Dear readers,
today I’ve got interesting news about ASPS work.

First of all, the Association has found external collaborators with whom it has worked on its latest official prototype, F242, to make it more suitable for testing in vacuum chambers and, of course, for space flight.

Substantially, modifications have been made to make the thruster autonomous in its dynamic through the removal of the external power cables. This means power supply through a battery pack and amplifier plus preamplifier installed directly onboard the prototype. Also, the ignition command is sent via remote control.  This project has been jokingly nicknamed telefonone , “big phone” in Italian.

This F242 configuration will be then testable under any verification procedure that will be decided by eventual financiers, thus tests on ballistic pendulum, torsional pendulum, frictionless test track etc..

Once the casing will be installed F242 will be ready for commercialization and, after the solar panels for battery recharging will be added, it will also be ready for the tests in space.

The next evolutive step was F449. The purpose of this prototype was to reduce through constructive approaches the temperatures developed by the propulsion unit.
The overheating is due to the ferrite cores that are used to increase the magnetic fields, as they’re created using the limited amperes available from ASPS power supplies. As the ferrite cores work at millions of oscillations per second, the ferrite reaches temperatures that are critical for the whole system: the thermal camera detected a temperature over 250°C (full-scale). This intense heat propagates to all thruster components, hence compromising its integrity. Unfortunately it isn’t possible to realize a metallic frame because the induction currents would be uncontrollable under rapidly changing magnetic fields. Thermal deformations are able to compromise the measurements of the thrust as a result of deformation of the coaxial cable.

A possible solution could be the use of ceramic materials but ASPS resources aren’t enough to make customized components for PNN thruster. Therefore utilized ferrites and ceramics are common components found on the market and then wrought as much as possible to fit the prototype. For such motivations F449 power frequency has been increased from 144 Mhz of F242 to about 432 Mhz to reduce the prototype dimensions and consequently the overheating damages (although the temperatures remain the same). Last experiments have been conducted ad 449 Mhz, where it has been detected a thrust in the opposite direction.

There is a plausible explanation for the phenomenon: phase shifters are made of ferrite and it would be improvident to think that they maintain the fields phase as it happens without them. The fields through ferrites can operate in maximum phase, thrust in a direction with a phase of 0,360,720 degrees, or with 180,540 degrees that is thrust in opposite direction (quadrature 90,450 degrees) and no thrust when the fields reciprocally auto-erase themselves.

However incontrovertible PNN thrust tests can be made in “closed box” (prototype core can’t be disclosed) through battery power, thus without coaxial cables for external power that deform when heated. 

At the moment, incontrovertible PNN tests with external power cable can be made only in “open box”, where one can directly observe the force created by thrust elements.
This is a situation that ASPS can’t afford because it’s looking for resources to industrially develop PNN.

However all tests for both F242 and F449 are feasible in closed box with battery power supply after it has been conveniently prepared and with commands transmitted from remote .

The current electrodynamic violation procedure of action and reaction principle is a more effective variant than the one related to a patent filed on April 22nd 1998 that can be found at EPO (European Patent Office) with the following registry data:

ITRM980250 (A1) ― 1999-10-22 – Sistema di propulsione elettromagnetico

In February this year Laureti talked about this patent (where the present PNN has its roots) on Nasa spaceflight forum.

Basically his patent covers what Maxwell couldn’t know, not because he wasn’t capable but because he hasn’t got the technology to investigate further.

I report Laureti’s words about this issue:

The first who has thought to interactions between open circuits like the dipoles, for what I could find from a historical point of view, was Maxwell.

He explicitly says at page 163 Vol.2 of his Treatise:

…no experiments on the mutual action of unclosed circuits have been made…

and I have to say that at that time it was almost impossible to do such experiments. I’ve discussed more extensively this topic in Nova Astronautica n.84 Vol.20 2000 pages 3-9 as well as in n.77 Vol.18 pages 1-17, where it is described the standard procedure for the violation of Newtonian action-reaction principle through standard electrodynamics that led to the above mentioned patent.

You can find a description of this procedure here on Neo Leges Motus

Unfortunately the overheating issue prevented ASPS to take reliable measurements of the prototype thrust output but eventually F449 led to the creation of the next, and latest, prototype in the series: F432.

This will be the subject of my next post so stay tuned!