Asymmetric Capacitor In Vacuum

[hec031]

This isn't a new concept, it's pretty old, and there's a lot of people aware of it and have tested it (myself included). The thrust produced does fall off with atmospheric pressure, so there is a very significant ion wind component to the thrust, however I've never seen any tests of it at pressures equivalent to low earth orbit.

If you are so sure it works, then I'd suggest you build a CubeSat that uses one of these thrusters, fed by solar cells. If you can maintain the 24 mN/W in orbit, then you should easily be able to demonstrate that with significant orbital changes. Publishing that data would be undeniable proof.

Currently the plan is to have the results independently verified, then presented at an industry conference and publish a paper in a peer reviewed journal. Eventually as you suggest we would like to see it tested in orbit.

Just a note. There is no ion wind to our devices. While I used Asymmetric capacitor in the title of this post, our test device are unique examples of this technology. Ion wind is not even under debate by the experts that are looking at the work. In our case the performance did not change from atmospheric to high vacuum, it remains the same and constant.

I appreciate your suggestion, but we are still a few steps away from any kind of in orbit testing, but I'm sure it will come.

Hector:

I have a few questions for you:

1. Does your thruster device work off dc or ac power? 

2. If dc, what is the magnitude of the drive voltage at the noted 2.0 milli-Newtons output?  If ac, what is the frequency and peak voltage at the same thrust level?  Is there a differnce in thrust production between the ac and dc cases for a given input voltage??

3. Is the power supply for the device mounted with the device, i.e., is it battery powered and therefore self-contianed with the device, or do you supply power to the device remotely via a twisted pair or coaxial cable?

Thanks much.

DC, +41.5Kv@2uA and -41.4Kv@6uA. While the device is exposed to the vacuum, the Electrodes are not. The Electrodes are fully encapsulated and operating in their own environment, this is why the performance does not change regardless of what's on the outside of the device. Currently the device is powered via a high voltage feedthrough and umbilical cable. A self contained power supply and source is a few steps ahead of were we are at the moment, but it is one of our future experimental goals.

Hector:

Since you are running a fairly high voltage into this test article, I need to know what the ac ripple voltage and frequency are that may be riding on top of this ~83kV total dc supply voltage.  As Robert Talley showed in his 1991 AFRL report, ac ripple or impulse signals can have a marked effect on the output response of these types of devices and he was only dealing with 19kV.  However if your input HV is pure dc, it rules out a number of possible explanations for its thrust signature and the mechanisms behind it.

Second question.  How are you meauring this thrust signature?  Is it on a standard pendulum?  If so, it can't be much longer than 10 inches, or it wouldn't fit in your 12-1/2 inch OD by 15 inch long vacuum chamber. 

That brings up the third question and that is how did you calibrate your force sensor and how are you detecting the 2.0 mN force signature?  With a 10" pendulum and say a 200 gram test article, the pendulum's deflection with that thrust level is not going to be very large.

All the best.

Sorry I gave you the wrong impression. The experiments were performanced first by applying +41.5Kv@2uA and repeated afterwards using a -41.4Kv@6uA.

Ripple, the Oscilloscope tracks show very clean wave forms on all our runs. We used a Spellman SL40PN30, which has an ripple of 0.1% p-p +1Vrms. We simply did not see any noticeable amounts of voltage variance on the waveform.

We used s a Level Pendulum not a Simple Pendulum, so we have two suspension cables and the power and grounding cable. The average weight of a test unit is only 18.5 grams without the Mu-metal shielding or Faraday cage. These are not complicated devices.
The length of the suspension cables were kept at 17.3cm through all reported tests. Most deflections in our testing were in the 1 to 2.5mm range.

As for Calibration, that would take some time to explain in detail, but we used the Meter to deflect the device which would give us a measure of the force that it would take to get 1-3mm of displacement. This was in agreement within the 1mN increment range of the meter and what the force would be based on Level pendulum calculations. In addition the meter itself was calibrated using a 100gram weight using it's force downward on the load cell as the measure of force. In the upcoming testing the calibration will be more detail since we will be checking the calibration at the beginning and ending of every tests and not just at the beginning of a series of tests.

Just a note, if you're a civil servant such as a researcher at NASA, Air Force or other government agency or are willing to sign an NDA if your in the private sector, we will provide you with access to the report and test data for your review and opinion. In fact we are trying to find civil servants at NASA and other government bodies that will review our work and offer their opinions. I know a lot of you on this forum fall in this criteria.


