This is a transcription of a video-conference interview with Dr. MARC MILLIS Project Manager, NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project conducted on April 27, 2001 by the class members of STS497 I, "Space Colonization"; Intructor: Dr. Chris Churchill; technical aspects of conference call by Bob Jones; location: Wartik 108 at Penn State. Video transcription by Dr. Jane Charlton. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- moderators: Jason Camillo, Rachel Cervin, & Geoff Cooper Camillo: Good morning Dr. Millis. My name is Jason Camillo, and this is Geoff Cooper, and Rachel Cervin. First question is personal and is being asked by Lauren Chung. Chung: The first question - what inspired you to do what you do? From your degree in physics from Georgia Tech, to being an alumni of the International Space University, to what you are doing now working with NASA and having your research formalized in the breakthough propulsion physics project? MILLIS: I got started into this subject when I was a kid - what was going on is there was the Apollo program, there was the Vietnam war and there was the idea that nuclear war was pending. Seeing all these things and watching Apollo is like this grand national effort at something that was peace oriented instead of war oriented I found inspiring. And that when we actually landed on the moon everyone was watching and basically the world was basically as one kind of made me decide that a good thing to do in life that would be rewarding, challenging, and for the benefit of all (as the NASA cliche goes) would be to go into space exploration because I figured that would make the world a more peaceful place and it would be fun stuff to do. Also, at that time Jacques Cousteau was on TV a lot too and exploring the oceans seemed just as fascinating but I figured by the time I grew up that would be "old hat". The other thing that was happening is that things like Star Trek were on and I made the wrong assumption that by the time I grew up rockets would be "old hat" and they would be working on the next level of physics for making those things reality. And I thought well that might be a cool thing to aim myself for. And what I did not realize is that the Apollo program and NASA got really whapped after it was done. NASA got cut back to only a third of what it was when doing Apollo. So if you take the analogy: if you take your best technician and you cut off all but three of his fingers and then still ask him to do the same thing you get in a really strange situation. So there had been no research whatsoever in these types of topics. So I did it on the side for fun. And meanwhile I had my day job. And also you mention in the question about the International Space University. The idea there too about I think it will be a more peaceful world if we work together. And space so far at least had has been a topic on which other nations do want to work together. It has not been a grounds for contention. It has been a ground for collaboration. And so I attended the ISU in that theme as well. The reason I went in to physics (I actually liked physics and engineering) is because with the rocketry which is established science - that is not going to take us to the stars - we need to look beyond that. So I was interested in physics for that point. But not just purely interested in physics because of the application focus of wanting to try to do something with it which is partly engineering-like. So I actually like to do both of those. Camillo: Thank you very much. The next question is by Brock Pronko. Pronko: You may have already answered this first question. I noticed upon reading the Popular Science article that you are a Star Trek fan. Before your professional career as a kid, what are the things that influenced you to get you thinking about space and interested in space travel besides Star Trek? Were you into any science fiction novels, films, or TV series - things like that that might have influenced you early on? MILLIS: Some of the other influences sound really corny now. But there was this TV series "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" which was really kind of a tacky show but as a three year old I ate that up. I thought that was cool. And the idea of gadgets - machines that you could use to go where you've never gone before sounded really cool as well. Then also around that time there were shows like "The Outer Limits" and "The Twilight Zone" that really stretched your brain and I liked having my brain stretched and thrown wild curves like that. And yes, Star Trek - I liked Star Trek too. And just for comparison, Lost in Space was going on at that time too. I really was not crazy about Lost in Space. Skip the reasons on that. It's just kind of too long to go into. One of the things I liked about Star Trek that: 1) they had the crews always behaving honorably to deal with outside situations instead of internal victory, but then 2) they tried to be at some level consistent with their science fiction which made it fun to use to play with. You already had the labor taken care of to present you with a visual image of how you might do it. So you tried to picture these things in your mind of how to make it really happen. And the one thing in Star Trek I guess, if you look at a single icon for what it would be really cool to figure out, is just their little shelf. That thing that looked like a box about the size of a mini-van. And if you could make a vehicle something the size of a mini-van and be able to levitate out into orbit and then go long distances it would be fantastic. So I used to like to think about that particular one, asking how could you get one of that shape and really have it levitate. And since that image was already there I didn't have to worry about that and I could play with the other ideas. The Star Wars movies - along the same lines of science fiction - they were entertaining but the science fiction aspect of it there (basically gadgets that look cool) did not do much to inspire me technogadget wise. And its not coming to me right now but I think there were another couple influences there too regarding the fiction. One thing about these topics in general: there was actually a book compiling a symposium about the correlation between science fiction and science fact and they looked at the field of aeronautics. And they found that all the rocketry pioneers (Tsiokovsky, Goddard, von Braun, Oberg) were inspired by the science fiction of their day. No doubt that helped urge them on to try to do that. The other thing is that they noticed that science fiction, even though there are some exceptions, is not an accurate predictor of reality and I'm kind of seeing that too. But the idea that science fiction is an inspirational tool and also gives you a vehicle by which you can deal with outrageous ideas and prepare yourself for trying to deal with them more credibly - there are a lot of scientists and engineers who recognize that - some that actually write science fiction (Robert Forward, Jeff Landis, Katherine Asaro - those are just some of the ones I know personally that do that - that use science fiction as a deliberate tool for toying with other ideas. But I'm not sure how widely that is recognized. And of course once you transition to try to transition and try and get more credible and more realistic then it takes on a completely different flavor. Yeah, I was definitely inspired by science fiction to some degree try to use it as a tool even though in my NASA work I don't have the flexibility to do that because it is really too entertainment oriented. Cooper: Our next series of questions falls under our "New Physics" category and the question is from Laura Yingling. Yingling: Several recent physics experiments have suggested that light can travel faster than c. What implications does this have for interstellar travel? MILLIS: OK. On that one what's really hard on that topic is that what the experiments measure - what the equations predict - everyone pretty much agrees upon. What the disagreement is on is the interpretation of the data and it is a very complicated issue. We're supporting some research on quantum tunneling which is where light appears to go faster than what it normally would when it goes through a tunneling barrier. And a number of theorists have interpreted that such that the light actually kind of got spread out so that the front end actually arrives sooner but you don't actually get the entire information packet faster than had it not gone through the barrier. Well you can modulate the signal and pull off the modulations ahead of time but some people disagree as to whether those modulations really