Are you a Star-Trek fan, or a StarGate Fan? What's the difference, when you get right down to it? I'm betting that if you're like me, you've been disappointed with the Star-Trek episodes on Television, for the primary reason that they always end up exactly where they started out. The reason is pretty simple: they probably had multiple script-writers submitting stories, and it would have been difficult to manage developing storylines across several writers at once. Hence, the real changes to the story always come in the season finale -- usually around the same time as contract negotiations for the actors.

StarGate's not perfect either, but they have a continuing story -- a central theme of exploration, with the new characters that they meet reappearing frequently in later episodes. Depending on how you look at things, it's either a great way to manage a show, or some new form of social-welfare program for bit-part actors. The fact that the story builds off itself is what makes the critical difference for me between the two series: StarGate is watchable, while I never seem to have the time for the now-defunct Star-Trek series.

StarGate also has another plot-bonus: they take advantage of the resources that they have available. For instance, one of my biggest annoyances in Star-Trek was when they learned how to recreate Captain Kirk from the transporter records in an original 1960's episode --fast forward to the 90's, and when Cmdr Data gets blown up on the big-screen they're left with only a cheap replacement android. Either Kirk didn't bother to note ths stunning technological advance in his Captain's log, or else some Federation scientist completely lost the technology....either way, it was a great "hack" for their technology that you never saw again.

The reason that I mention this is because I am in the process of reloading all my audio-interviews for the last year. I've done over 50 interviews with the top scientists, researchers, and thinkers in gravity research, and learned a lot from each of them. It's a continuing process, which means that when I go back to write descriptions for these interviews online I now know a lot more than I did starting out.....a bit like the "Naquada Generator" from the StarGate series.

The Naquada-Generator is a handy little fictional power-source that appeared in season two or three of the Star-Gate SG-1 series, and it was useful enough that it remains an essential tool in many of the new episodes. Heck, StarGate Atlantis even started with these tools on board, which shows that the script-writers are definitely evolving.

Fiction aside, this goes to the very heart & soul of what makes American Antigravity different. Simply put, we're building off of what we learn -- creating the news as well as reporting it. I'm not sure why nobody else seems to do this, because most reporters have a better bird's-eye view of the technology than the inventors themselves. Isn't that part of the point -- finding new tech, capitalizing on it, and sharing the advances across a spectrum of inventors?

Obviously there are intellectual property constraints here, but we've found that the collaborative approach manages to work around these just find. Some things you share, and others you don't.....but the ideas themselves are usually shareable, and that's what has the most importance. Implementation details are great, but concepts change the world.

If nothing else, if you've already listened to the interviews, take a bit of time to read through the descriptions. I'm writing them now, which means that they contain a bit of background info that I didn't always know at the time. More importantly, they help frame why I did the interview in the first place.

The goal with our interviews was not the same as Art Bell's -- these aren't time-fillers meant for entertainment only. In fact, they're not really interviews at all: I think of them as a short-hand method for creating tech notes. They also build off each other, which means that I follow concepts in science and setup interviews with the best experts to help advance these concepts. Some of the interviews focus on space-politics, and others on evolving concepts in technology, but they're all valuable.

A few of my best interviews never did get the attention that I thought they would:

Hutchison & Gagnon: This covered a means for controlling the H-Effect, and a brand new form of electrochemistry. This is a really big idea, and can change our understanding of physics overnight. It also has serious spin-off potential for manufacturing, but I never did get much feedback on it.

Eugene Podkletnov: Admitted on-air that he had a force-beam generator that could punch through brick & warp metal. Absolutely profound, and I received at-most about 10 or 12 emails about it.

Mark Goldes: His company has invested millions into manufacturing a room-temperature plastic superconductor, and they're 90% of the way to completing their final product!

John Dering: Whether or not you're into the WW-II era mythology, his presentation is down to earth, and he makes some wonderful engineering-level connections about the Nazi-Bell and Einstein's lost research.

I'm not done loading interviews, but you can always access these through our classic interface. Also, in case you're wondering, my favorite is actually the new BattleStar Galactica remake -- I think that the look & feel blows away the old space-western approach that both Star-Trek & SG1 favored for a leaner, edgier approach to space.....an approach that I find compelling.