Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion (21 page)

Figure 5.6.
A cutaway view showing the arrangement of the B-2’s flame-jet generators.
(P.
LaViolette, © 1993)

The Hughes radar units may also be supplying microwave energy to the B-2’s leading edge to assist the air-ionization process.
Microwave frequencies emitted along the leading edge would readily ionize the approaching air and allow the B-2’s high-voltage electric field to discharge a greater flux of positive ions.
With increased ion currents, the B-2 would be able to generate a greater ion sheath space charge at a given velocity and thereby increase the electrogravitic and electrostatic thrust propelling the craft.
New Scientist
magazine reported that NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, had conducted wind tunnel tests in which they used a microwave beam to create a plasma upwind of an aircraft wing in a Mach 6 airflow and found dramatic reductions in air drag.
¹³
Quite likely, the B-2 has been using the same technique, although a high-voltage radio frequency field might work just as well.

5.2 • THE B-2’S FLAME-JET GENERATORS

The excerpt from the October 1954
Aviation Report
article quoted in chapter 2 suggests that there should be a division of responsibility in the program to develop a Mach 3 electrogravitic aircraft, that the “condenser assembly which is the core of the main structure” be developed by an airframe manufacturer and that the flame-jet generator that provides the electrostatic energy for the craft should be developed by companies specializing in jet engine technology.
Consistent with that suggestion, we find that Northrop Grumman, a company experienced in aircraft electrostatics, was contracted to develop the B-2’s airframe and that General Electric, a company experienced in the development of jet engines and superconducting electric generators, was contracted by the U.S.
Air Force to develop the B-2’s engines.
Recall that the 1956
Aviation Studies
report mentions General Electric as one of the companies involved in early electrogravitics work.
Also, note that Brown had conducted vacuum chamber experiments at the General Electric Space Center and that the Electrokinetics Corporation, which had hired him as a consultant, was located just several miles away.

The Air Force states that the stealth bomber is powered by four General Electric F-118-GE-100 jet engines similar to those used in the F16 fighter, but the B-2’s engines quite likely have been modified to function as flame-jet high-voltage generators.
The propulsive force lofting the craft, then, would come not only from the mechanical thrust of the jet exhaust, but also from the electrogravitic and electrostatic force fields set up around the craft that would be powered by the jet’s generators.
Such flame-jet generators also would account for the presence of ions, which
Aviation Week
says are present in the B-2’s exhaust stream.
As in Brown’s saucer, the engine nozzle would acquire a high positive charge as it exhausted negative ions.
Presumably, the engine is electrically insulated from the aircraft hull and surrounding ductwork and its positive charges are conducted forward to power the leading-edge ionizers.

The B-2’s General Electric engines are reported to each be capable of putting out 19,000 pounds of thrust.
Consequently, all four engines together should provide the B-2 with a total output of about 140,000 horsepower, which translates into an electric power output of about 25 megawatts, assuming a 30 percent conversion efficiency.
^*15
By comparison, the November 1954
Aviation Report
concluded that a 35-footdiameter electrogravitic combat disc would need to have access to about 50 megawatts of power in order to attain Mach 3 flight speeds.
Thus it appears that the magnitude of the B-2’s power output is in the right ballpark.

A total of about 50 kilowatts of power (50 kilovolts × 1 ampere) probably would be sufficient to get the engine ionizers started.
This could easily be handled by electric generators mechanically driven by the jet turbines.
Once the flame-jet generators were operable and power was being extracted out of the ionized exhaust stream, the power draw of the leading-edge and exhaust ionizers could be allowed to rise much higher, to tens of megawatts.

The B-2 may use superconducting generators for its more conventional means of generating power from its turbines.
Such generators have the advantage of being nearly 100 percent efficient in converting shaft power to electricity and of being extremely lightweight, weighing less than one-tenth as much as conventional generators.
The first superconducting generator was developed in the mid-1970s by scientists at the General Electric Research Laboratory working under an Air Force contract.
Subsequently, the generators were being mass-produced for the Air Force.

