It’s mind-boggling to imagine the numbers of people who have viewed the NARI Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft Seedling Seminar by Doug Wells – people from companies serving the aerospace industries, to leaders in engineering and research. The seedling seminar is even being reported in aviation magazines worldwide. Wow!
Doug Wells Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft [.pdf]
Doug Wells will also present a paper at the AIAA Aviation 2014 Conference, a Study Webinar by Marty Bradley available through the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a paper was presented in January, at the 52nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting, by Robert A. McDonald from Cal Poly.
Thousands upon thousands of savvy people are now grasping that cold fusion is emerging as a source of clean energy beyond our most promising dreams, with the power to move humanity through our next evolution. With popular cold fusion/LENR science, we are on the verge of an epic technological advancement with the concurrent personal, social, economic, environmental, spiritual, and philosophical advancements.
With that change in energetics, the paradigm changes, and we begin building an ecologically sustainable society.
“-given the truly massive-to-mind boggling benefits – solutions to climate, energy and the limitations that restrict the NASA Mission areas, all of them. The key to space exploration is energetics. The key to supersonic transports and neighbor-friendly personal fly/drive air vehicles is energetics, as simplex examples of the potential implications of this area of research.”
–Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist NASA Langley on the energetics of LENR.
Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft Investigator
Doug Wells, NASA Langley Research Center
The purpose of this research is to investigate the potential vehicle performance impact of applying the emergent Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) technology to aircraft propulsion systems.
LENR potentially has over 4,000 times the density of chemical energy with zero greenhouse gas or hydrocarbon emissions. This technology could enable the use of an abundance of inexpensive energy to remove active design constraints, leading to new aircraft designs with very low fuel consumption, low noise, and no emissions.
The objectives of this project are to gather as many perspectives as possible on how and where to use a very high density energy source for aircraft including the benefits arising from its application, explore the performance impacts to aircraft, and evaluate potential propulsion system concepts.
LENR is a type of nuclear energy and is expected to be clean, safe, portable, scalable, and abundant. The expected benefits make it an ideal energy solution. When it is applied to aircraft, LENR removes the environmental impacts of fuel burn and emission from combustion. Excess energy could be used to reduce noise so that all three of NASA’s technology goals for future subsonic vehicles are either eliminated or addressed.
Furthermore, aviation impacts almost every part of our daily lives, civilian and military.
A revolutionary technology like LENR has the potential to completely change how businesses, military, and the country operate as a whole, giving a tremendous financial, tactical, and resource advantage to anyone that utilizes it in the most effective way.
High-density energy sources create some unique capabilities as well as challenges for integration into aircraft.
An LENR concept that has reported some success generates heat in a catalyst process that combines nickel metal (Ni) with hydrogen gas (H). The initial testing and theory show that radiation and radioisotopes are extremely short lived and can be easily shielded.
Although nuclear fission has been looked at for use in aircraft, LENR is different. LENR has a higher energy density and no radioactive by products.
Success of this research will provide a firm foundation for future research and investment for high-density energy source technology integration into aircraft.
FIVE EMERGENT EXAMPLES
California Polytechnic State University
- Dr Rob McDonald
- Advanced Topics in Aircraft Design Course
- Sponsored Research Project Team
NASA Glen Research Center
- Jim Felder, Cris Snyder
NASA Langley Research Center
- Bill Fredericks, Roger Lepsch, John Martin, Mark Moore, Doug Wells, Joe Zawodny
The Application of LENR to Synergistic Mission Capabilities
Submitted by Doug Wells for publication and presentation at the AIAA Aviation 2014 Conference. Date: 16 – 20 June 2014.
Location: Atlanta, Georgia. (we must wait to view it)
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.
Lessons Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR)
Study Webinar Recorded 18 December 2012 – Martin K. Bradley
Available at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite 500 – Reston, VA 20191-4344
This webinar summarizes the work accomplished for NASA by the Boeing Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) team during a continuing two-phase study, which started in 2008. Results through February 2012 are reported.
In Phase I, the team completed the development of a future scenario for world-wide commercial aviation in 2030, selected baseline and advanced configurations, generated technology suites for each, conducted detailed performance analysis, calculated noise and emissions, assessed technology risks, and developed technology roadmaps. Five concepts were evaluated in detail including a high span strut braced wing concept, a gas turbine battery electric concept, and a hybrid wing body.
In Phase II, the study was extended to the N+4 2040 timeframe and considered the following additional technologies: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Hydrogen, fuel cell hybrids, Low Energy Nuclear (LENR), boundary layer ingestion propulsion (BLI), unducted fans, and advanced propellers.
Dr. Marty Bradley is a Technical Fellow for The Boeing Company, working in the Boeing Research and Technology organization in Huntington Beach, California. For Boeing, he is the leader for a variety of projects related to green aircraft technologies, aviation environmental life cycle analysis, and propulsion integration for advanced technologies. Marty has 28-years of experience in vehicle design, propulsion integration, and technology studies for a wide variety of commercial and military aerospace applications. He has led and conducted projects for green aircraft design, alternative fuels, and environmental life cycle analysis (LCA).
