BALANCE IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
By Wingate A. Lambertson, Ph.D.
BALANCE IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
By Wingate A. Lambertson, Ph.D.
Ms. Jeane Manning reported on the Conference on Future Energy in the July 1999 issue of New Energy News and I was surprised at her paragraph on Paul Goodwin's presentation. Mr. Goodwin is part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics. "He acknowledges that it (ZPE) is a future energy possibility but has a long way to go." He and I seem to have a difference of opinion on the time and/or money needed and that is all right. He made this statement in reporting on the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Conference. I was not at the Conference and have not read their report. I do know about my method and its potential, and it is not going to take very long to go commercial.
The NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program has three basic goals, of which goal three is "creating new energy production methods to power such devices" (devices of goals 1 and 2 are on propulsion). The Breakthrough Propulsion Missions are thought to be "beyond scientific knowledge to date, further advances in science are sought,..." This resulted in contracts with B. Haisch of Lockheed Martin and A. Rueda of California State University at Long Beach. Their work resulted in a paper with Dr. H.E. Puthoff on "Advances in the Proposed Electromagnetic Zero-Point Field Theory of Inertia." (AIAA 98-3143)
The way I read this information is that our Federal Government has assigned ZPE research and development to NASA and that NASA has decided to start their studies with two theoreticians. It is a start, even though I would have invested in an applied research program. We in the ZPE research field should recognize this as an event of historical change. Their reason for this strategy could have been political or it could have been caution. The important point is that they have immersed their little toe in the "sea of energy."
My interest in ZPE is in the applied research area. Theory can come before invention or it can come after. First Dr. Puthoff's papers and now those by Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff are helpful to me in my research. Their starting study on inertia leads me to the concept of a low-cost inertia and ZPE teaching device that may be used by all freshman college physics teachers. I saw Don Kelly change the acceleration of gravity using an electric current in 1994. That would have been my starting point for a breakthrough in propulsion had I been on the grant panel.
The cost of the Haisch and Rueda contracts was not available to me but it had to be low. In the same issue of New Energy News we are informed that the DOE is providing $25 million to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory for their fusion program. Their director speculates that "the projected fruition .... is suspected to be decades away and cost hundreds of millions of dollars." That tells us that the consciousness of DOE is still on fusion as the answer to the world's potential energy needs.
In a recent letter, Dr. Hal Puthoff suggested to me that I use as the title for my invention, "Efficient conversion of ambient energy in the environment," instead of "Collection and conversion of zero-point energy," and I think that has a great deal of merit. My research is being done at ambient temperature. It is 94 degrees Fahrenheit in my garage as this paper is being written. This gets us away from the thermodynamic hang-up where we learned that energy flows downhill. Nothing is lower than zero degrees Kelvin. In fact, I read recently that it is impossible to reach the zero point.
The DOE has responsibility for meeting the future energy needs of this country. This is not just about a manned mission to Mars. Doctors Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff have theorized that inertia results from the electromagnetic zero-point field. That means that the ZPE field contains tremendous amounts of energy - more than I can comprehend. I started down this path over 25 years ago because I knew the energy was there. The logical next step will be for DOE to go into an applied research program. I am doing applied research on the collection of ZPE. I had the research director of a large U.S. energy-based company tell me that they could not go into the development of my method because it was too expensive. I had no way of knowing what he was thinking, but I knew that he did not understand my method.
It is suggested that the next step for DOE is to commission a study of the proper scope of a national ZPE applied research program. This study could be done by using a panel from the National Society of Engineers with support staff from DOE - if they can find six members who have an understanding of ZPE. The applied application of collecting energy from the vacuum is an engineering problem and not a theoretical one. This has been done in Switzerland since about 1985. We do not want to repeat the National Science Foundation's fiasco on cold fusion. This study would come up with an estimate of a program, where it should be done and how much it will cost. DOE could then go to Congress for funds to get started. They could also get into a product development program if it is not done by industry. That will then give our national program balance and complete the circle. We could save $6 billion a year of our federal energy bill.
August 5, 1999
www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_6_11_5.html
Sept., 1999.