Presented January 2014 at the 52nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics by Robert A. McDonald, California Polytechnic State University.
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” – Joni Mitchell
Ultimately we will want to do away with most pavement; considering that the fresh asphalt gassing off into our atmosphere is like millions of miles of tar sands being spread out yearly. Some even say asphalt is a rectal disorder and that roadways are a very primitive and destructive technology; it is thought to be an overly complicated and expensive travel infrastructure that is best done away with altogether. The first paving stones, so to speak, laid towards this end, were set in place in 2008 by the NASA contract envisioned within the Google CAFE Flight Foundation and the Cafe Flight Challenge. This may be as important as the NASA LENR Boeing 747 or the NASA SpaceWorks LENR Spaceplane contracts, which were initiated in 2007.
Imagine a world of personal transport and package delivery without roads, gridlock, or rush hour long traffic delays, no need for parking lots.
Tear up the pavement, create greenways which replace highways, paradise returned.
The folks bringing this dream to reality meet at the 8th Annual CAFE Electric Aircraft Symposium, held April 25th and 26th, 2014, in Santa Rosa, California, an incredible gathering of experts and thought-leaders in the areas of electric- and sustainable-aviation. Highly educated impassioned volunteers and industry leaders power the Café Foundation. Google and NASA provide key technical and financial assistance.
Enabling concepts, which they are working with, have long included the energetics of low energy nuclear reactions, improved thermo/peizo electric conversion technology, advanced nano-tube “structural/airframe” energy storage, and supercomputer navigation capabilities. Dennis Bushnell helped forge the CAFE Flight Foundation NASA contract and has presented important technical information to them over the years.
Dr. Shin to Keynote Electric Aircraft Symposium by Dean Sigler
Dr. Jaiwon Shin, NASA Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, will close the Friday, April 25th session of the eighth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium with his keynote address, “The NASA Aeronautics Vision and Strategy – How It Relates to Electric Aircraft.”
5th Annual CAFE Electric Aircraft Symposium – 2011
Dennis Bushnell: Envisioning a Plausible, Positive Future by Dean Sigler
Consider that Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Benjamin Santer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) kicked off the first day of the 2011 Electric Aircraft Symposium with a highly-detailed examination of the issues surrounding climate change. That required an equally adept presenter to expound on possible solutions for worldwide problems, and EAS 5 delivered with Dennis Bushnell, NASA’s Chief Scientist at Langley Research Center.
His presentation, “Frontier[s] of Electric Aircraft Propulsion [The Responsibly Imaginable],” was far-ranging and wonderfully challenging, encompassing energy, aeronautics, and technologies from information technology (IT), bio, nano, energetics, and quantum mechanics, to societal technological systems.
Quoting Arthur C. Clark, “The roads to support autos cost as much as a small war and the casualties are on the same scale”, Bushnell looked at the 80-year dream of flying automobiles, and posited adaptations and alternatives such as robotic package delivery, 300 mile commutes, and flying shuttles for “the aged, the infirm, the young, and the inebriated.” Such personal air vehicle use, along with rail traffic, could constitute “a complete [physical] domestic transportation system,” according to Bushnell.
This approach would have enormous infrastructure and sociological implications, reducing the need for roads and bridges, built-up core cities, and allowing self-sufficiency in electronic cottages on their own large plots of land. Obviously, from this writer’s perspective, this would require a big change from the current 99-percent/one-percent economic dichotomy, because such alterations would require a greater prosperity for everyone, or a more layered society much like those in utopian fiction (or dystopian, as some might fear).
This will come about because navigation and control breakthroughs currently are being developed by the Department of Defense and package delivery companies; and ultralight, motorcycle-like flying machines will enable most to have a safe means of traversing space while avoiding downtowns and malls. These small machines would expand in size to include “Cadillac” level transportation and service delivery.
Bushnell thinks this is possible because the hardware and software Infrastructure involved would be “vastly less expensive than the current ground alternative.” He also foresees a demand for this based on “the HUGE markets [and] economic benefits,” and “because the People want the associated freedom/convenience/time savings/cost reductions” that could come from this visionary breakthrough.
He listed a promising number of ways to harvest energy, including wind, solar, wave power, geothermal, and biomass, but took them to the next level with suggestions for the extraction of atmospheric CO2, and using engineered microbes to convert the gas to fuel; low energy nuclear reactions (LENR and sometimes erroneously referred to as “cold fusion”); exploitation of energy potential in chemical bonds; and the use of positrons – the “affordable anti-matter.”
