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Build Your Own UFO

Posted by michael on from the crop-circle dept.

Are Belong To Us dept. writes "Guess where the billions of dollars in the super-secret Air Force program are going? Build your own for $10 in parts. They're popularly called "Lifters" and they're flying (one of many videos) without engines and can hover in place. Admit it, it would have been cool to see a UFO. Never mind if you didn't, because now you can build your own (another, step-by-step instruction, here), like lots of people around the globe already have, for $10 in parts. A number of patents surround the technology, some by NASA. The best introduction site to all of this is Jean-Louis Naudin's site. There goes your sleep - this is fascinating stuff. ;-)" Any website that uses the phrase "a simple 30KV power supply" is okay in my book.

12 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Ah... Antigravatics by stuffman64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know this is real stuff, I've seen it done before. The thing that scares my is if you read the page you see some stuff refering to "electrogravatics" stuff, i.e., pseudoscience. Can anyone really provide a reasonable explaination as to why we get this effect? I notice in the illustrations that the ground is shown as reference voltage (0V), while the craft is at 30kV. Isn't this just simply Coulombs Law at work?

    --
    --- At my sig, unleash hell.
    1. Re:Ah... Antigravatics by redcliffe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, I suppose, but what did you expect? Something totally different? If this is real it should fit in with other scientific principles. The major problem though even if you could create an "impulse" drive like in star trek is storing enough electricity in a spacecraft.

    2. Re:Ah... Antigravatics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yes, the major problem with this device is that it's not strong enough to lift its own power source. Also, NASA beleive it will only work in a fluid atmosphere (they intend to use them for attitude control thrusters in near earth orbit i.e. where there's still appreciable, if tenuous atmosphere), whereas JLN is convinced they'll work in a vacuum.

    3. Re:Ah... Antigravatics by AnotherBrian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I always thought thoes things worked on corona discharge. (Basically, corona discharge is what happens right before you get a spark. When the voltage quite literally pushes electrons off the (-)end of a wire. You can get it to do work.) It's way past my bed time but I think the Biefeld-Brown Effect that the lifters use is due to the time delay and the charge imbalance that the delay creates between the two plates. I came up with this from this pic.
      As far as the electrogravatics, I don't have any URLs handy for that one, but I believe it has to do with exploiting the connection between electricity and gravity. People are working on this because of the unified field theory that brings together the different forces like electritcy, magnitizam, gravity, and acceleration. The link between electritcy and magnitizam is already apparent and we exploit it (motors, solonids, maglev trains). This has now become known as the electro-weak force and gravity is due to the strong force. The strong and weak forces are what hold the nucleus of atoms together. And I think that it's the 6 flavors of quarks that form the forces.
      (Please forgive me if I got the physics on this wrong, I am quite tired.)

  2. Re:First! by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Here is a link to the NASA patent in question (the nice HTML version, not the retarded PDF).

    And I thought reactionless thrusters were impossible... Can some physics guys help us out here?

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  3. Re:Build a better UFO and watch the jets scramble by donheff · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Years and years ago some friends built tissue hot air balloons powered by sterno in a light tin foil gondola/heater. They let em rip at night on the Chicago lake front north of a SAM site (long gone). The light glowing from the white tissue was a strange vision as they lifted out of view. On a lark they sent one up with a bunch of tin foil stips to reflect radar. A short time later a jet scrambled from one of the nearby bases.

  4. Flight by Veteran · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At the start of the 20th century it was the general consensus of the scientific elite that heavier than air powered flight was a pipe dream and impossible. While it was conceded that birds and insects could fly it was obvious that they were light - nothing heavy enough to carry a man could possibly fly. Attempts to do so were met with great scorn.

    There was only one serious scientist attempting heavier than air powered flight; professor Langley. His repeated failures were held as proof to the scientific establishment that flight was an impossibility and a waste of time and money - pseudo science at its worst.

    Fortunately for mankind a pair of bicycle mechanics didn't know that it was pseudo science and impossible. When the Wright brothers succeeded in doing what all of the physicists said was impossible they changed the world. Of course today airplanes are an obvious fact of reality and no one but a complete idiot claims that there is any pseudo science involved in their construction. The ridicule of the early 20th century has long been forgotten.

    Now in the early 21st century mainstream science ridicules 'electrogravitics' as pseudo science. Once again mainstream physicists are simply wrong. The key point in anything is "Does it work, and is it repeatable?"

    General relativity predicts electrogravitics - one case which has been solved is this: if a cloud of charged particles is allowed to expand outward an inward pointing gravitational field will be generated.

    Einstein used Maxwell's equations in formulating general relativity. All of you are familiar with the concept that mass and energy are related; if mass can change space-time why is it impossible for energy to do the same thing?