were pulled off ahead of time. The issue of whether this really is a genuine "faster than light phenomenon" is still debated and probably will be debated for some time. But if those phenomenon are proved genuine - they are an indirect indication right now - they are kind of a foot in the door to say that - well faster than light phenomenon might be possible but they are very far removed from "how might you use it for space travel" - so at this point they are only a foot in the door. So on the physics built on general relativity about trying to circumvent (not break but circumvent the laws of physics by playing games with space time) - those are - well two things to say. There are a lot of uncertainties in them and possible show stoppers. The other thing to say about them is that it is only one approach. If all that general relativity, wormholes, warp drives, falls by the wayside and are shown not to be valid representations there are still several other approaches that haven't been looked into. To use a language from science fiction for convenience the idea of hyperspace - that there might be some other realm where velocity phenomenon don't behave our same rules that we don't normally see but can interact with - is an area that has not appeared in the peer reviewed journals even though some people have been toying with those ideas. If the warp drive and worm holes ideas fall by the wayside there are still other approaches. In particular the faster than light issue is the most difficult to address right now. The other breakthrough of just trying to create a space drive where you don't need rockets - there are a lot more promising things emerging there. But even those are still uncertain. Cooper: OK the next question comes from the group member sitting on my left, Rachel. Cervin: From reading your Website you said that for interstellar travel there are a lot of seemingly impossible things that need to be done starting with modified gravity and inertia for drives and things like that. How much of that is still theory and how much is fact? What are the prospects of it actually happening? MILLIS: That one is in better shape than the faster than light situation. I'm going to try to talk while I search for a chart that I can show. Aha I found it. There is a scale that I came up with. We start on the left with conjecture - the next level is speculation which is when you are smart enough to know what you do know and what you don't know - then into the middle area which is science - understanding the laws of nature and how they work - and then on to technology where we can make devices based on science, and then finally put them to practical use The subject of gravity control and inertia control are evolving from speculation into science and some of the ideas are very much in the middle of science with some unanswered issues. As well there are a number of anomalous physical phenomenon that have been observed. Phenomenon that have yet to be credibly discounted or verified. They might turn out to be true. They might turn out to be false. And they haven't really been shown so far. If any of these anomalous phenomenon turn out to be true, for example the anomalous weight losses over spinning superconductors, the transient inertia effect that Woodward published I think back in 1990 - if any of those turn out to be true we are well on our way to having some new principles where we could make breakthrough space engines. There is even some old electromagnetic theory where there was more than one interpretation of how they made the measurements and what has happened in modern physics is that they have kind of adopted one interpretation because it is useful. And the other two are just kind of held back as, well, they might be valid too but they aren't really relevant. And some of those if you go back from the point of view of propulsion are relevant. And people are trying to check those ideas to see which one of those interpretations are correct and are they useful. So on that, on some of the tasks - I think, let's see - three of the research tasks that we are currently supported (the ones that are mentioned on the website) deal with those sort of issues. Two of them deal with physical effects that have been observed and are trying to find out whether or not those effects are genuine. One of them was a theoretical thing and even though this is not yet suitable for broad public disclosure, that theory was found to be wrong. In other words that turned out to be a dead end. And all these results will be presented at a joint propulsion conference in July. But the gravity inertia type ideas are on better footing than the faster than light stuff. And they are on that edge between speculation, emerging science, and established science where there is still some issue. Cooper: The next question is from my group-mate to my right, Jason. Camillo: What emerging technologies do you think will result from trying to control inertia and gravity and inertia? Not just propulsion but other things as well. MILLIS: What we might do with it if we had it... Well that opens up a whole bag of playful worms. I think one of the first things that if we could create something as strong as a 1G artificial gravity field I think that the first place it would be used is for amusement park zero gravity rides where you go into a room and float around for a while. And I imagine certain hotels might like to adopt that for obvious reasons as well. The material processing - the type of things they want to practice with on the space station - you could do those on Earth. In standard spacecraft even if you did not have the breakthrough propulsion on it the idea of being able to provide an artificial gravity for the crew would be of great benefit. And then in general - and this is kind of where you can let your imaginations run wild to see how they might play out - just in basic principle if you can do energy conversion between a mass effect (say inertia or gravity) to some other form of energy (say electromagnetics) there is a variety of things you could come up with: automobiles, brakes, things to help move furniture around the house and who knows what else. And on top of that if there are phenomenon like that that turn out that we can be discovered - very likely if they are like some of the other phenomenon we have there is probably going to be some of the other phenomenon we have there is probably going to be some wave behavior. In other words you might be able to find spectra either of absorption or emission from these things. And who knows what sort of spectrum, if you could play around with inertial fluctuations or what have you, might show up. Who knows if you could adapt that to where you could make imaging devices where you could see densities of objects where different densities would come out to different colors. That would be very useful for medical imaging, for geological type surveys and things like that. But all those things I've just mentioned are at the level of conjecture and by my previous definition that is by wishful thinking and I'm not yet smart enough to know what we do know and what we don't know as far as those extended applications. But at least that kind of a snapshot might give you some idea of how broadly discoveries like understanding inertia and gravity could translate into. Cooper: Alright our next question comes from Josh Broscious. Broscious: What type of progress is being made in the field of worm holes? Is this really a feasible theory or is there more time being spent on other technologies? MILLIS: Right now we're not supporting any research from this program directly on wormholes. Not that they - I mean they are on the interest list - but we just didn't have an affordable proposal that we could fund, but that topic is still open. There are a number of people who continue to research those in particular Matt Visser - he has a textbook about traversable wormholes - I believe it came out about three years ago. That's a very good description. The possible show stoppers to wormholes is the amount of energy they require, that all of the ideas for wormholes also have time travel paradoxes or causality violations which might be a show stopper. And one that is kind of peculiar if you look at the equations for wormholes you'll see that there are absolutely no terms in them whatsoever for the distance between the throats. And there are a number of interpretations for that. One is that it doesn't matter, two that it's strictly a mathematical curiosity with no physical significance whatsoever in which case it is a dead end, or three that the other throat doesn't go to our own space - that it goes to some alternate