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By Hal
McKenzie
While teams throughout the world are competing for the
X-Prize, which awards $10 million for the privately-funded
team that first lofts three people 62 miles above the earth
and returns them safely, one American company is marketing a
design for a craft they claim can take man to the stars
Star-Trek fashion, at "warp speed."
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Artist's conception of Unitel's
starship
| The theoretical physics of
interstellar travel, including wormholes
and antimatter
drive, is already being discussed in scientific journals.
The engineers and scientists at Unitel Northwest in Portland,
OR, have gone beyond the theoretical. They have published
detailed specifications for a craft that would use exotic
quantum physics to "tunnel" its way to distant stars at faster
than light speed.
The technology includes a "smart skin" that acts as an
energy shield to counteract reentry heat and radiation, which
would have saved the Columbia shuttle crew. They are now
looking for investment capital to fund a prototype craft.
According to the company website,
"Unitel, Inc. will provide mankind with the first practical
interstellar transportation system. Based on our patented
laser lens and specifically shaped hull, our aerospace
propulsion system will feature two modes of transportation:
Electromagnetic propulsion, which will be used for short-range
interplanetary travel, while elastic tunneling will allow
interstellar travel throughout the universe."
Unitel calls its craft the "Type VI MOSS Vehicle,"
which stands for Macroscopically Observable Superconductive
State. MOSS "pertains to a system that is observable on a
large-scale, yet bound to the same quantum laws as a subatomic
particle. The fact that atoms or particles can exist on a
macroscopic scale was recently proven with the creation of a
Bose-Einstein condensate, a proven MOSS system."
"Tunneling" occurs at sub-nuclear levels in
semiconductors, nuclear fusion and the tunneling electron
microscope. "Acting as a single giant electron, the Unitel
spaceship will tunnel through the fabric of spacetime to
arrive at a calculated destination. The same distance could
take eons to travel by conventional means. In this manner, our
vehicle will demonstrate superluminal or faster than light
capabilities," the company says.
According to Unitel co-founder and CEO Larry Mauer,
"Both aerospace design and quantum computer design have been
thoroughly reviewed by official technical review teams from
Rolls Royce, Honda R&D, Boeing Aerospace & Electronics
whereby we were given a complete and extremely high rating of
technical approval."
Unitel's ideas have also received some interest in
Europe. The German group DGLR
accepted Unitel's paper "Surface Charged Smart Skin Technology
for Heat Protection and Radiation Screening" to be presented
at the German Aeronautics Congress in Munich from Nov. 17- 20.
The company was also invited by the French aerospace
organization AAAF
to the recent "Vehicle Reentry Alternative" conference and the
forthcoming annual conference in Bremen, Germany. "We can't
understand why the news agencies aren't jumping on a story
about Unitel and its projects that are currently being
offered, which are literally the future of transportation,
communications, computers, medical and industrial advanced
technology," Mauer said.
Based on UFO
It might have something to do with the design's
out-of-this-world origins. According to Mauer, it is based on
actual alien craft he and his friends observed in two
sightings on Oct. 18 and Dec 22, 1981, near Eugene, OR. As an
experienced mechanical draftsman, Mauer produced a drawing of
the craft, while his friend, math teacher Michael Miller, who
is knowledgeable in quantum physics, deduced the physics
behind its operation. In effect, they back-engineered an alien
craft by observation and deduction.
The following account of the sightings is taken from
the upcoming book Flying Colors, written by Mauer and Miller.
"On Sunday Oct. 18, 1981, I was hiking near Mt.
Jefferson with Michael Miller and a couple of friends from
Ohio
It was shortly after nightfall (around 7:30 P.M.) and
there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground. The
evening sky was clear and it was still relatively warm."
Suddenly, they noticed "two flying objects with a single
(strobing) aircraft white light (much like an ordinary
aircraft warning light) approximately 2-3 miles due West,
flying at an altitude of about 10,000 ft., moving in a North
to South direction."
Both objects seemed to project a pair of "solid white
lightning bolts" to the ground, with what they described as a
"light pellet" moving within the two separate streaks of
light. "The streaks of light would shoot straight down,
stopping slightly above the ground.
After a few seconds
the pellets would shoot back up to the vehicle flying
overhead. Both craft repeated the process several times."
Intrigued by this strange show, they started signaling
with flashlights with no response. Then Miller tried signaling
in a "Fibonacci sequence," in which each number in the
sequence is the sum of the previous two (1-1-2-3-5-8 etc). It
worked. Right after he signaled, a light pellet came toward
them as the other vehicle continued to perform its maneuvers.
As it approached, it hovered about a half mile away.
Thinking that they had mistakenly hailed a rescue helicopter,
they stopped signaling and continued to hike north towards Mt.
Jefferson and Table Lake. The craft kept pace with them to the
west. It would drop below and then rise above the tree tops,
"as if it were playing some sort of peak-a-boo game with us."
This continued for about 45 minutes.
When the trail dropped off into a steep canyon, the
craft dropped out of sight, then suddenly appeared 180 degrees
due east, one and a half miles away, about ten feet above the
snow. "It was coming directly toward us, 'snaking' back and
forth
At this point none of us thought that the craft was
any type of rescue helicopter
Fear was definitely setting
in."
