Dear Reader,

Anyone who is interested ask me questions and I will try to answer.  I think this is one of those "requiring a global community with hundreds of millions of members" problems.  It might be so difficult it requires the cooperative efforts of everyone on the planet. We will see.

This project is so large, it is taking me a while. I feel I am making some progress.  It is clear that Hackaday.io, in its present form, will be hard to use.  I am looking at building a website where people can share complex models for all the things that will have to be built and tested.

I am hammering on the details of how gravity and magnetism are connected.  If someone asks me, I can explain my own model of what is happening.  In practical terms, everything that was discovered and tested in electromagnetism can be looked at from its application to gravitaitonal engineering.  

My own favorites are "earth to orbit", "atomic energy storage", "modular and portable generators", "imaging the interior of the earth", "ultrawide bandwidth communication", "Imaging the sun with gravity", "moving things with fields", manipulating thing with fields", "modifying chemical and atomic structures with fields", "solar system exploration", "remote scanning of asteroid interiors", "sublight propulsion", "gravitational Mach numbers".

Just to be clear, I use the word "atomic" to go back to the original hope of using atomic energy for safe, practical, everyday purposes.  That, for me, means "atomic chemistry" where you build and use materials and processes where the bond energies are in the zero to 10 MeV range.  Particularly in the keV (1000 electron volts or about 100 times the energy in a chemical bond).  Pushing things to orbit, and puttering around the solar system at sublight speeds requires atomic energies, and fuels with atomic energy densities.  Safe, reliable, affordable.

Practical, efficient movement of things is part of gravitational engineering.  First to use our current technologies to produce acceleration fields efficiently. Then to understand, test and create new ways to optimize application of energy using fields.

[ My tentative model description ] So far, there are a few phenomena that are distinctly gravity related.  The underlying potential field that gravity and electromagnetism share, supports the usual speed of light and gravity waves. But "gravity" is governed more by the diffusion term in the telegraphers equation, than the lossless wave terms . As such it can support modes that are nearly instantaneous. If you get a chance, read Moon and Spencer, "Field Theory Handbook" for a quick over view.  I am very practical, that is why I say "engineering".  If you create acceleration fields and move things with fields, that is gravity.  If you create a chemical propulsion system that is 100% - some tiny losses - efficient, it is "gravity".  More "efficient use of anything" or "12 sigma engineering".

The "models" in the title of this update are computer models of all the phenomena affecting any design or application of fields.  Because they are so intertwined, we need to have some people focus on standardizing the way we document, test and use literally billions of scraps of information.  And build tools so global communities can work together without constantly duplicating basic research.  A simple thing like "fast fourier transform" has 4 millon entry points on the web.  All those people are learning and memorizing and duplicating tools that should have been long ago settled and useful.  Not waste everyone's time.  So we need data and tools to use for gravitational engineering.  And we need tools to allow groups of hundreds of millions of people to work together - carefully tracking everyone's contribution.

Those starships do not get built by one person. We are five generations from the tools needed for that. But I think an "up to light speed" puttering around the solar system is probably possible three technology generation from now. But a sustainable way for people with an interest and skills to do that is needed.  As usual, the engineers will build it, and the theoreticians will try to explain it to everyone else.

The earth based applications will be so valuable that starships might be an after-thought.  From my point of view, our current technology is so cumbersome, expensive and fragmented, just cleaning  up to separate "gravity" from "electromagnetism" might benefit many.  Working together globally regardless of country or background will have profound effects. Think of it as organizing to push out to the solar system, then the universe.

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation