Boeing Joins In Anti-Gravity Search

SimcoFrappe writes: "BBC News reports that Boeing is trying to extend the research of Russian scientist Dr. Yevgeny Podkletnov to develop a device to shield against gravity. The military branch of the British BAe Systems announced a similar program in 2000. One step closer to cheap space travel or just more sci-fi jive?"

Comments

Anti-gravity

[Android robot head]

is quite a weighty problem.

It's about time.

[Rhombus]

Where are all the flying cars???

I was promised flying cars.

Re:It's about time.

[nizo]

Not to mention this whole antigravity deal will revive the sex industry (zero-g sex rooms anyone???) And don't forget bras, there are millions of women around the world who would appreciate the "load reducing" capabilities of an anti-gravity bra.

Since when do we need shielding against gravity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a conspiracy against "overweight" people. If we're shielded from gravity, we'll all simply be known as fat.

Looks simple

[Captain Pedantic]

The scientist says he found that objects above a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets lost weight.

The reduction in gravity was small, about 2%, but the implications - for example, in terms of cutting the energy needed for a plane to fly - were immense.

All Boeing have to do is strap a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets upside down into one of their planes!

Re:Looks simple

[sql*kitten]

All Boeing have to do is strap a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets upside down into one of their planes!

Powered, no doubt, by a slice of buttered toast strapped to the back of a cat!

But wait, how will cat-based purr-petual motion machine work if there's no gravity to pull the cat towards the floor? It's going to take all of Boeing's engineering talent to work that one out :-)

Re:Looks simple

[Bandman]

what you would have to do is put simple floor linoleum above and below the cat, thereby creating the desired effect.

In the words of Garth Algar, "It's almost /too/ easy."

Re:Looks simple

[ShavenYak]

Nope, that won't work. The cat can then land, feet 'down', on either the above surface or the below surface. There is no force trying to attract the cat's back to one of the surfaces, like in the traditional BT-FAGE (Buttered Toast - Feline AntiGravity Engine) design.

Unfortunately, much research remains to be done before the BT-FAGE becomes reality. We are dealing with forces far beyond our present understanding of the universe. All experimenters who have attempted to harness these forces have ended up with multiple flesh wounds, covered in butter, or both.

Re:I'll take the latter.

[junkgrep]

What are you talking about? Boeing already produces an entire line of gravity defying products...

Re:Since when do we need shielding against gravity

[OblongPlatypus]

You're not fat, you're big boned.

Remember Josephson junctions?

[ebcdic]

It's often said that IBM poured money into Josephson's work even though they didn't have any expectation of it succeeding because it would force their competitors to spend money on it - which they couldn't afford as well as IBM. Maybe Boeing are trying the same thing.

Or maybe BAe are trying it, and have succeeded with Boeing...

The way things are going...

[flacco]

I wouldn't be surprised if the block-and-tackle industry buys the patents and kills the technology.

Re:small

[squaretorus]

Hello World

As soon as you create a machine that allows you to put those two little words on the screen you can do all sorts of things - hey! You could display a whole encyclopedia!!!

As soon as you prove you can do something AT ALL you know its worth figuring out how to do more of it.

Creating a Zero G device is like making love to a beautiful woman. When your young you pull your first woman. Yeah - she might be a dog, but hey! she was willing to sleep with YOU! So you try again with some chick who's a bit nicer looking, or has bigger boobs, or washes a bit more often. Some of you will stay with her - glad not to be alone. But some of you with vision will keep climbing that mountain until you finally get to nail a pretty one! THEN my boy, THEN you'll be floating on air!

That first shag proves it is at least POSSIBLE. Same with the 2%.

( I dont think the observations hold up - but if they HAVE achieved a 2% effect then WOWOWOWOW!!! )

a 2% reduction

[Hieronymus Howard]

Wouldn't an easier way to get a 2% reduction in weight be to remove it from the passengers. Set a weight limit for plane passengers and weight everyone at check-in. Anyone over the limit gets immediate liposuction.

Never have to sit next to a fat person on a plane again.

HH
--

a simpler way

[shd99004]

Since we all know that

1. Cats always land on their feet, and
2. A buttered slice of bread will undoubtedly land on the carpet butter side down,

we could strap said buttered slice of bread onto the cats back, then drop the whole thing to the floor.

Re:a simpler way

[colmore]

This fails both under quantum physics and general relativity.

Under the quantum physics interperetation, since both the cat's feet and the buttered toast are equally likely to land on the floor, the cat-toast enters a superposition where both cat and toast are simultaneously on the floor until it is observed, at which point a radioactive particle decays, and the cat is skinned in a number simultaneous, equally likely, yet distinct ways.

Relativity predicts that the intense attraction to the floor will, in fact, bend space-time in such a way that the floor actually is in contact with both the cat and the toast. If the cat is of the black variety, then it will thus cross its own path, generate a singularity, and vanish in a puff of logic.

The debate continues, as attempts at experimental verification have thus far failed. Dr. Kibble at Princeton's IAS said "Look, have YOU ever tried to hold a cat still and strap some friggin' TOAST to its back?"

Military Uses

[CaffeineAddict2001]

I learned this in quake:
Step 1: Lower gravity to 0
Step 2: Wait for enemies to accelerate upwards.
Step 3: Increase gravity to 255, watch enemies splatter all over the ground.

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[Lumpy]

The only thing we've ever discovered that's capable of warping spacetime is "mass". So sure, we can counter the effects of gravity, there's no mystery about it: simply use a mass as large as the mass of the object whose gravitational effects you want to counter.


So this is very simple then.

All we need to do is generate a quantium singularity in the vacinity wher we wish to block the forces of gravity...

what do wo do then after we are sucked into the singularity?

Oops... the earth was destroyed today when boeing ran some tests on a gravity shielding system they have been devising..

The american government responded with "we would have been very interested in the device as a doomsday weapon, unfortunately we no longer have anything we want to blow up... If boeing can discover a race or another planet we can threaten with the device, we will be very interested."

Senator hollings was not available for comment.

Gravitons are different, silly

[lildogie]

A Graviton is a spinning cylinder, not a spinning disk. When you get inside, it starts to spin, and you slide across the floor and stick to the inside wall of the cylinder. Then they drop the floor and friction holds you to the wall. But it gets boring pretty quickly.

I once snuck a tennis ball inside and tried to throw it to my buddy on the far side of the cylinder, but it didn't travel in a straight line. Spooky.

Baron Harkonnen?

[uberdave]

Just what we need. Fat, evil dictators floating around in their antigrav suits.