7th Annual CAFE Electric Aircraft Symposium – 2013
Beyond Chemical – Exotic Energetics/Propulsion
Presented by Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA
LENR [Low Energy Nuclear Reactions]
Frontier Energy Storage/ Release Options
LENR Utilization Approaches
Alternative Heat Storage Options
2011 Green Flight Challenge Sponsored by Google
The 2011 Green Flight Challenge sponsored by Google marks an historic achievement in aviation—the first demonstration of practical, cross-country emission-free flight. Final results.
Years from now, these first Green Flight Challenge team members will be recognized as the pioneers of the Age of Electric Flight. CAFE is already discussing plans for GFC II and will publish more on that at their website soon.
CAFE Foundation creates and advances the understanding of personal aircraft technologies through research, analysis, and education.
Aircraft are submarines that swim in a sea of air
—Lyle S. Powell Jr.
Besides overcoming the force of Earth’s gravity, aircraft must maneuver against the friction and pressures of a surprisingly viscous and powerfully turbulent medium—Earth’s atmosphere. By comparing how aircraft move through this ‘sea of air’, the enthusiast members of CAFE have pioneered valuable new ways to study aerodynamics and improve personal aircraft.
CAFE developed award-winning flight test equipment and software that records extremely accurate speeds, temperatures, weights, pressures, frequencies and sound levels. These suites of CAFE flight test tools have turned the skies above Santa Rosa into a kind of “Nature’s Wind Tunnel”. (See “Order From Chaos“). CAFE’s flight test expertise has become a national asset recognized by many of those prominent in the world of aviation, including NASA, AOPA and EAA. (See Sponsors)
The diverse members of the CAFE team each contribute a special talent and expertise to the organization. But it is the magic of enthusiasm that has turned these airplane hobbyists into respected aeronautical scientists. The CAFE team arose mainly from members of Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter (EAA) 124, where the passion for personal aviation is strong. Volunteers from EAA 124 have formed the backbone of CAFE’s success.
As we enter the Second Century of Flight, the non-profit, tax-exempt CAFE Foundation looks forward to enhancing its key role in advancing the science, education and growth of personal aviation for everyone. Learn how you can help.
Members of the media, enrolled students or other special cases, please email a ‘request for special registration’ to: eas2014reg@cafefoundation.org
Educates and advocates new energy technologies based on cold fusion science and lobby to make cold fusion research a part of our alternative energy portfolio.
Safe and ultra-clean, from a water-fuel, cold fusion is the viable alternative energy that has the energy density to power a green technological future for all of planet Earth.
Cold fusion makes it economically-viable to recycle all waste. We can remove hydro-electric dams and restore the wilderness, saving species from extinction. No CO2 emissions puts a halt to further degradation of the atmosphere.
And no more dirty and dangerous radioactive nuclear power plants!
Low-energy nuclear reactions, another name for cold fusion, also show the ability to transmute elements, offering a path to clean-up the thousands of tons of radioactive waste that imperils our environment and health.
It’s mind-boggling to imagine the numbers of people who have viewed the NARI Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft Seedling Seminar by Doug Wells – people from companies serving the aerospace industries, to leaders in engineering and research. The seedling seminar is even being reported in aviation magazines worldwide. Wow!
Doug Wells Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft [.pdf]
Doug Wells will also present a paper at the AIAA Aviation 2014 Conference, a Study Webinar by Marty Bradley available through the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a paper was presented in January, at the 52nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting, by Robert A. McDonald from Cal Poly.
Thousands upon thousands of savvy people are now grasping that cold fusion is emerging as a source of clean energy beyond our most promising dreams, with the power to move humanity through our next evolution. With popular cold fusion/LENR science, we are on the verge of an epic technological advancement with the concurrent personal, social, economic, environmental, spiritual, and philosophical advancements.
With that change in energetics, the paradigm changes, and we begin building an ecologically sustainable society.
“-given the truly massive-to-mind boggling benefits – solutions to climate, energy and the limitations that restrict the NASA Mission areas, all of them. The key to space exploration is energetics. The key to supersonic transports and neighbor-friendly personal fly/drive air vehicles is energetics, as simplex examples of the potential implications of this area of research.”
–Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist NASA Langley on the energetics of LENR.
Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft Investigator
Doug Wells, NASA Langley Research Center
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to investigate the potential vehicle performance impact of applying the emergent Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) technology to aircraft propulsion systems.
LENR potentially has over 4,000 times the density of chemical energy with zero greenhouse gas or hydrocarbon emissions. This technology could enable the use of an abundance of inexpensive energy to remove active design constraints, leading to new aircraft designs with very low fuel consumption, low noise, and no emissions.
