Project Greenglow

Gravity control was a notion beloved of science fiction writers that every respectable theoretical physicist said was impossible. It is amazing how many antigravity projects have been conducted by various companies such as NASA, Airforce, Navy, Army, foreign nations, or privately funded and have all failed. However, no documents have been made available as to the theoretical approaches, proposed and conducted experiments, and outcomes if any, until Project Greenglow.

Project Greenglow and its search for gravity control were recently introduced in The BBC’s Horizon. In 1986, aerospace engineer Dr Ron Evans went to his bosses at BAE Systems and asked if they’d let him attempt some form of gravity control. The BAE Systems specialized in designing, manufacturing, upgrading, and supporting combat and trainer aircrafts. Pushing against gravity with wings and jets was BAE’s multi-billion pound business, so why bother with gravity control? However, they realised that if this project was to be successful, this would provide BAE an unlimited source of propulsion and put them at the very top- there wasn’t much one could do with wings and jets anymore. In order to convince them further, he brought them a drawing of a vertical take-off plane, powered by an as-yet non-existent “gravity engine”.

He worried it didn’t look visionary enough, so he asked the artist to add some green rays emanating from the plane – a green glow. And that was how Project Greenglow came to be.

Project Greenglow was carefully conducted and well documented, but it didn’t make any major breakthroughs, much less built any flying saucers, and Evans retired in 2005 with with no practical form of gravity control on offer. But the story doesn’t end here.

One device survived, almost unnoticed, from the project- a propellant-less electromagnetic or EmDrive, created by British aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer. But what sets this to be different from the rest? Well, the EmDrive is a “reactionless” drive- it’s like you only need to sit on the seat to get the bike to move for an indefinite amount of time.

If the EmDrive worked, it could get us to Pluto in 18 months, compared to the 9 to 12 years it currently takes for our space probes to get to the dwarf planet.

So watch out- flying saucers are yet to come.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35861334

Chen Yu Yang 1T