page_title: Eric Laithwaite
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Eric Laithwaite / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Collection: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Collection Name of Image: Magnetic Launch Assist System Demonstration Test Full Description: Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have been testing Magnetic Launch Assist Systems, formerly known as Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) technologies. To launch spacecraft into orbit, a Magnetic Launch Assist system would use magnetic fields to levitate and accelerate a vehicle along a track at a very high speed. Similar to high-speed trains and roller coasters that use high-strength magnets to lift and propel a vehicle a couple of inches above a guideway, the launch-assist system would electromagnetically drive a space vehicle along the track. A full-scale, operational track would be about 1.5-miles long and capable of accelerating a vehicle to 600 mph in 9.5 seconds. This photograph shows a subscale model of an airplane running on the experimental track at MSFC during the demonstration test. This track is an advanced linear induction motor. Induction motors are common in fans, power drills, and sewing machines. Instead of spinning in a circular motion to turn a shaft or gears, a linear induction motor produces thrust in a straight line. Mounted on concrete pedestals, the track is 100-feet long, about 2-feet wide, and about 1.5- feet high. The major advantages of launch assist for NASA launch vehicles is that it reduces the weight of the take-off, the landing gear, the wing size, and less propellant resulting in significant cost savings. The US Navy and the British MOD (Ministry of Defense) are planning to use magnetic launch assist for their next generation aircraft carriers as the aircraft launch system. The US Army is considering using this technology for launching target drones for anti-aircraft training. Date of Image: 2001-03-01 Reference Number: MSFC-75-SA-4105-2C MIX #: 0100743 NIX #: MSFC-0100743 MSFC Negative Number: 0100743 UID: SPD-MARSH-0100743 Original url: mix.msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts.php?p=3154 SOURCE: nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~9~9~58024~161868 Visit www.nasaimages.org for the most comprehensive compilation of NASA stills, film and video, created in partnership with Internet Archive.
context_page_description: Eric Roberts Laithwaite was a British electrical engineer, known as the "Father of Maglev" for his development of the linear induction motor and maglev rail system.
context_section_description: Eric Roberts Laithwaite was born in Atherton, Lancashire, on 14 June 1921, raised in the Fylde, Lancashire and educated at Kirkham Grammar School. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1941.  Through his service in World War II, he rose to the rank of Flying Officer, becoming a test engineer for autopilot technology at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough.
  On demobilization in 1946, he attended the University of Manchester to study electrical engineering. His work on the Manchester Mark I computer earned him his master's degree. His subsequent doctoral work started his interest in linear induction motors. He derived an equation for "goodness" which parametrically describes the efficiency of a motor in general terms, and showed that it tended to imply that large motors are more efficient. 
  He became professor of heavy electrical engineering at Imperial College London in 1964 where he continued his successful development of the linear motor. He was involved in creating a self-stable magnetic levitation system called Magnetic river which appeared in the film The Spy Who Loved Me where it levitated and propelled a tray along a table to decapitate a seated dummy.
  He also worked at applying linear motors on the Tracked Hovercraft until its cancellation.
  In the 1980s, he was involved in creating a device to extract energy from sea waves. Although the technology was successful in trials, it could not be made storm proof, so it never became a commercial success.
  Laithwaite was an able communicator who made many television appearances. Notable among these were his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures to young people in 1966 and 1974. The latter of these made much of the surprising properties of the gyroscope.
  In 1974, Laithwaite was invited by the Royal Institution to give a talk on a subject of his own choosing. He decided to lecture about gyroscopes, a subject in which he had only recently become interested. His interest had been aroused by an amateur inventor named Alex Jones, who contacted Laithwaite about a reactionless propulsion drive he (Jones) had invented. 
  After seeing a demonstration of Jones's small prototype (a small wagon with a swinging pendulum which advanced intermittently along a table top), Laithwaite became convinced that "he had seen something impossible". In his lecture before the Royal Institution he claimed that gyroscopes weigh less when spinning and, to demonstrate this, he showed that he could lift a spinning gyroscope mounted on the end of a rod easily with one hand but could not do so when the gyroscope was not spinning. This was discussed in the BBC science series 'Horizon - 2015-2016: 2. Project Greenglow - The Quest for Gravity Control'. 
  In his 1974 lectures, Laithwaite suggested that Newton's laws of motion could not account for the behaviour of gyroscopes and Laithwaite suggested that they could be used as a means of reactionless propulsion. The members of the Royal Institution rejected his ideas and his lectures were not published at the time, a first for the Royal Institution. His lectures were subsequently published independently as Engineer Through The Looking-Glass and also on the Royal Institution website.
  Despite this rejection and the fact that Laithwaite later acknowledged that gyroscopes behave fully in accord with Newtonian mechanics, he continued to explore gyroscopic behaviour, maintaining the belief that some form of reactionless propulsion could be derived from them. Laithwaite set up Gyron Ltd with William Dawson and, in 1993, applied for a patent entitled "Propulsion System". A United States Patent, Number 5860317, was granted in 1999.
  Although Laithwaite is best known for his ideas concerning gyroscopes, he also held an idea concerning moths. He proposed that they communicate via ultra short wave electromagnetic phenomena (Inventor in the Garden of Eden, E R Laithwaite 1994 page 199). He persisted in this belief even after the phenomena which they actually use had been isolated and could even be bought "over-the-counter" — seemingly contradicting his account. However, he 
caption: Magnetic Launch Assist System
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