From: larry@ichips.intel.com (Larry Smith)
Subject: Re: U.S. black programs
Originator: larry@pdx097
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 20:58:08 GMT


>From: PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR; Newsgroup: sci.space
>
>AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY, March 9, 1992  -  "Black World"
>Engineers, Scientists Encourage Using Highly Classified Technology
>for Civil Applications  -  William B. Scott/Los Angeles:
>
> ...
>
>    In 1968, Aviation Week reported that Northrop was evaluating
>  "electrical forces to condition the air flowing around an aircraft at
>  supersonic speeds" to reduce drag, heating and sonic boom effects.
>  The findings were promising enough to justify funding of additional
>  research (AW&ST Jan. 22, p. 21).
>
>    By negatively ionizing air molecules ahead of an aircraft, ...

Following is a reprint of the 1/22/68 AW&ST article talked about above.

Remember this was in Jan. 1968!!

"Northrop Studying Sonic Boom Remedy"

Hawthorne, Calif. - Use of electrical forces to condition the air flowing 
around an aircraft at supersonic speeds may lower drag, reduce heating and 
soften sonic boom, Northrop Corp. said here last week.

Although practical applications of the technique, assuming research validates
it, is quite far in the future, Northrop said its findings in company 
studies show enough promise to justify government funding of more intensive 
research. NASA is reportedly interested in the method.

Air molecules ahead of the aircraft would be ionized, probably negatively, 
through a corona. The nose of the aircraft would be charged to the same
negative potential, forming an electrostatic force field which would tend to
repel or alter the course of the molecules as the aircraft approached.

Preliminary work has been largely analogous, using liquids rather than air. 
However, limited wind tunnel work has established that the corona discharge 
readily propogates forward in a Mach 3 airstream with no measurable 
attenuations due to the air flow.

The work has been conducted by M.S. Cahn and G.M. Andrew of the Norair Div. 
Cahn and Andrew were to report their results Jan. 22 to the sixth Aerospace
Sciences Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in
New York.

Company officials are guardedly optimistic about the usefulness of the 
technique because of the preliminary stage of the research.

Next stage in the research requires expenditure of roughly $100,000 to modify
a wind tunnel with electrical insulation. This would create isolated conditions
similar to those of an aircraft in flight. Work in Northrop's 5-in. tunnel
failed to produce meaningful results when the electrical discharge applied to
the test body grounded against the walls of the tunnel.

Northrop officials concede that communications problems would arise in a 
charged aircraft, but pointed out that a solution  might be found in the method
used to maintain communication through the plasma sheath of a spacecraft during
re-entry.

In a possible application of the technique, the nose of the aircraft would 
have to be insulated from the rest of the vehicle to preclude charging the
entire airframe, Cahn believes. The excess electricity could be discharged
through a trailing boom into the slipstream, which would act as a ground.

-------

I have a copy of the complete Gustav-Cahn paper. I have also done searches
in some technical libraries for any follow-up papers. The paper trail, TO DATE,
according to my current research, dries up after this paper. There was a paper
in German after this paper that referenced the Gustav-Cahn work, but that
is all I have been able to find. 

The complete paper confirms the above report, and leaves it up to the reader's
imagination as to what the isolated wind-tunnel results were! No other
researchers seemed to be interested in this based on the dearth of follow-up
papers.

According to the above and the complete paper, the experiments were successful
in the dynamically similar (reynolds no.) fluid tunnel. It was tried with 
fluids with different dielectric properties. The fluids with the better
dielectric properties (as you might expect) worked. Heck, if it works in the
fluid tunnel, and the corona was seen to propogate forward in a Mach 3 air
stream, .... ! But something like this, with no follow up?

If anybody knows what happened with this research, please let me know! Maybe
it was proven infeasable later. Does anyone know? Maybe I just haven't found
the appropriate papers yet.

I would also point out the second last paragraph. 

I was not aware that a mechanism for communicating through a plasma covered 
vehicle was available (?) back in 1968! Makes you wonder about all those 
astronaut re-entries that had to go through a communications black-out. 

I would also point out the articles posted in the past about Sandia Lab's
SWERVE vehicle and the reported fact that SWERVE had solved the same problem.

Also the ability to recreate ball-lightning (a confined plasma) like
phenomenon reported last year in Nature. This was done with microwaves and 
a microwave resonant cavity in ambient air, by Japanese researchers.

Possible flight technology using static electricity or/and E-M waves!!

Larry

Xref: sparky sci.space:7420 sci.physics.fusion:983 sci.research:491 sci.energy:2473