Fusion to Warp Drive with a Hint of Antigravity

Jason Cassibry, Ph.D., explains his team’s research and experiments in the areas of fusion, warp drive and even a mention of antigravity propulsion. A mention is also made as to what happened to Ning Li (more on that in a subsequent video). This was a presentation to the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society, a chapter of the National Space Society. There is a lot of technical discussion with the audience who were almost all engineers and scientist.

GoldBacks from Galactic/Green Greg’s affiliate link:

Goldbacks

Use coupon code GreenGregs for 1% off

Outstanding Antioxidant For Your Health: https://shopc60.com/
Use discount code: GreenGregs10 for 10% off

Inspire your kids to love science!
SAVE 20% OFF New Science Kits Using Code: NEWKITSSAVE20 At Steve Spangler Science dot com! Great Educational Products For Kids! SHOP NOW! https://www.pntra.com/t/SENKTExNSUhDR05OSUxJQ0dPRkxGRw

For gardening in your Lunar or Mars habitat GalacticGregs has teamed up with True Leaf Market to bring you a great selection of seed for your planting. Check it out: http://www.pntrac.com/t/TUJGRklGSkJGTU1IS0hCRkpIRk1K

Awesome deals for long term food supplies for those long missions to deep space (or prepping in case your spaceship crashes: See the Special Deals at My Patriot Supply: www.PrepWithGreg.com

For that off-grid asteroid homestead stock up with Lemans before you blast off:
https://www.pntrs.com/t/SENJR0ZOSk9DR05OSUxJQ0dMRkpJSg

Check out my previous videos:
Anti Gravity Technologies Survey – Rest in Peace Amy

UFOs – What is the DOD Hiding?

UAPs – UFOs What are They? Anti Gravity and More

UFOs Not From Space?

A Nuke In Every Pot

More Mars and Moon Water Found

Japan Lands on the Moon – Peregrine Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere

Did Life on Mars Commit Suicide?

