Air And Space Propulsion Facts And Rumors

Sometimes it turns out that old is new again. I had heard NASA and some of their contractors were going over some of the old suggestions for propelling a vehicle in space. One that came to mind, because it seemed so dangerous, was the idea of exploding a nuclear bomb behind a ship to push it along at high speeds and to keep doing this until it reached its destination. I remember thinking this was the craziest thing I had heard at the time. It has been a long time since this suggestion was made. The suggestion was made in the 1950s, but had been first proposed using conventional bombs by a Russian explosives expert Nikolai Kibalchich in 1881. There were no nukes at the time, needless to say. In 1946 scientists were already talking about using nukes for propulsion. This brings us to the current time and it seems that a recent patent filed by the Boeing Company is for just such flight. It calls for an engine to be powered by nuclear explosions caused by lasers. It is also said the engine would be able to work in either the atmosphere or in space. I can’t help but think a fleet of planes using these engines would dump all sorts of radiation into our atmosphere, but the company says the radioactive material is vaporized and the by-products are only hydrogen and helium. I guess we will have to wait and see if this is true.

A British company has designed an engine for a single stage vehicle to reach orbit with. The engine is called Skylon. It is a rocket engine which can breathe air. It is said to be for a reusable space plane which is powered by hydrogen and will take off like an ordinary aircraft, fly to an altitude of about 16 miles and then switch the engine over to its internal tanks of liquid oxygen. The designers of the engine are Reaction Engines Limited and they claim the engine will be capable of being reused about 200 times. The company believes as long as there is no repairs needed after the craft lands, it can be made ready to fly again in about 2 days. It has long been believed the United States has an aircraft capable of reaching orbit and could even be on the third generation of such a craft. It is known as the Aurora. Perhaps this engine has already been put into use? We are being told the first tests are expected from Reaction Engines in 2019.

There have been some strange stories going around about what types of engines we may have developed for space travel and it is a fact the government is not about to let us know if they have advanced engines which are part of secret projects. Other countries may know, our enemies may know, but we are not allowed to know. In 1960 a physicist named Robert W. Bussard suggested we could build a spacecraft which could scoop what it needed for fuel from space as it traveled. The idea was to build a sort of ramjet which could travel in space. The idea was to scoop up and compress hydrogen as it went along. There is more to this however and it is the fact the hydrogen was supposed to be so compressed by the engine it would cause fusion. This engine was regarded by many as just science fiction since scientists have not been able to create a fusion reactor which produced more power than went in to it. This may have changed in the last few months. Lockheed has announced the invention of a fusion reactor which puts out far more energy than it consumes and is small enough to fit on an aircraft, but since the announcement I have not seen much more about it.

We have been hearing about antigravity engines for decades. This is the holy grail of space travel even if it may not be practical for long trips since it might require large bodies to be in some sort of proximity. There is a lot of speculation on this subject and some feel given the scale of time which has been invested in it, we may have produced an antigravity engine by now. If you believe some of what you read on the Internet, we have not only succeeded in developing an antigravity engine, but we have 3 different ones. I don’t know what the differences are supposed to be between the engines. The reason we are so desperate to achieve antigravity propulsion is not only because of its speed, but also because the people inside an antigravity ship would not be affected by any maneuvers the ship might make, because they wouldn’t be subject to Earth’s gravity. In other words the most violent of maneuvers wouldn’t bother the occupants one bit. These are the same maneuvers which might kill a pilot or tear the wings off his plane. Dr. Eugene Podkletnov has been experimenting with antigravity for generations. He is famous for designing and demonstrating gravity shielding devices which were constructed with rotating disks made from ceramic superconducting materials. Podkletnov claimed he was able to reduce the effect of gravity. A rumor came out stating Boeing was running a program called GRASP and it had to do with antigravity shielding. Podkletnov came out with a startling statement which had to do with his work on a gravity beam. He said his gravity pulses were traveling about 64 times the speed of light but did not violate any natural laws. Some claim Podkletnov helped Boeing and between them they did develop an antigravity engine. This is still a mystery.

It has also been said we are experimenting on an antimatter engine. There is a big problem with this idea and it has to do with the fact most scientists believe we could never produce enough antimatter atoms to power our ship and even if we could, it would require heavy, giant, exotic magnets, making the idea of a ship powered by antimatter impractical. This might change in 100 years or so if technology keeps running at the pace it is going.

There are two requirements needed for meaningful spaceflight, an engine capable of propelling the craft at sufficient speeds and protection for the crew from radiation and other hazards. The longer the trip, the more exposure to radiation for the crew. We need sufficient speed to get around our solar system, but traveling to star systems, even the closest one, requires something even faster and more efficient. Currently we have been experimenting with ways to travel through space without the burden of having to carry large fuel tanks. ION engines fill this bill with their electromagnetic propulsion. It may just be a matter of time when huge amounts of fuel, such as those required to propel a rocket are no longer needed.