Athanassios Nassikas Crowd Funding for Thruster
Dear Friends,
I am writing to call your attention to an interesting research project planned by one of our members, whom I have known for many years, Professor Athanassios Nassikas of the Technological Educational Institute of Thessaly in Larissa, Greece (retired). I’m writing to you because I think many of you may be interested to help out on his research project. He is planning to build and test a novel superconducting levitation thruster technology that he has invented which if it works has the potential to completely transform society for the better. Astrophysicist Dr. Paul LaViolette, who is mentioned in our data base, has created an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign, accessible at: https://igg.me/at/levitation-thruster, to help raise money for Dr. Nassikas’ research project. At this link, you can view an 11 minute video about this amazing new technology and also read an accompanying story about it. After learning about it, I would encourage you to make a contribution to their fund raising campaign, to help them reach their $32,000 goal, which is the amount they will need to build and test their new thruster prototype. Any amount you can donate should help.
Many of you may know that Dr. Nassikas had spoken about his earlier conical superconducting maglev thruster at our 2012 meeting. Many of you may have found his lecture extremely fascinating, particularly given that his invention may have the potential to completely transform the field of space propulsion. Tests showed that this conical maglev thruster, which his group refers to as the Nassikas thruster-I, can deliver 1000 times more thrust per unit mass than the Xenon ion propulsion engine that NASA has used to propel its Dawn spacecraft beyond Mars to Ceres. It is no wonder that one NASA scientist who is involved in the search for advanced innovative concepts has asked them to keep him informed of their progress in its development. What is amazing is that this novel device is able to accomplish its propulsion with absolutely no physical energy input. It just needs to be cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures or below, conditions that are readily available in space behind a sun shield. To say the least, the Nassikas thruster will require that physics undergo a major revision of its laws as applied to superconductors.
But now Dr. Nassikas has come up with an even higher thrust version which he filed a PCT patent application on last month. This second generation thruster, which is termed the Nassikas thruster-II, is essentially a conically shaped superconducting coil and his calculations indicate that it should develop over 30,000 times more thrust than his first version. Hence it should be able to lift heavy payloads off the ground. He has thoroughly researched this thruster design, and has engaged a superconducting coil manufacturer to carry out computer simulations of its electrical and magnetic characteristics. By employing straight forward standard Lorentz force equations commonly used by physicists and superconducting coil designers, they find that this special conical design should develop a tremendous lift force. In fact, their group estimates that it should be capable of delivering 9 times more thrust, per unit thruster weight, than the Space Shuttle main engine. Given the success of his first maglev conical thruster, and results of these more recent simulations, his group is quite confident that their planned prototype should work as expected and be able to self-levitate off the ground.
Moreover, like his first version, it is predicted to accomplish this feat with essentially no energy input other than what is needed to initially energize the coil. The thruster design is simple and elegant, and many may find all this almost incredible. But, I know most of you will want to learn more about it. The Nassikas thruster-II calls to mind the self-levitating hoverboard in the movie Back to the Future? Who knows, if it works, this invention may make this a real possibility, including even pollution free electrical generators, and spaceships able to travel to the nearest stars. Please take time to read about what they are doing, spread the word to your friends, and post their campaign link on your social media pages. Tell everyone to visit their page: https://igg.me/at/levitation-thruster.
All the best,
Greg Volk
Chapel Natural Philosophy Society
Eagan, MN