form of dimension or whatever. And those three questions are at the level of speculation And the type of work that is going on when people consider wormholes is addressing such things as the causality violations or the energy requirements. One in particular, not one that we're funding but that I know of, is trying to revisit whether or not you need negative energy to create wormhole effects. And they are finding that you don't but then the size of the wormhole that you might get from it is so small as to be insignificant. So that is kind of a snapshot of where that stands. And it might turn out to be a dead end. But even if it does turn out to be a dead end there is a variety of other - it does not close off the subject entirely - there might be other ways of looking at this. Cooper: The next question in the category again comes from Josh. Broscious: In relation to some of the more far out ideas such as wormholes being causality violations, What are your feelings on parallel universes being a possible solution for letting these events take place? If this is the case, could this destroy some of your theories? The multi-universe interpretation which (and I forget there is some official name for it) is an interesting possibility and one to keep on the table for consideration. For those of you who are not familiar with it just for example if I could go back in time and kill my mother before I was ever born obviously I wouldn't exist to be able to go back and kill my mother. That is the causality paradox. But the multiple universe type of interpretation says that if I go back and kill my mother before I was born that is a different universe and in that version I will never be born. In time travel you can never go straight back to your own universe's past. You can only go on diagonal pasts where you get into these parallel universes. And these things I think are at the level of conjecture/speculation and maybe some theory, but the theory that they are drawing the equations from is very young and subject to a lot of interpretation. But in general though, its a candidate to leave on the table and if it turns out that with wormhole travel rather than being able to go a long distance in your own universe you go someplace completely different that would still be very interesting for exploration. I guess the real question there would be when you come back do you come back to your own universe or can you never come back to your own universe and that would be in popular interest a major question. If you can go to other universes, see interesting things and come back to your own I think it would still be very attractive for explorative travel. I don't know how it is going to pan out. Cervin: Our next section of questions deals with propulsion systems. We have an added editorial question. For the record if you could simply state and describe the seven basic types of propulsion systems you and your team are exploring. MILLIS: OK. One thing here that is a slight misinterpretation. When the Popular Science folks did that article (and I actually found this delightful) they focused on - I wrote one - let me back up. Before doing the project I was doing research on the side on these topics for fun and only got one paper published in a peer reviewed journal and it was actually the beginning of a sequence of papers I was planning to write. But then the project came up. They asked me to lead it. And then I had to put all that on hold. That paper is where I introduced seven hypothetical propulsion method. And the key word there is hypothetical. The point was to say if you were to propel in this way what physics issues would you run into and what unexplored physics avenues might there be to solve them. That's about as deep as it went. Later I was going to go in and start addressing those and say which of those ideas are flatly probably going to be impossible and which are more likely to be true. And because I've had to do the project management I didn't come back to it. Those hypothetical propulsion devices for which Popular Science provided artist's renderings (and it is really bizarre to see artist's renderings of something that is hypothetical) but those seven are actually not what the project is looking at right now. Those are basically on hold until I get the time to go back and do research. The ones that the project is exploring, which they only mentioned in the body of the text, are: 1) an experiment to find out whether the transient inertia effect is true; 2) an experiment to find out if the theory describing how electromagnetism and gravity can be re-described is true. That is the one that looks like it is a dead end; 3) and experiment to see if the anomalous superconductor gravity effects are genuine; 4) an experiment looking into whether quantum vacuum energy really exists as strong as it does and whether or not you can interact with it; 5) and then a quantum tunneling experiment. Those are the ones that we are actually funding right now and they address make/break issues along the path of eventually getting to propulsion breakthroughs. Of those the transient inertia one, the one about the asymmetric equations (the one that turned out to be a dead end), and the superconductor ones. Those would be the ones that might have applicability to the seven hypothetical propulsion concepts but there are several steps between finding that those are valid and addressing how you might do something with them propulsion-wise. Cervin: The next question comes from John Yuda. Yuda: You've answered somewhat what I had to ask in your previous but we can alter it slightly: "are there any other experiments that are "on-deck" to add to your project?". MILLIS: Yes, I mentioned the ones that are funded through a formal call. Some things that have happened since then is there was an experiment (the term we use here is "bootleg" - the experiment is done without funding - the guys just get the parts together and find free time to wedge it in) to test something that was published I believe in 1995 - an antennae that was designed to thrust. That one doesn't look like it is going to work either. That was one that is just about to be completed. There was a very small grant that we had looking into whether or not you could get lower energy states of a hydrogen atom that would be able to get more energy out of hydrogen reactions. That might too turn out to be a dead end. And also we got slated with something called a Congressional earmark - Congress has the luxury to specify that "thou shalt send so much money to this individual whether you want to or not" - that is called a Congressional earmark - and I was assigned (and that word I use euphamistically) an earmark to send two million dollars to a group in West Virginia to test some old theoretical interpretations of electromagnetism. Things that might make light sails work better. And that's another one that is ongoing. That one too will be presenting results at the Joint Propulsion Conference but I don't normally talk about it because that one wasn't selected by a competitive process. That one was assigned to me by Congress irrelevant of whether or not the research warrants the dollar amounts that it received. And to put things in context, the most expensive research task that we are funding, which is a three year task, is about 170 thousand dollars. Compare that to 2 million dollars for one earmark task. So there is a degree of frustration on my part regarding that type of approach. Also, separate from my project there are some private financiers who have research into a number of areas. And British aerospace has sponsored some research tasks in similar areas. And I was able to talk a lot of them into also presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference. I have twenty-three papers slated to be presented, seven of which has to do with work that our project is directly tied in, two are something that Marshall Space Flight Center had awarded as a different part, seven are international, and seven are privately sponsored. So that Joint Propulsion will definitely be a venue in which to hear the results of all these things. And after that (and exactly how soon after that is still pending) we will have another call for research proposals and then from there we will see what other new possibilities come up. Basically all those research tasks that I mentioned will be pretty much wrapping up at the point of the Joint Propulsion Conference or slightly thereafter. And then it will be time to look for another round of research tasks. One of the ways I've set up the project is that we're looking to fund short-term, very focused small research tasks and then sustain progress as