by Richard C. Hoagland
2008

from EnterpriseMission Website

Part I

A half-century ago, from a windswept Florida beach, the United States finally "got back in the game" - after the shock of the Soviet Union's Sputnik just three months earlier - and successfully launched its own satellite into an orbit of the Earth... dubbed after launch, "Explorer I."

Unknown to anyone but a handful of civilian engineers and US Army personnel, intimately involved with the launch that night, this would became a true "history-defining moment" - when the launch team, via Explorer I, immediately and serendipitously made America's MOST important and overarching discovery, of all nations that would someday ever venture off the Earth... in the entire fifty-year history of "space"...

The secret of gravity and inertia themselves... revealed as a true "anti-gravity effect" - somehow operating on Explorer I... radically affecting its very orbit!

A seminal discovery... which - at the stroke of a White House pen - could have re-written not only the history of science… but, the destiny of the entire world...

However, this was not to be.

This monumental, history-making breakthrough was immediately followed by the United States' most far-reaching political move of this same half-century - a hurried decision, made apparently that same night, to keep this phenomenal "anti-gravity" discovery a total secret... not only from its own civilian scientists, its own "free press"... its own citizens and taxpayers... but, from everyone on Earth!

This is the story of the Enterprise Mission's painstaking, years-long investigation (given context in our recent New York Times bestseller - Dark Mission: the Secret History of NASA):

the "back-engineering," scientific and political analysis of this "world-changing, pre-NASA discovery"... and the grave global consequences that have now evolved from the crucial decision, made by "someone" in a position of Authority that night... to simply... "bury it."

In subsequent pages, we will detail and document "who" exactly made this amazing breakthrough, precisely "how" it was achieved, and "what" the stunning, world-wide implications could have been... if science had been allowed to take its natural course that night - if this unique discovery had been freely presented, freely studied and freely discussed in the global scientific community in the ensuing years... and then, implemented as a revolutionary, Earth-based "gravitational control technology."

But, most important..., we will detail how this paradigm-shattering breakthrough can now be duplicated - by any student, in any decent high school physics laboratory... literally, anywhere on Earth!

And what that now could mean for all Humanity.

 

Explorer I was launched at 10:48 PM EST, January 31, 1958 - from Pad 26A, at Cape Canaveral.

The Jupiter-C rocket (C standing for "composite") that successfully launched this first US satellite into the Florida skies (below), was actually a converted "Redstone" military ICBM - a rocket developed as a US Army advancement over their earlier "V-2s," by Wernher von Braun and his imported team of "Operation Paperclip" German Nazi rocket engineers to the United States, in the decade immediately following World War II.

This "Jupiter-C satellite launcher" was built around a main liquid-fueled rocket stage, composed of two separate tanks for housing liquid oxygen and the "Hydyne" hydrazine-based fuel, standing a total of 47 feet high and weighing, fully loaded, 62,700 pounds.

Atop this "main stage" were 15 individual, much smaller solid propellant rockets, arranged in three additional "stages" (weighing a total of 1380 pounds), consisting of 11, 3 - and finally, 1 - topped, at 71 feet above the ground, by the ~31-lb, bullet-shaped Explorer I satellite itself (below) - literally bolted to the fnal "solid" stage beneath it.

Explorer I's best-known, unclassified contribution to space science was the discovery of the famed “Van Allen” radiation belts - named for the University of Iowa physicist, James van Allen, who first found (via his radiation detectors aboard Explorer I, confirmed by the two successor Explorer III and IV spacecraft) the high-energy “donuts” of charged particles circling the Earth, trapped by its "dipole" magnetic field (below).

Van Allen went on to win the equivalent of the “Nobel space physics prize” for this fundamental space discovery - which was eventually found to be a basic feature of ALL planets in (and outside) the solar system exhibiting similar magnetic fields.

He even made it to the cover of TIME magazine.

By stark contrast, the ultimately far more significant (literally "physics-shattering" - as you shall see) anomalous orbital dynamics exhibited by this same satellite, and, on its very first orbit that night...

That, Explorer I’s actual trajectory, unambiguously (and most disturbingly) seemed to violate two basic laws of 20^th Century Physics, immediately after launch..., have received NO scientific acknowledgements, prizes, or peer-reviewed discussions… even fifty years after their totally unexpected discovery...

So, "who" made this remarkable discovery... and then (as the evidence will prove...) actively participated in its subsequent, deliberate, decades-long (and still on-going) cover-up?

Why - none other than Wernher von Braun, himself...

To fully understand the extraordinary technical and political significance of what "mystifyingly" occurred that January night in 1958, one has to go back to the events themselves, swirling around this "super-charged, US Army launch attempt by von Braun and his German team..." - a desperate effort for the US to "catch up" in a space race it was clearly still losing to the Soviets at that point - and compare what was expected to happen with Explorer I's launch... with what actually happened.


 

Because of the extremely primitive status of the "global satellite tracking network" in 1958, required to follow a satellite in orbit, the number of "stations" up and running the night Explorer I was finally launched was "few and far between".

The portion of this Mercator-projection map (below) NOT shaded, is the latitude coverage straddling the equator dictated by the planned inclination of the first US satellites - Vanguard and Explorer - designed for orbits between "latitudes 40 degrees north and south."

As you can see, most of the existing ground stations were concentrated along a band running raggedly north and south, mostly in the Americas - heavily favoring one side of the planet but leaving the rest of the world "dark" (the scattering of stations seen in other parts of the world - such as the one in central Australia - did not yet have the proper equipment to detect Explorer I's radio frequencies, having been originally planned to support the Navy's Vanguard Program).

Explorer I was launched by von Braun and his team with an orbital inclination of "33.3 degrees..."

Thus, when the spacecraft disappeared over the South Atlantic horizon from Cape Canaveral that evening, after being launched "downrange" (the line extending southeast from Florida - above), there was essentially no way for von Braun (or anyone else...) to track it, to KNOW from "telemetry" (radioed information...) if "his" satellite had been successfully placed in orbit by the Jupiter C... or not...

But to impatiently just wait..., until Explorer I - moving at ~18,000 miles per hour (5 miles per second...) - had almost completely circled the entire world... and came back around... within range of special radio receivers set up in the deserts just north of San Diego, California (a place called menacingly "Earthquake Valley"...).

There, if the receivers picked up Explorer I's faint telemetry signals as it was coming over the Pacific Ocean for the first time - after the spacecraft had almost circled the entire planet - word was to be "flashed" (by "long-distance telephone" - as it was quaintly called in those days...) to Cape Canaveral (where von Braun's Army launch crew was nervously waiting...), and, to the Pentagon in Washington DC - where von Braun himself, Van Allen, and William Pickering (Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory - JPL - the West Coast facility which had constructed the actual satellite) - were also watching "the clock tick down the seconds"...

If the eventual word from Earthquake Valley was "go," the three scientists were then scheduled to begin a live press conference over at the National Academy of Sciences, and announce triumphantly to an equally waiting world...

"We did it!"

Only after all this "waiting and nail biting"... a literally hours-long vigil, and an equally archaic mode of communicating "success" when it was finally learned (over a single telephone line - stretching between California and Washington DC...) - would (or could!) anyone in the rest of the world that night really KNOW that Explorer I had successfully made it into orbit!

That key California signal - for a carefully planned, Explorer I trajectory around the Earth of 220 by 1000 miles - was expected at about 12:30 AM EST, February 1, 1958 (below).

Slightly over an hour and a half after Explorer's launch from Florida," the moment of truth" in this intensely anticipated "window" came... and went... and... nothing.

Then - it was 12:31... then, 12:32... and more nothing.

Because of the "clockwork" nature of satellite orbits when, by 12:33, there was STILL no signal... it became dreadfully apparent to von Braun's entire senior team - General John B. Medaris, head of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) which had actually launched Explorer I for the US Army earlier that night (below)...

And... William Pickering... Director of the Cal Tech laboratory (JPL) under contract to ABMA for the actual design and construction of Explorer I (below)...

That, they were likely never going to hear that desperately hoped-for signal... because, somehow... "something" had gone radically wrong!

By 12:41 AM it was all but certain.

Instead of going into orbit and coming around the Earth on time, Explorer I had - somehow - been plunged back into the atmosphere far over the horizon from the Cape - and, by now, had simply burned up... literally, somewhere on the far side of the world...

It was never going to "come around the Earth and over Earthquake Valley..." - because it no longer even existed!

A photograph of von Braun (below) - snapped while he and everyone else at the Pentagon desperately awaited word... any word - captures perfectly what he was obviously fearing...

Von Braun would later directly write about his roller coaster emotions during that "interminable wait," in a piece entitled "The Story Behind the 'Explorers,'" appearing in the Des Moines Sunday Register, April 13, 1958:

“... the bird was due in California about 12:30 A.M., EST. We had four tracking stations there poised to pick up its signal, and Bill [Pickering] had them on the long-distance phone.

“Twelve-thirty came. There was no signal.

“A minute went by. And another. And another, without a beep from the satellite. Eight minutes elapsed and still they didn’t hear a thing.

“We were miserable. Obviously, we’d been mistaken. The Explorer had never really gone into orbit..."

Then, at 12:42 AM... there it was!

Within the next 30 seconds, all four Earthquake Valley stations picked up Explorer I's transmitted signals "loud and clear."

The United States was - finally - in orbit!

Explorer I had just been "late."

But... why?

George Ludwig - Van Allen's chief assistant, and designer of the ~18 pounds of batteries and custom-made radiation-monitoring equipment on-board Explorer I - described his own automatic first reaction...

"... we all realized immediately that the rocket had provided a larger than expected thrust, resulting in a higher than planned orbit, and a longer orbital period. The orbit had been expected to have a perigee (lowest height above the Earth) of about 220 miles and an apogee (greatest height) of about 1000 miles.

 

The perigee and apogee heights were actually 223 miles and, more significantly, 1592 miles, respectively, with an orbital period of 114.7 minutes rather than the 105 minutes that had been originally anticipated..."

With the (belated!) acquisition of Explorer I by Earthquake Valley - von Braun, Van Allen and Pickering were whisked from the Pentagon to the more "scientific" (and civilian...) "National Academy of Sciences" - for a packed "2:00 AM press briefing..."

Amid all the adulation and congratulations, this iconic photograph (below) was taken, capturing the mood of "a new US technological and political renaissance" - symbolized now by the resounding success of Explorer I - in the face of the Soviet Union's "daunting early wins" in this new game...

Lost in all the well-deserved self-congratulations... was the nagging real reason for Explorer I's agonizing delay at Earthquake Valley: its "higher than planned" orbit.

And... any serious questioning - either from the assembled scientists that night, or from the press - as to how something like that could even have been achieved... powered only by von Braun's relatively primitive "Jupiter-C" rocket...


 

Van Allen (below) - when he wrote about his own emotional experience that memorable night - also barely touched upon "the problem"...

" … the burning of all four stages [after launch] was monitored by down-range stations and judged to be nominal. The final burnout velocity of the fourth stage was somewhat higher than intended, and there was a significant uncertainty in the final direction of motion. Hence, the achievement of an orbit could not be established with confidence from the available data.

 

The telemetry transmitter was operating properly, and the counting rate data from our radiation instrument corresponded to expectations… The reception of the telemetry signal after the lapse of [almost] one orbit was necessary before success could be confirmed...

"... for about an hour following receipt of the [last] down-range station reports, there was an exasperating absence of information... The clock ticked away, and we all drank coffee to allay our collective anxiety. After some ninety minutes, all conversation ceased, and an air of dazed disappointment settled over the room. Then, nearly two hours after launch, a telephone report of confirmed reception of the radio signal by two [sic] professional stations in Earthquake Valley, California, was received. The roomful of people exploded with exultation, and everyone was pounding each other on the back with mutual congratulations..."

Van Allen - NOT being a true "rocket scientist" (he was, after all, primarily a physicist - specializing in custom-designed instrument payloads for sounding rockets... not the launch vehicles themselves) - can be forgiven for not immediately appreciating the deeper implications of the problem presented by Explorer I's inexplicable, significantly higher-than-planned orbit that night.

He could only assume (as, apparently George Ludwig did... and everyone else) that the "higher orbit" was the by-product of a "slightly greater efficiency" - somewhere in von Braun's pioneering, multi-staged Jupiter-C launch vehicle - most likely, in the solid-fueled rockets, designed by JPL (in addition to the satellite), that comprised those critical last three upper stages...

As we have detailed in "Dark Mission," in the chapter devoted to the remarkable history of one of JPL's key founders - Jack Parsons, and his early solid-fuel rocket pioneering - "solids" in this period were only slightly more predictable than "alchemy"... or "magik"; depending on a variety of arcane chemical and physical variables - the exact proportions of fuel to oxidizer mixed together; the physical size of the propellant grains of that resulting mix.

The density of the final packing of those grains into the rocket's casing, even the temperature of the propellant - any one of these parameters could affect the final product, which would result in a well-known "variable thrust and burn time" for all solid-fueled rockets of the period...

Parson's singular claim to fame was, by exhaustive trial and error, over more than two decades (from the 1930's through the 1950's...), to finally have hit upon a fuel/oxidizer mixture, and a loading process, which eliminated almost all these inherent solid-rocket variability’s... almost.

For these well-known reasons (to those who "hung around the fledgling space program..."), it was assumed by all the "non-rocket scientists" (and by the press...) that one of these "normal variables" in the Jupiter-C's upper stages easily accounted for the rocket's additional performance...

That "everyone assumed" this was the case, is obvious... because, it is equally obvious that no one at the time (at least, anyone who will talk...) actually sat down and carried out even the most basic of "rocket calculations" - of just how "over efficient" von Braun's Jupiter-C had to have been... to result in anything even approaching Explorer I's much higher-than-expected orbit!

Fifty years after the fact, we have done those calculations... with some spectacular and very thought-provoking results.


 

OK, now comes the part where the "mathematically challenged" (or squeamish...) might want to turn away. If you do, we promise we'll summarize the cool stuff - in neat, plain English - at the end...

Because...

The foundation of all true "rocket science" is...

The “Rocket Equation!”

Wp = Wi * (1 - e**(-dV/g*ISP))

Where,

Wp = weight of propellant expended during the thrust arc
Wi = initial weight of the vehicle
V = delta velocity change
g = Earth's gravitational acceleration (32.174 ft/sec^2)
ISP = specific impulse of the engine (and fuel) in use

Solving for dV (the final rocket velocity), the equation becomes:

dV = -g*ISP*ln(1- Wp/Wi)

Back to English.

Broken down, the above equation is actually quite simple.

The key parameter is the number representing "ISP" - a rocket's "specific impulse" (expressed as "seconds").

Specific impulse is somewhat like a "miles per gallon" reading for your car; the higher the specific impulse (ISP) for a given rocket system (engines plus fuel), the more efficient the total rocket system is... in terms of "miles per gallon" usage of that fuel...

And, the higher the final velocity you can achieve with a given amount (mass) of fuel.

And... higher final velocities result in higher orbits!

So, high ISP numbers are good; lower ISP numbers are... "less good"...

In terms of determining if the JPL upper stages could have achieved the performance levels required to place Explorer I into its higher-than-expected orbit, we began by looking at the published parameters of the solid rockets JPL used in constructing those stages for von Braun's final "composite" rocket.

One major clue was in Van Allen's own report:

"... the final burnout velocity of the fourth stage was somewhat higher than intended [emphasis added]..."

According to the Smithsonian's "National Air and Space Museum Data Sheet, Department of Astronautics" - published on an official NASA website...

The fuel and oxidizer used in the JPL-designed "solid" upper stages for the Jupiter-C was "... polysulfide-aluminum and ammonium perchlorate." This was pretty standard stuff, even if its ISP was fairly poor, compared to almost any liquid chemical rocket fuels in use today.

The ISP varied from about "220 seconds" in the atmosphere, to about "235 seconds" in a good vacuum (because, contrary to common misperception, rocket engines actually work best in a pure vacuum - when the thrust exhaust isn't slowed down by the surrounding air!).

The Smithsonian data sheet also neatly listed the "fueled" and "empty weight" of each Jupiter-C stage (below).

Plugging these numbers into the Rocket Equation, and averaging the atmospheric and vacuum ISP efficiencies of the upper stages together (as the Jupiter-C rose out of the atmosphere that night, and the later stage ignitions became more efficient...), gave us the maximum theoretical "by the book" velocity those three upper stages could have imparted to Explorer I at "orbit injection."

dV = -32.2 X 228 X (662lb/1380lb) = 3520 feet per sec

But...

We already knew that this velocity, added to the maximum velocity imparted by the liquid-fueled first stage (at "staging"), was the "nominal satellite injection velocity" - what was required to place Explorer I into its planned orbit of about "220 by 1000 miles" (red line, below).

Since the actual orbital parameters (according to George Ludwig's figures) were "223 by 1592..." - almost 600 miles higher at apogee than "nominal" (the blue line, below) - what we really needed was a measure of how much additional velocity that approximately 600-mile increase in apogee represented, to put Explorer I into an orbit that much higher (and more elliptical) than originally targeted...

There's a well-known "rule of thumb" in rocket science - that, for "every additional foot per second of injection velocity" at perigee (the low point of the orbit), a spacecraft gains "about a mile of additional altitude at apogee" (the highest orbital point).

Using this approximation, Explorer I had gained something like "an additional ~600 feet per second"...

Was this covered by the normal variations for solid rocket performance of that generation?

Inverting our Rocket Equation - and solving for the additional ISP required of those solids, to match that now known additional performance - produced the following result:

Additional required velocity = ~ 600 feet per second

3520 + 600 = 4120 total feet per second for Explorer I

Increase in Explorer I injection performance = 4120/3520 = 1.17

Equivalent “improvement” in 2nd, 3rd and 4th stage propellant ISPs = 1.17 X 228 = ~ 267 secs!

This amounted to almost a twenty percent performance increase - in ALL the upper stage solid ISPs - over the same solid-fueled rockets' measured performance in previous JPL applications!

The idea that one of the 15 solids in those upper stages might exhibit this degree of major variation, was barely plausible; that ALL of them TOGETHER (required to produce the total delta velocity increase) had done so that night, was simply impossible... by any known chemistry and physics.

"Normal physics" also says you "can't get something for nothing." Yet, somehow, by this simple calculation, Explorer I DID exactly that...

Acquiring six hundred extra miles of "something"... from absolutely nothing.

Just how the hell did JPL and von Braun manage to accomplish that!?

It would have been at this point - for anyone who actually DID this simple set of calculations, in 1958 - that they HAD to have realized they had a major discovery on their hands... and... a major problem.

The problem was:

No "small variations" - a few percent, at best - of the Jupiter-C's individual solid rockets in the vehicle's upper stages - from "grain size, packing density, mixture variations, etc., etc." - could possibly account for a ~20% INCREASE in overall delta V at burnout... resulting in almost 600 additional feet per second... and 600 additional vertical miles... of "super performance" for America's first satellite!

So, what was left...?

That, serendipitously, Explorer I had made...

A profound and fundamental scientific breakthrough... regarding how objects really gravitationally orbit one another!

And that, as a result, almost 300 years of Newton's long-accepted "Law of Universal Gravitation" was, somehow, wrong... as might be his equally unquestioned "Three Laws of Motion"... and potentially (shudder...), even Einstein's "General Theory of Relativity"...

Whatever the ultimate cause - this was NOT going to be any "small" Scientific Revolution.

And, that was precisely “the Problem”...

And the solution to "the Problem" - as we can now demonstrate - was a political decision, made by "someone" that night, to instigate an immediate cover-up of this entire, stunning US space discovery... which obviously, if openly verified, would have been...

Tthe most important result of the entire space program!

A cover-up which (according to the evidence)...

Is still on-going.

For, while Ludwig and Van Allen - both eminent physicists, both intimately familiar with the Explorer Program (because they were designing all its intricate on-orbit measuring instruments!) - freely published the intended orbital parameters of Explorer I we've just cited, and even compared them to the higher, enlarged orbit... neither of them seemed to realize (and Ludwig STILL doesn't...) just what those numbers had to represent (unless, of course, they were ultimately "persuaded" to remain "ignorant"...)

If either physicist, for a moment, had sat down and actually gone through the "rocket calculations" we just have, both would have instantly realized that to expect that type of "anomalous super performance" - from EVERY one of the 15 solid-fueled JPL rockets atop von Braun's modified Redstone...

Was impossible.

Yet, neither of these key physicists (nor, any other physicists, astronomers, rocket engineers, members of the scientific press, etc., etc.) - over these last fifty years - has apparently EVER done this simple calculation... or stopped to consider (if they have), even for a moment, the extraordinary alternative to the inevitable assumption "it must have been the rockets..."

That, it might have been, instead... the Physics!


 

One blatantly obvious initial reason that Van Allen and Ludwig DIDN'T do this calculation that same night, HAD to have been "Wernher von Braun."

After all, this was "Wernher's baby!"; if HE didn't know what made his rocket tick... what might account for its "dazzling increased delta V"... who would?!

That von Braun was immediately prepared to be 'less than candid" about this remarkable Jupiter-C "over performance" (initially, by simply not discussing it...) - to, in every way, downplay the ultimate significance of what had really happened to Explorer I that night - is apparent in his immediate actions at the National Academy press conference that morning...

With the entire world press corps gathered, and hanging on his every word... he said nothing!

And, he continued to say nothing... to his death.

However, giving him the benefit of the doubt... for "great uncertainties" in the numbers that first roller coaster morning, when "the cold light of day dawned …" von Braun had to have found time to do those crucial calculations. And he HAD to have realized then that nothing involving the JPL solid upper stages could have resulted in that amount of "extraordinary, additional performance"...

Yet, three months later - writing in that same Des Moines Sunday Register article, in April 1958 - von Braun would simply say:

"… there’d been just a slight error in our quick estimate of the satellite’s initial speed and period of revolution..."

"Slight error"...

Six hundred additional feet per second (that's just over "four hundred miles per hour..."); and... six hundred miles higher as a direct result, at apogee...

Yet, all from... NOWHERE.

Where were the "triumphant official ABMA press releases"... the proud "White House announcements" (at the height of the Cold War and this sudden "space race" with the Soviets)... and then, the ultimate "solemn ceremony" in Stockholm... celebrating such an extraordinary scientific breakthrough in "Newton Laws" by the United States - the first... in almost three centuries!?

The proof that von Braun knew that this wasn't just "the result of his own rocket" - that, in fact, this was something BIG... something potentially "extraordinary" - comes from von Braun himself:

Immediately following the baffling events surrounding the launch of Explorer I, von Braun began quietly writing and sending out a series of clandestine letters all over the world - to a very select group of "extraordinary physicists"... but deliberately, NOT to any associated with the Explorer program (like Van Allen!). In this correspondence, he is clearly, unquestionably, looking for “an alternative physics” - that could eventually explain what really happened to Explorer I.

Not exactly the actions of "just a rocket guy" - complacently satisfied with his own vehicle's performance!

One fascinating von Braun exchange involved fellow German countryman, theorist Burkhard Heim (below).

Another - if anything, even more indicative of von Braun's real thinking, in his persistent secret efforts to understand the apparent “new gravitational physics” that (he obviously now believed...) had, somehow, radically altered Explorer I's orbit after launch - involved the even more remarkable, anomalous gravitational discoveries of a future Noble Laureate, Dr. Maurice Allais.

But first - to Heim's theoretical relevance to von Braun's "problem"...

Heim (who had worked at the world-famous "Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics," in Goettingen, Germany, after the War), had rocked the physics and space communities just a few years earlier, by presenting at the 1952 and 1954 sessions of the "International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Congress" historic scientific papers, outlining the first theoretical proposal for "fuel-less field propulsion technology“ - a means of sending true space vehicles to other planets, without the profound "limitations of rockets"...

Because his radical proposal was backed by some extremely innovative (if highly complex) "unified field equations," created by a bona fide physicist attached to such a prestigious German scientific institution, Heim immediately became something of an international celebrity.

Here was a "scientific somebody" in the 20^th century, directly suggesting that Newton's long-inviolate Third Law of Motion "... for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" - which lies at the heart of every rocket-based propulsion system - might, in fact, be completely circumvented by a new 20th Century "space-time field technology"...

Which could itself move through space - yet, expel NO "reaction mass"... by electromagnetically "hooking into the very fabric of 'space-time'" itself!

Heim worked on his theories in close collaboration with quantum theory physicist and pioneer Pascual Jordan (himself a close associate of Nobel Laureates, Max Born and Werner Heisenberg. Jordan also is known as the developer of "the non-associative Jordan Algebras").

Significantly, Heim was seeking in this collaboration to carry out key physical experiments with Jordan... in gravitation - because, even before the War, the latter had turned his attention from "quantum mechanics" to "cosmology"... the origin and evolution of the largest structures in the Universe... where gravity reigns supreme...

But the joint projects Heim proposed, to test his own far-reaching "gravitational theories," never materialized - as the necessary government funding in post-War West Germany in the 1950's (except for a small grant from the aerospace firm, Messerschmitt-Belkow-Blohm) was apparently "not available."

The title of one of Heim's later papers (1976) - "Basic Thoughts on a Unified Field Theory of Matter and Gravity" - specifically reveals his fundamental and continuing interest in alternative gravity research, some 20 years after he first burst upon the world stage... and the obvious reason for von Braun's provocative (and well-documented) "sudden interest in Heim" in 1958... right after Explorer I!

For, according to the "Research Group - Heim Theory" - a collection of international scientists currently collaborating on publishing and discussing Heim's "unified field" work, in English (following Heim's death, in 2001) - Wernher von Braun's telling interest - remember, a "rocket guy" - centered specifically on Heim's radical ideas re "...spacecraft field propulsion and orbital dynamics."

According to the Research Group:

"...in a letter to Heim, Wernher von Braun enquired about progress in the [German] development of such a field propulsion system since otherwise he could not accept responsibility for the enormous cost of the [Apollo] moon-landing project. Heim [because of the lack of West German government funding to develop the technology] answered in the negative..."

From this documented correspondence, it should be blatantly apparent that Wernher von Braun - thought by the press and public to be merely a "steely-eyed missile man" - was actually probing far beyond... searching avidly for an "alternate gravitational solution" to his major Explorer I problem, one which did NOT involve "trivial rocket explanations."

Obviously, at some point after that memorable January night, von Braun had carried out the same calculations we just did... and had come to the same conclusion:

Namely, that,

"Something" was radically wrong with all existing gravitational theories... used (quite unsuccessfully, it turned out...) to attempt to predict the orbit of Explorer I.

In other words, Von Braun - contrary to his public "caviler dismissals" of Explorer I's anomalous behavior (the statements in the Sunday Register...) - privately, was clearly... secretly... bent on finding "a serious, workable alternative to Newton and Einstein...!"

As his independently confirmed private correspondence with Burkhard Heim, now unquestionably confirms.