Hector

[clongton]

Interesting - very interesting. What are the terms of the NDA?

[GraphGuy]

If you are so sure it works, then I'd suggest you build a CubeSat that uses one of these thrusters, fed by solar cells. If you can maintain the 24 mN/W in orbit, then you should easily be able to demonstrate that with significant orbital changes. Publishing that data would be undeniable proof.

That is what I was thinking- make a cubesat and put it as a rider on a SpaceX launch.  Of course this is not undeniable proof as you need to eliminate interaction with the Earth's magnetic field, but it would be pretty close to undeniable proof.

[Star-Drive]

Hector:

"Sorry I gave you the wrong impression. The experiments were performanced first by applying +41.5Kv@2uA and repeated afterwards using a -41.4Kv@6uA."

OK then, did the test article's thrustvector reverse with this voltage polarity reversal or did it stay the same direction? 

Also is your current vacuum chamber test article like the one shown at the below URL, but perhaps smaller in diameter so it fits in the chamber?  I'm still trying to understand how this test article might work...

http://lifters.online.fr/html/sfptv1.htm

[hec031]

Interesting - very interesting. What are the terms of the NDA?

Send me and email at [email protected] and I will send you the NDA and you can read it. If you have any problems with the language we can talk about it. We will also have to know a little more about who the person or organization is that is asking to see the report.

The terms are standard NDA language.

We've been around for over 11yrs pursuing this research, we are easy to find on the Internet or anywhere else. Our company is Gravitec Inc.

[hec031]

If you are so sure it works, then I'd suggest you build a CubeSat that uses one of these thrusters, fed by solar cells. If you can maintain the 24 mN/W in orbit, then you should easily be able to demonstrate that with significant orbital changes. Publishing that data would be undeniable proof.

That is what I was thinking- make a cubesat and put it as a rider on a SpaceX launch.  Of course this is not undeniable proof as you need to eliminate interaction with the Earth's magnetic field, but it would be pretty close to undeniable proof.

I agree, but first we are trying to get a serious discussion and terrestrial confirmation effort of our lab results. I agree with the cube sat, but that won't be cheap and should be done after lab test confirmations.

As for magnetic field interactions, at 2uA the interactions is orders of magnitude to low to account for the observed force. In fact as part of these lab test we exposed the device to an N50 permanent magnet with a magnetic field strength over 200 Gauss at the center of the device and tested it to see if its performance would change. It simply did not have any effect on the device performance. So I'm pretty confident that the Earths magnetic field will have no effect on the device performance.

[hec031]

Hector:

"Sorry I gave you the wrong impression. The experiments were performanced first by applying +41.5Kv@2uA and repeated afterwards using a -41.4Kv@6uA."

OK then, did the test article's thrustvector reverse with this voltage polarity reversal or did it stay the same direction? 

Also is your current vacuum chamber test article like the one shown at the below URL, but perhaps smaller in diameter so it fits in the chamber?  I'm still trying to understand how this test article might work...

http://lifters.online.fr/html/sfptv1.htm

The direction of the force did not change with polarity, however the thrust diminished as did the efficiency. So instead of generating 2mN at +41.5Kv@2uA, the device produces 1mN at -41.4Kv@1uA.

The configuration is different, in fact it's like nothing that has ever been seen in this field of study. We refined the device and it's geometry. I'm sorry to say that until I finish filling our next patent I really don't want to show what we did, because as you will see in a while, it is very different than what anyone else has done. Like I said same principals as my prior patent, just refined to get much better performance in a more consistent manner.

[GraphGuy]

I'm sorry to say that until I finish filling our next patent I really don't want to show what we did, because as you will see in a while, it is very different than what anyone else has done. Like I said same principals as my prior patent, just refined to get much better performance in a more consistent manner.

May your patent be successful and may you become filthy rich.  Can you provide a URL for your previous patent?

Edit: nevermind, I learned to Google and found the information.

[hec031]

I'm sorry to say that until I finish filling our next patent I really don't want to show what we did, because as you will see in a while, it is very different than what anyone else has done. Like I said same principals as my prior patent, just refined to get much better performance in a more consistent manner.

May your patent be successful and may you become filthy rich.  Can you provide a URL for your previous patent?