a series of these tasks and try to cover a wide variety of approaches. So this cycle of short term tasks, have a review, do more short term tasks, have a review. That is kind of the philosophy by which the project is set up. So that we can basically get progress done in digestible pieces. And also it is much easier to get my funding allocated when I do it that way. Cervin: I think we are running short on time so try to keep the answers a little shorter. The next question is from Geoff Cooper. Cooper: Obviously they are very theoretical from what you said about them earlier, but how safe are the propulsion systems going to be? MILLIS: Totally unknown. And the challenge to found out - let's say that you made a gravity pulsating engine - well, who knows what effect that will have. We've never seen anything like that and if history is any indicator we will probably learn by virtue of accidents. But right now until we get a verifiable effect it is to early to assess or even figure out how we would determine if they are safe. That it is an issue is recognized, however. Cervin: The next question comes from Matt Hughes. Hughes: Of all the technologies presented by your office, which is the most promising for the near future, like in the next ten to twenty years I guess? MILLIS: And this is both the official and the behind the scenes answer - it is way too early to tell. We've even set it up to where we are looking at a number of different or even contrary approaches. And we're probably going to be doing that for at least two or three more cycles of proposal calls. It is just way too early to tell. Cervin: The next question comes from Chris Hynick. Hynick: When talking about the breakthrough propulsion drives and the "ruler for advancement" there were five steps that you showed on the chart earlier from conjecture to application. Which one of these steps is the most important and which one is the most difficult to assess? MILLIS: They are all difficult. They require different mindsets and some people are better at one mindset than the other. So regarding difficulty if you are really good at one the other is going to be very difficult for you - so we find a good skill mix to cover it. The other aspect to that is that every time you move from conjecture to speculation and on the level of detail and just time that it takes to work it out is about ten times more. So speculation is about ten times more material coverage - not really difficulty but the amount of effort you need to put into it - and science is about ten times more work than speculation - technology is about ten times more than the science part - and getting something to actually work is about ten times more than just working out the technology. And the cost kind of goes that way too. And it has a lot to do with getting down to all the gory details of making sure everything works right. And the more you get into something real and physical the more details you have to encounter. Like the safety question for example. At the levels of conjecture, speculation it just begins to open up in science. But when you start with technology it becomes more important and when you talk about the application it becomes so paramount that there is no way to avoid it. As an example of one of the adding details that comes in. Cervin: The next question is also from Chris Hynick. Hynick: What would a typical vehicle, that deals with interstellar propulsion systems, look like, how much would such a vehicle cost with these systems implemented, and realistically, how many years from now could such a vehicle be built, so that we could travel around space? MILLIS: OK. I'm going to answer that question in three layers. Right now today it is scientifically feasible to send a very small probe to our nearest star and have it get there within a hundred years. It is technologically feasible and economically not feasible. If you pulled all the world's resources money-wise to try to make a system like that happen it might still be too expensive for people to buy into it. I can't give you exact figures but the kind of thing it would take would have a major in orbiting space power facility that can power tens of Gigawatts of a beamed power into a gigantic light sail with gigantic Fresnel lenses at the edge of the solar system. A degree of space infra-structure which is way beyond what we have now. But these are scientifically feasible and possibly even technologically feasible. If we go to the next level about where we are hoping to get humans there in a reasonable time that branches off into two approaches: one where you have not conquered the faster than light issue which now you are talking about generation ship where people live on the space ship, they die on the spaceship, they have their offspring and raise their offspring on the spaceship, and by the time they get to the destination you might have great grandchildren. And also, and this is even written in science fiction stuff, the great grandchildren might be so comfortable living on the space ship the idea of going down to visit a planet might be too radical for them. Those things are, even though they are kind of scientifically feasible, lots of technological hurdles about the life support system. So I don't really know what to say there. Now if you are talking about the physics breakthroughs I can't answer that question until or if we get a physics breakthrough. And it might turn out that these things are flatly impossible. But until we actually begin to discover the laws of science and be able to price out what the technology is and to plan how long it will be can't be done. So at this point it is too early to be done. Cervin: The next question comes from Brock Pronko. Pronko: Since the late 40s, people from all over the world have been reporting seeing "flying saucers." Although the stories vary somewhat, one thing seems fairly consistent, these spacecraft do not move the way aircraft we know are supposed to move. They stop still, suddenly shoot off at incredibly speeds, and turn at sharp angles impossible to do with conventional aircraft. And so I have two questions having to do with these phenomenon. (a) Theoretically, could any kind of propulsion drive allow a spacecraft to operate the way that flying saucers are said to? (b) Do you think flying saucers could be real? MILLIS: I'm going to answer that in reverse order about the flying saucers. One thing that this project does not cover in any way, shape or form is the flying saucer claims. That topic is probably one hundred times more difficult than just doing the breakthrough propulsion physics topic. In large part because most of the data comes from humans relaying stories. It is here say. And we have to build what we can tangibly touch - physical effects, theories and ideas that are in the tangible literature that we can build from. So I just don't touch that topic. And there are plenty of other people - not in NASA but in privately funding things - that are looking at that. In regards to - if we had the kind of breakthroughs that we are working on - would they behave like UFO sightings. That is hard to say. They might and they might not. And I think Paul Hill's book is one example where he talks - if you had a levitating saucer and there are two ways of looking at this - if the vehicle would tilt and then move you could get a pretty good indication that the bottom hull is probably having a downward force - if it is not tilting you have something else going on. When we are looking at these things even when we are looking at the level of speculation there is more than one way these things might transpire. You might be able to - now this is at the level of speculation not at the level of science. If you wanted to make a vehicle levitate you could do that by two means. You could somehow effect the - to use an analogy - buoyancy - make it so that gravity is not affecting it in which case it could probably move around in any direction. Or you could levitate it because you are producing some sort of directed force down underneath in which case if it were to translate sideways it would tilt first. And when are trying to entertain how you might make it happen for real you'd have to entertain all those possibilities. And it is too early to tell which of those - and that is just a small subset of examples but at least for illustrative purposes - it is too early to tell even which of those might be a preferred way. But to entertain all those speculations you have to be open to. Cervin: Before the next question Dr. Churchill has a question for you. Churchill: For amusing me, the questions have been making so many questions in my mind come up. This sort of relates