The objectives of this project are to gather as many perspectives as possible on how and where to use a very high density energy source for aircraft including the benefits arising from its application, explore the performance impacts to aircraft, and evaluate potential propulsion system concepts.
Background
LENR is a type of nuclear energy and is expected to be clean, safe, portable, scalable, and abundant. The expected benefits make it an ideal energy solution. When it is applied to aircraft, LENR removes the environmental impacts of fuel burn and emission from combustion. Excess energy could be used to reduce noise so that all three of NASA’s technology goals for future subsonic vehicles are either eliminated or addressed.
Furthermore, aviation impacts almost every part of our daily lives, civilian and military.
A revolutionary technology like LENR has the potential to completely change how businesses, military, and the country operate as a whole, giving a tremendous financial, tactical, and resource advantage to anyone that utilizes it in the most effective way.
High-density energy sources create some unique capabilities as well as challenges for integration into aircraft.
An LENR concept that has reported some success generates heat in a catalyst process that combines nickel metal (Ni) with hydrogen gas (H). The initial testing and theory show that radiation and radioisotopes are extremely short lived and can be easily shielded.
Although nuclear fission has been looked at for use in aircraft, LENR is different. LENR has a higher energy density and no radioactive by products.
Success of this research will provide a firm foundation for future research and investment for high-density energy source technology integration into aircraft.
NASA LENR Aircraft 2014 Seedling Technical Seminar
The Team
California Polytechnic State University
NASA Glen Research Center
NASA Langley Research Center
The Application of LENR to Synergistic Mission Capabilities
Submitted by Doug Wells for publication and presentation at the AIAA Aviation 2014 Conference. Date: 16 – 20 June 2014.
Location: Atlanta, Georgia. (we must wait to view it)
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.
Lessons Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR)
Study Webinar Recorded 18 December 2012 – Martin K. Bradley
Available at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite 500 – Reston, VA 20191-4344
Synopsis
This webinar summarizes the work accomplished for NASA by the Boeing Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) team during a continuing two-phase study, which started in 2008. Results through February 2012 are reported.
In Phase I, the team completed the development of a future scenario for world-wide commercial aviation in 2030, selected baseline and advanced configurations, generated technology suites for each, conducted detailed performance analysis, calculated noise and emissions, assessed technology risks, and developed technology roadmaps. Five concepts were evaluated in detail including a high span strut braced wing concept, a gas turbine battery electric concept, and a hybrid wing body.
In Phase II, the study was extended to the N+4 2040 timeframe and considered the following additional technologies: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Hydrogen, fuel cell hybrids, Low Energy Nuclear (LENR), boundary layer ingestion propulsion (BLI), unducted fans, and advanced propellers.
Presenter
Dr. Marty Bradley is a Technical Fellow for The Boeing Company, working in the Boeing Research and Technology organization in Huntington Beach, California. For Boeing, he is the leader for a variety of projects related to green aircraft technologies, aviation environmental life cycle analysis, and propulsion integration for advanced technologies. Marty has 28-years of experience in vehicle design, propulsion integration, and technology studies for a wide variety of commercial and military aerospace applications. He has led and conducted projects for green aircraft design, alternative fuels, and environmental life cycle analysis (LCA).
Marty is the Principal Investigator for this NASA funded study looking at advanced technologies for future commercial aircraft, which will be discussed. Marty has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering, all from the University of Southern California.
Impact of Advanced Energy Technologies on Aircraft Design
Robert A. McDonald, California Polytechnic State University
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Publication Date: 13-17 January 2014
Chapter DOI: 10.2514/6.2014-0538
The impact of low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology on the design of aircraft is examined. Energy conversion possibilities considered and a Brayton cycle engine with an LENR heat exchanger is selected.
Potential aerospace applications of LENR devices are discussed and a high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned ariel vehicle with multi-year endurance is conceptualized with primary focus on (LENR) energy management.
SpaceWorks Engineering Advanced Concepts Group
Key customers and partners are NASA, Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, JPL, Pratt Whitney a United Technologies Company, ULA United Launch Alliance, Orbital, IHI AeroSpace, National Institute of Aerospace, UDRI University of Dayton Research Institute, UTC Universal Technology Corporation, and SI Satrec Initiative.
