American inventor who discovered in the 1920s that high voltage applied to asymmetric capacitors produces thrust with no fuel, no exhaust, and no propellant: the Biefeld-Brown Effect. His work specifically involved Bismuth. The Hunt for Zero Point takes the claim that the B-2 flies on a Brown-derived antigravity drive seriously, tests it against engineering and against pilots, and dismantles it; what survives is electrostatic charging for radar signature, drag and lift.
Key claim
A physicist at Martin Corporation’s RIAS research institute, Louis Witten, recalled in a 2011 American Institute of Physics oral history: “There’s a guy named Townsend who claimed to have an isotope of bismuth that repelled instead of attracted.”
Modern revival
Charles Buhler, a NASA electrostatics scientist at Kennedy Space Center, runs experiments in Brown’s lineage through his private company, Exodus Propulsion Technologies, not at NASA. By his account the team started in 2016 at Brown’s 150,000 V, now runs at about 400 V, has reached about 50 mN with thrusters stacked, and tests in hard vacuum, which he says rules out ion wind.
Connections
Biefeld-Brown Effect · Bismuth · Charles Buhler · Bob Lazar · Anti-Gravity · Electret · The Hunt for Zero Point · 1956 Antigravity Press Window · Agnew Bahnson · Cady ONR Report 1952