Marty is the Principal Investigator for this NASA funded study looking at advanced technologies for future commercial aircraft, which will be discussed. Marty has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering, all from the University of Southern California.
Impact of Advanced Energy Technologies on Aircraft Design
Robert A. McDonald, California Polytechnic State University
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Publication Date: 13-17 January 2014
Chapter DOI: 10.2514/6.2014-0538
The impact of low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology on the design of aircraft is examined. Energy conversion possibilities considered and a Brayton cycle engine with an LENR heat exchanger is selected.
Potential aerospace applications of LENR devices are discussed and a high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned ariel vehicle with multi-year endurance is conceptualized with primary focus on (LENR) energy management.
SpaceWorks Engineering Advanced Concepts Group
Key customers and partners are NASA, Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, JPL, Pratt Whitney a United Technologies Company, ULA United Launch Alliance, Orbital, IHI AeroSpace, National Institute of Aerospace, UDRI University of Dayton Research Institute, UTC Universal Technology Corporation, and SI Satrec Initiative.
Advanced Propulsion System Concept Studies
Customer: NASA LaRC
Duration: 6 months
SpaceWorks conducted separate vehicle design studies evaluating the potential impact of two advanced propulsion system concepts under consideration by NASA Langley Research Center:
The first concept was an expendable multistage rocket vehicle which utilized an advanced Air-Augmented Rocket (AAR) engine. The effect of various rocket thrust augmentation ratios were identified the resulting vehicle design where compared against a traditional expendable rocket concept
The second concept leverage Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), a new form of energy generation being studied at NASA LaRC, to determine how to utilize an LENR-based propulsion system for space access. For this activity, two LENR-based rocket engine propulsion performance models where developed jointly by SpaceWorks and LaRC personnel.
The Complete NARI 2014 Seedling Seminars (click people tab to view investigators)
The NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) presented a 6-day virtual technical seminar on February 19–21 and February 25–27, 2014 to showcase innovative concepts developed by NASA researchers, primarily featuring work from the Seedling Phase 2 (Round 1) and Seedling Phase 1 (Round 3) funds.
NARI awards the ARMD Seedling Fund grants to make deliberate investments in early-stage and potentially revolutionary aviation concepts and technologies that are aligned with NASA’s mission. These grants go to civil servant-led teams at NASA Research Centers. This seminar was an opportunity for members of the NASA aeronautics community to view the results of this research and see how these innovative concepts might complement and benefit their work and projects across the agency. The results were presented in 33 talks: 30 minutes for each presentation and 10 minutes for discussion and questions. Each session featured a special guest NASA leader as Keynote Speaker and Moderator.
The NASA seminar was free and open to all. Watch the archive and download the slides.
Amazing and fantastic!
Here is a small yet important part of their wonderful work. Enjoy.
“Why Science is Social”
What is social?
An act or result of an act involving two or more than two individuals is called social. Since science is produced by two or more than two individuals, it is social. In other words basic character of science is social.
What does it mean?
It means that very notion of science is social. It means the notions of verify-ability and repeatability, reliability, validity, precision, exactness, isomorphism, measurement, methods, hypothesis, inference and theory are social notions. It means there is close connection between society and science and between social conditions and science. As humans and their societies develop so does science.
It also means that proclivity of all humans to social influence and their inability to free themselves wholly from the social and personal prejudices tend to influence objectivity of science. It means science is ‘primitive’ to some extent and ‘precious’ to large extent. It is ‘primitive’ to some extent because it is never cent percent objective. It is, ‘precious’ to a large extent because there is no other system of better objective knowledge.
What is its implication?
It implies that the division of science between science and social science is no longer correct. Today there is no dichotomy between Nature, humans and society or between living matter and non-living matter. Through long and arduous pursuits humans discovered their origin and connections with Nature. Today the term Nature connotes all non-living and living objects including humans and their societies. The 18th century notion of Nature and science or basic science is no longer a valid notion. It might be convenient to fragment science into various subcategories for the sake of study, but it will not serve its social purpose if it is not put together.
Science of Nature, therefore, is necessary for modern humans and their societies. Science of Humans and their societies is integral to the science of Nature. It also means that science is never eternal or static. All objects/things are in constant motion. Since all objects/things keep on changing so does their science. Also, each object is divisible into two because of mutually opposite attributes inherent in it. That is to say, nature of nature, be it non-living or living is dialectical. There is nothing like linearity in Nature.
Science, therefore, is dialectical and not linear. The need for verification and repetition makes science authority free. There is no place for authority in science. Any one and every one enjoys the right to challenge science. Democracy, therefore, is necessary for science. Science grows in democratic conditions and dies in undemocratic or authoritarian conditions.
A bit of Prose
Not so far in the near distant future…
The next generation in fact.
Will look back at our generation as the last of the fire era.
And know the term energy shortage was…
A term for unenlightened minds.