, "the well known pin wheel effect or reaction from a high voltage point discharge." Much of what we know about T.T. Brown is from his numerous patents (all of them are reprinted in the Electrogravitics Systems book), although I was fortunate enough to correspond with him in 1981 when he was at the University of Florida. A sample of his detailed correspondence is contained in the book, Ether-Technology: A Rational Approach to Gravity-Control by Rho Sigma (1977) which is the only other introduction to Brown's work. The important fact from that book is that the DC power supply went up to 250 kV, with a substantial force being displayed starting around 150 kV. Here we get an idea of the range of voltage necessary for successful electrogravitics that even recent military contractors mysteriously disregard. An example is R. L. Talley’s report to the Air Force concerned "with exploring the Biefield-Brown effect which allegedly converts electrostatic energy directly into a propulsive force in a vacuum environment." It was entitled, "Twenty First Century Propulsion Concept" #PL-TR-91-3009, but only tested Brown saucer designs in the range of 19 kV and predictably failed to produce results.

Brown’s saucer tests show a propulsive force with the positive voltage leading and the negative edge trailing. The high voltage electrically charged the air around the craft with a cloud of positive ions forming in front of the craft and a cloud of negative ions behind. This has been verified with tests recently performed by researcher Larry Davenport. These tests are reprinted in the book, Electrogravitics Systems and can be seen in the commercial video, "Free Energy, The Race to Zero Point" for which I was the technical consultant.

In March, 1952, the Townsend Brown Foundation laboratory in Hollywood, California was visited by Air Force Major General Victor E. Bertrandias. He reported to Lt. Gen. H. A. Craig that he was "frightened" by the flying demonstration because it was in private hands and he felt it was "in the stage in which the atomic development was in the early days." He expressed concern about "if it ever gets away," meaning, we presume, "into enemy hands." A confidential security investigation was thereby initiated concerning the Foundation and T.T. Brown. Shortly afterwards, an evaluation by the Office of Naval Research in September, 1952 surprisingly devalued the Brown saucers to a "well-known phenomenon of the electric wind" claiming it would perform "less at high voltage and zero in a vacuum." The Navy declassified the report in October, 1952. However, today, copies of the report are not available from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.

In 1956, Brown returned from a research trip in France where he verified that electrogravitics worked well in a vacuum, in other words, the environment of outer space. Interavia Magazine published an article in the same year about Brown entitled, "Towards flight without stress or strain or weight" and alluded to possible speeds of several hundred miles per hour. In 1958, Fate magazine writer Gaston Burridge described Brown’s metal discs that reached up to 30 inches in diameter. Until 1960, Brown and Agnew Bahnson worked on various designs in Bahnson’s laboratory which were recorded by Bahnson’s daughter on Super-8 film. Today, a VHS converted silent video is available of those experiments entitled, "Thomas Townsend Brown: Bahnson Lab 1958-1960." In 1964 Bahnson, an experienced pilot, mysteriously flew into electric wires and died. The Bahnson heirs subsequently dissolved the laboratory project.

In 1985, Dr. Paul LaViolette was in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and looked up the work "gravity" in the card catalog. Surprisingly, he found the listing for "Electrogravitics Systems," a report that was missing from the stacks. When the librarian tried to locate any other copies through interlibrary loan, she commented, "It must be an exotic document" because she could find only one in the country which was at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Thus, LaViolette was successful in obtaining a copy of the formerly classified document. The mystery continued: seven years later when contacting the Wright-Patterson AFB Technical Library, they surprisingly found no reference in the computer-based card catalog. They did locate the document on the shelves, however, after being asked to search for it. To summarize, the report has historic value because:

• It validates T.T. Brown's experiments;
• It lists the major corporations that were collaborating on electrogravitics;
• It includes the requirements for supersonic speed;
• It shows the continuity from Project Winterhaven in 1952;
• The report includes a list of electrostatic patents;
• It had been classified by the Air Force for an undetermined amount of time which underscores its importance.

