Gravitron Drive with a Rapidly Spinning Disk (RSD)
Propulsion without Propellant
– Full Proposal –

Conventional jet aircraft are major polluters. The fuel consumed per hour by a 747 jumbo jet in flight is equivalent to the fuel used by approx 1,300 motor vehicles every hour. Conventional rockets also pollute the atmosphere. Moreover, rockets are currently regarded as too slow, too unreliable, too expensive and too inefficient for their purpose.

The production of oil is peaking worldwide.  Only massive investment to modernise existing installations will enable the industry to extract the last remnants from current fields. To enable the extraction from the alleged remaining resources such as the Alaskan fields and the Caspian Sea, continual investment will be required and further desecration of the planet will result.  Such investment is clearly a short term solution, since the oil industry itself estimates that there will soon begin a permanent and precipitous decline in the availability of oil that will very likely completely change the character of civilisation as we know it within the next 20 years or so.

All the current alternatives in the world cannot begin to provide more than a tiny fraction of the energy base now provided by oil. In addition oil is required for lubrication purposes and for the ever-growing plastics industry. Only radically different solutions and totally new energy technologies will save us.

The purpose of the RSD enterprise is to develop and demonstrate a truly advanced technological solution. It is a propulsion system harnessing gravity as a thrusting force, generated by a rapidly spinning disk in a gravitron drive. This solution will provide a complete replacement for traditional jet engines and rocket propulsion.

Spinning Disk Research was founded to develop this technology. Headquartered in the UK, the senior partners have been in business together for over 14 years.  Spinning Disk Research has spent many years on the project so far and one of the world's top materials scientists is a partner heading up the RSD team.

Conventional rockets are regarded as too slow, too unreliable, too expensive and too inefficient. In chemical or nuclear rocket propulsion speedy acceleration or sudden changes of direction are not practical because such actions (if they were possible) would subject the occupants to excessive pressures-exerted in the opposite direction to the thrust. Rocket technology also requires that travellers train for a considerable time (and at great cost) to be able to tolerate the micro (or zero) gravity of space.

The RSD, in an appropriate craft will be able to generate a source of localised gravity. This on-board, computer-controlled force, equivalent to our normal 1G environment, will remove any possibility of occupants being forced back against the craft's wall as it accelerates.

• RSD + HDE Phase One will culminate in the demonstration of gravity generation by a 30 cm RSD. Time to realisation: approx 3 years.
• RSD + HDE Phase Two will culminate in a basic demonstration of a 200 cm drive mounted in a prototype demonstration model craft powered by an RSD. Time to realisation: approx 3 years.
• HDE Component will run in parallel with Phase One and Phase Two. Full details available upon request