Mars Life Where to Find It IF

Settle Venus First

Alien Life In Our Solar System Enceladus Europa and More

Water World Found? Just 100 Light Years Away Prospects for Life Profound

Earth Sun Like Solar System Found – Planet KOI 456.-04 Orbiting Kepler-160

Recycle Spent Nuclear Fuel Save the Grid with Steven Curtis

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Safety Questions

Titan Sub Crushed Crew Lost

OceanGate Titan – Big Questions

EMP Balloon Attack Threat From Chinese Military

Identified – Air Force Shoots Down Party Balloon

Moon Race 2.0

Your Vacation in Space

Life from Space Found? Life in the Universe

you’re about to hear a presentation on
fusion and warp dry propulsion research
with a Twist of anti-gravity and what
happened to ning Lee this presentation
is made by uh Jason Cur PhD at
University of Alabama Huntsville he’s an
associate professor of mechanical and
aerospace engineering with a propulsion
Research Center and he’s got a whole
team researching this stuff it’s an
in-depth technical presentation except
for might be discussion about ning Lee
and good Q&A sessions mixed in with it
this has got a lot of content in it so
if you’re interest in this kind of stuff
you want to watch I’m Greg Allison with
Galactic Gregs Please Subscribe bang the
subscription Bell and uh click all this
presentation was made to the Huntsville
Alabama L5 Society local chapter of the
National Space society and was casted
with the National Space Society uh let’s
Orient on Dimensions first so uh time so
we we we use the second as our basic
unit of time where does it come from so
uh 1 second is defined as the fixed
numerical value of the cesium frequency
the unperturbed ground state of oh Sho
this is getting in the way we get that
out of the way hyper famee transition
frequency of the atom and I think
that’s about 9.19 gahz where 1 Herz is
equal to 1 second that’s where the the
second is now defined um everything else
is derivative of that 1 hour is 3600
seconds a day is 24 hours of J Years
365.25 days and better than one better
than 1% one year is approximately Pi *
10 7 seconds if you’re trying to
Ballpark something while your friends
just keep that in the back back pocket
so now let’s talk about length so length
is actually defined based on the speed
of light now so 1 meter is the distance
traveled by light and one over uh
299,792,458
seconds um and meters are used you know
to measure spacecraft and launch vehicle
scales uh we use the foot and the
kilometer and then there of course
there’s the astronomical unit where that
is about 1.5 * 10 11 M roughly the
distance between the Sun and the Earth
and so for solar system scales an au is
a very convenient unit of frequency goes
from about zero out to 100 for most of
the things that we deal with um and
there’s a more pref precise definition
for Au but let’s not get into that um so
on Galactic scales the Lightyear is what
we tend to use for the measurement and I
don’t recall how many meters that is I
should put that scientific notation um
but it’s a distance that light travels
in a year and these are huge huge
distances um so our galaxy is about
100,000 light years across um in one
nond light travels about a foot through
vacuum so in one Nan one billion of a
second light goes about this
far uh a parsec is another thing that
you hear um so uh you know the
Millennium Falcon of course that’s
scientifically based uh when you know
did the kle run in 11 Parx or something
like that um but the way it’s defined it
actually has to do with astronomy so the
Earth’s
rotation um uh basically factors into
that and uh it’s an angle uh it’s one
One AU subtain the angle of one Arc and
the Parc is defined based on that and
it’s
206,000 Au or about 3.26 light years so
if you hear par used um that’s where
that comes from so now let’s get to the
fun one velocity so we start with meter
per second um so we’ve already defined
what meter per second is um a mile per
hour is about 447 m a second if you’re
trying to do this in your head just take
uh miles per hour and divide by two and
you get pretty close um a kilometer a
second is starting to think in terms of
spacecraft for um missions to the moon
or missions to Mars and things like that
those are kinds of the speeds that are
involved more a little bit more than
that but that’s getting close so one
click another uh reference point is 1
km/ second that’s about Mach 3 7 1 12 km
a second is about low or or orbit
velocity it’s about M 23 the speed of
light is about 3 to the 8 m a second
that’s the speed of light in a vacuum
and um that also corresponds to about
Mach 1 million so if you’re flying the
Earth’s atmosphere at Mach 1 million
you’re going in the speed of light
you’re also vaporized but you know uh
least you have a little claim to fame
there so now let’s get to science
fiction then we’ll get on with uh what
we’re up to uh at UAH so warp speed and
Star Trek so the way uh warp speed works
so there’s there’s a physics basis for
it has not been demonstrated
experimentally yet that I’m aware of uh
but the basic idea is that you can warp
or distort SpaceTime uh where you
contract it in front of you and expand
behind you and we now know that space
actually can expand faster than the
speed of light we can physically observe
that it doesn’t mean that we can travel
faster through the vacuum but we can
stretch and expand the uh the vacuum of
space and cheat and go faster and like
that way so that’s that’s our uh our
hack to get through SpaceTime if we can
if we can actually achieve that
so what does warp drive mean so uh Next
Generation all modern content 1 to n is
given like roughly warp to the warp to
the cube warp cube is basically the
answer and then there’s all kinds of
different variations on that um
hyperspace which is in Star Wars is a
lot faster and hyperspace is defined
according to the um screenwriters for
whichever movie TV show was out so it
moves as fast as a plot is needed for
the SCP writers do it’s hisory
quot um but to Ballpark it so galaxy has
a diameter of 100,000 Lightyear and it
takes a week to cross the Galaxy that
gives you about 5 million uh seed for
for um hyperspace travel and then
there’s one more most important one is
ludicrous speed um and that’s you know
if you go Ludicrous Speed you know that
you go to Plaid uh and uh it’s about
1,000 C uh or roughly warp 8 and that’s
according to the peer riew
Reddit article that I can
find so there we go so there there’s all
that something to shoot for so who are
we so um the charger advaned power
propulsion laboratory is part of the
propulsion Research Center at the niss
of Alabama in Huntsville so we really
good at smoking fire blow blowing smoke
everywhere uh this is an example this is
our our supersonic wind tunnel over here
that’s one of our facilities and it’s
really just all about the people the
past present and in the future the
students we’re here to train the
students and help them go out and have
exciting careers and help solve the next
generation of uh problems so um but the
thing that gets me out of bed uh in the
morning is the uh excitement of of
working with fantastic colleagues like
Dr Judy
Schneider oh you’re here toight oh my
gosh wow that’s what how that was lucky
of me right okay and second to that um
it’s the following so this is the Flint
River so I’m not excited particularly
about a random River but just as a
reference point this is in Tennessee uh
and in Alabama and uh it flows about
2,000 gallons per second um there’s
enough dyum in the water so so water has
this tiny fraction of the hydrogen in
that water is dyum there’s enough
flowing through that River to sustain 20
ter of fusion power so if you can burn
it all just that one River could power
the entire world with what we draw on
electricity right
now and everything that contains water
Rivers Creeks ponds lakes oceans running
faucets clouds plants animals they all
contain detarium and if we can figure
that out we can figure out how to crack
fusion um it it just about democratizes
energy because you’ve got water all over
the planet uh to be able to dve the fuel
for creating electricity so what is
Fusion uh so Fusion is when you combine
the Light Elements together and then
they make new elements and release a
massive amount of energy in the process
so the easiest one to do and I put that
in Big quotes is duum with tritium so
duum is hydrogen and tridium is just a
heavier isotope of hydrogen when they
merge and U fuse they release a neutron
and a helium uh with a lot of energy and
so this is this is kind of the basic
idea now I actually can’t I think I’ve
had the honor of doing the how talk this
is my third trip here the last time I
was blabbing about this giant pulse
power machine uh that we had that I was
so proud of and so now let me talk about
a colossal failure okay uh and what we
learned from it so we had this large we
had this opportunity to get a pulse
power machine that was a leftover from a
nuclear weapons effects program the
program is called the decade quad
facility which was up at Arnold
engineering Development Center we had
the last prototype that was built before
they cloned it and took four of them
connected them together and had one of
the largest pulse power capabilities in
the world at the time and uh we were
like yeah of course we want this machine
absolutely so we collaborated with
Boeing and brought it in and worked with
NASA for about eight years and it was a
lot of fun we learned a tremendous
amount um on the on the job and this is
some of the original group uh uh right
here assembling some of the machine this
is one of my former students Dr now Dr
Ross
Cortez but um
what happened is so we we collaborated
with NASA on this and uh it led to
working on something called Puff the
pulse Vision Fusion Hybrid concept and
we spent a number of years trying to
figure out how to make that work and
understand all of the physics and uh it
possibly could lead to a much smaller
propulsion system uh because of the
coupling between the fision and the
fusion and how they kind of can help
each other as we got into the physics to
figure out to figure out what was
required we decided to reach out to
Department of energy to say these are
the calculations that we’re doing can
you help us vet this and and and
collaborate together and they looked at
the codes and our calculations and what
you guys are doing a really good job now
you have to stop it so uh between that
and then them uh and then a tri agency
