NASA's antigravity machine.

[Donn]

I was recently sent this link in my email:
http://popularmechanics.com/science/research/1997/12/antigravity_machine/

Scientists have historically dismissed talk of antigravity machines as utter nonsense. But at a rare, closed-door conference at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, scientists representing major universities, national weapons laboratories, defense contractors and the corporate research and development community gathered to hear a detailed account of the space agency's progress in attempting to build a machine that once seemed beyond the bounds of possibility.

I suspect it's as old as 1997. I was wondering if anyone knows of this and just where the needle on the Bull-meter would be pointing?

[Soapy Sam]

Journalists "Backed off" from a scientific scandal similar to Cold Fusion??

Now that, I'm sceptical of.

[Virgil]

is it a rocket???

[Donn]

Yes, it seems strange that's the last we hear of it. There doesn't seem to be anything in the article that you can get a grip on. It's very if and maybe.

Has anything been made/tested along the lines of this podkletnov magnetic thingum?

The article was sent to me as 'proof' that NASA knows more than they let on. I find that truly inane, but against the mindset that NASA is throwing science off the scent of true anti-grav (etc, etc), it's pretty much impossible to argue.

[CurtC]

Didn't Randi write about this a few years ago? I recall reading something like that. The gist was that this Russian guy had wild claims of antigravity effects, involving spinning magnets or some such. NASA had a research program with the charter of looking at all kinds of wild ideas, and they gave this guy a hearing. And that was that.

[Chemical_Penguin]

Yea I remember reading an article much like this one, but in popular science back when I was in about 9th grade and from the little that I actually remember NASA said that they were approached by someone who showed them a type anti-gravity idea that in it's current state could make the space shuttle lighter by .1% or .2% something small like that, so NASA gave him and his team funds to further research into the project.

But that's all I remember, and I don't even know if it was .1% - .2% or if it was a full 1% - 2% but it was definitely one of those two. And in the article they explained that by making the shuttle lighter by even .1% (or 1%) it would save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Khonshu]

NASA always has to have it's doors open to hear about such things. You just don't know what someone may figure out, even if 99.99% of the time they are just wasting their time to check out someone's claim.

Whenever I hear about this sort of thing, I remember why a tank is called a tank. During WWI, the British referred to their new armored vehicles as water tanks to disguise what they were really working on. It sounded innocent enough - "tanks being constructed in...." or "# of tanks being shipped to France". The name just kind of stuck. Sometimes money really isn't being funneled down a black hole.