Edit: nevermind, I learned to Google and found the information.

Just for others that may be looking for the same info. The US Patent# is 6,492,784. The link below should work.

http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=6492784B1&KC=B1&FT=D&date=20021210&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP

And just so everyone knows, the US patent office examiner did challenge our patent applications and we presented evidence that convinced him that our device did work.

[GraphGuy]

Were there any stray magnetic fields/superconductors that could interact with the magnetic field of your device?  My physics days are far behind me but I wonder if there is some unknown environmental effect present.

[hec031]

Were there any stray magnetic fields/superconductors that could interact with the magnetic field of your device?  My physics days are far behind me but I wonder if there is some unknown environmental effect present.

Not to my knowledge. I did my best to flood the device in a magnetic field far stronger than what the Earth could put on it. In addition we used Mu-metal shielding in combination with our Faraday cage to shield much of the Earths ambient magnetic field. There were two more sources of magnetic fields. One was a small magnet on the outside of the chamber that was producing about 1.7 gauss at the center of the device, the other was towards the back of the chamber were the Cold Cathode magnet was producing just over 2.8 Gauss, but was only .8 Gauss by the time the field got to the center of the device. I used an F.W. Bell 7030 Gauss Tesla meter with a 3 axis temperature corrected hall sensor probe to conduct the magnetic survey.

I took great care in these experiments and I'm currently working on the next round of testing using even better testing methods to try to find any evidence of a conventional force mechanism.

Superconductors are not used in these devices. They are far more mundane than that.

[neilh]

If you are so sure it works, then I'd suggest you build a CubeSat that uses one of these thrusters, fed by solar cells. If you can maintain the 24 mN/W in orbit, then you should easily be able to demonstrate that with significant orbital changes. Publishing that data would be undeniable proof.

That is what I was thinking- make a cubesat and put it as a rider on a SpaceX launch.  Of course this is not undeniable proof as you need to eliminate interaction with the Earth's magnetic field, but it would be pretty close to undeniable proof.

Something like that might be useful at TRL 6 or so, but right now this is way down at TRL 1.

[GraphGuy]

I took great care in these experiments and I'm currently working on the next round of testing using even better testing methods to try to find any evidence of a conventional force mechanism.

If you have improved on your previous work then you probably have some suspicion as to what is causing this effect (unless you just made a larger machine with a larger flux).  24 mN/W means that 100 watts would provide an easily measurable effect.  Are you unable to increase the power going into the device without shorting your insulators?

As for an explanation perhaps you are doing something like this:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24499/

[cuddihy]

I took great care in these experiments and I'm currently working on the next round of testing using even better testing methods to try to find any evidence of a conventional force mechanism.

If you have improved on your previous work then you probably have some suspicion as to what is causing this effect

yes, why the mysteriousness about what might be causing the effect? Are there literally no  guesses about theoretical causes?

[Star-Drive]

I took great care in these experiments and I'm currently working on the next round of testing using even better testing methods to try to find any evidence of a conventional force mechanism.

If you have improved on your previous work then you probably have some suspicion as to what is causing this effect

yes, why the mysteriousness about what might be causing the effect? Are there literally no  guesses about theoretical causes?

Apparently it's another version of the Biefeld-Brown (B-B) effect, but that just gives it a name.  As to its underlying thrust producing mechanism, my guess at the moment would concur with Graphguy.  I.e., it's some type of qunatum vacuum E&M momentum exchange interaction that depends on an unsymmetrical array of non-linear dielectrics and large E-fields.  Past that we wait for Hector to provide details on his new and improved "Electric Rocket".

[Garrett]

It's a good sign to see that there is interest in this kind of research. We are planning on doing a presentation in a conference later this year. We also are planning on submitting a paper so we can present our findings at STAIF, next year.

Just curious: what conference this year?
Also, are both the atmospheric and vacuum tests carried out in the vacuum chamber setup? Any plans to use a larger vacuum chamber?

Also, what are the similarities to US Patent 6317310?
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6317310.pdf

Sorry for asking only questions and a lack of insight. Maybe in another post ...

Cheers

[hec031]

I took great care in these experiments and I'm currently working on the next round of testing using even better testing methods to try to find any evidence of a conventional force mechanism.

