REVIEW AND OUTLOOK

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POST-RELATIVISTIC CONCEPTS IN PHYSICS AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY ABROAD

Rolf Schaffranke, Dr. h. c.
Member A.I.A.A.

        "Far more harm is done to the progress of science by skepticism than by gullibility". (Dr. Robert Wood, Director R & D, McDonnel-Douglas Astronautics Div., Cal.) NASA - Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA is named after Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906), an American astronomer, engineer and architect.
        Langley worked out the aerodynamic principles for manned flight. In principal, his calculations were correct; but the structural materials he used for wings and engines were ,insufficient. In December of 1903, the New York Times published an editorial complaining about his foolish dream and the associated waste of government money. The editorial predicted that: "man would not fly for a thousand years".
Only 9 days after the editorial was published, the Wright brothers made their first successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk. (Dec. 17, 1903). But, again, as late as 1905, the Scientific American suggested the happening was a hoax - two years after the event which changed history. Let's reflect for a moment on the fact that only in a single lifetime, man has journeyed from Kitty Hawk to the surface of the moon!
       The analogy to the problem of alternative energies and their development is, of course, obvious. We try to educate the preaching orthodoxies. But orthodox solutions are no longer enough. Our system of education can only give from the past. The present must operate on inspiration and intuition, or the future will be lost. The past no longer has enough of the answers for arising crises for which there are no precedents. To keep pace with the requirements of the future, we must begin to teach not only what to learn, but how to learn, how to analyze, how to search for the truth. Only then will be able to recognize discrepancies between experiment and dogma and to cope with problems which appear to be just beyond the corner. History has shown again and again that no single individual can rise above the species without being persecuted. The reasons for that are:

                Some of the most powerful forces in homo sapiens have always been
                Greed, Pride, Ego, Fear and, above all, the Desire to Control Others,
                        .
         A brand new German book titled Energy in Abundance, which is evidently creating a considerable impact in the European community, challenges the contemporary high

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