Initial Thoughts on Lifters

Like many people, I suspect, my first encounter with Thomas Townsend Brown was a rather breathless chapter of "The Philadelphia Experiment" by Charles Berlitz. As a result, this has led to much rubbish being spouted about the Biefeld-Brown effect and its supposed connection to gravity.

A number of experimenters, from the US Army to hobbyists, via NASA have attempted to bottom out the claims that it would operate in vacuum. None have yet shown any thrust in vacuum, strongly indicating that gravity plays no part in it. It appears to be an ion momentum effect, at least at the voltages commonly used today (typically <30kv).

This is not to say that it may not have its uses; it is inherently stealthy and doesn't require stored fuel, although its power-to-weight ratio is (currently) pretty poor. I think that it would probably be useful in low-Earth-orbit manoeuvring thrusters, and indeed NASA are already trying to sell the concept.

Podkletnov's paper *was* accepted, and here's the proof

I'm including a scan of the first page of the page proof of Evgeny Podkletnov's paper as it would have appeared in Journal of Physics D in 1996 had it not been withdrawn as a result of the infamous UK Sunday Telegraph article of Sept 1st, 1996, for the purposes of referencing for the Wikipedia article about him.

Here 'tis, as supplied by the Ministry of Defence, apparently: