NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
The Zero-Point Field and the NASA Challenge to Create the Space DriveThis NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop seeks to explore concepts that could someday enable interstellar travel. The effective superluminal motion proposed by Alcubierre (1994) to be a possibility owing to theoretically allowed space-time metric distortions within general relativity has since been shown by Pfenning and Ford (1997) to be physically unattainable. A number of other hypothetical possibilities have been summarized by Millis (1997). We present herein an overview of a concept that has implications for radically new propulsion possibilities and has a basis in theoretical physics: the hypothesis that the inertia and gravitation of matter originate in electromagnetic interactions between the zero-point field (ZPF) and the quarks and electrons constituting atoms. A new derivation of the connection between the ZPF and inertia has been carried through that is properly co-variant, yielding the relativistic equation of motion from Maxwell's equations. This opens new possibilities, but also rules out the basis of one hypothetical propulsion mechanism: Bondi's "negative inertial mass," appears to be an impossibility.
Document ID
19990023211
Acquisition Source
Headquarters
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Haisch, Bernhard
(Lockheed Martin Corp. Palo Alto, CA United States)
Rueda, Alfonso
(California State Univ. Long Beach, CA United States)
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1999
Publication Information
Publication: NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings
Subject Category
Thermodynamics And Statistical Physics
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NASw-5050
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
No Preview Available