to the previous question - I guess your third tier about the breakthrough propulsion and the new physics - and then also a little but to Brock's questions about flying saucers. I've had this debate with Frank Drake several times, who you know of course wants to look out into the universe, and he argues very strongly that if this breakthrough physics existed then there would be signatures out there or we would have been visited already. So he uses that as a very strong argument to say that this breakthrough physics cannot exist say, you know, tapping into the tachyon universe or something like that. And I'm curious: I'm sure you've heard that argument before and I was wondering if you could have a quick response to that. MILLIS: The way that I try to deal with these situations is that I entertain several conflicting hypotheses at the same time. One of the hypotheses you could do for that is if this physics is possible we've been visited and that is what the UFO things are but they keep themselves relatively stealthy so we don't notice it. Another one if you entertain that they are possible then they might be happening but if we had not yet discovered how to detect it then it could be happening to us but we just wouldn't notice. For example radio waves existed ever before we had a radio but we didn't know about it until we had a radio. There is also the possibility that they are flatly impossible and that is why we haven't seen anything. It is also possible and there just hasn't been anyone using it. Or it is possible that there have been people using it but they just haven't crossed out paths. And Jeff Landis did a nice quick study and he used something called percolation theory to address it. If you assume that they do exist they are scouting and they have certain capabilities. I don't know if he went to hyperspeed or hyperlife or not. But the probability that they cross our path you have to take into consideration - do they find anything more interesting in the near term? Do you assume they go to a destination, decide whether or not to go on to the next destination. And there is a probability that they will stay - or they will stop or something changes. And when you run those probabilistic numbers the chances that they crossed our path drops way way down. So you have to take that into account too. And on all those candidate possibilities what I like to do is to keep of them open - all of them under consideration - and as new information emerges see which one of them fit better. And at this point I would consider any of them worthy of consideration. Cervin: The last question in this section is from Matt Hughes. Hughes: Since solar sails have to be so large and extremely thin -- one article said they'd only be a few atoms thick -- what are the dangers of them being destroyed by small particles, or even asteroids? MILLIS: Yeah, that has been looked at a few times and fortunately the situation isn't as bad because they can withstand a fair amount of punctures and even areas of depleted damage and still function - and still do their basic thing. There are other people in other groups at NASA studying the whole issue of sails not only for near-Earth things but for interstellar and there might be websites on it but I don't know. The situation is not as best as once thought since people have done some other studies on it. Camillo: The next section is warp drive technology and the first question is to be asked by Rachel. Cervin: Your first objective in the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project is to create propulsion that requires no propellant mass. How can this be done? MILLIS: The different ways you can look at it is 1) trying to find something else that exists in space that you can use as you reaction mass analogous to the way an airplane uses air - whether the vacuum fluctuation energy might constitute that. The cosmic background radiation in effect could provide that function - as a matter of fact those sail ideas that were in Popular Science could in principle do that but the energy of the cosmic background radiation is so feeble that wouldn't work There is also what's called dark matter which is a name for something that is not understood. But if dark matter turns out to be something there is enough of we could use as an in situ reaction mass that might be a candidate. A whole other area is to try to understand better how matter, electricity, electromagnetism, and space-time itself are coupled. And if there is any way to get imbalanced forces that would result in a net force that might do it. A critical question is how do you do this without violating conservation of momentum. If all of a sudden your spacecraft starts moving in one way what is balancing momentum and some of the unanswered areas in physics that have open holes for that are Machs principle - the very definition of inertia frame itself- and whether or not it is connected to the surrounding matter. And so if you are pushing against a dense space you are also pushing against the surrounding matter and conserving momentum. How to do those tricks - that is left to be discovered and those kind of tasks about gravity and electromagnetism and anomalous physical effects and so on and so forth address those type of critical issues. Camillo: Thank you. The next question is going to be asked by Nahks. Nahks: A follow up to that - your proposals for providing propulsion without carrying a huge tank of propellant - what kind of power sources would be necessary to create say a space-time disturbance - I can't imagine that would just be easy to do - so how would you power that kind of process? MILLIS: If you were talking about the wormhole or the warp drive ideas the amount of energy you would need is - to use a bad pun - astronomical. If you are looking at, say, the goal 1 and you just look in terms of whether you could distort energy be it a nuclear reactor, batteries, what have you, into kinetic energy then even if you give yourself only a ten percent conversion efficiency then something the size of a standard nuclear reactor that you have on Earth could probably send a very small probe within fifty years to our nearest neighboring star. The kinetic energy for that is not ridiculous. It is a lot, but not ridiculous. And just to give you an idea - and you can run these - these are basic physics calculations that you can do - if you look at the potential energy difference between raising a car up - and calculate how much energy is in a battery - and ask yourself if you could convert all the energy in that battery into lifting the car up to potential energy height then ask yourself this question before you do the question then do the calculation and see where you came out. Well in that case I won't answer the question. But do that calculation. You'll find out how much energy is stored in a battery and the average mass of a car and ask yourself how high could a car be lifted - just a change in potential energy - by depleting the energy in the battery. And you'll find that - unless you are overly optimistic - that the answer is surprising. Camillo: The next question is also going to be asked by Nahks. Nahks: There is also the idea - just getting back to science fiction and Star Trek - they talk about "inertial dampeners" on the ship that prevent the crew from getting splattered all over the wall when the thing jumps up to Warp 7. So I guess my question is with ships traveling faster than light how would you get around the acceleration problem, or do these things create a kind of virtual velocity such that the crew and the ships don't actually feel the effects of the acceleration? MILLIS: Two answers to that one. The Alcubeire??? warp drive which is in the peer reviewed literature - the way is basically works is rather than moving through space time it moves space time itself. And anyone in that moving region senses no acceleration whatsoever. They are standard zero gravity. The other way is that if you are physically accelerating the ship and you discovered some wonderful technology to do it you could also apply that to the interior of the vehicle to make sure your crew is held with the vehicle. For example if you had a sphere and this sphere could push against the outside space you'd also put those devices inside to make sure that as it moves it pulls the crew along with it. And until we actually discover the physics of how you'd make that possible it is hard to speculate exactly how you'd do it. But in principle if you discover new things to solve one problem you can apply those thins to solve your other problems as well. And hopefully solve all of them. There might be some show stoppers in there but that is