A Conversation with Ben Bova
By Tim Ventura, August 1st, 2003
I imagine that one of the advantages of being a science-fiction
writer is the ability to look at the future in a manner
unencumbered by the short-term engineering difficulties
that tend to bog down the mind with the minutiae of problem
solving. A good example of this comes in the form of a Nitrogen
Laser that I'm currently building -- the device produces
a beam using only air as the lasing medium through which
a high-voltage current pulse is passed. The idea is truly
elegant, and worthy of mention in fiction despite the fact
that it exists in reality.
I set out to construct a version of this laser last week,
with the aid of several excellent pages of on the Internet
by enthusiast Mark Csele. Unlike the design that he promotes,
which features a rail-system embedded between two metal
plates, the design that I wanted to use would have an external
laser head -- a truly beautiful design with an external
capacitor array to provide the 1 nanosecond pulse of energy
required to initiate lasing.
As it turns out, the only problem with this idea is that
the rail-system must be embedded within the rail system
in order to allow the high-voltage pulse to traverse the
air-gap between the rails in the required 1 nanosecond lasing
time. Despite the beautiful, elegant design that I had constructed,
reality had interceded with the hard-truth of the device:
an embedded rail system is ugly and unwieldy, but required.
Science-fiction doesn't have to solve problems like these.
Assumptions can be made by the author about the state of
technology when the fiction is to take place, and from that
the challenges of that era can be solved to provide the
requisite technological sophistication to allow the characters
in the story to have the high-tech tools that they need
for the story to take place.
When I was a kid I read "Orion", by Ben Bova.
In that classic piece of science-fiction, the protagonist
is portrayed as somewhat of a human "machine"
-- a tool of the gods sent through time to combat their
enemies. At the time I'd read it, the idea seemed outlandish
-- after all, who could design a human being? Nearly 20
years later, with genetic engineering now commonplace for
plants and lower life-forms, and the ability to engineer
a person is becoming much more realistic with every passing
day.
The case above is one of many examples of what is initially
portrayed as being 'science-fiction' slowly creeping into
being 'science-fact'. The most celebrated case of this is
Arthur C. Clarke's description of the communications satellite
in the journal "Wireless World" in, and later
led to Clarke being credited as the inventor of the device.
My research into Lifter and Antigravity technology has
also suffered to some degree from short-term problem-solving.
While I've been able to make great progress into improving
the efficiency of the technology, perhaps I've focused too
much on the smaller day-to-day details of making things
work, and not enough on the long-term goals of taking the
technology to the next level.
I thought that it might be nice to speak with a professional
about some of this -- someone with vision, with experience,
and most importantly, with a background in the scientific
theory to give them the ability to think critically about
the ideas that we're considering with regard to Antigravity
and Field-Effect Propulsion Technology. I'd just finished
reading Ben Bova's novel "Orion Among the Stars"
-- a follow up to the Orion saga -- and thought that perhaps
he might be the person to speak with.
Ben Bova has authored many novels over the years, and his
latest collection -- the "Grand Tour" science-fiction
series -- is intended 'to show how the human race can expand
through the solar system'. These are a collection of science-fiction
novels intended to show the near-term ability of mankind
to colonize the solar system, as well as the type of people
that will be involved with this, their goals, and motivations.
As a demonstration of the predictive abilities of science-fiction,
Ben Bova's website maintains a list of his predictions that
include the following ideas: "Life on Mars, The Space
Race of the 1960s, Solar Power Satellites, Organic chemicals
in interstellar space, Virtual Reality, (VR)Strategic Defense
Initiative (Star Wars), International Peacekeeping forces,
Ice deposits on the Moon, and Electronic Book Publishing".
This was even better than I had expected, so I hastily sent
Bova an email requesting an interview to find out more about
his thoughts on the future of space-travel and Antigravity/Field-Effect
Propulsion technology.
The next morning, after guzzling two cups of iced-coffee
and logging into my email system, I found that renowned
science-fiction writer Ben Bova had replied to my email
regarding the interview request. In all honesty I felt a
bit nervous about speaking with him about this. While my
research has been important to myself and has inspired interest
in the younger IT-generation of enthusiasts, I wasn't sure
that someone with his experience would find it as exciting
as I did. After all, he was writing novels before I was
born, and bringing my ideas to someone like that could backfire
on me in a big way. Nonetheless, he'd provided a phone number
and a good time to call, so my excuses rapidly began to
fade as I tried to hurriedly brainstorm some questions to
ask him.