Von Braun's letters to and from Maurice Allais (below) are even more revealing - in terms of the alternative gravitational ideas von Braun (backed by personal experience, remember...) was obviously willing to entertain.

Allais, a French economist by training (he would go on to win the Noble Prize for Economics, in 1988) was also an accomplished physicist - publishing copious experiments through the French Academy of Sciences [and winning fourteen physics prizes - including, the Gold Medal of the National Center for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.), the most distinguished honor in French Science, from the 1930's through the 1980's].

The work that obviously brought Allais to von Braun's attention was the French physicist's startling observation of "...highly anomalous pendulum motions, made during a solar eclipse over Paris in 1954..." (and repeated, during another solar eclipse, also over France, in 1959).

Allais noted that the normal, progressive "Foucault motion" (due to the rotation of the Earth) of his laboratory's uniquely-designed "paraconical pendulum," during the eclipse, suddenly reversed... and literally "ran backwards" (with the Earth's rotation!)... until mid-eclipse, when the pendulum motion reversed again... rapidly resuming its normal rate and direction of angular rotation (below)...

This set of completely inexplicable (under any current theory...) solar eclipse observations has since been termed "the Allais Effect."

Here (below) is a trace of Allais' actual, remarkable 1954 pendulum observations - made during the eclipse.

The graph shows (red line) the normal, progressive angular trend (the downward slope) of the pendulum's apparent rotation, mirroring the Earth's actual opposite motion.

This trend is suddenly interrupted by an upward deflection in the graph - at the precise beginning of the eclipse (left green line) - representative of the complete reversal (backwards rotation) of the pendulum's (normal) forward angular motion!

This hour-long "pendulum anomaly" is then followed (near mid-eclipse - center green line) by a rapid resumption of the normal downward trend... once again, the normal "mirrored reflection" of the Earth's inertial spin...

Needless to say (but, we'll say it anyway...), this astonishing behavior was completely unpredicted ("unmodeled" is the term...) by either Newton or Einstein - in terms of the "normal" inertial motions of a pendulum freely swinging under gravity...

Or, to quote Allais directly:

"...indeed, the effects of the eclipse are spectacular and cannot be explained in the framework of currently accepted [gravitational or inertial] theories...

"Over many centuries, no phenomenon had ever before been exhibited, whose observed values were from twenty to a hundred million times greater than the values obtained by [prior theoretical] calculation..."

In a very real sense, Allais' stunning eclipse observations were a remarkable "ground-based version" of von Braun's equally aberrant Explorer I behavior in space; in von Braun's growing perception, the two phenomenon could only be caused by the same gravitational anomaly - ergo, his obvious interest in Allais' continuing experiments.

Documentation of this fascinating von Braun/Allais correspondence comes from two independent sources: Professor Allais himself... and the current, official website of the NASA-Marshall Spaceflight Center - whose first Director was... Wernher von Braun.

Allais, writing in 1999, in "a memoir for NASA" - flatly stated:

"...with regard to the validity of my experiments, it seems best to reproduce here the testimony of General Paul Bergeron, ex-president of the Committee for Scientific Activities for National Defense, in his letter of May 1959 to Werner von Braun..."

In that same year - 1999 - a summary of Allais's provocative experiments was posted on the NASA-Marshall website, in anticipation of a possible repetition of Allais' original observations - to be carried out during an August, 1999 total solar eclipse about to sweep over Europe in a geometry very similar to Allais' 1954 event.

Remarkably, the NASA-Marshall website also cited von Braun's "interest" in professor Allais' experiments... and even made mention (though, quite obliquely...) of "why" he took some interest...

"...rocket pioneer, Wernher von Braun, NASA/Marshall's first director, first became interested in Allais' experiments in 1958, when early investigations began to look at predicting satellite trajectories in orbital mechanics..."

The total understatement of "the Problem" by NASA, in 1999, and the equally apparent "downplaying" of von Braun's much deeper personal involvement with Allais (as you shall see...) - even after half a century - is telling...

For, the evidence of how just how seriously von Braun took Allais' work is amply revealed by what the rocket expert publicly did next:

In 1959, following the May letter from General Bergeron (cited by Allais, above) - von Braun apparently personally arranged for the French physicist to publish a lengthy, three-part series on his revolutionary pendulum experiments in a leading US aerospace journal (and, for the first time in English - as Allias' published experiments had previously been available only in French...):

The journal was "Aero/Space Engineering" (below).

Allais' series did not "beat around the bush," but directly confronted the startling possibility that his lengthy series of meticulous pendulum observations, consisting of literally thousands of hours of detailed repetitions - which included the extraordinary, totally unexpected 2 hours and 34 minutes of the amazing events during the '54 eclipse - revealed fatal flaws in the previously "sacrosanct" laws of Newton and Einstein...

The same "fatal flaws" first experienced by von Braun, in space... in the bizarre orbital behavior of Explorer I, the night of January 31, 1958.

In hindsight, von Braun seems to have hoped that, by sponsoring open US publication of Allais' revolutionary data in a major US space engineering publication, the resulting "discussion and debate" might spur a timely "innovative engineering solution"... one that he himself could ultimately then use to quietly solve "the secret Explorer problem"

For, there was still no open acknowledgment of the existence of the "Explorer anomaly" itself... either, within the aerospace community, or to the public. Von Braun's idea may have been that, by exposing other rocket engineers and scientists to Allais' astonishing, compelling experimental contradictions to existing gravitational theory... someone in that community "might just hit on a solution"...

At least, that's the best I can come up with at the moment, to explain - from a remove of over 50 years - von Braun's clearly contradictory efforts in this time period - his continuing decision (agreement?) to hide the "ultimate space discovery" from the rest of the world... but, simultaneously, to sponsor open publication and discussion of the potentially revolutionary physics that seemed to lie at the root of "the Explorer problem!"

For... "the Problem" was only getting worse.

In the slightly more than a year and a half that had elapsed - between the first appearance of the "Explorer anomaly," January 31, 1958, and the US publication of the first section of Allais' unique, three-part experimental examination of the real nature of gravity, in September, 1959 - von Braun had successfully orbited two additional Explorer satellites... and the US Navy had orbited three (of its planned eleven...) Vanguards.

And, all of them... exhibited the same type of "baffling orbital anomalies" as Explorer I!


 

Von Braun's "worst fears" - that Explorer I was NOT a fluke - were totally confirmed less than two months later... with the successful orbiting of Explorer III.

Launched March 26, 1958, the satellite was planned for a trajectory essentially identical to Explorer I's original intended orbit: 220 by 1000 miles. However, to the chagrin of von Braun and his launch team, the new spacecraft also wound up in a close repeat of Explorer I's peculiarly extended flight path!

And, again, no one (except von Braun...) seemed to have a clue as to what was really going on...

Explorer III 's final orbital parameters were - "125 miles by 1750 miles... with a period of 115.7 minutes" - an orbit more elliptical (and even higher) than Explorer I's... but of almost exactly the same duration!

There was NO WAY this could be dismissed as simply another "over performance" by the Jupiter-C (and yet, of course, according to the "experts," that's all it could be...)!

With the launch of Explorer IV four months after that - July 26, 1958 - "the anomaly" was solid:

Explorer IV's final orbit was "163 miles by 1373 miles..." compared to the, again, intended "220 by 1000." At first glance, this does NOT look like any kind of confirmation... until the fact that Explorer IV was carrying twice the payload of scientific instruments, compared to the previous spacecraft, was factored in...

Then, the "peculiar physics" matched once again - perfectly.

As previously noted, in this same time frame - March 17, 1958 to September 12, 1959 - the US Navy (finally) succeeded in placing three Vanguard satellites of its own in space.

All of them... also reached "higher and more elliptical orbits" than originally planned - so high and so elliptical, that they now represent the three oldest man-made objects still orbiting the Earth... half a century after they were sent aloft; each still with a remaining life span (before they someday, finally, dip low enough to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere...) of "several hundred years"...

And yet, despite all this... "the secret" held.

No one in the press, writing about any of these historic early launches, even seemed to suspect that "something was seriously wrong" (or, if they did, they certainly didn't write about it...). They didn't seem to even notice that all these early orbits were "significantly higher" than originally planned, at altitudes (as anyone can calculate...) the rockets themselves weren't even capable of reaching!

But, since von Braun - the hero of the hour - was saying nothing... it had to be "the rockets," right? They were simply "more efficient" than originally designed (rah... rah for "good ol' American technology." Take that, you commies...).

After all, who wanted to argue with "the man?!"

Von Braun's cover-up - and simultaneously quiet (if not quietly desperate) quest... for an "alternative physics" to ultimately fix the problem... was working...

Certainly, "the cover-up" part....


 

At this point, if there are still skeptics remaining out there (there always are...) - who simply don't (or won't) believe us - look carefully at von Braun!

Clearly, von Braun's aggressive world-wide search for a workable physics "work around" to this major (if carefully hidden...) overarching problem, was not something he was doing "just out of idle curiosity"; he, of all people, obviously realized that if this apparent "breakdown" of Newtonian mechanics in satellite dynamics was not ultimately understood - and then somehow controlled - the impossibility of placing future satellites in any kind of planned orbits would rapidly spell "the End" to the entire space program!

If spacecraft couldn't be launched on precisely predictable trajectories, then, scientific missions based on known satellite orbits (and thus, calculable Earth geometries), couldn't be successfully carried out.

Carefully designed military reconnaissance fly-overs of intended targets (like, suspected missile bases in the Soviet Union...) couldn't be pre-planned (a Cold War concept that the Pentagon was secretly counting on, even then...) and missions - unmanned or manned - to the Moon... or to the other planets (such as Mars - von Braun's personal favorite...)

Forget it!

So, it was imperative that someone - von Braun! - truly "figure it out"... and soon.

For mission planners, on both sides of the Iron Curtain (after the successful launch of Explorer I), had decided to raise the stakes... and set their eyes on the Moon as the next prize in this new geopolitical game.

William Pickering, Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) - which, you might remember, had designed both Explorer I and its three solid-fueled upper rocket stages - was at the forefront of those planners on the US side who now had their sights set on places "far beyond low-Earth orbit...”; Pickering, in the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, had strenuously argued for a major US effort to “…send an American spacecraft to the Moon at the earliest possible opportunity..."

In the Pentagon, just one month after Explorer I was launched, ARPA (the "Advanced Research Projects Agency") was hurriedly formed by President Eisenhower, as a means of coordinating the various military services response to the new Soviet space challenge (two years later, the new civilian space agency, NASA - also formed by Eisenhower in the summer of '58 - would assume control of all of ARPA's "non-military" space missions).

Within a month of this "military R&D agency's" formation, taking its lead directly from Pickering's earlier proposal ARPA dramatically announced - on March 27, 1958 (just one day after von Braun successfully orbited Explorer III) - that it was looking to "shoot the Moon," with a "quick and dirty" program called "Pioneer"... as a way of finally upstaging the Russians and taking back "some of the political momentum" in the "space race."

That was the obvious political intent.

In the actual DOD statement, the more diplomatic language read,

"...to determine our capability of exploring space in the vicinity of the moon and to obtain useful data concerning the moon."

Unfortunately, from August 1958 through December of that year, there were four straight failures in this hurriedly-put-together, first US "Lunar Program."

And then, one day after New Year's Day, January 1959... came another Soviet surprise:

"The First Soviet Cosmic Rocket" (later renamed Luna-I...) was launched by the Soviets toward the Moon , on an upgraded "R-7 intercontinental rocket" - placing an ~800-pound unmanned Russian probe on an impact trajectory designed, for the first time, to contact the surface of another world...

Given the size of the Soviet "Block-E" upper stage atop its R-7 launcher (below - top), compared to the tiny American Pioneer lunar spacecraft (below - bottom), and Block E's sheer mass (which provided ample ability to carry both the required guidance system and the fuel for several mid-course corrections en route to the Moon...), Luna I should have easily impacted "within 60 to 120 miles of its intended aiming point..."

Instead...

Thirty four hours after launch, the Soviet's first unmanned lunar probe successfully crossed the Moon's orbit... but, ahead of the Moon... by some "3700 miles..." (below), before eventually moving into a ~ year-long, recurring solar orbit: the first manmade object of the "space age" to totally escape from Earth... renamed "Mechta" - Dream.

Major question: why, with all that mass and technology going for them... did the Russians miss!

Von Braun, looking at their mission from the outside (since, it was damn certain the Soviet's weren't calling him with daily updates!), could only logically conclude one thing:

That, whatever "non-Newtonian" forces were acting on his (and the Navy's Vanguard) spacecraft in Earth orbit, seemed now also to be acting on the Soviets as well! This was the first independent confirmation of this possibility, as in Earth orbit the Soviets could claim (and had) that any orbit they achieved was the one that "they'd intended"...

Missing the Moon... by more than its own diameter (2160 miles)... and, with the Soviet's sophisticated space navigation technology, was pretty dramatic evidence that the mysterious "Force" (non-Newtonian gravity) demonstrably operating on von Braun's spacecraft... had also been operating on the Soviet's, all along!

And... that it extended into space at least to the distance of the Moon...

What was also obvious was the fact that, they too, seemed totally incapable of doing anything about it!

Unfortunately, this crucial insight still didn't provide von Braun with any practical assistance in compensating for these maddening "non-Newtonian" celestial mechanics in his own program...

For, two months later, when it came von Braun's turn to try again - with another US Moon-bound mission (like Explorer I, built by JPL), "Pioneer 4" - the JPL/von Braun spacecraft missed the Moon by 37,000 miles (below)... ten times the Russian's error!

Pioneer 4 Trajectory
 

And still, the US press suspected nothing.