Prepared by the Aviation Studies (International) Ltd., Gravity Research Group, Special Weapons Study Unit in England in February of 1956, it defines electrogravitics as "a synthesis of electrostatic energy use for propulsion." The report historically notes that: "Electrogravitics had its birth after the War, when Townsend Brown sought to improve on the various proposals that then existed for electrostatic motors sufficiently to produce some visible manifestation of sustained motion." As mentioned in the first section of the report, both Project Winterhaven (1952) and "Electrogravitics Systems" (1956) propose "a saucer as the basis of a possible interceptor with Mach 3 capability." Another interesting detail presented is the necessity of an insulator with a exceedingly high "dielectric" constant of 30,000 for supersonic speed when the best dielectrics of that era were around 5,000. This section goes on to describe the creation of a local gravitational system by the craft which "would confer upon the fighter the sharp-edged changes of direction typical of motion in space." The January, 1955 entry states:

The intriguing part of this commentary is that without any space program at the time, the report complains that the public knows how UFOs behave and refers to sharp-edged changes of direction. Later in the report, we read, "One of the difficulties in 1954 and 1955 was to get aviation to take electrogravitics seriously." However, corporations such as Douglas, Sperry, Bell, GE, Hiller, Lear, and Convair are then described with an ongoing-project perspective. For example we read that, "General Electric is working on the use of electronic rigs to make adjustments to gravity." "Glenn Martin say gravity control could be achieved in six years....Clarke Electronics state they have a rig, and add that in their view the source of gravity's force will be understood sooner than some people think." This information makes the report exciting reading and gives it an air of suspense.

Even today, electrogravitics continues to attract public attention in the press. The latest is an article entitled "Military Power" published in a British aviation magazine, AIR International, (Jan., 2000) that includes copies of LaViolette’s drawings from the Electrogravitics Systems book. The article also cites the Aviation Week and Space Technology article from March, 1992 "Black world engineers, scientist, encourage using highly classified technology for civil applications" which caused LaViolette to investigate the B-2 Bomber connection to T.T. Brown’s electrogravitics.

John R.R. Searl, of England, constructed numerous craft purported to fly with high voltage (see the recent biography Antigravity: The Dream Made Reality book by John Thomas). However, one correction to the "Antigravity" article from Atlantis Rising Number 22 issue is that the positive pole was traditionally at the periphery of Searl’s crafts. This is important because as Searl describes his control of the imbalance of positive voltage on the edges, to steer the craft, he found that the saucers would travel toward the more positive side, exactly like T.T. Brown’s saucers behave! Throughout the sixties and the seventies, J.R.R. Searl produced many newsletters detailing the work he was doing. Since I corresponded with him in 1981, I also received some of these reports. The importance of his experiments lies in the electrogravitics phenomena associated with them. In the 6/1/68 issue of the "Searl National Space Research Consortium" newsletter, Barrett reports that the ionization of the air and permanent electric polarity of dielectrics were common along with the antigravity effects. In the 6/14/71 issue of the newsletter, Bernhard Vaegs reports that "a pink halo surrounded the craft" and describes the effect of the millions of volts that were generated. This type of description is found throughout the reports and probably was measured by the length of the spark discharge considering the approximate voltage breakdown of air. Barrett describes in the 6/1/68 issue a vacuum layer that surrounds the craft preventing ionizing breakdown of the air. The similarities between Searl's high voltage propulsion and T.T. Brown's high voltage propulsion that both are based upon the principles of electrogravitics as theoretically predicted by Dr. Paul LaViolette in his previously mentioned book, SubQuantum Kinetics.