LENR Spaceplanes
Advanced Propulsion System Concept Studies
Customer: NASA LaRC
Duration: 6 months
Date: 2009-2010
SpaceWorks conducted separate vehicle design studies evaluating the potential impact of two advanced propulsion system concepts under consideration by NASA Langley Research Center:
The first concept was an expendable multistage rocket vehicle which utilized an advanced Air-Augmented Rocket (AAR) engine. The effect of various rocket thrust augmentation ratios were identified the resulting vehicle design where compared against a traditional expendable rocket concept
The second concept leverage Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), a new form of energy generation being studied at NASA LaRC, to determine how to utilize an LENR-based propulsion system for space access. For this activity, two LENR-based rocket engine propulsion performance models where developed jointly by SpaceWorks and LaRC personnel.
The Complete NARI 2014 Seedling Seminars (click people tab to view investigators)
The NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) presented a 6-day virtual technical seminar on February 19–21 and February 25–27, 2014 to showcase innovative concepts developed by NASA researchers, primarily featuring work from the Seedling Phase 2 (Round 1) and Seedling Phase 1 (Round 3) funds.
http://nari.arc.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/SeedlingWELLS.pdf
http://nari.arc.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/SeedlingCOGAN.pdf
NARI awards the ARMD Seedling Fund grants to make deliberate investments in early-stage and potentially revolutionary aviation concepts and technologies that are aligned with NASA’s mission. These grants go to civil servant-led teams at NASA Research Centers. This seminar was an opportunity for members of the NASA aeronautics community to view the results of this research and see how these innovative concepts might complement and benefit their work and projects across the agency. The results were presented in 33 talks: 30 minutes for each presentation and 10 minutes for discussion and questions. Each session featured a special guest NASA leader as Keynote Speaker and Moderator.
The NASA seminar was free and open to all. Watch the archive and download the slides.
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BUILDING AN ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY
Website: www.issaindia.org.in
Here is a small yet important part of their wonderful work. Enjoy.
What is social?
An act or result of an act involving two or more than two individuals is called social. Since science is produced by two or more than two individuals, it is social. In other words basic character of science is social.
What does it mean?
It means that very notion of science is social. It means the notions of verify-ability and repeatability, reliability, validity, precision, exactness, isomorphism, measurement, methods, hypothesis, inference and theory are social notions. It means there is close connection between society and science and between social conditions and science. As humans and their societies develop so does science.
It also means that proclivity of all humans to social influence and their inability to free themselves wholly from the social and personal prejudices tend to influence objectivity of science. It means science is ‘primitive’ to some extent and ‘precious’ to large extent. It is ‘primitive’ to some extent because it is never cent percent objective. It is, ‘precious’ to a large extent because there is no other system of better objective knowledge.
What is its implication?
It implies that the division of science between science and social science is no longer correct. Today there is no dichotomy between Nature, humans and society or between living matter and non-living matter. Through long and arduous pursuits humans discovered their origin and connections with Nature. Today the term Nature connotes all non-living and living objects including humans and their societies. The 18th century notion of Nature and science or basic science is no longer a valid notion. It might be convenient to fragment science into various subcategories for the sake of study, but it will not serve its social purpose if it is not put together.
Science of Nature, therefore, is necessary for modern humans and their societies. Science of Humans and their societies is integral to the science of Nature. It also means that science is never eternal or static. All objects/things are in constant motion. Since all objects/things keep on changing so does their science. Also, each object is divisible into two because of mutually opposite attributes inherent in it. That is to say, nature of nature, be it non-living or living is dialectical. There is nothing like linearity in Nature.
Science, therefore, is dialectical and not linear. The need for verification and repetition makes science authority free. There is no place for authority in science. Any one and every one enjoys the right to challenge science. Democracy, therefore, is necessary for science. Science grows in democratic conditions and dies in undemocratic or authoritarian conditions.
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REAL ENERGY
Not so far in the near distant future…
The next generation in fact.
Will look back at our generation as the last of the fire era.
And know the term energy shortage was…
A term for unenlightened minds.
gbgoble2009
Tuesday, February 25 10:45-11:15 Eastern Standard Time (EST)
Doug Wells Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft
From their website:
The NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) will present a 6-day virtual technical seminar on February 19–21 and February 25–27, 2014 to showcase innovative concepts developed by NASA researchers, primarily featuring work from the Seedling Phase 2 (Round 1) and Seedling Phase 1 (Round 3) funds. If you’d like to download a pdf copy of the agenda, click here.
NARI awards the ARMD Seedling Fund grants to make deliberate investments in early-stage and potentially revolutionary aviation concepts and technologies that are aligned with NASA’s mission. These grants go to civil servant-led teams at NASA Research Centers. This seminar is an opportunity for members of the NASA aeronautics community to view the results of this research and see how these innovative concepts might complement and benefit their work and projects across the agency. The results will be presented in 33 talks: 30 minutes for each presentation and 10 minutes for discussion and questions. Each session features a special guest NASA leader as Keynote Speaker and Moderator.