I called Ben at his office and immediately began to feel
a bit guilty. He told me that he'd just returned from a
4-week trip, which made me realize that he hadn't even had
time to settle in before I called. However, he was interested
in talking about the new technologies and offering advice,
so I couldn't resist the opportunity to begin telling him
about the Lifter technology and other projects that I've
been investing time in lately.
I asked him if perhaps science-fiction was in some ways
responsible for the lack of vision in the scientific community
with regard to Antigravity and Field-Effect Propulsion.
I pointed out that science-fiction writers have tended to
focus on methods of Interstellar-travel more than methods
of simply getting into orbit, and that over the years perhaps
this has shaped the opinion of the children reading this
that eventually grew up to be scientists and engineers themselves.
Bova responded by pointing out that methods to get into
orbit haven't been neglected so much as simply being inherently
difficult and inefficient. Sure, writers like H.G Wells
have come up with plot devices such as the material "Cavorite"
to allow the story to easily progress from being Earth-bound
to being space-adventures, but in realistic terms its difficult
to envision methods of getting into orbit that are more
realistic than this for storytelling purposes.
Orbital Delivery Methods
Bova stated, "As Robert Heinlein said, 'if you can
reach low orbit, you're halfway to anywhere'. Chemical rockets
have inherent limitations, and nobody wants to use nuclear
propulsion in the atmosphere. I think that the best way
to achieve orbit is possibly a skyhook. A skyhook would
reduce the cost of lifting things into orbit to pennies
per pound . If you make fibers for the tethers from buckeyballs
(something that's already been done in a laboratory setting),
it would probably provide a workable strength to weight
ratio."
It's interesting that he would mention the skyhook -- another
name for a space-elevator. I asked him if he'd heard about
the work being done by Michael Laine's team over at Liftport
(formerly HighLift Systems), and he indicated that he hadn't
heard about their startup efforts. I'd talked to Laine just
the other day about their recent designs, which involve
using a ribbon-shaped tether to connect a station on the
ground to an orbital station for highly-efficient transport
of materials into space. I agreed to pass along some info
about Liftport to him, and asked then about other methods
of getting into orbit that might come to mind.
Bova responded by describing a two-stage orbital system
under construction for the X-Prize competition by aviation-pioneer
Burt Rutan. Rutan is an aviation expert who has designed
a number of aircraft using advanced composite materials
that have opened up a new world of lightweight experimental
aircraft to enthusiasts. "Burt Rutan is currently building
Spaceship 1 -- This is a two stage device that is lofted
on a plane and uses chemical rockets to reach orbit. If
anybody can do it, Rutan can..." If Rutan's idea works
-- and Bova seems to believe that it will -- then it could
save on the cost of chemical boosters because it doesn't
require propulsion all the way from the Earth's surface
to orbit, but instead from an aircraft-based launch platform
already traveling at a considerable altitude.
Rotating Superconductors
I thought that it might be pertinent to ask Bova about
some of the ideas that are further out in terms of near-term
practicality. Ideas like this include the experiments involving
super conductive gravitational shielding by Russian scientist
Eugene Podkletnov -- they may indicate an entirely new vision
of aspects of physics theory, which takes time and makes
them more difficult to engineer with conventional technologies.
In his opinion, I wanted to know what he thought about not
only rotating superconductors, but also the entire concept
of rotating magnetic fields and centrifugal devices playing
a role in manipulating gravitational-force.
"Rotating bodies often provide illusory results --
they seem to provide lift but often don't. An example is
the Dean Drive from the 1960's. People have been experimenting
with these for years, but haven't been able to break Newton's
Law with rotating devices." The Dean Drive is a device
that attempts to translate a rotational motion into linear
acceleration. The idea is to produce thrust without losing
mass, which is usually ejected as exhaust from the combustion
of a propellant.
The idea behind the Dean Drive, a device constructed in
the 1950's by inventor Howard Dean, is similar to the Woodward
device, and is usually justified as relying on Mach's Principle.
This states that the tendency of an object to resist acceleration
is based on the sum of all gravitational attraction in the
universe. Woodward, a member of the faculty of Cal State
Fullerton University in both the physics and history departments,
believes that this is a loophole to Newton's Law that allows
a rotational or vibratory device to translate its energy
into linear acceleration without having to lose mass --
ie: exhaust -- in the process.
The Dean Drive is considerably different than Lifter technology
is -- unlike devices based on Mach's principle, the Lifters
are based on a combination of Ion-Wind and Biefeld-Brown
technology. Even conventional scientists have conceded that
these devices work (at least in the atmosphere), but the
chief complaint against commercial viability has been the
traditionally low efficiency of the devices.