the basic way of attacking that. Camillo: OK. Our next section is on breakthrough propulsion at NASA. And the first question is going to come from John Yuda. Yuda: How did your program get started within NASA? Was it coincidental that somebody planning knew you had an interest, or did you bring the idea to an administrator? MILLIS: Here is what happened. I was doing these things because it was fun and I started to forge informal collaborations with other people who wanted to work on it. And basically the topic was considered - the term is "lunatic fringe". And we thought well maybe we'll start a journal on the topic and I gave talks to public audiences called "Warp Drive, When?: About Why it is So Hard." And meanwhile while I was doing this on the side Golden asked NASA/Marshall to come up with a very long range propulsion development program. And they told him to be more visionary than had been done before. And after a few iterations with that someone actually asked well what about controlling gravity and going faster than light. The Marshall folks found me, asked me to propose a program which myself and my informal collaborators were just shocked at - we couldn't believe it - so we repackaged what we were going to do as an informal society about breaking things down to small tasks, credibility filters for doing journal things, and repackaged that as a project and they were surprised at how well we had already thought it out and implemented the project. And also the project was implemented in conditional steps where before I got my next increment of funding I had to demonstrate that we were ready for it. So first was are there things in the literature - yes - second was if we gave you money for tasks could you do anything - yes - third was if we went out with a call for proposals would we get good stuff or crap. And we got good stuff - we got some crap too but enough good stuff to ward it off. And now the next question is going to be whether the research progress we are making is good enough to keep sustaining it. Those decisions will probably be made in a year or two. But as it is looking right now and the reaction we are getting overall is that it is probably going to be sustained. Camillo: OK. Our next question comes from Brock Pronko. Pronko: You touched upon this earlier but I wonder if you could give us a preview of the Joint Propulsion Conference in July and discuss which of the seven space drives are going to be discussed and describe where the current technology stands in each of them. MILLIS: OK. I have twenty-three paper spread over three sessions and none of my seven hypothetical drives will be discussed explicitly. All of these papers will be talking about small increments of critical issues along the lines of that, along the faster than light issues and so on and so forth. All the work that the project is funding will be presented there and I've already talked about what those are. And the privately funded ones, they will be talking about other experiments they have done to look at electromagnetism and gravity coupling and things like that. And I believe on the AIAA website the listing of the papers, the authors, and their titles are there even though I have not yet posted it on my website. But as it stands now I'm not expecting any of those to announce that a breakthrough has been discovered. And if any of them are in that situation I hope to find out about it beforehand to make sure they are reported credibly. Because to report such news like the way the cold fusion people made their announcement would probably set the problem back several years rather than advancing things. Camillo: The last question in this section comes from Rachel. Cervin: You already mentioned that your project is going to be re-evaluated in a couple of years. Have your plans been affected at all by the new Bush budget? MILLIS: That is unknown at this point. The emphasis to put more money into basic research by some means seems to be there. But as they say we'll have to wait to see if they put their money where their mouth is. At this point I am anticipating no increases - no decreases. Cervin: Now we have a couple more personal questions. The first one is from Nahks. Nahks: Have you run into any major public opposition to your work from the public or from Congress? That is, has the "gee, whiz" inspirational factor of this research been able to hold up against people asking, "don't you have something more serious to do?" MILLIS: The most opposition usually comes from internal folks who get less money because I got more. The Congressional folks - here is one thing that is weird about government - I am not allowed to talk to my Congressional folks directly unless they go through some elaborate hoops to invite me explicitly - But I know through indirect means that the idea that the government including NASA has not been visionary enough in some of the things they have reached from. And also the other problem is that when individuals have they have not done so credibly. So the idea that NASA is tackling this - and from the feedback I have gotten how we are tackling it that is trying to be both visionary and credible at the same time - is turning skeptics into supporters. One example, Lawrence Krauss who wrote the book "The Physics of Star Trek" - he has testified for us on Congress on a number of things. He used to be a skeptic but now I'm collaborating with him to get him to be a chair of an advisory council that I have on this topic. In general, when even the skeptics see that we are trying to do this in safe increments, that we are willing to entertain the idea that these things may be impossible, and that we are not trying to spend too much - they think yeah, NASA should be doing this. Another one that I asked is the famous physicist Kip Thorne and his reaction was that NASA should be devoting some resources to this because the public needs to know where we stand and how the physics community will judge this is by the quality of the things that we have selected to fund. And he said just a cursory look at what we've supported so far have been reasonable choices. And so long as that we keep finding reasonable things to support I expect that the reaction we will get will be increasingly positive. Like I said the most objections I've had have been internally because other people are getting less funding because I'm getting more funding. And the skeptics that have been there when they look more carefully at how we are doing it they become less skeptical. I am willing to admit too that these things might be impossible but because of the enormous payoff at least it warrants a reasonable, systematic investigation. Cervin: The next question comes from John Yuda. Yuda: You're obviously trying to "think outside the box". I was just wondering what some of the stranger proposals you got when you did a call for research were and some of the stranger things you may have rejected. MILLIS: We have a category we call the lunatic fringe and I could write a book about it. One guy - now that wasn't sent in to the proposal call - I get a lot of unsolicited proposals. But strips of corrugated cardboard coated with black tape and instructions that if I waved them in front of my face like this I'll create a region of space transparency so that I can transport large distances. I don't know if the guy was off his medication or what. There was another one about flowing fluid through a pipe where you get reaction forces and they wanted ten billion dollars to turn this into a propulsion device. At the time the call for proposals went out we had half a million for all of them combined. And he wanted ten billion for his fluid in the coils. I could go on and on about some of the more radical stuff and who knows some day maybe I will write a book on it. Oh one thing though - on the serious side. Because it is quite likely that in a peer review a genuine breakthrough will be summarily dismissed because genuine breakthroughs look like radical ideas before the point. Only after they were shown valid did they say "oh yeah, I guess that is true". So in our review process the reviewers are not allowed to judge the feasibility of an idea because that is a research task in itself. What they have to judge is is it based on credible foundations, are the aware of where the physics on that topic really stands - they have to demonstrate that they have done their homework, and the last one which is really the encompassing one is that if we were to fund the research and when it was concluded would other researchers consider it reliable information on which to base further decisions. And if the answers to that are yes and if of course it is