"Space travel" in these early, heady days, was still so new, so filled with all sorts of "known unknowns" (to borrow a notorious line from later Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld...) that the press covering these early missions was essentially "just reading press releases."

They were certainly NOT doing any original, sustentative reporting on... let alone real, in-depth, original investigations of, "government space institutions"...

If the US Army, the Navy, ARPA... eventually, NASA itself... were all excusing these early mission failures and anomalies as just typical "equipment problems," or, "unexpected thrust," or, "guidance difficulties," etc., etc. - who in the press corps, in those early years, knew enough about this totally new profession - literally, "rocket science!" - to effectively argue with a "giant" like von Braun?!

And - who would want to try!?

So, the cover-up rolled on...

Ten months later, Von Braun had to have experienced another major shock when, on September 12, 1959, the Soviets launched their second unmanned "Cosmic Rocket" to the Moon...

And this time... they didn't miss.

What had the Soviets learned in those "intervening months," that von Braun was still attempting to figure out - regarding the "non-Newtonian" forces now demonstrably acting on all spacecraft - whether they were in low Earth orbit... or, headed for the Moon!?

And, how had they been able to "figure it out" - allowing their second lunar attempt to successfully crash land on the lunar surface (complete with Soviet flag and Communist Party pennants)... once again, ahead of the Americans?

Inquiring minds...


 

And yet, just nine years later... on December 24, 1968... three American Apollo astronauts - with almost surgical precision - would be successfully inserted into lunar orbit via Earth-based, computer-driven orbital calculations... carried out "in Houston."

They would make ten historic circuits of the Moon that Christmas Eve... returning live television from their lunar orbit to an awe-inspired world... complete with an eerie and unique reading of Genesis... before "returning safely to the Earth" - exactly as John Kennedy envisioned...

How did NASA do it?!

How - in the face of the baffling "non-Newtonian gravitational anomaly" discovered by von Braun only ten years earlier, which had made it impossible for the US to not only predict future orbits of Earth satellites, but also to successfully aim any spacecraft at the Moon... and certainly, to successfully place one in lunar orbit - did the United States actually carry out... just nine years after the Russians hit the Moon with Luna 2..., Apollo 8?!

More inquiring minds really want to know...

Just eight years earlier... in 1960... von Braun was made head of NASA's massive rocket development program, to ultimately design the monster "moon rocket" - the 363-foot tall, 3300-ton Saturn 5 (above and below) - that would one day send Americans triumphantly to the surface of the Moon...

In addition...

Von Braun was one of the key NASA personnel - as first Director of NASA's "Marshall Space Flight Center" - tasked with finding the best way to use this massive vehicle he was designing "to carry out the mission"... even before Kennedy's historic commitment to "Apollo," in 1961.

Yet, back in 1960, von Braun secretly also knew he couldn't really "complete that mission"... because of the continuing "non-Newtonian dynamics" problem!

The immediate task at hand for the rest of NASA (which didn't know they had a problem...) was determining exactly "how" such a massive launch vehicle could best be utilized in the envisioned "Apollo Program",

• in support of a "direct ascent" mode (go from Earth, land directly on the Moon, then return)

• in an "Earth orbit rendezvous" mode (rendezvous various elements of the Apollo Expedition in Earth orbit first, before heading for the Moon and then returning)

• in a "lunar orbit rendezvous" mode (send two Apollo craft - on one rocket - to the Moon... splitting them apart in lunar orbit for a separate landing by one of them, before rendezvousing back in lunar orbit with the first... and then returning safely to the Earth - below)

The last concept was nicknamed "LOR"... vigorously championed by a young engineer from NASA-Langley, John Houbolt .

But, despite LOR's clear engineering and economic advantages in making it feasible to reach the Moon before the President's 10-year deadline (by NOT attempting to build and land a spacecraft on the Moon weighing close to a hundred tons, and standing almost 70 feet high - below!), Houbolt kept running into "...mysterious brick walls" - in his years-long, virtually "one man crusade" to convince NASA senior management that this was the ONLY way that Apollo could succeed.

Houbolt found, to his puzzlement and increasing professional frustration that, despite making "eminent engineering sense to more and more NASA managers and engineers..." (when he got a chance to brief them on the full details in person...), LOR stubbornly remained "for some reason" (that no one would ever come right out and tell him...) the least favored of all of these early lunar landing ideas... across the Agency.

Based on what we have documented here, at least one man in NASA knew that "reason".... Von Braun, obviously (because of the still-concealed "non-Newtonian dynamics" situation...) was adamant that the only hope of achieving any Apollo Landing was "direct ascent."

That meant that your intended "rendezvous target" was the entire Moon... as opposed to (in LOR) "an infinitesimal, artificial spacecraft... floating somewhere in the dark... in lunar orbit." This conviction was, undoubtedly, based on von Braun's assessment that, if the Russians had (somehow!) made it to the lunar surface with a direct ascent trajectory for their unmanned Luna-2... he could too!

With "direct ascent," with "a big enough rocket and enough fuel..." you could employ a "brute force technique" to get to the surface of the Moon - overwhelming the unpredictable orbital dynamics of whatever gravitational anomalies were interfering with the spacecraft trajectories enroute... by using repeated rocket burns (and a lot of fuel...) to constantly correct your course... until you safely landed on the Moon!

But that required a truly massive rocket... much bigger even than the Saturn 5...

This, in our opinion, is why von Braun was so fixated on "direct ascent" from the beginning:

a single, ultra-massive rocket (that he eventually, fittingly called Nova - see below) - designed to send an equally massive lunar landing craft directly to the lunar surface from the Earth... carrying sufficient fuel to ultimately counteract any "non-Newtonian uncertainties" that it encountered on the way there... and... in returning home.

It was the only Apollo strategy - based on what von Braun knew about the real orbital dynamics of cis-lunar space in 1960 - which had even a slim chance of actually working!

Later, because of the sheer size of the Nova fuel margins, von Braun reluctantly expanded his "direct ascent" lunar mission concept to include "Earth Orbit Rendezvous" (EOR); the "brute force" method would also work in Earth orbit - ultimately allowing two (or more) spacecraft to come together - rendezvous - and thus, a greater mission flexibility in assembling the right spacecraft components for Apollo... before heading for the Moon.

And, if anything went wrong - if rendezvous was NOT achievable (because of the continuing "non-Newtionian dynamics problem...") - the astronauts, with EOR, were still "only a couple hundred miles above the Earth"... where, within hours, they could easily come home...

NOT possible with LOR... where the astronauts could become literally "stranded"... in a spacecraft not capable of carrying enough fuel to overcome the even more uncertain "non-Newtonian forces" - operating 240,000 miles from Earth... in lunar orbit.

This, from our analysis, was von Braun's real (though never stated...) reason for totally rejecting LOR... until, that is, the summer of 1962...

Then - to the amazement of the entire aerospace community, including (especially!) his own Marshall engineering team (who were definitely NOT for LOR) - von Braun abruptly reversed his previous position on "how best to accomplish Kennedy's grand vision," and announced at a major June, 1962 NASA meeting, that he had "changed his mind," and was now "backing lunar orbit rendezvous unconditionally..."

This was von Braun's public explanation:

"...we at the Marshall Space Flight Center readily admit that when first exposed to the proposal of the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous Mode we were a bit skeptical - particularly of the aspect of having the astronauts execute a complicated rendezvous maneuver at a distance of 240,000 miles from the earth where any rescue possibility appeared remote.

 

In the meantime, however, we have spent a great deal of time and effort studying the four modes [Earth-orbit rendezvous, LOR, and two Direct Ascent modes, one involving the Nova and the other a Saturn C-5], and we have come to the conclusion that this particular disadvantage [low probability of successful astronaut rescue in lunar orbit] is far outweighed by [LOR's] advantages..."

Von Braun's sudden, simply inexplicable (to most NASA veterans...) high profile "LOR reversal"... could only mean one thing:

That - in this crucial time frame - "something" suddenly had changed... in the whole (still classified) "non-Newtonian dynamics" situation!

Curiously, just over a month before this major NASA meeting, on April 26, 1962 - out of all the previous failed attempts - a US unmanned spacecraft, Ranger 4, finally, successfully, impacted the surface of the Moon!

Was von Braun's sudden, dramatic "turn around decision" regarding LOR because, the "non-Newtonian dynamics problem" - still standing firmly in the way of all reliable space rendezvous - had finally, quietly, been solved? Had Ranger 4 been merely the final, visible demonstration of this in-space celestial-mechanics resolution (with the publicly-presented aspects of the mission merely a convenient “cover”)?!

The more I thought about it (and my own recollections from the early 60's, of the extremely troubled history of the entire "Ranger Program" from this period - where, successive spacecraft in the series "just kept failing," and there were even eruptions in Congress over "gross NASA mismanagement" of the laboratory in charge, coming after two equally-scathing "high-level" NASA Headquarters reviews of JPL's Ranger management performance) - the more I began to wonder...

Could the entire Ranger Program have been just a "cover," all along... a test-bed (complete with "scientific instruments" and even "principal investigators" from various universities...), but for the real purpose of flying - in space - various deep space mission profiles... in repeated empirical attempts to understand, and then ultimately fix, "the Problem?"

Was this the real objective of Ranger from its inception: to develop practical "non-Newtonian, celestial-mechanics equations"... that could successfully correct for the "non-Newtonian anomaly"... in future NASA missions?!

Was this how NASA learned - literally by "trial and error" (LOTS of error...) - how to so precisely navigate spacecraft in Earth orbit and deep space... despite the continuing "non-Newtonian Problem?!"

Like a flash bulb going off, I suddenly realized that this specific NASA laboratory, once even under Congressional investigation for all the "gross irregularities" discovered in the Ranger Program, which had designed... and built... and launched Ranger 4 - the first unmanned NASA spacecraft to finally, navigationally, make it to the surface of another planet - was none other than the same laboratory (even before it was in NASA...) whose engineers had also designed and built... Explorer I..., Bill Pickering's... Jet Propulsion Laboratory!

And suddenly, it all fit...

There was even a statement in an official NASA history of the Ranger Program that correlated exactly with our own assessment:

“…as the [Ranger] project got underway, the [supposedly scientific] priorities established at JPL revealed the essential purpose of all five Ranger flights to be the development of 'basic elements of spacecraft technology required for lunar and planetary missions' [emphasis added]..."

Which would have definitely included “…develop viable interplanetary navigation techniques...”

JPL had to have known about the "Explorer I anomaly" - and, from the beginning!; it had to have been aggressively working on its own solution (with von Braun?)... since that January night, in 1958!

Who would have had better motivation to figure out and solve this overwhelming celestial navigation problem - than the one laboratory whose director was intending from the beginning (according to Bill Pickering's official NASA biography...),

"to turn JPL into NASA's most important interplanetary laboratory..."?

Which (by solving this "insolvable problem?" - and learning to control a Physics which makes completely obsolete both Newton and Einstein!)... it ultimately became!?

Suddenly, the much broader policy implications of NASA's consistent "kid gloves treatment" of JPL - even during the Ranger fiasco - especially, in terms of the "inexplicable influence" JPL has seemed (somehow) to exert over NASA's other programs (out of all proportion to its inherent size and actual institutional role...) took on entirely new meanings...

In this scenario... without JPL, and its (obviously top-secret) successfully-developed (via Ranger...?) interplanetary space navigation computer programs, no one else in NASA was going anywhere… unless JPL agreed.

And that could explain almost everything… regarding NASA’s 50-year-old history... and actions.

In terms of Apollo, the crucial "last-minute switch" by von Braun - from opposing to supporting LOR - was clearly the single, key decision that ultimately allowed the entire Apollo Lunar Program to succeed.

Because, with NASA's official selection of LOR a few weeks later, as the means of actually landing on the Moon - a separate, smaller spacecraft to take the astronauts down from lunar orbit to the surface... and back up again - the entire Apollo Program suddenly became "manageable": the individual Apollo components became far "lighter" (less massive...)

Thus, they now required (comparatively speaking) a much smaller moon rocket to carry them ["only" the Saturn 5 - as opposed to von Braun's vastly more robust (and far more expensive!) twelve million pound thrust Nova rocket].

Ultimately, because of all of this, the Apollo Program itself was carried out on a much shorter developmental time-frame than it would have followed otherwise - which, in the end, was what enabled NASA not only to beat President Kennedy's visionary deadline... but, to "beat the Russians to the Moon" while doing it!

Did Wernher von Braun - with "a little help from his friends at JPL" - make all this happen, by finally "figuring out" Explorer I's extraordinary, still-classified, "non-Newtonian discovery... and problem"... and, in 1962?

And, if so, how did they do it... and in so doing, potentially give Humanity the keys to unlocking not only the entire solar system to future human exploration...

But, the secret of building real "anti-gravity spaceships" - with which to ultimately colonize that solar system! Finally.

A full half century after Explorer I... is "someone" now doing exactly what we've just described:

Carrying out a real, "top-secret" Space Program... perhaps, by now, far beyond this solar system... and, with a fleet of "gravity-controlling spacecraft"... all based on JPL's "secretly-derived New Physics"... while the NASA that we see on television... still pretends "it only plays with rockets?!"

And, no one in the American press corps is still suspecting... anything!?

Part II

In Part I above, we described surprising - and apparently totally unrecognized, until now - pivotal new details around the seminal events which quietly unfolded the night of January 31, 1958 - when the United States finally carried out its first successful launch of an artificial Earth satellite, Explorer I.