When the B-2 was unveiled in 1988, one Air Force official commented that it uses a system of baffles to mix cool intake air with its hot exhaust gases so as to cool the gases and thereby make them less visible to infrared-guided missiles.
Although infrared invisibility might be one side benefit, most likely the real purpose for diluting the exhaust is to greatly increase the flow volume and, hence, the ability of the exhaust stream to eject negative charges from the craft.
Much of the air entering the B-2’s intake scoops would bypass the inlet to the flame jet and be allowed to mix in with the jet’s hot ionized exhaust (figure 5.6).

Actually, the jet’s exhaust has an aspirator effect in that friction between the exhaust stream and the surrounding air creates a sheer layer that naturally entrains the bypassed air into the exhaust flow and thoroughly mixes the two.
As a result, the temperature and velocity of the exhaust stream drop as its volume increases.
At the same time, the sound that normally emanates from the exhaust’s shear layer, which is the prime contributor to a jet’s sonic boom, is substantially muffled, for all this occurs within the engine shroud.
Aeronautical engineers call this air-mixing exhaust nozzle an ejector-type suppressor nozzle.

A series of electrified conical collars, similar to those described in Brown’s patent 3,022,430 (see figure 2.10), located in the exhaust nozzle might inject additional negative ions into the mixed exhaust stream, thereby boosting its ion content.
This augmented volume of ionized gases then discharges through the two rectangular exhaust ports positioned near the rear of the B-2’s wing and contacts the titanium-coated overwing exhaust ducts, portrayed in figure 5.6.
These open-duct sections may function as rear electric grids that collect million-volt electrons from the exhaust streams and recycle them to power the exhaust and wing air ionizers.
This might be done in the same fashion as Brown had suggested in his patent (see figure 2.9).
Additional high-voltage current could be recovered from the conical electrodes.

As the exhaust leaves the craft, it passes over trailing-edge exhaust deflectors, flaps that can be swiveled so as to direct the exhaust stream either up or down for flight control.
This accomplishes more than just vectoring of the exhaust’s thrust; it also changes the direction of the electrogravitic force vector.
When the exhaust is deflected downward, negative charges are directed below the craft.
As a result, the electrogravitic force on the craft becomes vectored upward as well as forward.
When the exhaust stream is deflected upward, its negative ions are directed above the craft, resulting in an electrogravitic force that is directed downward as well as forward.
Thus, by using these flaps, the B-2 is able to control its force field so as to induce either a gain or a loss of altitude.

Once the B-2 attained a sufficiently high flight speed, it would receive enough airflow through its scoops that it could maintain a relatively high flow rate of ionized exhaust, even with its engine combustion substantially reduced.
Since hot exhaust is not essential to its operation, the high-voltage generator could just as well run on cool intake air with fuel combustion entirely shut off.
As Brown pointed out in his electrokinetic generator patent, “It is to be understood that any other fluid stream source might be substituted for the combustion chamber and fuel supply.”
¹⁴

In such a “coasting mode,” in which jet combustion is entirely shut off, the B-2 would be able to fly for an indefinitely long period of time with essentially zero fuel consumption, powering itself primarily with energy tapped from its self-generated gravity gradient.
For example, during coasting, the kinetic energy of the scooped airstream would arise entirely from the craft’s own forward motion, with this motion being due to the pull of the electrogravitic propulsion field.
The kinetic energy of this ionized airstream is responsible for linearly accelerating negative ions down the B-2’s exhaust ducts and, hence, for creating the multimegavolt potential difference relative to the positively charged engine body.
The craft’s high-voltage electron collector grids—the overwing exhaust ducts and other collector surfaces possibly hidden in the exhaust nozzle—recover a portion of this electric power to run the ionizers for the craft’s flame-jet generator.
Provided that this power drain is not excessive and that the plane’s propulsive gravity field can be adequately maintained, the craft would be able to achieve a state of perpetual propulsion.
As mentioned in chapter 1, such perpetual motion behavior is possible in devices having the capability to manipulate their own gravity field.
Moreover, when the B-2 flies at a sufficiently high velocity, such that the flow rate of its scooped air exceeds many times the exhaust flow rate from its jet turbines, the electric power output of its mixed exhaust will be comparably larger, perhaps exceeding 100 megawatts.

