Elizabeth Helen Drake wrote:Yes, things here are shutting down too, and I shouldn't even perhaps be sitting here ... but ... just for a moment. I hope that Thanksgiving dawns as beatutifully for you Paul. (Langley).....
It is exactly that meeting. Probably May or June, not much later than that.
.... does the name Franklin Chang-Diaz mean anything to you yet? Has his path crossed your research yet? A very handsome man interested in plasma propulsion. He has a recognizable passion.
Elizabeth
No, but looking him up, He Knows, I think. what struck me (aside from his gigantic skills and knowledge re fusion and plasmas, etc is this
STS-46 (July 31-August 8, 1992), was an 8-day mission during which crew members deployed the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) satellite, and
conducted the first Tethered Satellite System (TSS) test flight. Mission duration was 191 hours, 16 minutes, 7 seconds. Space Shuttle Atlantis and her crew launched and landed at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, after completing 126 orbits of the Earth in 3.35 million miles.
STS-75 (February 22 to March 9, 1996), was a 15-day mission with principal payloads being the reflight of the
Tethered Satellite System (TSS) and the third flight of the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3).
The TSS successfully demonstrated the ability of tethers to produce electricity. The TSS experiment produced a wealth of new information on the
electrodynamics of tethers and plasma physics before the tether broke at 19.7 km, just shy of the 20.7 km goal. The crew also worked around the clock performing combustion experiments and research related to USMP-3 microgravity investigations used to improve production of medicines, metal alloys, and semiconductors. The mission was completed in 252 orbits covering 6.5 million miles in 377 hours and 40 minutes.
end quote from
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/chang.html
The thing is, the satellite missions of NASA are fundamental in experiments toward using the sun - earth circuit (ie the potential in th ionosphere and magentosphere) as a an electrical power source. The NASA experiments were aimed at producing voltage of use for space craft, but every day tera watts goes to waste down plug holes at the poles.
And it links in to ley lines and natural electricity, and so forth.
See also journal article 31 #
# "Operation of electric motors from atmospheric electric field," Am. J. Phys. 39, 776-779 (1971).
http://www.as.wvu.edu/coll03/phys/www/OJ/jefimenk.html
Jefimenko powered an electric motor from a wire suspended from a weather balloon. Using the potential different between height and earth. that was in the 70s. The NASA tethered satillite missions were again, a more complex application of similar principles. Both are direct descendents of Benjamin Franklin's key and kite experiment (though you dont need lighting to tapped the terrestrial geodynamo. It is a potential source of independent power for craft. IMO.
And then there's this:
"Perhaps the most significant finding," Stone said, "is
that tether currents proved to be up to three times greater
than existing theoretical models predicted prior to the
mission. With the amount of power generated being directly
proportional to the current, this bodes well for
technological applications."
"Reversing the direction of current flow puts the system
into an electric-motor mode," Stone explained. This harnessed
energy could furnish thrust for reboosting a space station,
satellite or Shuttle in a decaying orbit."
and
"Other important revelations from the STS-75 mission
include observations of the satellite's thrusters interacting
with the ionosphere while moving rapidly in Earth orbit.
Stone said that, when the thrusters were fired to adjust the
satellite's spin rate, the neutral gas emitted became
ionized.
The tethered satellite researchers noted that, at that
point, "a sudden jump" took place in the level of current
flow, while the satellite's potential (voltage) dropped
several hundred volts. They traced this effect to the small
amount of gas, released from the thrusters, becoming ionized
in the vicinity of the satellite. A greater, more efficient
current flow was observed. "The effect of neutral-gas
ionization is not taken into consideration by existing
theoretical models of
current collection in the ionosphere," ***
Stone said.
Also, for the first time ever, the high voltage plasma
sheath and wake of a high-voltage satellite moving rapidly in
the ionosphere was measured. "This is virtually impossible to
study in a laboratory and is difficult to model
mathematically," Stone said."
From
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/1996/96-106.txt
Seems to me that although this may be at first site somewhat off topic, its not, I think its crucial.
Funny how you mentioned a guy I'd never noticed who was on the one NASA mission sets Ive been fascinated by for year Elizabeth. Weird. Not.
This all relates back to Teller, Brown's involvement with the high alt. nukes out at sea, the H Bomb development, and in 1956, let's see, well, Bravo had already taken place, and wiki says "The first Soviet test of a "true" hydrogen bomb in the megaton range was on November 22, 1955. It was dubbed RDS-37 by the Soviets. It was of the multi-staged, radiation implosion thermonuclear design called Sakharov's "Third Idea" in the USSR and the Teller-Ulam design in the USA" So H bomb ability on both sides, K pans Stalin and Crabb episode. There's politics, (wouldnt be cool for Britain to promote internal Soviet tensions), there's espionage, and there's technology. And when you talk H bombs you talk fundamentally about resonance, density and conventionlly heat. But there are other unconventional cookbooks for a slow burn fusion. And I think oddly, the Tethered sat missions are a link in that chain.
*** There, its official. Not wacko science at all. Tesla's vision of an earth current driven aircraft, and Brown's search for an independent power source, both may hinge on this.
Paul