    Basically what is going on in these lifters is this: When you charge a capacitor energy flows into the capacitor from the surrounding space via the Poynting vector. When you charge an asymmetrical capacitor you draw energy from the surrounding space in an asymmetrical fashion; this distorts the surrounding space. Distorted space is a gravitational field.

    This is not 'ion wind' NASA has tested asymmetrical capacitors in vacuum chambers; the thrust is still there. Not much has been said about this in the general public but the fact is that the world is about to change dramatically.

    In some ways the 21st century is an echo of the twentieth: science will be dragged kicking and screaming into the future whether it likes it or not, and once again very important work has been done by non scientists.

    Like the early history of flight the field is full of both crackpots and people who know what they are doing. When you view these web pages understand what you are looking at; you are seeing the equivalent of the 'box kites' which were flown by experimenters and dreamers in the late 19th century. There is a direct line from those crude box kites to the space shuttle - the difference is 80 years of engineering.

    See for yourself whether or not these 21st century box kites fly - if they do don't worry about the science: it will be forced to catch up. This is real, and it is quite literally 'warp drive' unfolding before your eyes.

    By the way - the voltages involved are lethal - if you do these experiments be damned careful!

    1. Re:Flight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      What is the reference for the supposed NASA tests in a vacuum chamber?

      I'm looking for a nasa.gov site, an article published by people at NASA, or a peer reviewed article by outside authors in a real scientific journal.

  5. Re:Build a better UFO and watch the jets scramble by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Sounds verrrry familiar. Would that be north of Montrose harbor? I did the exact same thing mid 1960's and would be curious who you are.
    I remeber making my own hydrogen balloons (helium party tanks weren't yet available)from aluminum foil strips dissolved in sodium hydroxide. I did the same thing - attached aluminum foil to the balloons and watched them float our over lake Michigan. Later I heard that jets were scrambled.

  6. antigravity by debrain · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does it only work in a direction opposite to gravity? Just curious ... if it does only "lift" then it is precisely anti-gravity. If it works perpendicular to gravity, then it is not precisely anti-gravity.

    Brian

  7. Interesting quotes from the patent by Pvt_Waldo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I was kind of skeptical at first, especially when I started seeing words like "gravionics" and "antigravity", but I just read the original patent text, and noticed these two paragraphs.

    First...
    It is well established in the literature, that a force or thrust may be generated by a capacitor charged to a high potential. Although there are different theories regarding the basis for this phenomenon, there is no dispute that a force is generated by capacitors under such high voltages. However, the thrust generated by such high potential capacitors has been minimal and thus this phenomenon has had very limited practical utility.


    Translation: it works, but we're not sure why.

    Second...

    Although the asymmetrical capacitor module described in the preceding paragraph has worked well in the laboratory, one potential disadvantage or limitation thereof is that there is some tendency to arcing between potential surfaces. More generally, there is a need to further improve the module construction to enable use thereof for atmospheric propulsion and for propulsion in space.


    OMFG! (as they say), so it does (may) work in space! So does it need a "fuel" of some type? As in, are we talking about feeding it some kind of substance, and the mechanism acts to accelerate the mass? Or does it run all on it's own?
  8. word of advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Well. I tryed to do it also and voila - it took flight.
    • The device has to be as light as possible. And I mean LIGHT. Strip everything you can.
    • I used the simple kitchen folium (aluminium sheet they put cabbages and chicken in), please try to remove sharp edges, as they start ionizing and lower performance. Just roll it rounder.
    • I folded two times the upper side of the sheeth and placed a very very thin slice of bamboo into it, a bit of glue, and I had a strong structure.
    • At the corners I added a bit stronger bamboo sticks. I made them side by side, and then attached to triangle using a piece of tape.
    • As a power source - old SUN monitor, so, I did SUN powered anti-gravitics :)
    • It flies no matter the polarity, tho one is more efficient.
    • Place the wire as low as you can, to achieve maximum thrust. But be careful, lightning's not good. Mine once even caught fire.
    • It always flies towards the wire, but do attach it to ground using nilon or whatever is handy. U don't want it to fly into your face or something.
    • When u turn out the lights you can see the problem spots where it leaks. Try to remove them.
    • After success I made more sides and got a 4 triangle device. It flew also, tho that needed a bit more tuning because my powersource wasn't very juicy. But. You don't need lots power. You just need a light construction.
    • HIGH VOLTAGE! KILLS! DANGER! SAFETY!
    • After success I broke down an old CD-ROM, took the rolling part, attached wires close to the surface of a CD (opposites sides 0, +20K, CD was rolling freely) and voila - after turning power on it started turning, fassssst. Oh geek joys. Then I made one using two iso-star cans and a rotating coce can.
    • The ultimate question: does it work in vacum (space)? I have no idea.
    Disclaimer: If you manage to destroy your life, monitor or cat I take no responsebility, habbahabbahbaa. You're adults. Be careful.