If you have improved on your previous work then you probably have some suspicion as to what is causing this effect (unless you just made a larger machine with a larger flux).  24 mN/W means that 100 watts would provide an easily measurable effect.  Are you unable to increase the power going into the device without shorting your insulators?

As for an explanation perhaps you are doing something like this:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24499/

The focus of the work over the past three years has been in proving the existence of the effect through a very robust scientific device and testing protocol. We had to address the Ion wind issue once and for all. Testing in vacuum is not enough. We had to show that the effect was consistent between environmental pressures. We did it with a device who's physical configuration changes only by one component between the two environments. This left very little room for ion wind issues in air and zero for vacuum. So the focus of the work these last three years has been on a purely scientific device.

Like I have said before, the device we are testing is like no other Asymmetrical capacitor anyone has ever made. It's unique geometric rules is what allow it to consistently produce thrust. The circuit theory was not straight forward because of how the new device works and is powered, so running it in parallel had been a challenge. We found one way that worked, but was not very practical, so I've been studying the reason why the one method worked in order to design an alternative circuit theory that will be more conventional in nature.

We are about to test that new circuit theory this week. If it works then yes we should be able to increase the thrust to very visible levels which will not only add to our body of evidence, but will open the door to serious development of a technology demonstrator and prototype propulsion system. So your instincts are dead on.

Insulation is not as much of an issue for us like it is for the original Asymmetrical capacitor devices. The unique way in which the device produces thrust dramatically alleviates such issues. It's one of the key reason why the device operates at such high efficiencies.

[hec031]

If you are so sure it works, then I'd suggest you build a CubeSat that uses one of these thrusters, fed by solar cells. If you can maintain the 24 mN/W in orbit, then you should easily be able to demonstrate that with significant orbital changes. Publishing that data would be undeniable proof.

That is what I was thinking- make a cubesat and put it as a rider on a SpaceX launch.  Of course this is not undeniable proof as you need to eliminate interaction with the Earth's magnetic field, but it would be pretty close to undeniable proof.

Something like that might be useful at TRL 6 or so, but right now this is way down at TRL 1.

I agree. At the moment the work is a scientific demonstrator. A lab device. Scaling the force in a practical way is how we will transition from TRL 1 to TRL 6 and beyond. Working on that as I type.

[hec031]

I took great care in these experiments and I'm currently working on the next round of testing using even better testing methods to try to find any evidence of a conventional force mechanism.

If you have improved on your previous work then you probably have some suspicion as to what is causing this effect

yes, why the mysteriousness about what might be causing the effect? Are there literally no  guesses about theoretical causes?

Apparently it's another version of the Biefeld-Brown (B-B) effect, but that just gives it a name.  As to its underlying thrust producing mechanism, my guess at the moment would concur with Graphguy.  I.e., it's some type of qunatum vacuum E&M momentum exchange interaction that depends on an unsymmetrical array of non-linear dielectrics and large E-fields.  Past that we wait for Hector to provide details on his new and improved "Electric Rocket".

Have a friend that is a leading theoretical physicist that has been modeling the effect along the lines of what you are suggesting here.

He was shocked when he saw the device and what it could do.

In the case of our device there is one key feature that makes you invoke some kind of quantum field interaction. I'm sorry to be a tease here, but I'm working very hard to finish what I need to do, so you can all see what I'm talking about. I have to balance science with corporate and political issues.

[hec031]

It's a good sign to see that there is interest in this kind of research. We are planning on doing a presentation in a conference later this year. We also are planning on submitting a paper so we can present our findings at STAIF, next year.

Just curious: what conference this year?
Also, are both the atmospheric and vacuum tests carried out in the vacuum chamber setup? Any plans to use a larger vacuum chamber?

Also, what are the similarities to US Patent 6317310?
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6317310.pdf

Sorry for asking only questions and a lack of insight. Maybe in another post ...

Cheers

I'm working with our Theoretical physicist friend to decide on a conference. The device was tested under atmospheric pressure and high vacuum in the same chamber. The only thing that changes in the configuration is that we add an extra piece of insulation over the exposed connection point between the high voltage feedthrough and the device umbilical power cord when operating in air. The device itself stays the same.

There is a second party that is planning on doing confirmation work. Their results would be unquestionable simply because of who they are. They have much larger chambers that can go far deeper in vacuum than my setup. There confirmation efforts would start at my level but in a 24" diameter chamber.