In 1980, George Hathaway, a professional engineer licensed in Canada, along with entrepreneur, Alex Pizzaro, formed a small company to develop and promote what is referred to as "The Hutchison Effect." It is named after its inventor, John Hutchison, who liked to experiment with combinations of Tesla coils and Van de Graaff generators at the same time. Much of the information about the "lift and disruption" effects has been reported at various conferences (such as in the Third International Symposium on Non-Conventional Energy Technology held in Hull, Quebec in 1986). Videotapes of much of the phenomena have been shown on Japanese TV as well. Hathaway also assembled a three-hour videotape that documents the TV interviews, reports, and actual events. To summarize, the experiments were conducted with 250 KV of DC power on the Van de Graaff and about the same voltage of AC power on the Tesla coil. The total real power was about 1.5 KW continuously, according to Hathaway. Besides the disruptive effects, which were numerous, the lifting of various heavy objects by the field was most impressive. These events can be seen at the end of the commercial video, "Free Energy, The Race to Zero Point." In regards to the AC contribution to the field, Hathaway reports that he measured a small voltage of 2 millivolts per meter in the active region (besides the DC offset). This is a small AC signal but on top of the high voltage DC signal, it performs amazing feats.

The importance of the Hutchison Effect to Brown electrogravitics is the AC "ripple" on the high DC voltage. A reference to this may be found in a military report by Dr. Dennis Cravens who gave T.T. Brown a high rating of "practicality." Cravens reported in his evaluation of Brown that older, high voltage supplies always had some AC ripple to the regulated signal, and wonders if this had any effect on Brown’s phenomena (Cravens, T.L. "Electric Propulsion Study", AL-TR-89-040, #ADA 227121, Science Applic. Inter. Corp., Torrance, CA 90501). Dr. LaViolette has also found this factor to have particular electrogravitic significance.

Thanks to Dr. Paul LaViolette reporting in his article, "The U.S. Antigravity Squadron", there is substantial evidence that the electrogravitics research of the 1950's actually resulted in the B-2 Stealth Bomber "auxiliary propulsion system." Summarizing Dr. LaViolette's article, with references cited therein, the following facts are the most convincing:

• The B-2 charges the leading edges of its wing-like body, with high voltage;
• The B-2 is shaped just like T.T. Brown suggested an electrogravitic craft should look, for maximum charge separation;
• Northrup tested leading-edge charging in 1968;
• B-2 electrically charges the exhaust similar to the suggestion by T.T. Brown that the craft should be powered by needle-point flame-jet generators which electrically charge the exhaust;
• Aviation Week admits the existence of "dramatic, classified technologies" applicable to "aircraft control and propulsion" on the B-2;
• Aviation Week also disclosed that a high-density dielectric ceramic RAM made of powdered depleted uranium happens to have a mass density of 3 times that of the high-K dielectrics tested in the 1950's;
• The B-2's Emergency Power Units (EPU) can drive an electrical generator at high altitudes or even in space, since the fuel can be made to decompose rapidly even without oxygen;
• Edward Aldridge, the Secretary of the Air Force, admits that the B-2 creates no vapor trail at high altitudes.
• The decomposed gases from the EPU's can function as the ion-carrying medium, in much the same way as the hot exhaust gases from the air breathing flame jet generators.

These details create a sense of excitement about the world's foremost aircraft. Dr. LaViolette argues that the electrogravitic drive will function better at higher speeds due to the better flow of the ions. Therefore, it is likely, he says, that the B-2 actually is a supersonic aircraft, especially since the 1968 leading-edge charging experiments were for supersonic softening of the shock wave.

House Representative Robert Walker was quoted recently in Popular Science ("Secrets of Groom Lake") as promoting the idea of declassifying military secrets that will help commercial development. We hope that this trend will continue so that advanced Shuttle designs may also acquire an electrogravitic drive.

Through a proposal he submitted in 1990, Dr. LaViolette made NASA aware that an electrogravitic drive would be a feasible propulsion method for the Mars journey because calculations show that the transit time can be less than one month, instead of half a year to a year. It is especially attractive since it uses so little power when it is operational and verified by Brown to work well in a vacuum. More information about electrogravitics and Brown’s patents are available in my book, Electrogravitics Systems: Reports on a New Propulsion Methodology. Many of the books and videos mentioned in this article are available, as a public education service, from our non-profit organization, Integrity Research Institute, www.integrity-research.org