When the B-2 was first put on public display, critics had suggested that it could not risk flying at high altitudes because it might create vapor trails that would be visible to an enemy.
Edward Aldridge Jr., then secretary of the Air Force, was asked whether that problem had been solved.
He replied, “Yes, but we’re not going to disclose how.”
Clearly, to explain how the B-2 could travel at high altitude with its jet combustion essentially shut off and producing no vapor trail, he would have to disclose the vehicle’s nonconventional mode of propulsion.
Incidentally, in such a coasting mode, the B-2’s waste heat output also would be greatly reduced, hence lessening its chance of being detected with infrared sensors.

The B-2’s emergency power units (EPUs) probably play a key role in assisting such high-altitude flight.
According to Bill Scott, author of the book
Inside the Stealth Bomber
,
¹⁵
each EPU consists of a small self-contained gas turbine powered by hydrazine, a liquid that rapidly decomposes into gases when activated by a catalyst.
The expanding gases are made to drive a turbine that, in turn, drives an electric generator.
Public disclosures state that the purpose of the EPUs is to supply electric power to the craft should the B-2’s four jet engines happen to flame out or its four electric generators happen to simultaneously fail.
More likely, they were designed to function as auxiliary generators capable of operating at high altitudes (or even in space), where the air would be too thin to sustain normal jet combustion.
At high altitudes, the decomposed hydrazine gases would take the place of scooped air as the medium for transporting ions from the craft.
That is, after passing through the EPUs, these gases would be electrified and expelled from the craft in the same fashion as would the jet exhaust.
Brown noted that his electrogravitic propulsion system could run just as well using a compressed gas source such as carbon dioxide as the ion-carrying medium as it could using the exhaust from a jet engine.

When flying between an altitude of twenty-eight and eighty-three kilometers, the B-2 would have to shut off its hull electrification, since in this altitude range the air would become a very good conductor because of the glow discharge effect.
By accelerating to an orbital velocity speed in the range of Mach 19 to 23 prior to reaching an altitude of twenty-five kilometers, the B-2 could coast through this forbidden region.
Once in space, above an altitude of eighty-three kilometers, the vacuum would be good enough that the B-2’s electrogravitic drive could once again be switched on.
As mentioned earlier, it would rely on its hydrazine EPUs to power itself in spaceflight.

Figure 5.7 is a picture taken of a B-2 in transonic flight through humid coastal air.
At transonic speeds, which range from just below to just above the speed of sound (Mach 0.8 to 1.3), some parts of the airflow over an aircraft become supersonic.
In this speed regime, very-low-pressure areas form at various locations around an aircraft, and if the aircraft happens to be passing through humid air near the dewpoint, visible clouds can form in these low-pressure areas and remain with the aircraft as it travels.
Figure 5.8 shows a cloud formed around an F/A-18 jet fighter flying at transonic speed.

Northrop Grumman has produced a movie clip showing the B-2 in various flight modes.
It is available for public viewing at its website,
www.is.northropgrumman.com/windows_media/b2_tx.wmv
.
One segment near the beginning of the clip, which lasts for one and a half seconds, shows the B-2 surrounded by transonic vapor condensation clouds as it flies through humid air.
French astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Petit has posted this segment on his website and notes that the vapor cloud above the B-2’s wing visibly luminesces as though it was being excited by a high-voltage field.
¹⁶
The reader is also referred to color stills from this video posted on Petit’s website.
Unfortunately, we were not able to secure permission from Northrop Grumman to reproduce the stills here.

The segments from this video show that the cloud itself has a yellow luminous hue, a color that differs from the white color that such clouds would normally exhibit in sunlight.
Since at high voltages fog is more subject to electrical breakdown than is dry air, a high-voltage field could excite a glow discharge in an overwing vapor cloud to appear much like the luminescence seen in the video.
An orange hue is also seen reflecting from the portion of the B-2’s upper-wing surface that borders the vapor cloud.
Interestingly, in the last two frames of the video clip segment, the vapor cloud almost entirely vanishes, yet this orange luminescence or glow reflection is still apparent on the B-2’s wing, suggesting that the high-voltage field is still active.
It is surprising that this cloud disappearance happens suddenly from one frame to the next, in less than a tenth of a second.
It is not clear whether this change is due to a sudden change in air humidity or whether the B-2’s electric field was being switched to a lower setting.