agreement to stop doing Vision Fusion
Hybrid stuff as part of their Advanced
propulsion portfolio that kind of killed
that whole effort so um that sort of
forced us to to stop all of this effort
and so then I was stuck with okay I’ve
got this giant machine now what do I do
you know if we we can’t go that
direction um and this machine was very
very complicated in the first place what
can we do that’s additive diffusion that
might make this easier to do so I
started doing some calculations and I
literally sat down in a chair in the
middle of the lab going huh okay how do
we how do we dig out of this and so I
started doing these Power Balance
calculations it’s just thermodynamics
one BAS basically and what you’re
looking at um on the xais is number
density so the air in this room has a
number density of about 10 25 particles
per cubic
meter let’s count them
together okay
now the y- AIS is temperature and it’s
in funny units it’s in Kil electron
volts one electron volt is
11,605 Kelvin very very hot at about 1
EV is when you start to get ionization
of the atmosphere so things that come
through re-entry are of temperatures of
the order of 1 to 2 EV as they as the in
Earth’s atmosphere and it’s because of
that ionization that we have that um
that communication blackout during part
of the
re-entry so but anyway what this is
saying is that if you have a fusion
plasma um and you’re trying to burn it
uh if you have no implosion velocity but
you can have all the temperature that
you want there’s this little space over
here if you’re plasma is small like 2 mm
for example that actually Burns this is
where ni lives this is the national
ignition facility where they they’re
getting all of the the headlines so
their densities are uh about 100 times
solid density at Peak compression so
just tremendously High pressures um and
this is without any magnetic field and
this is the this color over here is
colored on energy so how much thermal
energy is actually in that plasma and so
like over here just a 2 mm plasma
basically just like a little BB has some
maybe 10 G of energy in it or just the
the ni actually isn’t that large it’s
more like a mega but just you know just
think how much energy is packed thermal
energy packed into this little Target so
I said okay so let’s crank up the
magnetic field and see how this space
opens up for us because as you increase
the magnetic field and increase the
implosion velocity what happens is this
boundary that you’re looking at is
telling you the the blue region is where
it cools off that’s why I pick that
color deliberately blue is going to be
cold anything else warms up and this
Dash boundary is where it means that you
can get into Fusion relevant
temperatures it’s a really really hard
part about fusions getting into these
high temperatures so if you can crank up
the speed and crank up uh the magnetic
field in the Target you can start to
open that space wide up and so I
realized wait a minute I could instead
of having these really exotic large
machines that have pulse compression uh
in order to try to get to these these
high density regimes which is what we’ve
been shooting for for years and we
started rethinking this maybe we could
get to just really high magnetic fields
and go in a much lower density regime
and so once I realized that and I
started calculating how much energy is
in that system and just kind of playing
with the numbers I realized that we
could kind of operate in a real hybrid
between uh magnetic Fusion Energy like
toax and the extreme inertial confinment
fusion and possibly have a small scale
re that breaks even and so that’s what
we’re working on um right now that’s
that’s kind of what we’re trying to
develop and so a lot of what we’re going
to talk about today is kind of some of
the tools and the things that we’ve done
along the way towards that goal um so
one of the things that just pains me is
the joke uh Fusion is the technology of
the future it always will
be and uh uh and it’s it’s frustrating
because it’s true I’ve been working at
this for so long uh you know and and I
my part of it is small compared to the
whole history but if you plot all of the
progress on one chart you can see that
we’re actually marching towards Break
Even we’re actually tracking better than
Mo’s law in terms of how much um energy
output is coming from these reactors so
if you go back this is where it got
Declassified and people started working
openly on Fusion so right here around
1958 um and then you have all these
different experiments that came online
and marched forward and here we are um
in 2024 so this this picture here was
generated in uh in 2020 by um Sam roelle
and Scott Shu who work at Department of
energy and help come up with the
policies for the nation on on fusion and
so they they published this uh Dr shu is
the lead Fusion coordinator for uh uh
Office of the under secretary for
Science and Innovation at uh doe and so
this just kind of shows the the the r
progress and how things are going
towards break even so you can kind of
forecast we should be there in the 2030s
so we’re getting really really close now
but we have to work really hard to make
sure that these Trends continue so we’ll
talk about what we’re going to be doing
within
that but things are changing very very
quickly um I made this chart just a year
ago where over 35 Fusion companies had
formed and there was almost 5 billion in
investment and now I’ve lost count of
how many Fusion companies are out there
there’s I think somewhere around 70
maybe and so there’s I think a few
billion that have been thrown in on top
of this private investment so things are
changing and progress is being made very
very quickly so it’s an exciting time to
be in it so some of the prominent
companies that are out there you’ve got
Commonwealth Fusion so of that 5 billion
I would say like 30% of it just goes to
this one company uh they have a
tremendous amount of investment but they
have a lot of credibility behind their
concept and so what changed and enabled
them to do this is a similar failure um
they uh they were part they this is this
is an MIT group that uh uh have always
been part of the magnetic confinement
stuff so tokc are basically like
magnetic Donuts so the plasmas are
basically a donut shape and so um when
eer the international thermonuclear
engineering reactor uh was starting to
be built all of the money most of the
money that went into our Fusion program
started to go to that and so a lot of
the the domestic Fusion uh participation
went away the the budgets were zeroed
out was because we couldn’t afford to do
that and everything else that we had and
uh they didn’t want to get out of the
action so they scratched their heads and
started thinking what can we do and they
they actually worked on uh super
conducting magnets and help develop the
technology to lead to magnets that could
get to 20 to 40 Tesla at at pretty high
temperatures and so they completely re
revolutionized super conducting um
capabilities because of that because
they were motivated and that now leads
to a smaller reactor and so now they’ve
got a lot of investment because of that
hard work um helon is so they’re in
Massachusetts so helon is on the other
side of the United States in Washington
there’s I think a half a dozen Fusion
companies up there so I don’t know maybe
they got extra detarium in the water
that motivates them or something here we
deter myself hang on
okay better so anyway helon is probably
oops I got to stop doing that uh helon
is probably the largest company infusion
on the west coast and their concept they
form a plasma kind of a kind of a donut
like a tokc but it’s a pulse system so
they form it they shoot it in into this
little chamber and then they compress it
down with additional magnets and so
they’re making some very interesting
progress and they have their own what
they call capacitor kitchen where they
cook up new capacitors to help help with
this so they they’ve got a really well
funded
program um this is just a road map I
think I’m going to skip this and kind of
get
into the portfolio what I’m portfolio
and what I’m interested in actually so
the fuel sources that people propos um
are all over the place most of them are
duum Trum So of the 35 companies that I
had listed statistically 22 of them were
doing derium trium five are doing people
are 11 and and um then there’s a mixture
of dyum and p 11 and de helium 3 the
reason the duum Trum is pick is because
it’s easy still Burn by an order of
magnitude um and then p 11 is a not a
close second but has the next highest
level of uh participation is because it
doesn’t make any neutrons neutrons are
terrible you make you burn a plasma it
makes neutrons and all those great
materials that you came up with slowly
start changing over time like some
sometimes they just they crack because
of neutron and Brittan and sometimes
they turn into different elements
because the neutrons will transmute and
just change it into something else and
they can make it radioactive so new Js
are really hard to deal with but people
are on 11 is so hard that I’m not sure
that anyone’s really going to get there
anytime soon with it so but we we’ll see
I’m glad that people are working on
it um so what are we doing in
Fusion so our main efforts that we’ve
been involved in recently uh plasma
driven magal Fusion is one of them and
so this is a collaboration with Al Alam
hyperjet Fusion uh University of New
Mexico in Spaceway which is a company in
Florida and it’s funded by Department of
energy RPA and NASA and we have this
cartoon down here that shows this is
actually a simulation that we did um uh
which prototyped on this machine
actually right here um in which we have
a three-dimensional implosion of 36
plasma Jets and uh six jets that are
magnetized by those external solenoids
so the field Lins that you see the blue
things are magnetic fields and you can
see as the plasma comes in they’re
conductive and it distorts that field so
it sweeps up the magnetic field and
compresses it and that’s uh one of the
merits of magal fusion is that the field
acts like an insulator trapping the
electrons which release the energy
otherwise so that’s really important and
uh it took us about a decade to develop
a code that could do these types of
calculations on a machine this small so
uh that’s this is a like in the last
couple years this is sort of a new
capability that we’ve had but it’s
taking a tremendous amount of work um
and a lot of grad students uh sweating