How, Wernher von Braun - "Operation Paperclip" chief German rocket engineer, and head of the US Army effort that actually launched Explorer I (using the Jupiter-C rocket that von Braun and his German team had specifically designed) - was, at first, intensely disappointed... then, obviously surprised and overjoyed... and finally, completely baffled...

By the totally unexpected orbital performance of "his" first US satellite.

For - mysteriously - Explorer I had reached an orbit of the Earth that night fully one third higher than the one (green line - below) originally planned!

We also noted in Part I of this report the immediate - and still continuing - national security classification of these amazing scientific findings, which have both prevented open civilian research into the far-reaching implications of Explorer I's astonishing "anti-gravity" behavior for these past fifty years... as well as any application of those findings to desperately-needed energy or transportation problems here on Earth.

Yet, despite this "security lid," we were able to document von Braun's surprising, clandestine, years-long personal search - following Explorer I - for "answers" to these inexplicable celestial-mechanics questions... which eventually set him on a remarkable one-man quest for "an entire alternative physics" - which could explain America's first satellite achieving an orbit (yellow line - below) for which von Braun's own rocket was literally incapable of reaching... on its own.

But, even more remarkable... Explorer I was not alone in this achievement!

Review of the publicly-available data revealed the equally-unexpected "over performance" of two additional Explorer satellites in von Braun's early Army program, as well as similar "mysteriously enlarged orbits" of all three successful US Navy Vanguard satellites... to the point where the latter have now become the oldest man-made artifacts still orbiting the Earth!

And yet, as also noted in our first section - even after fifty years - no one seems to have noticed or asked any in-depth questions about this astonishing sequence of events:

the repeated, gross violations of both "Newton's Laws" and "Einstein's Relativity"... in the launching of America's first satellites!

To say nothing of the simultaneous appearance of enormous quantities of literal "free energy"... in each of their much larger orbits...

All... apparently from nowhere!


 

In this Part 2 of our continuing investigation into von Braun's amazing "secret" - we will now lay out, based on our own ~ 20 years of "hyperdimensional research and experimentation," just how we "figured it out"; how we have been able to "back engineer" what von Braun (and JPL...) themselves eventually had to have deciphered about this startling phenomenon, and what it could mean even beyond "a fundamental revolution in celestial mechanics..."

Explorer I's radically "non-Newtonian" orbital behavior (and that of the other US satellites'...) must rank as THE major scientific and political discovery of the early space program... if not the last fifty years of solar system exploration!

Regardless of the public secrecy and security classifications that high-level governmental policy makers immediately placed around this night, the question which MUST be asked now is:

"were von Braun (and his associates at JPL) eventually able to turn this revolutionary scientific discovery... into a workable technology? A technology which ultimately could control even... gravity itself?! And if so, has this overwhelmingly important technical and political development also been officially kept secret, literally for decades... from both the American taxpayer... and the world?"

As noted earlier, our own ~ 25 years of research may have given us a technical advantage that von Braun (at least, initially...) did not possess: a working scientific theory (the Hyperdimensional Model) - which, from the beginning, has predicted distinct "non-Newtonian" spacecraft motions and behavior...

There is, however, another school of thought vis a vis "what did von Braun (and other Operation Paperclip Germans) really know about Explorer I's 'non-Newtonian dynamics' ..?" - an historical perspective extensively documented and discussed in the works of our friend and colleague, Dr. Joseph Farrell:

In this discussion, there was the definite possibility that von Braun (after all, once a Major in Himmler's "SS"...), in fact, was privy (along with other key members of his own "Operation Paperclip" imported German team...) to a major, ultra-secret, Nazi black-ops SS research and development program - termed "the Nazi Bell Experiment" (above and below).

An extraordinary experiment which (according to officially declassified "intel" documents from Eastern Europe, made available after the reunification of Germany...) "manifested several, extremely anomalous phenomenon... ", including... Anti-gravity!

Which would have been, of course, directly relevant to Von Braun's own ability to instantly recognize the similar "non-Newtonian behavior" of Explorer I!

After looking at this really hard, I happen not to share this point of view... and neither, by the way, does Dr. Farrell.

If von Braun had been knowledgeable about prior "... Nazi inertia and gravity-control experiments" ala "the Bell," why did he then personally go "in hot pursuit" of an alternative physics theory to explain "the inexplicable" around Explorer I?; in other words, why was he so obviously surprised...!?

Why, as part of his major effort to understand the startling phenomenon that accompanied Explorer I's launch into orbit, did he subsequently write to all those "alternative physicists" around the world, seeking a new theoretical "non-Newtonian solution" to "the Problem?"

Why not simply, quietly, consult with more knowledgeable members of his own German team... in terms of details of the Bell Experiment he might not have personally known?

In fact, von Braun's well-documented, "inquisitive behavior" - after the "shock" of Explorer I - compellingly argues for a distinct lack of knowledge of the "Nazi Bell" on his part... and certainly, a total ignorance of the radical, alternative physics that the Bell manifested to those directly interacting with its technology... to the point of actually killing some of the scientists and technicians involved during the SS-run experiments!

However, there is one other possibility..., that von Braun might have heard "just enough" about the Bell (from "someone" that he trusted...) to impel him - after his Explorer I experience - to seek further information... to find independent, contemporary confirmation of the existence of such a "radical, alternative physics"... on his own.

Whatever the facts around his "curious interest" in such physics (and we may never know, for sure...), unlike von Braun, we at Enterprise, as previously noted, had the distinct advantage of a remarkable, redundant, beautifully convergent series of non-classified "anomalous gravity and inertia experiments" to start out with - when we began seriously to examine "the Explorer problem."

In addition, also unlike von Braun (if you totally discount the "he knew about the Bell" scenario...), we had the distinct advantage of a set of precise theoretical predictions from our "Hyperdimensional Model" to go on...

All of which formed an extremely solid foundation from which Enterprise could attempt to "back engineer" the ultimate process von Braun and JPL must have used in their years-long, documentable efforts to "figure out the Problem."


 

It is at this point that we must introduce another remarkable player in this "drama" - the late "alternative physicist," Dr. Bruce DePalma (below).

DePalma (whose brother is the well-known Hollywood director, Brian DePalma) started his career by graduating from MIT the very year von Braun put Explorer I in orbit - 1958. In graduate school, he pursued electrical engineering - both at MIT and Harvard.

After grad school, DePalma went to work for some of the Nation's most prestigious scientists and scientific institutions - serving as Lecturer at MIT under Herold Edgerton; and Head of Photographic R&D for Dr. Edwin Land - at the famed Polaroid Corporation.

But after almost 20 years of watching the American Science Establishment "up close" - as it repeatedly ignored new experimental evidence in favor of traditional theoretical "explanations" - DePalma one day got fed up, and decided to resign... to create his own independent research organization - which he called "The Simularity Institute."

Based in part on his extensive lab experience with rotating electrical equipment (motors, generators, etc.), DePalma initially became fascinated by the electrical and inertial properties of "magnetized gyroscopes..."; after leaving MIT and extending this to gyroscope dynamics in general, he investigated a wide-ranging series of "systems in rotation"..., which is how our totally independent research paths eventually crossed.

In 1989, as Erol Torun and I were just beginning to grapple with some of the higher-level implications of our brand-new "Hyperdimensional (HD) Physics Model," paraphrasing the old joke about "the most important things to remember about business real estate..."

I paraphrased a (somewhat flip...) response to a similar question about our work...

"What are the three most important things to remember about 'Hyperdimensional Physics?'; rotation... rotation... rotation..."

Later, when I went looking for a serious "alternative physicist" (meaning, someone who was open to the "unexpected"...) to run some of our HD ideas past, a major figure in the "free energy" community, Don Reed, strongly recommended that I talk to "Bruce DePalma."

It was probably one of the most important recommendations I've ever received...

Because...

As noted above, DePalma - since the 1970's - had been carrying out perhaps the most exhaustive laboratory studies of "bodies in rotation" - including MASSIVE objects (~ 30 pounds...), spinning at very high velocities (~ 7600 revolutions per minute...) - that I had ever seen (below).

He had, thereby, accumulated an extensive experimental database on a subject not normally dealt with in mainstream physics or mechanics: Rotation.

Matching our theoretical predictions of "the HD Model" against Bruce's extensive experimental lab results in rotation, became one of the true joys of our initial professional collaboration.

For instance, early on Bruce introduced me to the simplest - yet, probably, the most profound - of all his many rotational experiments. He just called it (fittingly...) "the spinning ball."

Conceptually, the experiment could not have been much cheaper, or easier to carry out:

Two 1-inch steel balls (like those found in every pinball machine in America...) were positioned at the business end of an ordinary power drill; one ball was in a cup attached to the drill's motor shaft, so it spun - at a very high rate of speed; the other ball was in an identical cup, attached by a bracket to the stationary drill casing, adjusted so that it was level with the first ball.

The experiment consisted of positioning the drill vertically, cups "up," and pressing the drill switch on the motor.

The drill motor (and its associated cup, containing one of the steel balls) rapidly spun up to approximately 27,000 RPM. The cup attached to the side of the drill (with the second steel ball inside it...) was not rotating...

When the drill motor had attained its maximum speed, DePalma (or, more often, Ed Delvers, his assistant...) would shove the drill into the air with a fast, upward motion - suddenly stopping the drill it in mid-flight. This would, of course, cause both 1-inch pinballs to fly out of their retaining cups in the same upward direction - the "spinning ball" (hence the name...) and the non-spinning ball, right beside it.

DePalma, from his years spent working with Dr. Herald Edgerton at MIT - the famed inventor of "stroboscopic photography" - was an expert in such stop-motion photography as well.

By positioning Delvers against a gridded black background, in a darkened laboratory (below), and then illuminating the two upward-flying steel balls with a powerful strobe light, DePalma was able to take time-exposure photographs with the camera's shutter open, the "pin-balls" only illuminated (at 60 times per second) by the strobe's periodic flash...

The result was a striking "stroboscopic, time-lapse photograph" of the parabolic arc of both steel balls - flying upward and then downward under Earth's gravitational acceleration (below).

Looked at even casually, one can instantly see in the resulting time-lapse image (above) that the two pin-balls did NOT fly along identical parabolic arcs (as they should have); unmistakably, the steel ball that was rotating (at ~27,000 rpm) flew higher... and fell faster... than the companion ball that was not rotating!

An experimental result in direct violation of everything physicists have thought they've known about both Newton's Laws and Einstein's Relativity... for almost (in the case of Newton...) three full centuries!

The above ~ 34-year-old image is a recent scan of one of the original "spinning ball photographs" from DePalma's own ~30-year-old files, contrast-adjusted in PhotoShop (with text and grid added), to bring out the data in the faded original. Nothing else has been added or altered.

What this photograph reveals is truly remarkable... for, in direct violation of both Newton and Einstein, it SHOUTS that "inertial mass" and "gravitational mass" are NOT equivalent..., thus violating the foundation of all modern physics in one elegantly simple experiment - which anyone can safely repeat... even at home!!


 

When I first saw the orbit of Explorer I (below, right - outer blue line) - compared to the intended orbit (below, right - inner red line) - my thoughts instantly flashed to the DePalma's remarkable (and highly controversial) "spinning ball experiment" (below - left)...

The physics of each was identical - a "mass" thrust vertically against the pull of Earth's gravity by an "outside" force.

In Depalma's case, literally the hand of the experimenter - throwing the two pin-balls simultaneously into the air at the same speed; in the Explorer I example, von Braun's Jupiter-C rocket supplying the "outside force" - accelerating the satellite into a trajectory fast enough and high enough to eventually "fall around the Earth" without hitting it... the quintessential definition of a satellite orbit.

Was it possible that von Braun had - inadvertently... somehow duplicated some aspect of Depalma's elegantly simple "spinning ball experiment" that night in January, 1958... some ~ 20 years before DePalma would, in fact, carry it out?!

Was THAT why Explorer I had been boosted so much higher than originally planned that night...?

Could it be as simple as... that!?

Of course, this didn't explain anything about why the DePalma Spinning Ball Experiment works the way it does... the underlying physics that (somehow!) changes a spinning object's inertia against "an outside force," compared to one that's NOT spinning...

But, it was a start!

Now, as I've often noted "science is nothing... if it's not prediction."

For this comparison between Explorer I and DePalma's elegant experiment to physically hold true, for it to be real science - there HAD TO BE some aspect of von Braun's Jupiter-C rocket that was spinning... during and after launch, as Explorer I was injected into orbit.

Here is George Ludwig's (Van Allen's assistant on the Explorer I electronics) official description of von Braun's modifications of the "Jupiter-C" - before the effort to launch Explorer I:

"... as the building of the Army’s Redstone rocket was nearing completion, the ABMA group undertook the development of the Jupiter rocket, a much longer-range Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. As a part of that program, in order to test nosecones for reentry through the atmosphere, they developed a special test vehicle to achieve the necessary high velocity. Since it was part of the Jupiter program, it was called the Jupiter C (Jupiter Composite). It consisted of a Redstone first stage, topped by clusters of small solid propellant rockets forming an additional two stages. It was consciously designed from the beginning so that an additional stage could be added in place of the test nosecone to make the vehicle orbit-capable.

"... sixty miles up, 156 seconds after takeoff, the first stage [would burn] itself out. The three upper stages with the satellite payload [would then separate] from the booster and zoom upward, spinning in their tub-shaped assembly in free-coasting, unpropelled flight, toward the apex... at which instant the remaining three rocket stages had to be fired.

