GLTRS--Glenn
TITLE AND SUBTITLE:
Study of Vacuum Energy Physics for Breakthrough Propulsion

AUTHOR(S):
G. Jordan Maclay, Jay Hammer, Rod Clark, Michael George, Yeong Kim, and Asit Kir

REPORT DATE:
October 2004

FUNDING NUMBERS:
WBS-22-62-949-10-01
NAS3-00093

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES):
Quantum Fields LLC
20876 Wildflower Lane
Richland Center, Wisconsin 53581

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NUMBER:
E-14771

SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES):
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, DC 20546-0001

REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED:
Final Contractor Report

SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY REPORT NUMBER:
NASA CR-2004-213311

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES:
G. Jordan Maclay, Quantum Fields LLC, 20876 Wildflower Lane, Richland Center, Wisconsin 53581; Jay Hammer and Rod Clark, MEMS Optical, Inc., 205 Import Circle, Huntsville, Alabama 35806; and Michael George, Yeong Kim, and Asit Kir, University of Alabama, 301 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, Alabama 35805. Project Manager, Marc G. Millis, Turbomachinery and Propulsion Systems Division, NASA Glenn Research Center, organization code 5870, 216-977-9535.

ABSTRACT:
This report summarizes the accomplishments during a three year research project to investigate the use of surfaces, particularly in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), to exploit quantum vacuum forces. During this project, we developed AFM instrumentation to repeatably measure Casimir forces in the nanoNewton range at 10-6 torr, designed an experiment to measure attractive and repulsive quantum vacuum forces, developed a QED based theory of Casimir forces that includes non-ideal material properties for rectangular cavities and for multilayer slabs, developed theoretical models for a variety of microdevices utilizing vacuum forces, applied vacuum physics to a gedanken spacecraft, and investigated a new material with a negative index of refraction.

SUBJECT TERMS:
Interstellar travel; Spacecraft propulsion; Physics; Gravitation; Antigravity

NUMBER OF PAGES:
54

PDF AVAILABLE FROM URL:
2004/CR-2004-213311.pdf ( 4,367 KB )
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