relevant, then it passes through our hurdles. So the idea of actually supporting research which is probably not going to work but can be reliably shown not to work is a valid candidate. And the reason that is a valid candidate is that unfortunately there are a lot of cases where private industry has sponsored research into an idea that has not worked and they do not publish the results. And someone else sponsors the same topic someplace else and money is being wasted. So if we can test these ideas, even the ones that are not going to work, and publish that this approach did not work then hopefully no one else will keep spending money on that bad idea. So that is how we deal with the way we are open to the visionary ideas but anchoring them in credibility. We've done that cycle once of reviews and it worked pretty well, and even the skeptics when I said I'm using that rule where you are not allowed to judge whether or not these things are going to work - you can only judge whether the results are going to be sound and credible and meaningful - say OK I can go along with that. So it's kind of a trick to get around the reflexive rejection mode yet still require all these proposals to be anchored in credibility. Cervin: The last question comes from Lauren Chung. Chung: In your fictional story "The Social Impact of Access to Space," you tell a funny account of how space colonization will literally change the "face" of human nature. How space travel loses its novelty to the average "Joe and Joannes," but become a place where "hordes of self-proclaimed misfits that finally escaped the bounds of Earth -- specifically escaping the oppression of the authority figures that had the audacity to expect them to obey laws and social norms." And how the ultra-geek will develop the technology to genetically "reinvent" themselves to be better adapted space creature. But despite this the nastiness of human nature and territorial conquest remains. Basically, it sounds like history repeating itself, such as the "discovery" of America or a book like "Animal Farm" or something. What are your feelings on humans becoming a space-faring civilization? MILLIS: I had Jeff Landis, who is an accomplished science fiction writer, proof that story and that was kind of written on a lark. But the scary part is, and we both agree, that may be truer to reality than either of us would feel comfortable with. If it becomes easy to get out into space we will eventually become a space-faring civilization. What that does to us after the effect I don't know. Will we retain our human form even becomes an open question. Because there are others - I mean when I made up that story I was basing it on pieces of research that I heard and people actually considering doing these types of things with genetic alterations or implanting yourself with mechanical devices. And you know it may happen. And you know it may happen. History repeats itself. We are still fairly primal creatures. We are territorial. Just as one example - you guys when you come to class each day probably sit in the same seat as you always sit in. Show of hands of the people who do that. OK. That is a territorial behavior. If you come in each day and you pick a different seat and no one has any objection of it - they are willing to swap seats - then you've overcome that barrier. But we still have those instincts. They are there from our primal thing - that's survival. And how they precipitate themselves in face of new challenges and new opportunities - who is to say? But I guess when I wrote that story - and I did that to be jokingly and glib about it - but the scary thing is that might be closer to truth than I even want to be true. Churchill: OK Dr. Millis. We've gone over a little bit. But if you are not opposed to it if there are any last questions by the students... MILLIS: You guys are lucky because this week was a pretty helacious week. I had a whole set of charts to get done for proposing the next years of the project and getting the funding and I got my deadline done yesterday. So I'm just like, ahhhh, today. So I don't have any other meetings to go to immediately so I have the time. Churchill: OK. Well that's wonderful. So we don't have a lot of time. But I wanted to open the floor to students who might have one or two more questions. I have a question but Brock and Nahks seem to be interested so I'm going to hand it over to them. Pronko: Yeah, I have a question - we've been talking about this in between the lines but I wanted to put it out on the table and make it more concrete and that is - one of the things we talk about in STS (Science, Technology and Society) is the idea of two cultures. I think it was claimed originally by C. P. Show. You have the humanities type people and the science type people and how it is difficult to talk to each other. It seems like within the space community there is a similar type of situation where you have the theoreticians and then you have the engineers, the bean counters, and the administrators on the other side of the fence. And you seem to be in a unique situation where you are sitting on the fence with one foot in both yards so to speak. I was wondering how you manage to get those two camps to talk to each other. MILLIS: OK. I've recognized that from day one. Remember when I was talking about the scale of conjecture/speculation/etc. that they require different mental skills? And usually people are good at one area - like just the humanities or just technology. You know the classic stereotype of the "geek" to use the term my wife uses - they have no personality. They don't know how to socialize. And you know, I've seen that - they like solving mechanical problems. And then you have the other type. But as history evolves when things really start to happen is when you get the full skill mix. When you get people addressing all the aspects, working together, is when things start to happen. That is I think why Einstein was as successful as he was - because he not only could do the physics - he could communicate about it - and he had a degree of charisma even though it was a bit strange so that it could be popularized. And that combination of talents doesn't happen that often. And the reason why I fell into this role is that I could do the physics - not all of it - the general relativity stuff I'm weak on - basic electromagnetism - some of the older ideas of Mach's principle and stuff like that and quantum physics I'm fairly adept at. But I can usually explain things in public terms and I also know how to satisfy the project managers in what they need. And also early on in my career - actually after I got out of college - and this is something you guys should pay attention to - human behavior dominates human behavior. And I decided to devote a certain portion of my intellect to pay attention to how humans interacted. So in doing work you take into consideration how humans are behaving and alter how you talk, what you say, so that you are satisfying those needs to get past the technical hurdles. Very often technical people think that if something is technically obvious it should win out it should be obvious to everyone and that is not the case. You have to address the territorialism of people, you have to address what is called the "alpha-male phenomenon" where there is the urge that someone wants to be the dominant person, And if you pay attention - and there are sociological studies on these things - if you watch the Jane Goodall things about the chimpanzee culture you can pattern that into human society. If you are aware of these things and respective of them and tailor what you do and say to fit within that behavior then it is a lot easier to advance the technologies and the sciences that go with it. Because the human element is a part of the human element. The reason I am in this situation is because I'm aware of those and I have played all those factors. Another thing that you often see with engineers is that they don't like to tout their work publically. Like that is somehow too gutteral or too sensationalistic. That is a facet of it - as long as you don't get sensationalistic about it the public feeds on it and that is why I have a website, that is why I do press interviews, that is why I did the "Popular Science" - because it does help in the grand scheme of things and also if you work with the reporters to make sure that they don't get sensationalistic about it - that you say it with the right tone - it comes out very constructive. So yeah, those layers they are in play. And if you want to do good in your future jobs be aware of that and try to cover as many bases as possible and the more bases you can cover the more