Re: free launch
ChuckKuecker (ckuecker@mcs.net)
Fri, 12 Jun 1998 19:09:15 -0500
At 09:14 AM 6/12/98 -0700, Hal Finney <hal@rain.org>
>
>I agree that John Cramer's articles are interesting and worth reading.
>
>I'm pretty skeptical about this particular antigravity model though.
>Anything which violates conservation of momentum is highly suspicious
>in my book. It seems that the claim is that it doesn't "really" violate
>momentum conservation because (apparently) instantaneous nonlocal
>(i.e. faster than light?) changes occur elsewhere to bring about balance.
>Handwaving about quantum nonlocality is a long way from justifying this
>claim.
>
>As for the measurements, it is notoriously difficult to get good
>measurements on these kinds of devices. The article refers to the
>misleading results from the Dean drive. There was a recent Wired article
>about someone (not Podkletnov) using rotating superconducting disks, and
>the reporter pointed out problems with air currents caused by bubbling
>liquid nitrogen.
>
>In the experiment Cramer describes, running heavy oscillating currents
>into a capacitor can cause all kinds of EM interference. Plus, the
>capacitor itself will be subject to mechanical vibrations as its internal
>electrodes alternately attract and repel each other. It all adds up to
>a messy system that is going to be very hard to get clean measurements on.
>
My business partner and I attempted the superconducting disk experiment in
his lab. The results were negative, but there were many opportunities for
experimental mistakes that could have given a false positive reading.
Bubbling LN2 was the least of the problems - at one point the cryostat
erupted with a geyser of LN2 and broken superconductor...
Our disk was not rotating, but was inside a fairly powerful 60 Hz magnetic
field at the time. I believe inrush currents caused the damage. The basis
for our experiment was gleaned from an alternate energy website, and
admittedly was of poor quality for a true scientific inquiry, but as the
materials were dirt cheap, we could not resist trying it..
Chuck Kuecker
PS - I have been trying to use PGP to sign these posts, but keep getting a
dialog that asks for my passphrase - again and again and again - could
someone give me a hint as to what I am doing wrong? I have Eudora Pro 3.0
and PGP 5 that came with the package..
CAK