Documents / FOIA release
This 1992 JPRS report, dated 16 June 1992 and held in the CIA collection, translates a Rabochaya Tribuna article by Vladimir Lagovskiy called "Flight to Alpha Centauri." The article reports that specialists at the Experimental Machine Building Scientific Research Association say they built a high-temperature superconductor. They propose using it for a saucer-shaped spacecraft driven by electron flux. Scientist Vasiliy Shabetnik also describes an "energy conversion" process that he says could power a flight to Alpha Centauri and back in 12 years.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1992 Document 4 of 20 superconductivity is a phenomenon that may be discovered but could not be explained from the standpoint of previous principles. And where there is exact calculation, substances with prespecified properties may be designed. That is how scientists initially theoretically predicted the existence of a superconductor at minus 80 degrees Celsius. And then they produced it. And the result confirmed the theory exactly. And now a plan for 850 degrees has appeared. And there is no basis for suggesting that it will not be successful. 21. 'I will not stop until all secrets have been revealed,' says Shabetnik, 'but I give a hint that ordinary iron may become the basis of the new superconductor. The intricacy will be the energy order of arrangement of the rest of the elements.' 22. ''Okay. But what fuel do you intend to use in space?' I suddenly remembered. 23. And Almost With a Perpetual Motor 24. 'Will you place a nuclear reactor or a thermonuclear reactor on the ship? Or perhaps you will return to the energy of a vacuum?' 25. 'Neither of the three,' answers Vasiliy Dmitriyevich. 'Do you recall yet another sensation that burst forth about the same time as high-temperature superconductivity? I mean, when the discover of what is called the 'cold thermal nucleus' was announced in the United States. This effect was later reproduced in many laboratories. It was reproduced but again left unexplained. And why? Because they tried to find signs of thermonuclear reactions where none exist.' 26. 'I remember those experiments well. I even observed one at Moscow State University: a tank with heavy water, two live electrodes, and no idea where the additional heat was coming from. But if its source was not a 'cold thermal nucleus,' what then was it? 27. 'We call the phenomenon 'energy conversion.' And that very tank is a primitive model of a converter. The water in it boils. To put it in scientific terms, a phase transition takes place. The particles in the water move in an ordered fashion on account of the electric field. According to our theory, in such cases phase transitions yield an increased amount of thermal energy. The gain is a factor of 2.12 to 4.2 higher than the work expended.' 28. 'Wait, wait,' I said while trying to digest what I was hearing. 'Does this mean that a perpetual motor has been produced?' 29. ''No. The internal energy of the matter has been extracted.''
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.