What occurred next gave Mauer and his friends the shock
of their lives. "The vehicle suddenly and silently 'popped' to
a position ten feet from and directly in front of us.
I felt
as if we were mice and a giant snake just snapped upon us. The
vehicle then 'turned off' its main white light while it
hovered above the snow and an interior light came on as if
someone had opened a car door exposing an interior light. This
revealed the lens which we could see through."
The lens, taking up the front of the craft, was "in
three equal parts, like a Mercedes-Benz emblem with each
one-third part filled with a different color; red, green and
blue. We could see a box inside that looked like a sewing
machine case. The vehicle was tear-drop shaped and its
fuselage appeared to be composed of a whitish colored metal
with a disc-like structure located at its stern. Sparks were
coming off the stern that were orange in color
much like
slag from a welder's arc."
The craft seemed to "quiver with energy" as it silently
hovered just above the snow. After only a few seconds, it flew
up and away slowly and steadily toward Mt. Jefferson and
disappeared in the night sky trailing a shower of sparks.
Mauer later drew a color picture of what he saw, which
the other three agreed was a good rendering of the vehicle. He
then turned the sketch into a detailed set of engineering
drawings.
On Dec. 22, Mauer, his son Jason and Miller went into
Eugene to do last-minute Christmas shopping. On the way back
to his home in Horton, at around 10:30 p.m., he noticed an
orange streak snaking rapidly across the night sky from east
to west, immediately followed by no less than a dozen objects.
"After stopping a couple of times to watch them (half
of them were flying sideways, stopping and hovering, then
zipping off, while the rest were flying back and forth
overhead) we then witnessed the 'mother ship'.
It was quite
large and looked very much like the Goodyear blimp. The
smaller vehicles then flew up to it and began orbiting around
it. We watched it then just raise straight up into space and
disappear." The Jan. 22, 1982 issue of the Eugene
Register-Guard described the incident, which was witnessed by
several thousand people.
Mauer and Miller then began to take regular trips to
the University of Oregon library to try and understand how the
UFO worked. Miller understood quantum physics while Mauer
worked for engineering firms as a draftsman, which enabled him
to put what he saw and Miller's scientific knowledge together
in engineering terms. "We deduced that the vehicle must have
been flying in an enclosed projected plasma field when it
popped in front of us," he wrote, otherwise it "would have
knocked us over from the wind."
In 1982, they formed Unitel North West, Inc. Over the
years, with the advice of several scientists, they refined
their design six times, gaining supporters and financial
support along the way. With Type V, in 1986 they were awarded
a U.S. patent.
One of their advisors was Arnold C. Limberg, who had
retired from Hughes Electronics and had been supervising
engineer in charge of the Apollo 11 Moon mission and "Project
Big Bird" spy satellite. They retained Ken Schumann of
Affiliated Inventors, Portland, OR, to assist with the patent
application. They also acquired political assistance from Sen.
Mark O. Hatfield.
They also corresponded with Prof. Gerard t'Hooft,
University of Utrecht, Netherlands, a Nobel Prize winner in
physics. They presented their Type IV design to Dr. Rudolph C.
Hwa, director of the Institute of Theoretical Science.
Hwa "really tore our design to pieces," Mauer wrote.
"He pointed out many flaws and then followed up with an
official letter. At the end of the meeting Michael and I hung
our heads in sorrow." Hwa then told them the design might work
if they could use a special type of lens.
Based on Hwa's ideas, "The lens will be made of
alternating layers of Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) and Cadmium
Telluride (CdTe:Te), using a crystal growth technique termed
molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)," Mauer wrote.
In 1987 they realized that they could store, retrieve
and send information in the laminated laser lens, in effect
forming "an optical quantum computer whereby we could store
information using holograms and apply superposition and
quantum entanglement in our proposed design. Hence we then had
two products from the generic version of our patented laser
system," he said.
While their design has met with skepticism, even
ridicule, from U.S. sources, new scientific studies keep
backing up their design. For example, recent
scientific papers regarding light and lasers "gives us
absolute credibility and validates our proposed laser system
which has received a U.S. and Japanese patents," Mauer said.
"One would think that we have the most important
discovery or design ever in the history of mankind and that we
should get top attention and receive immediate funding to
build and test prototypes," Mauer said. Instead, "We have all
the respect and recognition as a feasible aerospace propulsion
system" in Europe, "but not here in the U.S. with NASA and the
Department of Defense."
Mauer's quest also played havoc with his family life,
which he describes in Flying Colors as leading to his divorce.
He has also endured ridicule from Department of Defense
officials, neighbors and acquaintances.
The conceptual details of the spacecraft are spelled
out in Mauer and Miller's book, Quantum Electromagnetic Laser
Propulsion ($39.95). A review of the book in Tripod.com's
"Warp Drive Today" section written by Edward Halerewicz,
Jr., faults some of the book's physics as based on conjecture.
It says, however, "it is a good read for the futurist
or those interested in advanced space technology in general.
Current models for aerospace propulsion are based off
reactionary physics, including solar sails and anti-matter
rockets, so the fact that it gets off that point makes it well
worth the read. Most of the background science is explained
along with figures and references are given, making it
understandable to a general audience so that is a plus."
The review concludes that the book "does explain an
alternative propulsion system in depth far better than any
book on interstellar travel to date. At the very least it
might provide an insight to the future of space travel beyond
rocket technology."
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