with me over over trying to get this uh
functional so the other company that we
work with is near Star Fusion and this
is a a hybrid of gradient field and
impact fusion and it’s derived from
actually a NASA propulsion concept uh
they’re based in Virginia and the
funding so far has come from Department
of energy the state of Virginia private
investment and National Science
Foundation and um the basic idea is they
have a a rail gun that shoots a
projectile up to about 10 km a second um
it runs into a chamber and the details
of what happens in that chamber are
proprietary pretty cool we’re working on
it I can’t say much more about it at the
moment um but this this this is
something I’m very very excited about
and uh we’re hoping to make a lot good
progress on that this summer so when
when when we can talk about it uh we get
good results you’ll you’ll hear from me
um so now that takes us to our next step
so we had to move out of the lab on the
Arsenal um because smdc took over the
building and their priorities shifted so
we’re like okay we can’t squat here
anymore so we moved what we could up to
campus and decided to focus on smaller
slower simpler machines and the main
machine that we focused on is this mile
thing that the kids named Sparky so
Sparky is a 60 K 40,000 volt capacitor
Rank and um this machine was so this
this room was supposed to be a room
intended for I think it was like kind of
like a medical center or something any
of my students know the
history yeah I don’t really know what it
was for but
um they were going to condemn all of
these buildings and start doing major
construction and then the pandemic hit
and halted it and so we basically got to
work in a condemn building until the the
pandemic lifted so so you know you mix
feelings they don’t want to see
everybody get sick and all that but it
was nice to have the building for a
while so we moved our entire lab or most
of it up to here for about a year uh
year and a half uh and then and then uh
then we had to move again to our more
permanent home but along the way we
picked up a very interesting project in
Vision which is why I added Vision to
the title um so this is a cad drawing of
of an experiment called the ant farm and
uh when we started doing this and people
say what what kind of work are you doing
you know if we’re at a restaurant i’
take my straw put it in the water and
just blow bubbles and say we’re doing
this for NASA you know um so what what
is it actually um so it’s derived from
any any great idea you had was thought
of in the 60s and 70s I’m I’m pretty
sure so this is this is a liquid molten
state urani
uh nuclear thermal rocket and so the
idea is that you have a bunch of these
cores that are spinning to centrific
confine the uranium and the point being
the hotter the temperature the faster
the exhaust velocity of the gas so you
can say travel to Mars faster or travel
with a higher payload Mass fraction um
and so they decided to resurrect that
and start funding it so we had the
pleasure of getting to work on it so
this little spinning um animation here
is uh uh is basically one of the
possible fuel elements and so there’s
two variations that we’re looking at one
in which each fuel element is sort of
separated and it’s an individual element
with its own nozzle and another one in
which they’re common and then they all
go through one nozzle I’m not really
sure which concept’s going to win yet so
we have to understand how the hydrogen
can bubble through that liquid uranium
and then go out into a nozzle and um
this this is harder than the fusion
stuff that I do trying to get all of
this to work so the first thing that we
did is we tried to duplicate uh the work
that they had in the ant farm and uh
there’s a young gentleman um hiding back
there who who successfully was able to
Benchmark our code against that oh good
it’s embarassing him good good um then
next up uh there’s a new experiment that
they’re buing called the blender uh in
which they basically take the end farm
and spin it up to 7,000 RPM they don’t
have it spinning that hard just yet but
they’re getting there and they’re going
to feed the gas sideways as a way to
kind of approximate that spinning
cylindrical drum so uh we modeled that
and this is this is this is probably the
single hardest model we’ve ever
developed is is trying to come up with a
planer enclosure and a liquid inside and
modeling liquid with bubbles coming into
it that’s we’re working on that right
now but so far we’re we’re doing okay
with it and the liquid is separating out
and going up the walls and we’re haven’t
really gotten into tracking the bubbles
yet but that’s part of the progress and
then we’re also doing the cylindrical
one in which you you see here this is
like a a subset version and so but
anyway we’ve got it working we just have
to make the physics better but that’s
that’s where we are with that we’re one
tiny part of a huge National project on
that that’s kind of exciting and so this
is this was last year’s nuclear emerging
Technologies for space um picture and so
here’s here’s some of our uh our our
grad students
and uh um I think oh no no I’m here I
thought I was going to not be in this
picture but yeah I’m I’m there so okay
so now we moved out to the airport I
think when they realized we were trying
to do fusion and nuclear reactions they
said yeah let’s let’s move you a few
miles away from the canvas um there just
really was no space on at UAH for all
the the equipment that we had so we
moved us out to a hexagon owned facility
um and we’re about to renew our rental
out there so we’re very excited so we
got our own mailbox we felt like we make
the big time now um and this is
basically what our lab looks like so we
have these pallet racks to kind of hold
most of the equipment uh that we have
and so that actually takes up quite a
bit of
space um and so here’s Sparky Sparky has
been moved over and um thanks to uh a
lot of our students and I’ll say the
lead on this was taken by uh Jacob
Kinsey and Logan Towers on getting this
machine operational in the new facility
I think Logan is is here with us today
and uh Logan just got his uh Master’s
thesis depended on the um on the machine
so we we we did a number of shots with
the machine and we did one where we said
let’s try Li lithium deuteride just to
see what happens um because our
instrumentation wasn’t quite ready yet
um but we did a shot and we measured
before and after with the background and
we did slightly activate the chamber uh
it seemed like so we we kind of did
something is very very safe we we have
uh a lot of uh uh safeguards in place
and and detectors and things so we we uh
we didn’t do any harm to anything but we
we think we actually did real fusion for
the first time here recently but now
that we think that we can do that we’re
we’re going to be a lot more rigorous
about everything so we’re developing our
diagnostic system and trying to come up
with a better source and we’re working
with the radiation safety officer so
we’re very excited about
this um and so we also have an
assortment of high voltage equipment um
this is a uh a Tesla coil uh that we
have firing in we took the Dome off of
it uh uh obviously for no reason other
than just to make cool Sparks so we
could have a picture um and then we’re
refurbishing these uh um high voltage
power supplies that will take us from we
can go to 0 to 60,000 right now and with
the yellow one we can go to plus and
minus 100,000 so we’re we’re working on
on that um and this is most of our team
we’ve got a few new people that have
been added uh one or two of them are
here today I think hey how you doing
um but anyway this is this is a lot of
our our our team right now so question
so
far okay thank you for not falling the
seat just yet oh oh oh y
y
away I’m reminiscent about Dr Cole’s
work back in the day when they were
trying to do Annie matter and everyone
was worried there’s going to be a black
hole generated and we’ll all disappear
here at hunsville remember those days I
do okay well I came out to your lab and
and uh visited and I thought it was
fascinating work you guys do so now I I
I see this this cool project you’re
doing kind of going away can you give us
a tidbit of what the sensitivities are
of that sure okay so I’ll have to redact
certain things but okay so the idea
behind the F and Fusion Hybrid is that
if you get the fusion part burning like
Fusion is very rich in in producing
neutrons right and so uh while fision is
kind of poor in producing neutrons you
have to do a lot in order to manage that
budget and so if you can get the fusion
to burn and generate neutrons then if
they couple into the um the uranium or
whatever material we looked at other
other materials as well um I’m sure as
we googled it we got on somebody’s list
in the process but um so the uh the fast
neutrons will fion with both uranium 238
and 35 they have cross-sections to burn
both and release a tremendous amount of
energy but you have to have a pretty
long distance for those neutrons to
travel through solid in order to get
them to um actually burn have a good
probability of burning so in order to
get around that and have a smaller
pellet you’ve got to compress Beyond
solid density and that gets you to can’t
finish the
sentence but that it gets into an issue
where it it runs Too Close into other
applications and at the same time the
energies required to achieve that turn
out to require a huge pulse power
facility so you lose the ability to
shrink it down because you have to
compress the solid uh to uh it’s hard
enough to compress any solid but the
hard the farther you go up on the
periodic table the worse it gets because
there’s just this huge electron cloud
and you push on it and all those
electrons are kind of pushing back and
it just makes it really hard makes makes
certain properties go up very very
quickly and so you just can’t
can’t deal with it so we didn’t really
lose out on some big important I mean it
was a great project but there’s other
ways to do basically that same thing and
we think we have a better path now to
make it smaller but we wouldn’t have
known that had we not spent all that
time going through all math and all that
um it’s closely related to like Orion
I’m sure you’re familiar with Orion and
Ryan they didn’t want to do either
because uh that’s basic Ryan is a
concept in which you would detonate
atomic bombs and uh and there’s almost
no better propulsion system out there