"... a radio signal [would then be sent] to the speeding missile to fire the second stage. Off [would go] the first cluster of scaled Sergeants, which quickly [would boost] the speed [of the entire, still spinning "tub"] by thousands of miles per hour. Seconds later, the next cluster of rockets [would ignite], pushing the final-stage rocket, with its satellite, ever closer to that critical orbital velocity. Then the single rocket in the final stage [would be triggered]. Its thrust [would drive] the 18.13-pound payload over the 18,000 mile per hour mark..."

BINGO!!

And here (below), is a modified NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center cut-away of the basic solid-fueled upper stages of the Jupiter-C IRBM configuration.

The diagram shows how the third stage fit neatly inside the second stage (like a set of nested decanter glasses...), and the entire upper-stage configuration was then rapidly ROTATED in flight... as each subsequent stage separated and ignited.

Von Braun and JPL (which designed this rotating, solid-propellant upper stage configuration...), as Ludwig wrote, simply modified their existing IRBM version a bit more, adding a fourth solid-rocket upper stage (attached directly to Explorer I) - which then became von Braun's "Jupiter-C satellite launcher."

There - plain as day! - was the simple fact these upper stages (called collectively "the tub") were all deliberately set spinning just before launch... to provide (according to the JPL engineers...),

"gyroscopic stability against uneven burn of the Sergeant solid rockets in each stage, during their subsequent ignition phases."

The added color inset (above - left) is a frame from a 1958 US Army PR film - showing a top-down view of a one-third scale model of a "nuclear reentry vehicle" for a forthcoming IRBM test, carefully mounted on "the tub"; with the cover not yet in place, you can also see clearly the placement of the 11 second-stage JPL "Sergeant" rockets, mounted in their circular (waiting to be spun up... ) configuration.

The dummy warhead is the purplish "cone" on top of the (hidden) third stage.

As Ludwig noted, this one-third scale warhead model was simply replaced in the "satellite Jupiter-C configuration," by that additional fourth stage solid-fuel rocket - atop which was literally bolted the Explorer I satellite itself (below).

Here (below), JPL engineers work on a full-size mock-up of this "spinning tub" assembly, with a separate mock-up of the fourth stage and Explorer I on top - the full "satellite version" of the Jupiter-C.

And here (below), is the three-stage "rotating tub's" operational configuration - complete with the real Explorer I - all mounted atop the conical "instrument section" and (below that), the liquid-fuel main stage of the Jupiter-C booster itself.

The vertical black stripe painted on the side of the "tub" is to allow blockhouse engineers to optically monitor the rate of spin of the three nested upper stages on the pad, as they were coming "up to speed" (between 450 and 750 rpm...) just before launch.

So, precisely as predicted by the HD model (and DePalma!) - a key section of von Braun's rocket, in fact, did rotate that night... as it placed Explorer I into space!

Mystery of "the unexplained higher orbit"... finally... solved.

Well... not quite, of course, for, this "confirmation" only deepened the real mystery:

Why does "spinning" a steel pinball, or... rotating a one-ton, high-tech "tub" - containing 15 solid rockets - allow both to climb SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER against gravity... than if they were NOT spinning!?

One of the first reactions I had to this fascinating confirmation - that portions of von Braun's rocket HAD to spin, inevitably (from DePalma's experiment...) resulting in the higher orbit for Explorer I - was a feeling of intense gratification for Bruce; for, this simple engineering detail proved that Bruce DePalma has been absolutely right all along... for over 34 years... in insisting that "spinning a mass" also creates "some kind of anti-gravitational, anti-inertial field..." which allows the object to fly higher against gravity than if it was NOT spinning!

Von Braun - decades before Bruce DePalma ever conceived of his elegant little "spinning ball experiment" - had already PROVED Depalma right... with easily the most expensive "spinning ball" demonstration one could possibly imagine (Explorer I cost the American taxpayer approximately 20 million dollars, in 1958; today, allowing for inflation, that would be something like "half a billion... ").

Further, it was now obvious that this is why von Braun also missed the Moon... by those "pesky ~37,000 miles" with Pioneer 4.

Again he was using, in his Juno-2 "moonrocket" (a further modification of the Jupiter-C...), EXACTLY the same "spinning tub" arrangement for the four solid-rocket upper stages that he'd used in the previous Earth-orbiting Explorer launches; and (from what we now know...), the "DePalma Effect" struck again... neatly over-accelerating the Pioneer 4 spacecraft to a slightly higher velocity than JPL had calculated using only standard "Newtonian dynamics"... thus, causing the spacecraft to arrive at the Moon's orbit slightly sooner than it should have... passing ahead of the Moon itself (which, of course, hadn't reached the "rendezvous point" yet...) by those disappointing "37,000 miles (below)..."

It all fit - beautifully.

Of course, the reason why simply "spinning an object" should so dramatically change its "Newtonian dynamics" - against all current mainstream theories (including, "sacred" Relativity...) - was still as profound a mystery as ever...


 

It is hard to overstate both the scientific and political significance of von Braun's initial Explorer I discovery (swiftly confirmed, as we have documented, by Explorers III and IV, and all three Vanguard launches!) - as well as all their confirmed connections now to DePalma's totally independent, rotating laboratory experiments.

Oh, did I forget to mention..., the US Navy Vanguard three-stage rocket also utilized a solid-propellant in its third stage... so, it also had to be spun during the burn... for "stabilization" - at ~100 rpm (below)!

And, of course, then there was Allais...

ALL these independent, dynamical results revealed "huge, gaping holes..." in conventional "Newtonian mechanics"... to say nothing of what they did to "General Relativity!"

Yet, mainstream science - and the mainstream science press, including those covering the space program for the last 50 years - blithely went on... as if nothing was amiss!

DePalma himself, trained as a mainstream physicist for decades at two of the premier universities on the planet - MIT and Harvard! - wrestled with the extraordinary implications of his "spinning ball experiment" (first carried out in 1972...) for years - before finally publishing some tentative, but far-reaching conclusions...

"... the beginning of this author's work with rotating objects began with moment of inertia measurements of constrained gyroscopes undergoing forced precession. The increased moments of inertia discovered for precessional motion were translated into a series of measurements on pendula with rotating bobs. Although the discoveries of the inertial effects associated with precession and pendulum oscillations of rotating bob weights were highly suggestive, this author greatly resisted [for several years] attempts to force him to drop a rotating object for two reasons.

"Firstly, he had no reason to be able to predict the motion of a freely falling object on the basis of the inertial alterations he had measured which had concerned themselves with constrained situations of rotating objects. Second, there was no reason to expect inertial alterations [because of Einstein's inviolate "Principal of Equivalence"] to affect the rate of fall of a released object and there was no available theory which could in any way be applied to the situation or a falling rotating object in a gravitational field. This is a situation known in religious terms as a "leap into the dark."

"Since the author and his assistants are experts in the application of stroboscopic lighting techniques to the study of high speed motions, the first experimental cut at the situation was to photograph the trajectories of a steel ball bearing rotating at a high speed together with an identical [non-rotating] control object moving at a similar initial velocity. The result of the experiment was so startling and anomalous as to have taken me five years to understand.

"... Basically, the spinning object going higher than the identical non-rotating control with the same initial velocity, and, then falling faster than the identical non-rotating control, presents a dilemma which can only be resolved or understood... on the basis of radically new concepts in physics [distinct from the existing "Laws of Thermodynamics"... "Newton's Laws"... or "Special and General Relativity"]...

"We know when we can alter the properties of mechanical objects, i.e. change their inertia, we have contravened the conservation of energy, because we have associated the properties of an object with the space which contains the object. The space which contains the object also contains energy and we can go at the project in two ways: we can attempt to extract the energy without worrying where it came from, or we can attempt to understand physics, ourselves, and the Universe by a new formulation of reality.

"... The behavior of rotating objects is explained [after much thought] simply on the addition of free energy to whatever motion the rotating object is [already] making. [Thus] the spinning object goes higher and falls faster than the identical non-rotating control.

"... In terms of the dropping of the spinning ball, the understanding of the experiment involves the results of many other experiments as well as the resolution of a mind picture of the Universe which is our best approximation to understanding at the present time. What makes it difficult for other experimenters to understand the experiment is that it is not simply the results which are important. Without a theoretical foundation of understanding to make the experiment comprehensible - to fit the results into a context of rational understanding and harmony with the facts of other experiments - the data become trivial and worthless, and, worst of all, subject to misinterpretation.

"The [technological] availability of free energy from as simple an experiment as colliding a rotating object with a non-rotating one opens up the development of other machines for energy extraction and propulsion which may be more convenient to handle than the extraction of energy from the collision of a rotating object with a non-rotating one..."

"... The behavior of rotating objects is explained simply on the addition of free energy to whatever motion the rotating object is [already] making. [Thus] the spinning object goes higher and falls faster than the identical non-rotating control..."
 

"Understanding the Dropping of the Spinning Ball Experiment"
Bruce DePalma
Simularity Institute

May 3, 1977

This summation of DePalma's thoughts on the "spinning ball experiment" is, in my opinion, a significant summation of the results of all of his decades of ground-breaking experiments in "rotation."

It is also the key to understanding exactly what von Braun - independently, serendipitously - actually discovered with Explorer I... decades earlier... and then (for whatever reason) decided to keep secret to the day he died...

For, after literally years of pondering its meaning - in concert with all the other "rotation and inertia experiments" he had carried out - DePalma, 25 years after Explorer (and knowing nothing of its anomalies or its profound significance to his own work...), realized that "the spinning ball" was NOT (directly, anyway...) about "anti-gravity" at all.

That, instead, it represented a unique window into a far deeper reality... re the very "energy structure" of space and time itself... and the extraordinary possibilities of extracting that unlimited, "free energy" via a variety of "appropriate" technologies.

"Energy Crisis - Solved!" anyone...?

One of our unfinished, on-going discussions (abruptly cut short by Bruce's tragic and untimely death, in 1997...) was a resolution of exactly where this "free space energy" was coming from; in the "HD Model," it is not really coming from "3-Space" at all - but literally from "a higher dimensional reality," made available in this dimension (as a propagating torsion field distortion - see Chapter 2 in Dark Mission...) via "physical rotation of mass..."

The act of mere "rotation" - in the HD Model - literally "opens a type of 'gate,' or 'geometric doorway...'" between other dimensions...

Intriguingly enough, our decades-old debates also now provided another (actually, "collateral"...) explanation for Explorer I's "orbital over-performance"...


 

DePalma proposed, as a result of his wide-ranging rotational experiments, that "rotating masses" in general set up some kind of hitherto unrecognized "inertial field" in their vicinity (the more widely-used term for this field now, because of how it's accessed, is a "torsion field" - because "torsion" means literally "rotation").

DePalma's exhaustive measurements (like the famous "Accutron Experiment" - below) eventually revealed that this "torsion field" was "anisotropic," i.e. it was NOT spherical (like a gravitational or electromagnetic "bubble," decreasing sharply in intensity with distance...) - but seemed to have radically different effects, and different geometric properties, depending on the geometric relationship and orientation of the detecting sensor to the axial spin of the object being measured.

This new "spin field" (another term now in use...) seemed to be, as scientists term it, polarized...

What this means is simple.

If measured along the rotational axis (as seen in the diagram - above)... this "torsion field" from the resulting rotation seemed to increase the inertia of other moving objects (such as the tuning fork inside the Accutron); but, if the watch was rotated 90 degrees (below) - into the plane of the masses rotation - the Accutron's tuning fork inertia abruptly decreased...!

Again, these differences - measured "within the spin field" - were NOT slight... or ambiguous.

A 1000-second measurement period (~17 minutes...) produced almost a full second (0.9 sec) lag in the Accutron's previous time setting; the normal drift rate of the watch - as measured by DePalma before and after each experimental "run" - was about 0.25 second per a four hour period...

The effect of a nearby, rotationally generated "inertial field" on the Accutron's vibrating tuning fork - a field created solely by spinning a ~30-lb aluminum/steel disc, at almost 8000 rpm - was definitely NOT "buried in the noise!"

As can also be seen in the above diagram, because the research of DePalma's "Simularity Institute" was not funded by "lavish government grants or major corporate donations...", sometime the measurement technologies were ingenuously "improvised."

Unable to afford expensive "electronic frequency counters" to measure the actual vibrations of the Accutron tuning fork, DePalma did the next best thing with what he had; he physically attached the Accutron watch to the face of an electrically-driven "Westclock" (fed by 60 cycle, "AC line current" from the wall).

He then measured the "time drift" of the Accutron, compared to the clock, by physically synchronizing the two sweep second hands - the Accutron's and the Westclock's - and then measuring how far apart their angular positions were when a ~1000-second "rotor run" was finished!

Decades later, in 2004, I decided that Bruce's elegant Accutron-based "inertial field detector" - if upgraded with a laptop and a "computerized, crystal frequency calibration system" (easily affordable now...) - would be the perfect sensor for a variety of HD "torsion field" experiments and measurements for Enterprise.

Combining two previous experiments - DePalma's Accutron detection of the "spin field" around a massive, spinning laboratory disc, and Maurice Allais' detection (with a paraconical pendulum) of equally "anomalous pendulum effects during the 1954 solar eclipse" (see Part I) - I decided to attempt detection of potential "torsion/HD effects" (if any!) generated from the impending Earth-Venus-Sun alignment during the rare "Venus Transit" - to take place on June 8, 2004 (below).

This is an event, which happens only in "pairs" (separated by 8 years every 122 years ..!) - where Venus comes directly between the Earth and Sun... essentially, a tiny, tiny "partial solar eclipse" - caused by the shadowed side of a planet that's almost the twin of Earth moving in-between these two other celestial bodies...

A friend and colleague, Bill Alek - an electrical engineer and computer systems expert, as well as an Enterprise Associate - professionally assembled the required equipment for our "Venus Transit Experiment" (see schematic - below).

