Veritay propulsion report (1988)

Veritay propulsion report (1988)

Date	April 1988
Topics	Government programs (topic), Propulsion & physics (topic)
People	Franklin Mead, Thomas Townsend Brown, Mark McCandlish
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 100
Year	1988 in UFO history
Timeline	1988 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	9

The Veritay propulsion report is 21st Century Propulsion Concept, a 73-page technical report submitted in April 1988 by Veritay Technology, Inc., a company in New York State. It was written under contract with the U.S. Air Force Astronautics Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base.^[1][8] The Phase I study set out to test the "Biefeld–Brown effect", the claim by the inventor Thomas Townsend Brown that high-voltage, asymmetrical capacitors produce a propulsive force, and in particular whether that force persists in a vacuum.^[1] The project manager listed on the report was Franklin Mead, who had edited the Air Force's 1972 Project Outgrowth study of advanced propulsion.^[6][8] Michael Shellenberger's 2024 UFO timeline, submitted to the House Oversight Committee, highlights the report. It says the report shows that, in the public record, the Air Force could not recreate the Brown effect, the effect that the illustrator Mark McCandlish later claimed had been used to build secret U.S. craft.^[8]

The Phase I report (1988)

The Black Vault, which posted the report, quotes its summary.^[1]

• Aims. The Phase I effort was intended "to explore the Biefield-Brown effect, which allegedly converts electrostatic energy into a propulsive force". It aimed to verify that the effect existed, to verify that it worked in a vacuum, and to establish how large the thrust was.
• Apparatus. A laboratory test set-up was built to quantify electrostatically induced forces on selected devices. It used a vacuum chamber with a torsion-fibre measurement system for direct assessment of propulsive forces. Geometrical symmetries were built into the design to minimise reaction forces from nearby bodies, including the walls of the vacuum chamber itself.
• Conditions. Tests were run at atmospheric pressure and over a range of partial-vacuum conditions.
• Result. When a voltage was applied between asymmetrical electrodes of an all-metal test device, "a residual propulsive force is generated and acts on the device". However, the residual force acted "in the opposite direction to electrical wind forces and to the forces claimed to have been measured in a vacuum by T.T. Brown".

Shellenberger's timeline summarises the program as having explored whether the concept existed and could operate in a vacuum, and says it "determined it could not recreate the Brown effect".^[8]

Talley's vacuum tests

The tests were carried out by Robert L. Talley of Veritay. A 2004 NASA contractor report by Francis X. Canning, Cory Melcher and Edwin Winet of the Institute for Scientific Research, Asymmetrical Capacitors for Propulsion, described his work as follows.^[3]

• Method. Talley tested asymmetrical capacitor thrusters (ACTs) in a vacuum in the late 1980s under Air Force contract. Rather than letting the devices spin, he suspended them from a torsion wire, which made it possible to measure small forces.
• Unique record. The NASA authors called his "the only written report we have found from the last half-century that describes a measurement of a force while in a vacuum chamber".
• Interpretation. Talley ultimately attributed the force he observed to electrostatic interaction between the chamber and the device.
• Conclusion. He wrote that "under high vacuum conditions no detectable propulsive force was electrostatically induced by applying a static potential difference between test device electrodes". On page 91 of his report he added that if such a force existed below the threshold of measurement, it "may be too small to be attractive for many, if not most, space propulsion applications".
• Limits. The NASA authors judged that this made "a strong case against the ability of these devices to produce a force in a vacuum", but noted that it did not address their use in air.

The Biefeld–Brown effect

According to the Wikipedia account of Thomas Townsend Brown (1905–1985):^[4]

• Origins. In 1921, as a high-school student, Brown noticed that a Coolidge X-ray tube with asymmetrical electrodes seemed to change weight on a balance when powered, depending on which way it faced. He became convinced he had influenced gravity electrically. He later claimed to have done experiments with the Denison University astronomer Paul Alfred Biefeld, though the university says it has no record of such experiments or of any association between the two.
• Devices. Brown built a "gravitor" and later devices charged with 25,000 to 200,000 volts, which he claimed produced an anti-gravity force. He demonstrated them to scientists and military officials in the U.S., England and France. In 1955–56, in research for the French firm SNCASO, he demonstrated what he believed was an anti-gravity effect in a vacuum, until funding was cut.
• Mainstream view. What Brown observed is generally attributed to electrohydrodynamics, or "ionic wind": charged particles transferring momentum to neutral air. A physicist who watched one of his disc demonstrations in the early 1950s said its motive force was the well-known "electric wind". Scientists who have studied his devices since have found no anti-gravity effect.
• Legacy. Brown helped found NICAP in 1956. His work inspired amateur "ionic propulsion lifters", and claims that he discovered anti-gravity remain popular in UFO circles.