but you have a nuclear fallout every
time you did a launch or if you just
take it all space and do it from space
um it would take a lot of launches to
assemble that vehicle and now you would
have a bunch of bombs in space and so if
we did it we’re like well this is just
for Science and other countries would go
yes us too this is just for Science and
so then we would have this big arms race
and nobody wants that and so it just it
it’s just politically a non-starter for
for that reason and puff is not you
can’t really weaponize the puff concept
but it’s in that family of things where
politicians go o I don’t want this yeah
so that’s kind of what
happened question other yes
blue oh
sorry I’m loud enough it’s okay what is
pv1 uh oh oh P for protons hydrogen and
and B1 is uh Boron okay so it’s one of
the so Boron which any most of your
laundry detergent has Borax in it and so
that’s I forget the the levels but Boron
10 and waron 11 are both really really
common Isotopes and they’re they’re
found in laundry detergent I’m getting
some kind of weird feet okay that’s
better Robin did you have a question
idea I was wondering um what is the
energy range of the
and have you noticed the minimum energy
that causes damage to the
materials very good question and um for
Fusion the dyum train reaction makes a
um a 14.1 me Neutron so it’s a massive
amount of energy and it’ll dislocate up
to 50 atoms in a lattice typically so it
it does a lot of damage uh the next one
down for dyum it makes every other
reaction that occurs is 3.5 me it’ll
make one of those and it’ll still do
damage um and then at low and so the
absorption cross-sections typically are
much lower energy so they have to be
moderated first um and at those lower
energies then it can basically transmute
elements and so any system that you have
has to be designed to account for that
knowing that the neutrons are going to
walk their way in and then get absorbed
into stuff and change the uh the
contents and so um the way we handle it
in our
lab let’s see oh here we go okay you see
these little blue containers so they’re
filled with Borax and then once they’re
full of borax you pour water in um and
get it as dense as you possibly can and
and
uh uh Mr thard over there is laughing
because he’s the one that actually
poured the Borax in for most of them I
think and U thank you did a good job and
so what happens is the the neutrons come
out they they get scattered and
attenuated by hydrogen they slow down
and then they get absorbed into the
Boron and then they react and form a new
component which is stable but then they
release a gamma ray when they do that so
you have to shield for the neutrons with
hydrogen and then you have to Shield the
the secondary gamma ray with lead after
that so the shielding is very very
complicated when it comes to neutrons as
you
know good
question um other questions before I
going yes yes
sir I know that at least one Fusion
company is uh is using a lithium um
blanket a liquid a liquid lithium
blanket rot around much as there much as
you’re plan to rotate um the uranium
fuel inside the inside the drugs and
they using that as a neutron Shield have
you looked into that is um is that
something that’s feasible yeah you’re
talking about a lithium blanket as a way
to I think what they’re doing is using
the lithium to uh Shield the neutrons
and then U generate Trum from that
because trium is a really important fuel
but it doesn’t exist naturally you have
to breed in so reactors would basically
are are designed to try to breed trium
and then then recycle that trium back in
and so I think you’re talking about
first light fusion and what they have
General Fusion General Fusion oh yeah oh
that’s different yeah they one doing
this steam FK concept of using Pistons
to compress a plasma yeah they are
actually one of the very first private
Fusion companies um and uh and so in
their concept they uh they use
explosives to drive these metal Pistons
to uh compress a magnetize a Target and
the the Piston serves two functions one
is to compress the Target and the other
is to also R trium and shield against
the neutrons and so yeah that’s that’s
what their concept is and it’s it’s
rooted in another concept called Linus
which existed years before that mostly
just on paper um but you can look up
Linus or general fusion and kind of get
the gist of what they were doing with
that um
so uh let’s talk about why we should go
to Mars so um I always like to share
this given Advanced propulsion talk
because like a lot of times when you
when you hear talks on M propulsion
people kind of give those mom and pop oh
it’s inspiring you know we got to do
this but but the the reality is it’s
very expensive and so you need some real
Subs reasons to give to politicians so
they can figure out why to spend money
on your thing instead of something else
and so really it comes down to if you
want to study something like Mars it’s
hard to beat the human brain it’s really
what it comes down to so humans are
basically our brains are like 20 pedop
flop supercomputers and they only need
about 100 watts to run I mean there’s
nothing comes close to that capability
so a lot faster speed and efficiency to
optimize field work and we have the
agility dexterity because we have hands
and things to do things um the on-site
team can overcome communication problems
is everything
okay yeah well I think what happened is
when we had Bert speaking Yeah I think
you switched the source of the mic Zoom
okay I that’s easy to back so there’s a
communication lag so if you go to uh
Mars depending on where Earth and Mars
are you’ve got between 6 and 20 minutes
uh communication Transit time so it’s
really hard you can’t just do you can’t
say hey why don’t you go look at that
rock over there you’ve got you know it
could be 40 minutes um before the uh the
command is issued versus you know what
they do so you really need some autonomy
and so it really helps to have people so
that’s that’s kind of what one of the
things that motivates me in terms of
crude space travel and how to make it
better so here’s our neighborhood and
I’ve put it on astronomical unit
measurements because remember I said
earlier the link scale that we think of
for the solar system is 1 Au because uh
Mars is like a half a Au away from us um
and then Jupiter is about 5 Au out and
so on and so forth and just look at this
so we’ve been to the moon and we’re
going to go back soon um and that’s only
0.1 to 002 a out so we’re just barely
it’s so hard to do that we’re just
barely scratching the surface of
exploration uh beyond Earth most of what
we do is in that tiny little cyan
colored Circle right there and pretty
soon with emis 2 we’re going to send
people back not to land on the moon but
at least a circle out and and go this
way so it’s very exciting to get to do
that but then we we look at the scales
we see if we put this on a log scale so
here we are in Earth and we’ve got this
this huge um region that we can’t
explore this is our nearby Celestial
neighborhood um and these are all the
worlds and this is another thing that
really strikes me so we we get excited
about Mars but I also think a lot about
um all the other worlds that are about
the size of the moon or a little bit
smaller most of them are kind of far out
most of them are cold and they have a
gravity that’s about 10% of of uh of our
gravity and there’s a many many of them
to go visit and I I I think about this a
lot because I think about you know what
could we do on those planets could we
dwell there could we do things could we
um you know is there is there value to
it probably maybe not at the moment but
I I do think a lot about um these as
maybe not Mercury that one might be a
little toasty for us but the rest of
them I think about the possibilities of
of visiting some of these other places
and what what might be there so I did
this calculation um for this talk this
is a walk through the solar system I did
this two days ago and so you can kind of
see as we we zoom out just to kind of
get a sense of scale that last orbit
there was Seda which has a huge huge
orbit of like 3600
uh Au and now we have the Oro Cloud
coming in at about 100,000 Au now we
have the nearest stars and then we see
the ones that were
um um sort of highlighted here those are
the habitable on so we have actually a
good number of stars uh in the habitable
zone but now let’s look at this chart
figure out what technologies to get to
all these places so on the Y AIS we have
Delta V that’s roughly how fast do you
need the spacecraft to go and on the
xaxis is the energy density of the fuel
needed in order to do those missions and
this blue line is just an approximation
but it really does capture a lot of
physics this way of how fast the exhaust
velocities need to be coming out the
vehicle in order to practically do that
mission so in other words you could use
the chemical propulsion system and go to
the next star but if you try to do it
fast you’re going to have like a posted
stamp worth of payload uh in order to
get there or you’re going to have a very
very very very large system so you
really need an exhaust velocity that’s
comparable to the Delta V that’s the
Assumption in this curve so let’s start
at the bottom lunar round trip in a week
we can do that that’s chemical
propulsion if you look at the
intersection here chemical energy
density is around 10 7 Jew per kilogram
Mars roundtrip in 2 years also can be
done with chemical it’s pushing the
limits but you can stage things and put
things out at the destination and refuel
there maybe and kind of help close that
mission um it starts to get easier if
you start looking at new nuclear
technologies though because you have
better energy density you have a higher
specific impulse and so now you really
kind of need something that can give you
about a th000 seconds ISP to do that
Mars round trip in 6 months now you’re
talking you need at least two or 3,000
seconds ISP now you’re pushing beyond
the limits of nuclear thermal propulsion
you need something better you need um
nuclear electric if you could get the
size of the Electric System and the
radiators down or you need fusion and
then you start pushing out a Titan sand
will return in 2 years the helops fly by
or Cloud gravitational lensing in 10
years and all of these need uh enormous
specific impulses like 10,000 seconds
100,000 seconds and simultaneously it
needs energy densities that keep going
up and up and up in order to do that and
so nuclear can kind of do some of this