NASA 2014 Seedling Seminar
Related Links
The NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) was established to pursue “deliberate investments in innovative, early-stage, and potentially revolutionary aviation concepts and technologies.”
NARI announced the 2013 (Round 3) Seedling Fund Phase I Awards on January 28, 2013 and twenty NASA civil servants received awards of $150,000 for research efforts lasting 12 months.
NASA Langley Research Center’s Doug Wells of the Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch was awarded a grant as Principal Investigator for a concept project titled Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) Aircraft. The discipline area is Propulsion/Airframe integration.
Wells holds a 2007 Bachelor’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Western Michigan University, and is expecting to graduate with a Masters Degree from Georgia Institute of Science this year!
Wells was also named in the Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research – Phase II report [.pdf] as a member of the Virtual East team in the workshop that developed advanced concepts and a future timeline for Boeing, NASA and others to generate green aircraft. The team evaluated LENR as having “important advantages, but extremely high risk – if it works, revolutionary to World energy.”
Period of performance for the NARI project grant is February 1, 2013 to January 31, 2014. Efforts that show significant progress after a year could be selected to receive a larger grant for 12 more months of research.
Related
“Responsibly imaginable” LENR solutions from NASA
The Electric Car
and then,
so much more to raise your hopes
An important note to the reader
This document leads in with new technologies for the electric car. Later, at the end of this document, via a clickable reference, it identifies a total scenario, in some detail, of the remarkable hot and cold fusion technologies that will be applied to power generation, marine propulsion, aircraft propulsion and space propulsion.
The transformative nature of all these [largely proven] energy technologies is that they are totally clean, safe and are free of toxic materials of construction and produce no toxic or harmful effluent – in fact they represent the end of the era of combustion [as a source of power or propulsion].
After studying Mechanical Engineering, author John W. Varney migrated to Classical Atomic & Nuclear Physics at the Naval College in England. A member of Institution of Nuclear Engineers, he has designed aircraft jet engines, nuclear submarine primary systems design, steam plant design for power generation, application of gas turbines in power generation, and general consulting for industrial projects. Born 1939 in London, England, Varney is now retired and a single grandfather who works to promote Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) fusion technology as a clean energy alternative to fossil fuels.
Who locked the garage door on our Super electric car
Is it Santa Clause or the Wicked Witch?
Surely it can’t be the oil and auto industries, because what on earth could they have against a transformation of all road vehicles to the simple, clean, efficient and lower cost electric mode ?
Surely it can’t be the reality of a sudden and total global collapse of fuel sales to road vehicles. The fine corporate executives who have the awesome responsibilities of building a better world for themselves would not dream of compromising their future if it meant abandoning the addiction to power and wealth, even as such a selfish strategy denies any benefit [of an improved environment] for people and all other species that inhabit this planet.
Such is the world today, populated by a vast majority who have the care and passion to nurture their families against all odds that reality throws at them, and a small minority whose privilege of financial success and a position of power has blinded them to the profound gifts of service and compassion for others.
Technology suppression and deception exposes the public to avoidable dangers.
Boeing’s Dream-liner problems with lithium-ion battery fires, is a grim reminder of suppression of technologies [technologies that threaten the future of fossil fuel vehicle propulsion].
GM and elements of the Military-Industrial complex became involved in ownership of the new technology of ultracapacitors for the express purpose of burying the program in the back waters of suppression so that vehicle propulsion [land, sea and air] will survive in the profitable domain of combustion engines.
Blacklight Power have developed and proven [with an energy source classified as a variant of cold fusion] a remarkable and transforming CIHT unit [Catalyst Induced Hydrino Transition] that will compete with the ultracapacitor battery when it has been scaled up for use in all road vehicles. This exciting technology is, without doubt, a target for any agency with an agenda to prolong the use of combustion engines in all road vehicles.
The following documents provide the evidence for the promising scenario [and political and industrial challenges] that will be experienced, in the emergence and global transformation from combustion to electric power for the car and all road vehicles:-
ELECTRIC VEHICLES – NEW BATTERY TECHNOLOGY
ANALYSIS OF LEAD ACID AND LITHIUM BATTERIES
Engine verses Electric Energy Ratings
Email John Varney
Related
and then, so much more to raise your hopes
John Varney: Small-scale fusion is “a matter of absolute urgency”