I described to Bova in brief that the Ion-Wind was what
the established community felt was the primary source of
thrust for Lifter technology, but that experimenters like
Jean-Louis Naudin in France were conducting interesting
experiments with completely sealed devices that seemed to
indicate that the Biefeld-Brown effect was something that
couldn't yet be written off. While researchers like Jonathan
Campbell became more and more convinced from vacuum-chamber
experiments that these devices didn't work in a vacuum --
hence negating the Biefeld-Brown Effect theory -- experimenters
like Naudin proceeded to continually to perform tests with
sealed devices and unique vacuum-apparatus that appears
to indicate exactly the opposite.
"Many different experiments will jiggle and shake
but extraordinary results are required to prove that they
really work. Lifters will need to lift at least a few pounds
at least a few feet into the air. The Lifter's efficiency
in doing this isn't terribly important because you can remotely
power the device. That's what we were doing in the 1960's
with Laser Propulsion -- boiling off a propellant such as
Hydrogen using a remotely positioned megawatt laser. In
that manner you can reduce the weight of your propellant
to only 50% of the overall weight of the vehicle."
I mentioned to Ben the newer idea using Lasers to rework
the concept of the Orion ship, from the science-fiction
classic "Footfall". Bova replied that while he
was the editor of Analog science-fiction magazine that he'd
actually requested that Jerry Pournelle write about that
idea in a story, which eventually resulted in Jerry Pournelle
& Larry Niven's 1986 classic novel "Footfall",
in which elephant-like space invaders are ultimately destroyed
by an Orion-ship launched from the harbor of the writer's
hometown -- Bellingham, WA.
Pournelle didn't invent the idea of the Orion-ship -- that
honor goes to scientist Freeman Dyson, whom postulated that
this might be a way to loft enormously large payloads into
orbit. In fact, during the 1950's experiments had even been
conducted with scale-models of this technology using conventional
explosives, but the project had ultimately been terminated
because of environmental concerns and related political
issues. The original idea of the Orion-ship in Footfall
had relied on a series of small nuclear-detonations to reach
orbit, which became a more and more unfashionable technological
approach over the decades as the public learned about the
dangers of posed by nuclear fallout.
A much newer variation on the concept of the Orion-ship
technology is being conducted by the Lightcraft technologies,
Inc, and utilizes a megawatt laser projected either from
orbit or the ground to create a sustained atmospheric detonation
under a spacecraft. This should provide enough thrust to
accelerate the craft into orbit or beyond. Lightcraft has
already conducted a technology test that has accelerated
a 4.8 inch diameter scale-model to an altitude of 233 feet
in a November 2000 test at White Sands missile range.
All in all, the interview was a success, at least in that
I was able to discuss a variety of different concepts with
Bova pertaining to not only AG and Field-Effect Propulsion
technology, but also with applications to conventional near-term
orbital propulsion concepts. It's good to keep in mind that
ideas like the Lightship and the Space-Elevator may be just
now starting to be taken seriously in the mainstream scientific
community, but they originated in the hearts and minds of
science-fiction writers decades ago.
References
The Ben Bova Official Site
http://www.benbova.net/
2003; "The TEA Gas Laser", by Mark Csele
http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/lasers/LasersTEA.htm
Liftport - The Space Elevator Company
http://www.liftport.com
Lightcraft Technologies:
http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/
July 31, 2002; "The Dean Drive and Other Reactionless
Drives", by Jerry Pournelle
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/dean.html
October 1978; "Freeman Dyson Interview (Orion
Ships)", by Monte Davis
http://www.omnimag.com/archives/interviews/dyson.html
August 12th, 1997; "Mach's Principle and Impulse
Engines", by James F. Woodward
http://chaos.fullerton.edu/~jimw/nasa-pap/
March 6, 2003; "Unlinked Lifter with Wire in
a Vacuum Tube", by Jean-Louis Naudin
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/lifters/vacuum/index.htm
2002; Sealed-Lifter Rotational Experiment, by Saviour(Blaze-Labs,
Belgium)
http://blazelabs.com/exp01.htm
2002; Sealed Lifter Experiment, by Saviour (Blaze-Labs,
Belgium)
http://bel.150m.com/exp02.htm
September 2002; "The Charge and Force Distribution
Analysis of the Lifter in Vacuum", by Zoltan Losonc
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/lifters/liftvacuum/
January 1985; "Orion", by Ben Bova
(Publisher: Econo-Clad Books, ISBN: 0812532473)
July 1995; "Orion Among the Stars", by
Ben Bova
(Publisher: Tom Doherty & Associates, ISBN: 0312856377)
November 2000; "Greetings, Carbon Based Bipeds",
by Arthur C. Clarke, Ian MacAuley (Editor)
(Publisher: SMP Trade Paper, ISBN: 0312267452)
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