um Fusion so nuclear a lump fision and
fusion together but Fusion of the two of
them can really give you higher specific
impulse and good uh good frust um and
the Delta V in order to get there so it
kind of gets you here and then there’s a
gap of there’s not a lot of missions
that I’m aware of that we could do here
that have a lot of value and until we
start looking at the next stars and even
with going to Stars we’re really pushing
fusions limits at this point like you
could maybe do something in 50 to 100
years um but uh you in order to really
do it like that you’d have to Stage it
and I hate to throw away a perfectly
good Fusion reactor uh but you know if
we must um but it really kind of becomes
impractical even for that so you have to
kind of look to things that are more
exotic like any matter laser lightcraft
if that if you can make that work or um
warp drive
so now let’s back up let’s let’s let’s
change GE and talk about something else
that interests me um and that is the
microgravity environment so we’ve kind
of got that managed but what astronauts
have to do is they have to work out for
2 hours a day in order to keep from
really um deteriorating too much due to
the microgravity um so it’s a solvable
problem at least for a year but now if
we look to going to Mars um what we’re
worried about is once they get to Mars
are they going to have to have uh
therapy on the site before they can
really do their work you know we don’t
know but we know that the the health
risks in being in microgravity are are
pretty significant the bone loss the
muscle weakening cardiovascular DEC uh
conditioning Etc um and so if we can do
something about that I want to so these
arguments here actually came from Dr Tor
and Clark who does um uh anti-gravity
countermeasures they have a cuge out
there so they do a lot of research in
that area but we came across something
else that we realized we could leverage
all of our pulse power power supplies to
do and that is using something called
dialect freesis so what is that um i’
I’ve worked on it for a number of years
now now and I still need Google’s help
to spell it right um but basically what
it is is you have a gradient in an
electric field okay so you take a a
power supply and literally just here’s
here’s an electrode and here’s another
one let’s make one flat and one of them
small over here and you can see how the
field lines kind of coales to a point so
there’s clearly a strong electric field
gradient the lines of force are tighter
over here than they are there what does
that do well what happens
is um the molecules everything can be
polarized and so let’s say the field
lines are left to right the molecule or
the atom orients itself so that slightly
more uh field or slightly more of its
charge is attracted to the stronger side
of the field and um it’s sort of like a
tug of war and this side wins and so it
always tends to go into the direction of
the stronger side of the force there are
exceptions and the the young gentleman
that I was fragging about earlier that
did the modeling of the bubbles is also
uh my foremost expert on dialect freesis
and all the exceptions to the rule so uh
he’s he’s I’m not going to be able to
get rid of him anytime soon um but some
of the applications of dialectric reges
are mostly on the small size the
particle size and medical applications
it’s really neat they use hundreds of
bolts in these small scales and they can
separate uh cancer from regular tissue
or bacteria from cells and things like
that it’s really cool what they can do
and I found out about this and I said
they use hundreds of volts I wonder what
you can do with 40,000 volts and um and
actually there was an aerospace
application of this and I found the
paper and I read it and it said the
author was Jim Blackman and Jim Blackman
literally was my office neighbor two
doors down and he doesn’t know when to
retire so he just keeps working um as as
a lot of us do I think in in Huntsville
so um so I went and talked to him about
it and he had a lot of great things to
say but so during the pandemic this is
when I thought about it and as one does
um for your birthday you treat yourself
to a high voltage power supply uh and
you said things up on a ping pong table
because you know I had free time this is
dangerous things that happened and this
is not a very good movie but this was
one of the first things that I got to be
successful you see that’s a pingpong
ball and what I was able to do was to
pick up the pingpong ball and the marble
did a strange thing and kind of wandered
around but I was able to figure out how
to set up something to lift it up so the
uh the rod here was at one voltage and
then the p and then the uh the aluminum
foil at the bottom I think was at ground
and that’s what I did there but it
worked if you reverse the polarity would
still pick it up and so I thought I
think we have something here um and then
I tried a lot of other weird things like
uh uh just just a rod by itself and um I
was I tried to set up something that I
could see if I could just tilt something
over because I couldn’t pick up things
in general and uh and so I there’s a rod
here and then this is insulated by uh
there are these blue PVC pipes you can
get at lows they’re for plumbing I think
and they just happen to work really
really well as an insulator so so once I
kind of had a rough idea oh okay we have
something here um then we started
getting into trying to do something a
little bit more rigorous with what we
could do on a budget of basically zero
um so we developed a 3D code to allow us
to be able to calculate electric field
this is the this doesn’t really do a
whole lot other than we you know have
the ability to do that now and that
allows us to calculate the forces and
then we were able to come up with a
stand um that allowed us to quantify how
much force how much effective
acceleration we could exert on different
objects and one of the things that was
the most challenging about this is the
arcing because if it arcs you lose the
electric field you’re done and it and
quits so we had to solve that problem
and u a student that has since graduated
um her name was um Savannah flarity she
came up to me one day kind of sheep and
shly goes this might be stupid but you
ever thought about maybe using art clay
because we could try all these different
shapes and just kind of sculpt things
around it I went hey let’s try it and it
worked perfectly so the the next best
thing is this high voltage putty which
cost 10 times as much so this was
perfect we can go to Walmart and get all
up it and bring it home and just sculpt
these things and we could bake them into
ceramic Parts it was really really
really neat and so this is an example of
one that I think either Savannah or boom
uh built and uh and so we put Velcro on
a little wooden pole and we tried um
marbles wood glass clay uh I think
avocado banana chicken just anything
that we could find to see and so we were
able to actually generate about a third
of Earth’s gravity uh using a 40,000
volt power supply so that that got us
very very excited so now we’re in the
middle of trying to get to we we’ve
written proposals we’re trying to get
this funded but we’re trying to get to
the point where we actually can pick up
something large so that that’s the goal
so to do that we’re going to have to get
to well over 100,000 volts and it gets a
lot harder because then the number of
power supplies available get much more
expensive and the ability to to suppress
the arcing is a lot harder to do as well
so but we’re working on that and that’s
that’s kind of where we are at the
moment but our interest is
can we make this safe for humans to
serve as an artificial gravity
environment and so that’s what we’re
looking at um right now and there’s a
lot of work that’s done on that line
workers are frequently around high
voltage power lines so they’re in
similar electric
environments um and there’s a lot of
data that’s available it’s not clear
that this is safe or not yet so an
element of the research I don’t see us
doing that anytime soon but an element
would have to be um on making sure that
this is safe for people but so far it
appears that as long as you’re at
frequencies below 100 khz um it’s it’s
okay unless you get shocked that that
that’s a problem and we obviously want
to uh mitigate that as well we have some
some ideas for how to to PR that so so
that’s one of the things that we’re
working on um so we are going to present
for okay okay I see what just happened
um I borrowed some old slides and I
think I had did recordings on that so I
I thought I got rid of all of those but
I see that I was like how am I cloning
myself where where am I coming from it’s
another you know me from a different
reality that’s kind of visit I guess
okay so
um let’s talk the last thing I want to
talk about before I get into the
Breakthrough stuff um is uh the pulse
magnetic nozzle work that we’re doing
which is derivative of the puff step so
it’s not de we’re just we’re just doing
it uh as pure Fusion at this point and
and so if you want to turn a fusion
propulsion a fusion system into a
propulsion system for pulse you have to
figure out how to take an explosion and
turn it into thrust and that is very
very difficult because the plasmas are
extremely high so the cartoon
illustration of it is that you have a
plasma that explodes into some kind of a
magnetic field these these uh X’s and
O’s represent coils that spiral around
the shape of a nozzle and the cartoon
image has always been okay the plasma
will do that push the f out of the way
and go out the nozzle and everything’s
fine and um the state-of-the-art has
been up up to this point whether you’re
modeling or experiments that we know how
to make a terrible not working at all
nozzle so um so it’s only a few years
ago that we were actually able to get
our code to be able to do something and
come up with a topology um that would
actually give us thrust um so um and
then on top of it this thing has to
somehow produce electrical power to
recharge the system for the next shot so
it’s a lot of really complicated things
that have to go on so we came up with a
model in which let’s say we take a
little chunk of plasma it runs into the
coils um if it compresses that flux so
here’s where the voltage is induced on
those coils it drives through an
inductor through a Transformer and then
pulse recharges a uh a capacitor bank
and so we’re able to come up with a