He even included ~150 feet of electrically shielded cable, to isolate the Accutron from the quartz-crystal time standard (and the laptop) we were using to gauge (to millions of times DePalma's own measurement precision!) the Accutron's inertially-induced, potential tuning fork vibration changes... during the actual Transit.

Bill's system (as you'll see...) worked perfectly.

We decided to choose as our Transit location, southeast Florida's famed "Coral Castle" (an entire story in itself!). We chose the Castle, in part, because toward the very end of this particular Transit, as Venus was about to leave the disc of the Sun... the Sun itself would rise (for us...) over the Atlantic Ocean horizon!

And physical sunrise - according to our previous hyperdimensional calculations - was a particularly propitious time to be measuring the possible "torsion alignment effects" of the Sun... "rising over the eastern horizon of a spinning Earth."

To make a LONG story shorter... the torsion/HD effects of Venus - as it was physically departing the western edge of the Sun (as seen in the Florida sky at dawn...) - were simply astonishing (below)!

Based on the major frequency "jump" of the Accutron tuning fork occurring EXACTLY at the moment of 3^rd Contact (when Venus' edge just "kissed" the Sun's western limb - above) - from ~360 hertz (cycles per second) to 364.5 hertz - the extrapolated daily acceleration of the Accutron at that rate was about twelve minutes per day!

For a watch normally rated (by Bulova) as "... accurate to a minute a month."

Clearly... unquestionably... "something" had reached out from Venus at the precise moment it was geometrically projected against the visible edge of our closest star - when, remember, Venus was ~25 million miles away from Earth - and (somehow!) "touched " our little Accutron detector... with an inertial change to its tuning fork fully one sixth of the same effect DePalma had previously measured... when the watch was mere inches from a massive ~30-lb steel/aluminum disc, spinning at 7600 rpm, in his lab!

Venus and the Sun - by means of their own extraordinary masses and separate, but reversed, rotations (Venus spins backwards, remember...) - were obviously creating their own extraordinarily powerful, interfering "torsional fields" - just as we predicted!!

Which (from the frequency plot - above) were clearly able to send successive, "interfering waves" of torsion (note the descending, "bell-like ringing"... as Venus fully "cleared" the Sun) to visibly interact with, and change the inertia of, the tiny tuning fork inside our Accutron!

It was an extraordinary and startling scientific moment of discovery - a clear, measurable demonstration of the reality of DePalma's rotationally-induced "inertial/torsion fields." But, more than that, it was a vivid confirmation that outside the lab... celestial "planetary alignments" of major members of the solar system (Hyperdimensional Astrology, anyone...?) can and do have extremely powerful - and physically measurable - effects on Earth...

If you have the correct physics model... and the right detection equipment!

As I watched the Sun rise over the edge of the Atlantic - with tiny Venus (remember, the size of the Earth ..!) just dimpling its western edge, and, unbelievingly, simultaneously watched the computer screen trace the invisible "torsion field" interactions between Venus and the Sun at that same moment - I couldn't help but wonder...

"What would Bruce think about this amazing confirmation?!"

DePalma had a quirky sense of humor, perhaps best revealed by his naming of this mysterious "inertial field"... the "OD field."

Thinking of DePalma at that remarkable moment, I couldn't help but also think "how odd... that he's not here to share this."


 

However, as Depalma had observed himself years before, the resulting influence of these "OD field" effects - be it from spinning laboratory discs... rotating planets... and even massive stars (!) - is NOT limited to mechanical objects, like "tuning forks"...

As he noted...

"...the effect of a field which confers inertia on objects immersed within it can be applied to a number of [other] situations, not all of which have to be mechanical, i.e. chemical reactions are [also measurably] affected by such a field. Reactions which do not take place under 'normal' conditions may be catalyzed. Other reactions may be inhibited..."

Returning us to the problem of von Braun's "anomaly."

Confirmation of DePalma's projected "OD field chemical effect" (to use his term...) raised the fascinating prospect that the physical act of rotating those upper rocket stages of the Jupiter-C had also, somehow, altered the physical chemistry of the solid rockets in those upper stages! This, in turn, could have markedly increased the efficiency of their previously estimated thrust and/or ISP!

More precisely...

That their physical rotation (ala DePalma...) had significantly altered what was occurring at the moment of ignition - by triggering a fundamental enhancement of the rockets' chemical reactions... during the actual burning of the solid propellants!

Remember DePalma's previous analysis, that,

"...the behavior of rotating objects is explained simply on the addition of free energy to whatever motion the rotating object is [already] making..."?

What if, as DePalma theorized, this fundamental "free energy" addition also extended down to the atomic and molecular levels?! What if the "addition of energy" - to whatever motions are occurring within "the OD field" of a rotating system - also automatically enhances the thermodynamic efficiency of reactions occurring at the molecular and atomic levels in that system!?

In other words:

what if the sheer rotation of those solid-propellant upper stages, by being enveloped in their own "OD field," substantially increased their ISPs... and thus, their effective thrust efficiencies?!!

Could "Von Braun's Secret" that night have involved far more than just a blatant violation of "Newton's Laws..." (as serious as that obviously was...) caused by an inertial change in those upper stages created by "rotation?" Could "the Secret" also have encompassed an almost trivial means of tapping directly into unlimited "free energy" for ANY chemical reaction - by the simple act of rotation...?

As should be readily apparent to anyone thinking deeply about all this, von Braun himself clearly (if inadvertently) had tripped over "a vast source of free energy in space..." - simply in those mysteriously enlarged "satellite orbits" - regardless of the details of how he actually did it... which "they," for obvious reasons (Big Oil, anyone?), immediately suppressed...

Imagine what the world would look like now... in 2008 - half a century after these historic events... if, instead of being immediately hidden, this extraordinary discovery had been triumphantly announced within a few days by the Eisenhower White House... and then, made openly available to scientists and engineers around the world... even in the former Soviet Union.

Would we even recognize our planet now...?


 

With our clear identification of Explorer I's "non-Newtonian anomalies" as being due to the rotation of the launch vehicle's solid-rocket stages, the celestial-mechanics "fix" for future US space missions - including the Apollo Program - was as simple as it was obvious: DON'T rotate!

So, the fascinating question then becomes: "when" did von Braun and JPL also come to this critical conclusion?

In other words, when did they "figure out" (regarding Newton's Laws...) what Bruce DePalma, independently, would also realize through experiment... two decades later?

"The fact that Newton’s Laws do not distinguish between the spinning and the non-rotating object represents the state of mechanical knowledge at the time. But because Newton did not distinguish between rotation and non-rotation, Einstein did not distinguish between the so-called inert and 'gravitational mass.' The fact that rotation affects the mechanical properties of objects places Newton’s Laws as a special case and invalidates a geometrical [Einsteinian] interpretation of space.

"… in a strict sense, the precise application of Newton’s laws [based on these experiments] … have to be restricted to non-rotating mechanical objects in field-free space. In a gravitational field, the possibility of extraction of greater energy by a new mechanical dimension [rotation] opens up the possibility [against both Newton and Einstein] of an anti-gravitational interaction...”
 

"Gravity & The Spinning Ball Experiment"
Bruce DePalma
Simularity Institute

March 17, 1977

So, von Braun and Pickering eventually realized that, if you wanted a spacecraft to follow predictable Newtonian celestial mechanics - in Earth orbit... going to the Moon... or traveling anywhere Beyond..., rule One - don't let it rotate!

As we described in Part I, this now explains JPL's (as viewed at the time...) "highly risky sudden spacecraft engineering decisions..." to abandon well-tested spinning system concepts (used in JPL's previous Explorer series...), and to severely "push the envelope" - to embark on a radically new type of spacecraft construction... pioneered in (what would soon become...) "the ill-fated, problem-plagued, Ranger Lunar Program":

A Program attempting to make available to US space planners, for the first time "...a three-axis, non-rotating, fully stabilized spacecraft design."

Seen against the serious space navigation problems of the "non-Newtonian anomaly" (that JPL was also obviously racing the clock to try to "figure out"), this risky engineering decision, in hindsight, now makes perfect sense.

So, the question looms... again:

"when did JPL first realize that rotation was 'the enemy?'"

To answer that key question, we must go back once more in time... to before the shock of Sputnik.

 

Bill Pickering was named Director of JPL in 1954.

Immediately upon Pickering's appointment, as part of his own long-term agenda to turn JPL "into the premiere space laboratory in the world..." the new Director began pushing a plan to the Pentagon (the only agency funding "space" in those pre-Sputnik days...) for an unmanned lunar probe, called "Project Red Socks" (and, try as I might, I cannot find out where this name originated! As an emigrated New Zealander, I'm convinced Pickering was NOT a fan of "a certain Boston baseball team..." so, the origin of this proposed name remains... obscure).

In an era when the idea of just launching "a satellite into orbit... " was viewed by Washington as "still one step removed from science fiction..." (remember, this is why the "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" - which never built a "jet," but designed only rockets in its early years - decided to use the more "acceptable" designation "jet" in all its contracts with the Army...)...

Pickering's idea went... nowhere.

Then... Sputnik happened.

Pickering promptly resubmitted "Project Red Socks" (which, by then, had morphed into an entire "JPL unmanned lunar program...") to the Pentagon.

Again, it went nowhere...

Until... months later... the newly-formed ARPA suddenly latched onto the idea, renamed it "Project Pioneer," and split the program (and the contracts) between the US Air Force and the US Army (with JPL getting the job of building the Army's lunar version...).

What's fascinating about "Red Socks" is how Pickering was originally proposing to send an unmanned spacecraft to the Moon... and get it back.

For, in his design, the spacecraft was to carry a high-quality reconnaissance camera loaded with film (no "television")... which would loop around the Moon (red line - below), acquiring photographic-quality images of the entire "hidden side"... before physically returning to Earth, reentering... and then being retrieved - so that the film could be developed and physically examined at JPL!

(Two decades later, the Soviets would do EXACTLY that... with Zond 5, in late 1968. And - they'd use "Eastman Kodak film" to do it!)

Pickering built his proposal around von Braun's parallel development (discussed earlier...) of a "survivable reentry vehicle" for a nuclear warhead, yet to be tested (in 1954) by a Jupiter-C IRBM (below).

This indicates the extremely close working relationship between Bill Pickering and Wernher von Braun, long before Sputnik and Explorer (note the 11 Sergeant rockets visible in this photograph, down through the holes in the top of the Jupiter-C's rotating "tub" - just below the one-third scale model of the reentry vehicle itself).

However, there was one major detail about "Project Red Socks" which, in hindsight, could make one question what von Braun and JPL really knew about the entire "non-Newtonian anomaly"... and, when they knew it.

This detail centers on that fact that, if it had been funded, Pickering's "Red Socks" proposal would have encountered exactly the same "non-Newtonian problem"... and for exactly the same reasons... as Explorer, Vanguard and Pioneer...

For..., as you can see from this artist's concept (below), the Red Socks design also featured "a ring of solid-fueled rockets, surrounding a single upper stage..." - to which the camera-carrying lunar spacecraft would have been attached...

EXACTLY...

Like the later Explorer I and Pioneer Jupiter-C configurations - with their own "spinning upper stages," and "spacecraft bolted to the final rocket!"

Here (below ) is the startling visual comparison; on the right, Bill Pickering (in 1992), holding a plexiglass model of Explorer I.

In the background of the same photograph (to his left - with cylindrical housing removed...), a scale model of the upper stage "spinning tub" of von Braun's Jupiter-C satellite launcher, with the Explorer satellite attached.

Note again, the circular placement of the 11 "cut-down Sergeant rockets" of the second stage, and the conical housing of the third stage (hiding its three additional cut-down Sergeants) protruding from their center... to attach points on the solitary fourth stage - with the (thermally-striped) model of Explorer I on top.

The comparison graphic (below-left) is Pickering's earlier "'Red Socks' upper stage and lunar probe configuration..."

Eerie...

Pickering was (obviously) "playing to JPL's own unique history" with his 1954 proposal - the solid rockets that, up until that point, had formed the foundation of JPL's entire reputation... the solid rockets that Jack Parson's had successfully created, decades earlier... for a laboratory which (some still insist...) actually bears the initials of his name, because of that singular, far-reaching contribution to the American space program...

And, though it's not overtly stated by any sources I could find, Pickering's plan to use an array of these solid rockets to send a camera to the Moon would have automatically demanded that they also spin - otherwise, the unbalanced thrust of their individual variations (as we have seen...) would have sent the proposed lunar spacecraft careening wildly off-course... the same reason that the upper stages of the Jupiter-C (and the Juno-2 lunar version...) also had to spin.

But, looking at these (essentially...) identical upper stage configurations, I couldn't help but wonder once again...

"What did Bill Pickering (or, his JPL engineers...) really know - and when did they first know know it... about the other effects of such an upper stage rotation?"

For, while working on ever larger versions of Jack Parson's solid-fuel rockets after WWII (below), even then some JPL engineers were looking upward... toward the Moon...

"... the most famous JPL product of that time was a small-scale prototype of Corporal called WAC Corporal (Without Attitude Control), some of which were used as a second stage of [the] V-2, reaching altitudes of more than 400 km and inaugurating, on [sic] 1950, the Atlantic coast missile range which became the Cape Canaveral 'spaceport.'

 

While working on this historic project, some laboratory engineers calculated, as a joke, that by using the full scale Corporal missile and a cluster of anti-aircraft Loki solid-fueled rockets, it was possible to hurl to the Moon... an empty beer can!"

