Secret Defense Hypersonic MHD

My comments following my lecture
on June 10th at Supaéro

June 16, 2003 – Hello, Mr. Petit?

• Yes, that's me.
• We are students at the National Superior School of Aeronautics. We're interested in MHD. Would you be willing to give a lecture at our institution, in Toulouse?

This request from the students is legitimate, but the current situation is far from pleasant for me. I keep hearing here and there that MHD—sometimes rebranded as "electro-aerodynamics"—is restarting in France. The magazine Air et Cosmos reported various initiatives, both within the CNRS and in the French aeronautics sector (ONERA, National Aeronautics Office, located in Toulouse alongside Supaéro). All this commotion pains me, knowing that I abandoned this field in 1987 due to public authorities' blockage. My research, after having been subjected to several successive (and unsuccessful) attempts at theft, is now superbly ignored. But the students are in no way responsible for this state of affairs, so I decided to accept their invitation. However, I made it clear that I would only give such a lecture under the explicit condition of being officially invited by the school's administration. The students therefore recorded my request and passed it along. The letter was finally sent on the 27th, and the lecture will therefore take place on Tuesday, May 10th at 8:30 p.m.

The students ask if I couldn't come at 7:30 p.m. so I could join a dinner where Mr. Bonnet would be present, and possibly other school officials. So I arrive at the school with my friend Jean-Pierre Ledoux, an entrepreneur curious about the event. At 7 p.m., we join the students in a room adjacent to the student cafeteria. Sign: "Lecture by Mr. J.P. Petit." At 7:30, not a single school official or professor appears! The students are puzzled. Mr. Bonnet, their fluid mechanics teacher, who had promised to be there at 7:30, does not show up, nor does he call them (later he admits he simply forgot the appointment).

Time passes. Awkwardness sets in. One student goes to get a corkscrew and opens one of the bottles of red wine on the table. At 8 p.m.: still no one.

We decide to quickly eat dinner and head to the lecture hall. The students arrive en masse. The amphitheater is nearly full, except for the front rows traditionally occupied by faculty and administration. According to the students, this exceptional turnout demonstrates a very strong interest. At 9:15 p.m., I think we can't keep the audience waiting any longer. Over two hundred people are gathered (and remain until 11:30 p.m.). But no teacher or school official is present to introduce me. So I ask one of the students to do it.

This lecture is interesting because the audience has knowledge of fluid mechanics. I discuss the history of MHD in France, the general question of hypersonic flight, talk about Aurora and the B2 for a good hour and a half, and then open the floor for questions. According to Ledoux, who had ample opportunity to observe the room, the students then turn toward their fluid mechanics teacher, Mr. Bonnet, who arrived after the lecture began and took a seat at the very back of the amphitheater. They pass him a microphone:

• What Jean-Pierre Petit said is, broadly speaking, entirely true, with a few inaccuracies. The B2's leading-edge system does not generate "turbulence."

I respond:

• The term "turbulence" is indeed inappropriate. It's rather "vortices" that fit better. Indeed, the zigzag cut of the B2 produces this phenomenon, preventing wingtip separations from migrating toward the nose of the vehicle.

Bonnet nods in agreement. Then he asks another question:

• Do we have any idea about the generator that would need to be installed on these machines to generate such strong electromagnetic parameters?

This question reveals that he missed the beginning of my presentation and, incidentally, shows he hasn't read my book. I reply:

• The first aspect concerns generating magnetic fields exceeding ten teslas through superconductivity. The intensities currently achieved remain unknown to us. These values fall under defense secrecy. Let us recall that a civilian installation equipped with superconductors operating in cryogenics and reaching four teslas was operational in Germany by the late 1960s. To my knowledge, the Americans have managed to implement high-temperature superconducting devices; the weight issue is therefore no longer a problem. Some years ago, two researchers received the Nobel Prize for work that led them to produce superconducting elements based on ceramics, functioning not in liquid helium but in liquid nitrogen—a tremendous gain in material efficiency. That said, progress in superconductivity undoubtedly represents the most sensitive subject on the military level, where the Americans have held absolute dominance for half a century. This field is subject to powerful technological suppression, even deliberate misinformation. Major breakthroughs have occurred in the USA. These advances are certainly Nobel-worthy, but political authorities have chosen to keep them inaccessible, shrouded in the thickest defense secrecy. This reminds me of how they hid from the rest of the world Chuck Yeager's achievement on the Bell X1—the first breaking of the sound barrier—until other countries discovered it independently. Returning to MHD, signs exist indicating that Americans dominate the field of high-temperature superconductivity. One of my engineer friends, responsible for instrumentation at a major European laboratory that attracts researchers from all nationalities due to its unique facilities and analytical capabilities, shared a "story" with me. One day, an American team came to conduct experiments involving strong magnetic fields. My friend asked them what amount of liquid helium or nitrogen they would need to plan for this experiment campaign. The American researchers replied they wouldn't need any supplied. They remained very discreet about the experiments they conducted, using only the "source" provided by this cutting-edge laboratory. However, a curious fact allowed me to gauge the strength of the fields they employed: they had to break through the reinforced concrete floor to remove the iron rods located just beneath its surface. This was noticed after their departure. According to reports, the American setup, positioned one meter above the ground, interacted so strongly with these bars that it caused unacceptable deformations in the structure. To completely conceal the fact that they possess superconductors operating at room temperature, or even above, they would have had to order a certain daily volume of liquid helium or nitrogen and simply let it evaporate beside...