space over which we can do this and
both uh recover enough power to recharge
the system
and um get propulsion for uh travel so
it’s very very difficult but everything
if you tune it just right uh you should
be able to get this and this is just a
model of um what the current and voltage
waveforms look like and the capacitor
bank which had just done in this case it
was a pup system where it it deliver
this huge amount of current to ignite it
and create an explosion then the
explosion comes back and runs through
the circuit and charges the system to
reset it back to 40 kts again so so it
can be done um and so now we’re we’re
working with nansa on further modeling
on this to try to improve it and this is
what we have at the moment this is this
is where we think uh we’re going to need
to go with this so the coil is a hybrid
of two things one is Linings that go
long length and then there’s another
Spiral the spiral is going to be best
for the fleux compression to get power
and then the the axial coils actually uh
are what give it propulsion what give it
thrust and so I have a little movie here
of a simulation that we did where you
can see how the as the plasma explodes
it distorts the field um and it’s kind
of coming out here uh now in full
disclosure right after this the code
crashed so you know uh but we’re we’re
making progress we’re going to uh as
soon as the semester is over and you
know they they insist that I show up for
class uh and you know blah blah blah
grade finals and all that kind of
stuff but once that’s over we’ll get
back to uh working on this and trying to
make improvements on on these models and
we’re working with Dr Gabe Shu one of my
colleagues and they’re doing experiments
and um so we’re trying to duplicate
their experiments and then scale it up
to see how a full-blown system would
operate so we’re really excited about uh
getting to do this work questions before
we get on onto this yes
yeah well I’ve heard that
sorry okay well I know that NASA’s also
doing research on using
um uh they’re doing research on on um
using a fields to protect astronauts
from radiation and one of the ideas they
came up with is a grid of
statically basically a grid of
statically charged uh points and what
what what it would do is it take these
you know these charged ionized particles
and kind of kind of nudge them in a like
a and basic you know if it’s coming
right straight at them it kind of nudges
them off to the side so it would miss
the spot where the astronauts is so do
you see that probably as a possible two
for one deal artificial gravity and uh
radiation shielding um so I don’t know
enough about that radiation Shield to
answer that question that’s a that’s a
good question um and I don’t know I
don’t know how that works like how they
how they do the shielding what the
issues are so uh if you email me about
it I’ll I’ll look it up and tell you
about it you know tell you what I think
later but that’s a good question I don’t
know the answer at all and good one
though any other
questions all right so let’s talk about
breakthrough propos can you ask if
there’s any online what oh oh are there
any question oh hang on I had the volume
down are there any questions
online open up okay certainly before we
we end oh sure yeah yeah yeah we can go
as long as you want or until the libr
out okay so um I this is not a formal
membership but there’s a a group of us
uh that uh meet regularly and it’s
called the The zc Institute so that’s
actually a company um a private company
zc stands for zephrine Cochran if you’re
treky you know who that is right and um
so the guy that runs the company and
founded it um Greg hodkin is very much
passionate about work drive and so he
approached us because he was aware that
we had done a review paper on War Drive
some years ago and here’s the story of
how that happened I went I gave a talk
like this to some freshman in sophomores
in a physics class as I’m asked to do um
about once every year every other year
and then as I try to make my Escape back
to my vehicle um a student you know
because they’re faster than I am got
tracked me down and said I wanted to
research with you on War Drive and I
just you know all of the consequences of
that flashed before my
eyes and uh and I I said well I don’t do
that kind of work um maybe you could do
a review article and so he did and the
thing is he did an excellent job this
was Joseph A did just wrote a really
really good paper it’s very well
received at a conference and then they
did a press release and that’s that’s
how the word got out and then that
created the perception that we were
doing that work and it attracted a lot
of very interesting people we’ll just
leave it at that
so as I anticipated it would because
that kind of thing happens um but that’s
okay uh one of them was this guy Greg
and he approached us and we showed him
what we were doing with dialect freesis
and I and I said I I know a little bit
about warp drive but not a lot and he
said well here I’ve got this vast
Library I collect papers and I’m always
getting the new ones and so that
connection to him that friendship uh
made it very easy uh and gave me no more
excuses for trying to at least learn
about it and so I I I got a book on
general relativity and realized how much
I hate general
relativity so you look at this equation
and just look at the man who came up
with these just they’re kind of making
fun of us you know um it it looks like a
simple little thing on the left hand
side all this is is just the math behind
the curvature of of space so space and
time curve in this four-dimensional
space but this thing generates 16
partial differential equations and I I
don’t know the exact number but I think
there’s hundreds of different uh
multiple mixed partial derivatives that
are part of what that giant Matrix is
and then on the right hand side you’ve
got some coefficients out here this is
SI units and then you’ve got this thing
called the mass energy tensor that says
okay if you’ve got mass or dust or black
holes or things that are spinning up and
have weird energies or if you have
electromagnetic fields they all can be
devised to um be put into this tensor to
kind of tell you okay if this is your
mass energy
density spatial variation this is how
it’s going to occur when you solve those
equations but the problem for warp drive
so alary I can’t remember his first name
back in 1996 published Miguel thank you
um and when she came up with this this
SpaceTime metric that says okay if we
could curve SpaceTime in which it
expands on one side and contracts on the
other we could go faster than light and
the modern day uh perception that we can
do ft
warp drive propulsion was born with that
paper and ever since then people have
worked on it to try to make improvements
because in the original paper he needed
the entire mass energy density of the
universe to generate this field and so
it it seemed like it just was not
possible and people have chipped away at
it until they’ve made it smaller and
smaller and smaller but the problem is
this term 8 Pi G over C 4 G that’s the
gravitational perimeter that’s Newton’s
parameter that guy uh is like 6.67 * 10-
11 it’s an SI units I can’t remember all
the the units there and then in the
denominator we have C to the 4th you
know C is a big number 3 to 8 and so 3 8
* 4 is 32 so you’ve got
-1 U divid by uh 32 makes it the
coupling between mass and SpaceTime
curvature just impractical and so it’s
like so the math is really really hard
hard and um the coupling between mass
and SpaceTime is just terrible it’s it’s
like God why do I even want to bother
with this um then I found out there is a
subset to uh general relativity that is
now this looks harder because it this
this is a lot more equations and it
looks intimidating but it’s a lot like
Maxwell’s equations so if you study
maxel equations like I’ve had to for uh
the the version of fusion that we look
at this is not bad at all believe it or
not so what this is saying so this is
one version It’s a subset of general
relativity doesn’t work for everything
but it does give you some intuition
about where to look this particular form
of the equations was derived recently uh
by uh LL Williams and Nathan Enon uh
some physicists that are kind of trying
to take a fresh look at things um some
of you who follow War driver Advance
propulsion probably heard of ning Lee
who was a professor at UAA some 20 years
ago she did stuff like this and before
her uh Bob forward and brinsky and maybe
how put off I’m not sure about that one
but anyway the the this paper cites a
lot of The Usual Suspects that that have
done this kind of thing so anyway what
this is saying uh basically this EG term
this is the electric field this is
basically your standard gravity this
right here this is this is the EG term
and it’s generated by this is the in
mass density so you could you can figure
out how to convert this uh from that to
a mass Source creating gravity so this
is your standard thing there’s this
other little term that shows up 3v ^2
over 2 c^2 where C is the speed of
light um so if you can stir the pot so
to speak and get close to the speed of
light you can kind of augment this a
little bit but you know nothing exciting
just yet and then there’s this magnetic
field like term which turns out have you
ever heard of frame dragging I’m sure
some of you are physicists and probably
know already what that is but frame
dragging
is basically like putting space time in
a blender okay so the Earth spins and it
actually stirs up those field lines a
little bit and creates a new effect to
it and it’s equivalent to the magnetic
field and they’re they’re generated in a
very very similar way it’s sort of a
relativistic effect and it’s created by
mass current but it’s Amplified by this
coefficient which is 4 Pi * that
stupidly small number divid c^ 2 it’s
like what can do here right okay but if
you expand it out and you consider this
term up here expand it out in terms of
its electrical properties maybe we can
do something because C is not a constant
C is um as we’ve measured it roughly 3 *
10 the 8 in vacuum but in materials it’s
very different and you can slow it down
a lot um so I think that’s where one of
the ways that we can improve on this
because you have the relative
permitivity and relative permeability
both of which can be very very high in
certain types of materials and now that
we have this magic men material thing we
might be able to really engineer some
