Franklin B Mead

Franklin B. Mead

Franklin B Mead Jr. (Franklin B. Mead, Jr.), also known as Frank Mead, is an American mechanical and aerospace engineer who spent much of his career as a senior research scientist with the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Propulsion Directorate at Edwards Air Force Base, California. He is known for his work on advanced and breakthrough propulsion concepts, including laser-propelled "Lightcraft" vehicles, and for a patent covering the proposed extraction of energy from zero-point electromagnetic radiation.

Biography

Mead earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, followed by a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Pennsylvania State University.

He worked as a research scientist at Edwards Air Force Base, where he served as a project manager in the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space and Missile Propulsion Division. Over a career of more than thirty-five years he directed experimental work and managed research and development programs and contracts covering chemical, electric, laser, solar and nuclear propulsion thrusters and system concepts, including flight experiments and demonstrations.

After retiring from the Air Force he continued private research through his own company, Mead Science & Technology, and has served as an advisor to the aerospace firm Kepler Aerospace.

Work

Mead's technical background is in the thermal sciences (thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and heat transfer), electric propulsion, and plasma dynamics. Alongside conventional propulsion research he has pursued advanced and speculative concepts such as fusion propulsion, plasma propulsion, zero-point vacuum energy, field propulsion, and faster-than-light travel.

Laser propulsion and the Lightcraft

Mead was one of the engineers associated with the Lightcraft laser-propulsion concept, working with Leik Myrabo and colleagues at the AFRL Propulsion Directorate. The Lightcraft Technology Demonstration program at Edwards AFB conducted ground and flight tests of small laser-boosted vehicles in the late 1990s and 2000, using a ground-based pulsed laser to drive an air-breathing/ablative thruster. Mead co-authored papers on these tests and later reported on a laser-propulsion program aimed at delivering very small payloads to low Earth orbit.

Zero-point energy patent

On 31 December 1996, U.S. Patent 5,590,031, "System for converting electromagnetic radiation energy to electrical energy", was issued to Franklin B. Mead, Jr. and Jack Nachamkin. The patent describes a proposed system in which a pair of dielectric structures of slightly different volumetric size are placed close together and resonate in response to incident high-frequency zero-point electromagnetic radiation. The secondary radiation re-emitted by the two structures interferes to produce a much lower beat-frequency signal, which is picked up by an antenna and passed to a converter that produces electrical energy of the desired voltage and waveform. The patent background cites the work of Hendrik Casimir (1948) and Marcus Sparnaay (1958) on vacuum forces as the basis for the existence of zero-point radiation. The patent is frequently cited in discussions of proposed vacuum-energy extraction schemes, which remain unproven.

Advanced propulsion studies

As an AFRL project manager, Mead oversaw contracted studies surveying exotic and breakthrough propulsion concepts for the Propulsion Directorate, work that was published in the Air Force's technical report series.

Publications

• F. B. Mead, Jr. and J. Nachamkin, System for converting electromagnetic radiation energy to electrical energy, U.S. Patent 5,590,031, 1996.
• F. B. Mead, L. N. Myrabo and D. G. Messitt, "Flight and Ground Tests of a Laser-Boosted Vehicle", 34th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, Cleveland, Ohio, 1998.
• F. B. Mead, C. W. Larson and W. M. Kalliomaa, "A Status Report of the X-50LR Program – A Laser Propulsion Program", 38th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2002.

External links

• U.S. Patent 5,590,031 – System for converting electromagnetic radiation energy to electrical energy