My comments after
my lecture
June 10, at Supaéro
June 16, 2003
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Hello, Mr. Petit?
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Yes, speaking.
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We are students at the National Superior School of Aeronautics. We are interested in MHD. Would you consider giving 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 hear here and there that MHD—sometimes renamed "electro-aerodynamics"—is restarting in France. The magazine Air et Cosmos reported various initiatives, both within the CNRS and in the French aeronautics community (ONERA, the National Office of Aeronautics, located like Supaéro in Toulouse). All this activity pains me deeply, knowing that I abandoned this field in 1987 due to public authorities’ inaction. My research, after having been the subject of several successive (and unsuccessful) attempts at appropriation, is now superbly ignored. Yet the students are in no way responsible for this state of affairs, and so I have decided to accept their invitation. However, I made it clear that I would only agree to give such a lecture under the explicit condition of being officially invited by the school’s administration. The students therefore recorded my request and relayed it. The letter was finally sent on May 27, and the lecture will therefore take place on Tuesday, May 10, 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 and perhaps other school officials would be present. I arrive at the school with my friend Jean-Pierre Ledoux, a businessman 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 administrator or professor in sight! The students are puzzled. Mr. Bonnet, their fluid mechanics professor, who had promised to be there at 7:30, does not arrive, nor does he call them (later he admits he simply forgot the appointment).
Time passes. Awkwardness sets in. One student fetches a corkscrew and opens one of the red wine bottles on the table. At 8 p.m., still no one.
We decide to quickly finish dinner and go 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 strong interest. At 9:15 p.m., I feel we can hardly keep the audience waiting any longer. Over two hundred people are gathered (and will remain until 11:30 p.m.). Yet 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 is familiar with 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 to questions. According to Ledoux, who had ample opportunity to observe the room, the students now turn toward their fluid mechanics professor, Mr. Bonnet, who arrived after the lecture had begun and had taken a seat at the very back of the amphitheater. They pass him a microphone:
- What Jean-Pierre Petit said is, broadly speaking, entirely correct, with a few inaccuracies. The B2’s trailing edge system does not generate "turbulence."
I respond:
- The term "turbulence" is indeed inappropriate. "Vortex" is more accurate. 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. He then asks another question:
- Do we have any idea about the generator that would need to be installed on these machines to produce 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 tesla through superconductivity. The current intensities achieved remain unknown to us. These values are classified under national defense secrecy. Let’s recall that a civilian installation equipped with superconductors operating in cryogenics and reaching four tesla was operational in Germany by the late 1960s. To my knowledge, Americans have managed to implement high-temperature superconducting devices; thus, the weight issue no longer exists. Some years ago, two researchers received the Nobel Prize for work that led them to fabricate superconducting elements based on ceramics, which function not in liquid helium but in liquid nitrogen—already a tremendous material advantage. That said, progress in superconductivity is undoubtedly the most sensitive topic on the military front, where Americans have held absolute dominance for half a century. This field is subject to powerful technological suppression, even deliberate misinformation. Major advances have been made in the USA. These achievements are certainly Nobel-worthy, but political authorities have chosen to keep them inaccessible, shrouded in the deepest defense secrecy. This reminds me of how they concealed from the rest of the world Chuck Yeager’s historic feat of breaking the sound barrier in the Bell X1—until other countries discovered it on their own. 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 draws researchers from all over the world 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 prepare for this experiment campaign. The American researchers replied that it would not be necessary to provide them with any. They remained very discreet about the experiments they conducted, using only the "source" made available 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 reinforced concrete flooring to remove iron rods located just beneath the surface. This was noticed only after their departure. According to reports, the American setup, positioned one meter above the ground, interacted so strongly with these steel bars that it caused unacceptable distortions in the structure. The Americans must have wanted to completely conceal the fact that they possess superconductors operating at room temperature...