some fantastic properties if we start
looking but in addition to that if you
start thinking
about um 2 mg JM JM is mass current well
where’s all the mass u in a particle
it’s in the nucleus of the atom so if
you start thinking in terms of well G
that’s just kind of like stuff spinning
around really really fast so if we could
maybe Orient all the nuclei the same
direction you know that might give us a
better coupling um between our Mass
source and then these observed uh Fields
so I don’t know if that’s going to lead
to anything or not but that’s where I’m
interested in looking is looking to see
where material properties can give us an
augmentation so so I’m not the first
person to think of these things at all
um but this is kind of the thing that
I’m interested in in looking at so we’re
looking at this there’s always these
wild claims that come out about uh
asymmetric capacitors you know some
people you have a CA be say it’s all ion
wind and some people say no no no
there’s this magic part if you do it
just right you can still see a Thrust um
and all that and so we have the ability
to test those sorts of things and so we
try to position the lab to be able to
look at that stuff just to see because
it’s not hard to test you know we can we
can argue one way or the other but if we
can actually test it that’s that’s where
the proof is and so we we look at those
sorts of things um there’s an idea that
we’re going to pursue this Summer that
I’m not going to Telegraph but if it’s
successful I’ll talk about that actually
has nothing to do with this so we’re
we’re always on the lookout for for ways
of of cheating the rocket equation so
we’re always we’re always trying to do
this but but in terms of where you want
to go with fields in my opinion this is
the place to really look is to is to
look at this and think in terms of how
can you get these material properties to
be augmented in order to slow the speed
of light down so that you can have terms
like this to sort of augment and
generate a an a more measurable gra
gravitational field so so that’s kind of
um my thinking on the topic right now
we’ve got a lot of people in the world
working on this problem different
aspects of it um it’s really hard
sometimes to tease out what’s legitimate
versus what is fuu I use that term um
but uh but but it’s all exciting because
it seems like because of the way we can
interact now with with everybody using
zoom and and and being able to go online
and and talk and exchange ideas that
things seem to be accelerating so I’m
very optimistic that uh we’re getting
closer and closer to being able to to do
this so um with that I’ll just kind of
wrap it up and and glad to take all
questions you want um so we’re the
charger Advance power and propulsion
laboratory uh we’re developing expertise
in Fusion pulse power and high voltage
especially and uh we’re really excited
about dialect phis as kind of our new
toy which we think we can make an
artificial gravity environment for creed
space flight um it’s also good for
debris remediation and material
separation Recycling and uh the main
thing the most important thing is that
we’re here to train our students while
developing Fusion sources high voltage
applications and Advance propulsion for
the Next Generation so that thank you
very much and invit to take
questions so b b can you hear me
yes uh if you can open it up for
questions from Zoom first we have to end
the zoom call right at 7 our
time y uh no questions have come in at
this point if anyone is online and like
to submit a question please do right
[Music]
now my question is um uh about Fusion
say super conductive magnets uh there’s
material discovered on U called ybco uh
has that seen any application in any fed
devices um the you’re asking about the
theum on was that that was that the
superconductor that was discovered at
U um so I think that and derivatives of
it had applications and breakthrough
propulsion back in the ’90s and early
2000s at least I think it was similar
because I remember people like uh uh
Tony Roberts working on that cuz I CU
When I was a student and I got to work
at Nasa I I didn’t do that work but I
got to be around it and see it and that
kind of thing in terms of fusion it is
now um and I don’t know if they were
using superconductors for eer I think
they were because basically you’re
limited to whatever the the saturation
magnetic field is for that material and
for eater it was like two or four Tesla
that’s all they could get this is a huge
field by the way
but um but with these new magnets you
can get to 20 or 40 Tesla and it shrinks
the volume down a considerable amount so
um that’s I guess that’s all I got on
that now is basically it was invented to
do uh U magnet Fusion the you know
magnet Fusion Energy toax and things
like
that do you have anyone
[Music]
yet nothing at this point okay have time
for a few more
question Dr Cole what happened to uh the
official uh what happened to
Lee I have no
idea she had a somebody ran over and she
had a auto accident and she disabled and
she died in Huntsville she never left
Huntsville she worked for the Army okay
she started her own pro project our own
company worked for the
Army and um somebody ran into her her
husband actually had a heart attack when
he saw her get hit she would have sa the
rest of her life and died a few years
ago and has been buried she’s buried
lovily I know that well I talked to Tony
about a year and a half ago and he was
still doing papers on some of this U
this these these basically these some of
the phenomena in some of these super
conductors and and he talked about this
this phenomena that Ding Lee was doing
you you talk about the the medium medium
specific speed of light and the
phenomena there um it was interesting he
he had more mechanical issues with
building large disc I think they were
going to go to a external methodology of
spinning uh the creating these vortexes
did did you ever work with any of those
Concepts um I so I didn’t get to work on
it directly I I got to sort of dwell
around them so I got to see some
demonstrations uh between him and then I
remember another guy Richard ESD that
worked over there and he got he he did
some really exotic stuff in which they
generated these massive uh electric
field gradients that just exploded stuff
everywhere and uh I and then I remember
he retired and formed a company and I
don’t know what he did since then I
haven’t really seen him in a long time
so I I don’t know I saw about two two
three years ago 8 conference here in hos
oh really to him a little bit but it
seemed like some some really
interesting you know quiet stuff he
couldn’t really talk about genius guy we
oh yeah we did high voltage stuff on a
product with with Richard and he would
test our high voltage exciters oh so you
you do PSE power uh for detonation we we
do a lot of that oh so we have a product
and Richard
tested uh because it’s hard to get a
true rating of the the uh you know the
jewels out because of your load so he
was doing that at Nasa so yeah it’s a
small world in it oh yeah yeah it is it
is question
back so you mentioned uh magnetic
nozzles earlier I guess could you
elaborate more on the type of fuel
strengths you were seeing and if there
were any interesting effects different
curvature varing the curvature in the
nozzle so that’s actually something that
we’re doing as part of our our NASA
grant that we have now that’s a good
question um so if I’ll go back to one of
the pictures on that all right so first
off if you go with you you want to have
something in which it’s directional so
that the there’s a a pressure associated
with magnetic field it’s like b^2 over 2
m mu is permeability in free space so
you want to pressure gradient to point
out the nozzle so the plasma goes that
way right and um when you wind a
solenoid which was has been kind of the
canonical description of what a nozzle
would probably look like um we tried and
tried and tried uh with uh different
simulations to do that and people done
2D mhd and never could get anywhere with
it they published and they said well you
know we’re making progress but then they
just kind of quit and so we I uh I did
what I you know I I always like really
kick myself when I’m in the middle of
doing these things I’m glad I did it
later um but there was a workshop where
I said we’re going to have the first
demonstrated simulation of a nozzle and
uh it was the night before and uh I
still didn’t have one working and I just
I just kind of help and what was
happening is the plasma runs into this
solenoid field and it creates these
weird instabilities and just sort of
catches the field or if you give it some
um motion like give it a kick motion
just Che start send it out the nozzle to
start with it goes
it comes back and sticks to the the
field you couldn’t get it to separate
from the field so I said well let me
just try this way I’ll just wind I’ll
just make a and actually it was a little
more thorough than these I took it and
just went out with the cone and then
came back and then down with it like
that and so those axial
windings um actually it just worked the
plasma just went straight out and I got
a good specific impulse and so that was
that was kind of the birth of this new
idea that we had or so I thought so um
one of the things that I do for fun is
just get old electronics and take them
apart I just want to see what things are
made of and what’s in there and uh one
of my favorite things to take apart is
an old CRT based television you know
people just throw them away and I drive
my wife crazy because I’ll be like oh we
got to get this TV it’s beside the road
you know there’s a flyback transformer
in there I need you know she’s like oh
God not again you know and so so we get
it but anyway one minute okay so I took
it home take it apart and uh the there’s
a thing on it called a diverter yolk
which drives where the Electron Beam
Shines on the phosphor screen and that
diverter yolk when which the technology
was developed in the 1920s or 30s as
those AAL windings so so they figured
this out 100 years ago I thought I was
smart but yeah no they figured it out
already I just caught up to 100y Old
technology you know touching tomorrow
with yesterday’s technology today that’s
our that’s our Botto but but yeah but
the windings are really super important
and it’s not clear why some work and
don’t work yet that’s not worked out yet
that’s open problem good
question thank you very much Professor
Round of Applause