With a spinning upper stage configuration, as we now know, that "empty beer can" easily could have grown... into a full-fledged camera-laden mission!

So, when did Pickering first realize that the "secret" to significantly increasing the ISP efficiency of his JPL solid-fueled rockets (and thus, their payloads) was just... to "spin them!?"

And - when did he first tip off von Braun...?

From the "spinning technology" of the mysterious Nazi Bell, to the "spinning upper stages" of Pickering's aborted "Project Red Socks," to Pickering's extension of that same "spinning technology" to the upper stages of von Braun's own Jupiter-C launch vehicle itself... rotation seemed to professionally surround von Braun at every turn (sorry...).

Yet, after the startling anomalies of Explorer I, von Braun himself seemed profoundly shocked, if not genuinely confused, by the dynamical behavior he was observing. What did he do then?; he began secretly writing to key experts around the world, to anyone who might have a clue as what had really caused Explorer I's (to him...) "inexplicable behavior."

Not exactly the actions of "someone in the know."'

So, did either of them - Pickering or von Braun - know, before Explorer I, what was really going on?

In my professional opinion - based on this extensive research into von Braun's actions following Explorer's launch (and Pickering's equally documentable, independent, Herculean efforts to overcome - with an entirely new type of spacecraft - the "non-Newtonian anomaly" in the wake of Explorer I...)..., no... neither man... knew anything!

Life is simply full of "irony and strange (some might even say 'hyperdimensional') coincidences..."

The fact that Pickering's "rotating solid-rockets" were the only available means - both to an early satellite launch into Earth orbit, and to early efforts to send a US spacecraft to the Moon, and, that in order for them to work as advertised, they had to spin - is, in my opinion, just exactly that:

A remarkable... almost providential... historical... coincidence.

The fact is that von Braun had to choose Pickering's "rotating, solid-rockets"... if he wanted, at that point of US technological development, to successfully launch anything!

And, if all this hadn't been just "sheer coincidence"... JPL wouldn't have immediately undertaken the almost impossible task of creating an entirely new space technology, after Explorer I - a non-rotating lunar and planetary spacecraft "bus."

And, von Braun wouldn't have held out for four full years (as we noted in Part I), before suddenly, without any prior warning, reversing his previous position and approving "LOR" for the Apollo Program... after he (we believe, from all the evidence) finally got the word that JPL had "fixed" the "non-Newtonian problem."

However, all that said... it is this remarkable set of "conspiring coincidences" that has now given us a stunning new set of blatant clues - "...those mysteriously enlarged, totally revealing, satellite orbits of the Earth..." (that no one can successfully suppress much longer) to the almost unlimited potential for HD Physics... right here on Earth...

To truly change the world...


 

So, just how certain am I that these remarkable HD "rotational effects" can now account for the all flagrant Explorer, Vanguard and Pioneer satellite anomalies?...

About ninety-nine percent...

Because..., there were subsequent instances of these same "HD rotational effects" observed in the continuing Explorer Program, which reinforces the idea that it was also due to this same "anomalous physics"...

George Ludwig - Van Allen's chief assistant (and designer of all the electronics for the radiation detectors carried in the Explorer spacecraft) - wrote a remarkable personal description of one fascinating... and now quite telling... subsequent "incident." It is clear, however, that he too obviously had no idea what he was actually witnessing...

Wrote Ludwig:

"... my Journal also reported... the most serious problem from my point of view... the difficulty in commanding playback of the [spacecraft's on-board] tape recorder. When the spin-up of the upper rocket stages was started at X-11 minutes, the recorder operated normally at first. But by the time the spin rate reached 550 revolutions per minute (out of 750 rpm needed for flight) we were unable to get a response from our radio commands for playback. The Launch Director interrupted the spin-up, slowed it down, and then increased the rate gradually. Playback was successful at 450 rpm but not at 500.

"All of this was happening within the final minutes of the countdown, while the rocket sat there fully fueled and ready to go. The pressure for a final go/no-go decision was intense, as further delay would have meant canceling the launch for that evening and recycling for the following day or later. While we held up the launch for 18 minutes, the payload manager, other payload engineers, and I had a spirited discussion, and concluded that the problem was with the on-pad commanding link, not the recorder itself. Specifically, we believed that there was a problem with the grounding path for the interrogating signal, and expected that operation would be normal once the rocket was free of the cluttered pad environment. We all agreed to proceed based on that assessment.

"The official launch time was 1:28 PM, EST on Wednesday, 5 March 1958. Performance of the Redstone first stage booster rocket appeared to be normal throughout its burning. Later analyses indicated that the firing of stages one, two, and three were all normal. However, the fourth stage apparently failed to ignite, for reasons that were never completely determined, and the launch attempt failed. The satellite payload plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean about 1900 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral [emphasis added]..."

By his own admission, Ludwig's dismissal of the pre-launch "tape recorder problem..." - as "merely radio interference from the clutter on the launch pad," exacerbated by the high-pressure "go/no go" pre-launch environment - unfortunately encouraged the collective decision to "just resume the count and launch..." without taking the time to properly analyze the situation.

Which, unfortunately, resulted in the subsequent loss of the entire spacecraft "for reasons that were never completely determined..."

Decades later, through another of his remarkable "rotational experiments," DePalma would (again!) expose the real "HD Physics" behind what likely happened to Explorer II.

Following DePalma's many experiments - that had increasingly verified the existence of a remarkable, uniquely geometric "OD field" around all massive, spinning objects (and even small ones...) - DePalma naturally began to wonder about the effects of such an "inertial field" on non-mechanical systems... specifically, on complex electronics... like "an off-the-shelf FM stereo receiver" (below).

Here's DePalma's description of an experiment he neatly carried out, to determine what those effects actually might be...

"... because of the uniqueness of the [OD field] behavior, corroboration [of an electronic effect] was attempted in the form of an experiment to alter the tuning of a radio-frequency circuit oscillating at 106 megacycles [megahertz]. The expected effect did indeed take place with a frequency shift measured to be about 2500 cycles [2.5 parts in 10(5)] relative to an oscillator located remotely at a distance of 70 miles and communicated to it by radio [emphasis added]..."
 

"Simularity: a New Theory of Physical Phenomena"
Bruce DePalma
Simularity Institute

June 15, 1973

The results of DePalma's "inertial field radio experiment" are illustrated below.

The frequency plot of the received FM signal, when the ~30-lb, aluminum/steel disc was NOT rotating, is displayed as the essentially horizontal "noisy" white line on the bottom of the graph (lower right). The frequency of the received signal when the disc was spinning (at ~8000 rpm...) is displayed in yellow (upper right).

An artistic rendition of the FM transmitter is on the left.

The fact that the distantly transmitted signal (when the receiver was "within the field" of the rotating disc in Depalma's lab) seemed to have a semi-regular "frequency periodicity," indicated that the generation of an "OD field" by physical rotation was also NOT a "static phenomenon"... but seemed to have multiple, drifting, interfering frequency components of its own - which resonated (in some, still undetermined fashion...) with the receiver's own electrically resonant circuits...

Exactly like what we saw - when measuring (with the Accutron...) the "OD field" from Venus, "interfering with" (modulating...) the Sun's much greater "OD field" (below)!

DePalma (remember, an MIT/Harvard electrical engineer...) described his first impressions of the "radio shift experiment," based on the "variable inertia" model, thus...

"...the radio frequency shift experiment demonstrates the existence of a phenomena, created here on Earth, which can alter the frequency of an oscillating circuit, independent of any electro-magnetic interaction. The phenomena of electrical resonance is created through the interaction of inductance and capacitance existing in what are known as lumped circuit elements.

 

As these are real physical objects, we should expect that any field or effect which altered the inertial properties of the materials from which these are made would affect the frequency of vibratory electrical resonance..."

Later, as we have seen, DePalma rethought some of these initial assumptions - and moved from "the OD field/torsion field creates a true variable inertia in physical objects," to a model which invoked the field's ability "to channel energy from the vacuum" (hyperspace!) into existing energy processes already occurring in these 3-D objects...

In that model, the effect of the "rotational OD field" on the stereo receiver's circuits could be viewed as directly altering either their voltage, reactance or amperage (or, all three!)... leading, in the end, to the same rhythmic, resonant frequency changes that were observed...

Whatever the ultimate physical process (and, unfortunately, DePalma never had adequate resources to determine what that might have been...) the fact that an "OD field" - from an EM shielded, spinning laboratory disc - could significantly affect the electrical circuitry of an off-the-shelf stereo receiver placed within mere proximity, has extraordinary, far-reaching implications...

Including... for the failed attempt to launch Explorer II!

Clearly, Ludwig's Journal description of what occurred, as "the tub" was gradually spun up to its rated "750 rpm for flight," and the failure of the tape recorder (newly added for this mission) radio commanding circuits suddenly occurred "above 500 rpm..." is compelling evidence that it was the ROTATION of "the tub" which (somehow...) was "the problem."

However, completely lacking ANY appropriate physical theory (unlike us...) as to how a physically rotating set of rockets could possibly affect the radio circuits of the Explorer II spacecraft, the Launch Director (with Ludwig's grudging concurrence...) decided to proceed..., with the unfortunate, disastrous consequences.

It doesn't take much extrapolation from DePalma's historic "radio frequency experiment" - carried out within the powerful torsion field of his rotating laboratory disc - to envision what happened to Explorer II; somehow, the "torsion field" created by the spinning "tub" above 500 rpm, altered the electrical properties of the on-board tape recorder radio circuits just enough... to interfere with their ability to carry information reliably to and from the ground.

Unknown to the launch team, these same "inertial field effects" likely were ALSO interfering simultaneously with the firing circuits of the fourth stage itself [perhaps, because of physical proximity of both sets of the wires leading to the tape recorder in the satellite, which (remember) was physically bolted to the top of the fourth stage]!

Clearly, in light of DePalma's definitive radio experiment (and at a frequency only slightly different than Explorer's 108 megahertz!), the evidence is heavily in favor of "an HD Physics cause" for the subsequent inability of Explorer II to successfully reach orbit...

The first compelling case for a truly "hyperdimensional failure" in the US space program!


 

Which brings us to the little matter of "the Soviets."

Unlike the Americans, because the USSR was using BIG converted ICBMS (Korolyov's "R-7" boosters - below) to put their "several-thousand-pound satellites" into Earth orbit [or to send their first, almost half ton (!) unmanned lunar probes toward the Moon], they didn't have to rely on "marginal clusters of solid rockets" in the final stages, to "barely put up a few-pounds..."

Ergo... they didn't have to spin their boosters!

So, why - with a liquid fueled (kerosene and liquid oxygen), non-spinning "Block E" third stage - weighing over a ton itself, and directed to the Moon by a set of sophisticated "state-of-the-art, radio interferometry navigation beams" from Earth...

Why, with all that going for them... did the Soviets still miss the Moon on their first try by those "~3700 miles!?"

And why, ten months later... did they then "get it right" (somehow) and squarely hit it?

The answer to that fascinating question which, on the face of it, would seem to undercut our entire thesis in this paper - that, to invoke HD Physics and the "non-Newtonian anomaly" in celestial navigation, requires that some part of the booster rocket spin...

Is, in fact, the visible exception... "that proves the rule."

Because, again - drawing on the actual HD experiments conducted by DePalma - we've even been able to figure out the answer to that mysterious little Cold War question:

The key to solving this remaining "celestial-mechanics mystery" is in this little gem from Bruce DePalma, once again...

"...mechanical energy of motion, stored in the created inertial property, od, appears as an inertial field. This inertial field has the property of conferring inertia on surrounding material objects - and a reduction in the frequency of oscillating electrical circuits placed in the vicinity of the energized machine..."

Think.

Even in non-rotating spacecraft... in their boosters... in their "instrument units"... what is the one thing which is always rotating - even if the vehicles do not.

The gyroscopes.

All spacecraft (and their associated launch vehicles...) have to have a number of whirling gyroscopes in their on-board "inertial navigation systems." These devices literally steer the vehicles, providing on-board 3-D coordinates for ground-based navigation and (along with other on-board devices, called "accelerometers") provide absolutely critical reference points for any spacecraft trying to reach any distant destination...

The gyros always have to spin!

Back to DePalma...

"…the [inertial altering, OD field] effect is roughly proportional to the radius and mass [of the rotating object] … and to the square of the rotational speed...”

So, if you have a big "dumb" object - like a main stage booster, or a set of upper stages - and you spin them... you get a certain "OD Effect," depending on how fast they rotate.

But, if you have a set of tiny, low mass objects - the gyroscopes in the on-board inertial navigation systems - but you spin them "like the proverbial bat out of hell..." you can get a MUCH greater proportional effect..., because - their individual torsion fields are directly proportional to the square of their individual rates of spin!

The key is in DePalma's crucial observation,

"...this inertial field has the property of conferring inertia on surrounding material objects."

What happened to the Soviets was elemental:

The torsion fields of the internal, spinning gyroscopes - rotating upwards of ~100,000 rpm - conferred their torsion field effects to the larger vehicle... causing it to drift off a "straight Newtonian trajectory"... across ~240,000 miles... by just enough to miss the Moon by that "... 3700 miles."

By Luna-2 (ten months later...) the Soviets had obviously "figured this out"... and, made the appropriate "mid-course corrections" enroute to the Moon.

Which then allowed them, to hit the Moon "dead on!"

Which leaves only the future technological effects of this extraordinary discovery on the quietly developing private space programs trying to "get off the ground" - Burt Rutan, Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk, etc., etc., etc.

And, how this same technology can also now be used to dramatically improve the "everyday lives" of everyone on Earth!