The 2004 NASA study reached a similar conclusion for operation in air. After testing ACTs in a vacuum chamber at Pittsburgh Materials Technology, its authors eliminated every proposed mechanism except one: ions drifting between the electrodes and passing momentum to the air through collisions. That model predicted the measured thrust. The authors also noted that researchers at the Army Research Laboratory had concluded "the physical basis for the Biefeld-Brown effect is not understood", and that peer-reviewed literature on the subject was surprisingly scarce.^[3]

Franklin Mead and Project Outgrowth

Franklin B. Mead edited the findings of Project Outgrowth, a 1970 study by a group of 28 scientists and engineers at the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, led by Donald M. Ross. It was published in June 1972 as Advanced Propulsion Concepts.^[5][6] The study tried to predict major propulsion developments over the following 40 years. It evaluated thermal, field and photon propulsion, and the laser propulsion concept conceived at the laboratory in 1969 by Robert L. Geisler.^[6] According to The Black Vault, it also examined "unknown sciences" including psychokinesis, tachyon propulsion and natural electric energy.^[6] The Black Vault noted a resemblance between this 40-year horizon and the later Pentagon AAWSAP program, which began about 37 years after the study, while saying it did not propose a connection.^[6]

Shellenberger's timeline records that in April 1988 Mead, then chief of the Future Technologies Section at Edwards, also oversaw a study of electronic propulsion by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). That study, citing the Los Alamos scientist Pharis Williams, suggested that a five-dimensional theory of thermodynamics could lead to a unified field theory and new propulsion methods. It reported that anti-gravity had not been achieved with a rotating cylinder of mercury, but that the research should be reconsidered.^[8]

McCandlish's claims

On 9 May 2001, at the Disclosure Project's National Press Club event, the aerospace illustrator Mark McCandlish testified that gravity-propulsion research had begun in the 1950s. He said it had succeeded, by 1981, in reverse-engineering recovered UFOs into three U.S.-built vehicles. He said their propulsion matched Brown's early electrogravitics concepts, and claimed to have seen three anti-gravity saucers, called "Flux Liners", in a hangar at Norton Air Force Base.^[9] Shellenberger's timeline sets the Veritay report against this testimony, noting that in the public domain the Air Force's own contracted tests could not reproduce the Brown effect.^[8]

Notes on the earlier version

• Location. The earlier version placed Veritay in East Amherst, New York. The sources read here describe it only as a New York-based company, so the town is not covered in the sources read here.^[8]
• The 1991 final report. The earlier version said the full study was published in 1991 as Air Force report PL-TR-91-3009. Its DTIC record refused automated access.^[2] The NASA report read here describes Talley's late-1980s vacuum tests and quotes "page 91 of his report", but does not give the report number or year. The 1991 date and number are therefore not covered in the sources read here.^[3]
• "Phase I" result. The earlier version described a small residual force in partial vacuum acting in the opposite direction to electric-wind forces. That is supported, and the later conclusion of no detectable force under high vacuum comes from Talley's report as quoted by NASA.^[1][3]
• Other DTIC copies. The DTIC copies of the 1988 report and of Project Outgrowth also refused automated access. The 1988 report is described here from The Black Vault's posting.^[1][5][7]

People and topics

• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Franklin Mead — Air Force propulsion engineer who edited Project Outgrowth and commissioned advanced propulsion studies.
• Edwards Air Force Base — The Air Force flight test center in California.
• Thomas Townsend Brown — Physicist and inventor who promoted "electrogravitics" and proposed Project Winterhaven.
• Mark McCandlish — Aerospace illustrator who drew the alleged "Alien Reproduction Vehicle".
• Project Outgrowth — Project Outgrowth

On the Timeline

• John Lear's ParaNet statement (1987) (29 December 1987) — Pilot John Lear claims the government has worked with gray aliens since the 1960s.
• SAIC electric propulsion study (1988) (April 1988) — SAIC studies electric propulsion for Edwards AFB.

See every 1988 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Thomas Townsend Brown”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.