American aerospace engineer, head of Advanced Programs and vice president in charge of the G-Project at Martin Aircraft in 1956, and the single figure on whom The Hunt for Zero Point turns. Quoted that year saying the conquest of gravity “could be done in about the time it took to build the first atom bomb,” he left Martin for NASA in 1967 as director of the Advanced Manned Missions Program. When Nick Cook approached him in retirement through Lockheed Martin’s press office roughly forty years later, Trimble first agreed to an interview and then refused; the intermediary’s report, that “he sounded scared and I don’t like to hear old men scared,” is the anecdote the book is built around. Cook records in his epilogue that the reasons for the refusal remain unclear and may be entirely innocent.
Connections
The Hunt for Zero Point · Nick Cook · 1956 Antigravity Press Window · Lawrence D. Bell