flexible you will be and the more successful you will be. Nahks: I have a question. This is sort of like kind of shameless. I look at the webpage and through the magazine and there is a lot of artwork that goes into visualizing these technologies and I was just curious is there a demand for that sort of thing? How do you come by all these graphics and things like that? MILLIS: The Popular Science folks volunteered to do those things on their own. And when I was talking to the artist because you know basically their artwork is bogus - they are artist's renderings on something that is hypothetical. And we talked about that - if these things were to come to pass they might be as boring looking as a sphere which is just not visually stimulating. But Popular Science did that - it was their staff who paid for that. The other artwork that is on the website of the ring vehicle going in - that again was an artist's rendering of something that was in the peer reviewed literature. But the need for those type of visual icons to make it easier to communicate and inspire the public - that is needed - but take into account that those vehicles are utterly bogus. There is a market to try and do that stuff but it is hard. NASA - I don't remember the details of that and it is not in the artist's favor - NASA does a lot of work with artists "gratis" - that means the artists do it for free. And the other difficulty - I've had lots of people volunteer their time to maybe try and help me out. But I'm in the awkward situation where I've had more people volunteering than I could coordinate to take advantage of the offers. And then, too, to try and screen which volunteers are the ones who could really help out, and which are the ones that just wishfully can but don't have the capability. And that's actually hard to deal with. If you are tempted to want to try to volunteer your services on this - from what I found and even how I got started in this work - you did it on your free time - you did it for free - and tried to bounce it off the people and make it more balanced and more professional. And once you do these things then it starts to become part of your day job. And it's a challenge. And the other point on this is that I am the only official full-time NASA person on this project. All the rest of the people that are helping - I have one support service contractor helping me out with my administrative assistance correspondence duties - - but all the rest is volunteer time. And not just from within NASA but outside people. Now yes there is the research task that we are supporting and if you have looked at any other research you will notice that the dollar amounts on those are "dirt cheap" for what you can get - or what research normally goes for. That is because people - right now this topic out of the passion of it - are doing a lot more for what they get paid for it. Because this subject still has to demonstrate that it is worthy enough to warrant normal funding. And it is getting to that point now. And also the idea of adding more people is just roughly beginning to be talked about. But right now we are a "one-man show" with lots of volunteers. Churchill: OK. Mark. I have a question too but we are running over so maybe I'll email it. MILLIS: Try it verbally now and if we run out of time we run out of time. Churchill: We are talking about the idea NASA being visionary - that came up a few times - and of course the program you are working on is cutting edge visionary and I totally personally feel it is absolutely necessary and I'm totally excited about seeing you do the kind of work you do and the fact that it has now become legitimized and what not. But I go back to this article that Thomas Paine wrote in "National Geographic" back in December 1969. He wrote an article describing what he felt was the direction of NASA up to the millennium. And of course it came just after the Apollo 12 landing. If you get a chance to look at that he outlines human space-flight for the next thirty years and he has actually permanent moon bases in the 70's, he had us landing on Mars in 1985, building permanent stations so that by the year 2000 we had permanent stations on Mars and we're beginning to step out into the outer solar system. So I guess what I'm saying is that the way that the current administration is going that we're missing the whole middle ground here. What are your feelings on that? MILLIS: What happens, and this again talks about the human element - remember when I mentioned that after Apollo NASA got cut back to about a third of what it was. Like taking your best technician/artisan and cutting off all but three of his fingers. And I think what happened culturally was that NASA was in denial that they only had three fingers left but they still had the full ten finger ambition. And you can't do ten fingers worth of work on three fingers. And the amount of resources just aren't matching the ambitions. Churchill: But when Thomas Paine wrote the article I think all ten fingers were intact still. Apollo 12 was just after the first landing. Obviously it died during the program like you are saying. MILLIS: Well, the fingers have been cut off. The other thing that has happened, in talking to Congress sometimes, is that going to Mars is too expensive and to try to make it cheaper we should advance first. Advance the technology to where we can make it lots cheaper before we even consider going. That is why some of the direction to put more of the money into research rather than the manned missions. There is another phrase - and it is definitely after that - some reporter said that NASA and some of the aerospace community still seems to be blinded like deer in the headlights of von Braun's image. The things you were saying were actually von Braun's image that they did with Collier magazine I believe in the 1950's. You know it is almost like unfinished business but the climate about how much interest is there in that business - the level of how much it costs versus the level of interest are a mismatch. Now if the level of interest went up to the level of cost those things would be going to try and happen. Regarding the type of stuff that I'm doing - the very visiony stuff - it is just a tiny tiny speck of the overall budget situation. And there is a whole spectrum of activities that don't get as much press as mine does about nearer term things - all the way to improving rocket engines to light sails, ion thrusters, antimatter - you know there is a whole spectrum of activities of maturity from the very visionary which gets a lot of press to the very near term improving the performance of the shuttle engines. And a lot of that middle ground you don't see. But right now the real show stoppers - the things really slowing down the progress - is that the amount of what it really costs to make those things happen and the level of interest in them are a mismatch. And until the costs come down or the interest goes up they are not going to happen. And both of those - the interest might rise in time or the cost might drop in time - and I forgot what the phrase is for it - whether it is called "monkey wrench" or "outlyer". But if this project has any breakthrough discoveries that completely changes the climate on everything. And who knows what will happen at that point and I could see it going both good and bad. The good would be that the breakthroughs are affordable to make all these missions happens but not using rockets - using the next technology. The bad news is that people assume that the breakthroughs will work fine - and they might not - and put all their eggs in that basket and abandon those near-term things and that would be a mistake because if the breakthoughs are not achievable we'd just burn ourselves and delay doing the things that are more tangible and more near-term. And how that is all going to play out I don't know. But right now bottom line - level of cost and level of interest are a mismatch. And this is just one small thing on the very far edge. Churchill: Ok, well - on behalf of the moderators and on behalf of the class we really want to give our gratitude for your time today. MILLIS: I enjoyed it. These were more interesting questions than I normally get to. Churchill: Great. I'm glad that you feel that there is some reward in it for yourself as well. I think that I speak for everybody when I say "good luck" with all your battles and with all your research. And we all hope that a breakthrough is coming and that all those efforts will be fruitful. Thank you very much and we hope that we have the opportunity to see you again somehow and wanted to wish you well at your conference as well. MILLIS: Thank you.