The age of Star Trek is upon us.

[Gaard]

Air Force report calls for $7.5M to study psychic teleportation

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation.

But scientists aren't so thrilled.

The Air Force Research Lab's August "Teleportation Physics Report," posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful military spending.

In the report, author Eric Davis says psychic teleportation, moving yourself from location to location through mind powers, is "quite real and can be controlled." The 88-page report also reviews a range of teleportation concepts and experiments:

? Quantum teleportation, a technique demonstrated in the last decade that shifts the characteristics, but not the location, of sub-atomic particles at great distances.

? Wormholes, a highly theoretical possibility whereby the intense gravitational field near black holes could rip open entrances to distant locales.

? Psychokinesis, or psychic teleportation. In support of the idea, the report cites UFO reports, Soviet and Chinese studies of psychics and U.S. military studies of spoon-bending phenomena.

"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek, a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."

Some experts have long criticized what they see as a military sweet tooth for junk science. A "remote viewing" project, for example, undertaken by defense intelligence services and declassified in 1994, sought to see whether psychic powers could be employed to spy on the Soviet Union. The teleportation report "raises questions of scientific quality control at the Air Force," the FAS' Steven Aftergood says.

Davis, a physicist with Warp Drive Metrics of Las Vegas, couldn't be reached for comment. The Air Force paid $25,000 for the report, part of a $20.5 million advanced rocket and missile design contract. The report calls for $7.5 million to conduct psychic teleportation experiments.

"The views expressed in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Air Force, the Department of Defense (news - web sites) or the U.S. Government," says an Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) statement sent to USA TODAY. "There are no plans by the AFRL Propulsion Directorate for additional funding on this contract."

Explaining why the lab sponsored the study, AFRL spokesman Ranney Adams said, "If we don't turn over stones, we don't know if we have missed something."

 

[Dissipate]

Your tax dollars at work, folks.

 

[MegaWorks]

I WANT A DEFIANT CLASS!!!!

 

[Engineer]

And we wonder (actually, we don't wonder) why we have huge fvcking deficits!!! :|

Yes, I'm mad. It's OUR money. If you're running a surplus, play a tad and give a little back...if you're 420 billion in a hold each year, cut the sh!t!!! :|

 

[Gen Stonewall]

Fortunately this is only two cents per person on average.

 

[MegaWorks]

Yeah I should say something useful, well that's a lot of money.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Engineer
And we wonder (actually, we don't wonder) why we have huge fvcking deficits!!! :|

Yes, I'm mad. It's OUR money. If you're running a surplus, play a tad and give a little back...if you're 420 billion in a hold each year, cut the sh!t!!! :|

You think that this is the only way the military wastes money? Boy are you in for a BIG surprise. The military is basically one HUGE centrally planned socialist entity. It wastes more money and is more inefficient than probably any single entity on the entire planet.

 

[Gaard]

The Air Force paid $25,000 for the report

The views expressed in the report are those of the author

Just the other day my wife said to me "Penny for your thoughts." What a ripoff!

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Engineer
And we wonder (actually, we don't wonder) why we have huge fvcking deficits!!! :|

Yes, I'm mad. It's OUR money. If you're running a surplus, play a tad and give a little back...if you're 420 billion in a hold each year, cut the sh!t!!! :|

You think that this is the only way the military wastes money? Boy are you in for a BIG surprise. The military is basically one HUGE centrally planned socialist entity. It wastes more money and is more inefficient than probably any single entity on the entire planet.

No, actually I know the whole governenment and military wastes money out the ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Anyone remember the toilet seats? :|

Yes, I'm pissed!!!

 

[MegaWorks]

Engineer cool down buddy, we all know you're pissed. Go take a cold shower or watch something funny on TV.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Engineer
And we wonder (actually, we don't wonder) why we have huge fvcking deficits!!! :|

Yes, I'm mad. It's OUR money. If you're running a surplus, play a tad and give a little back...if you're 420 billion in a hold each year, cut the sh!t!!! :|

You think that this is the only way the military wastes money? Boy are you in for a BIG surprise. The military is basically one HUGE centrally planned socialist entity. It wastes more money and is more inefficient than probably any single entity on the entire planet.

No, actually I know the whole governenment and military wastes money out the ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Anyone remember the toilet seats? :|

Yes, I'm pissed!!!

That's what happens in socialism. How the hell do we know how much a B2 bomber is supposed to cost, for instance? There is simply no market for a lot of the stuff the military buys. It just pays contractors to build this stuff some inane amount that is not based anything rational. This leads to inevitable waste.

Not only is the government military GROSSLY inefficient in purchasing and allocating equipment, it is also grossly inefficient fighting battles and wars as well. How do we know this? Because just like the purchasing of the equipment, all battles and wars the government fights are centrally planned as well. There is simply no free market for fighting wars, so the battle tactics and allocation of resources during the battle is also grossly inefficient.

 

[Abraxas]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Engineer
And we wonder (actually, we don't wonder) why we have huge fvcking deficits!!! :|

Yes, I'm mad. It's OUR money. If you're running a surplus, play a tad and give a little back...if you're 420 billion in a hold each year, cut the sh!t!!! :|

You think that this is the only way the military wastes money? Boy are you in for a BIG surprise. The military is basically one HUGE centrally planned socialist entity. It wastes more money and is more inefficient than probably any single entity on the entire planet.

How is it socialist exactly?

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Abraxas

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Engineer
And we wonder (actually, we don't wonder) why we have huge fvcking deficits!!! :|

Yes, I'm mad. It's OUR money. If you're running a surplus, play a tad and give a little back...if you're 420 billion in a hold each year, cut the sh!t!!! :|

You think that this is the only way the military wastes money? Boy are you in for a BIG surprise. The military is basically one HUGE centrally planned socialist entity. It wastes more money and is more inefficient than probably any single entity on the entire planet.

How is it socialist exactly?

It coercively extracts funds from taxpayers, and then distributes those funds through a centrally planned bureaucracy called the Department of Defense. Due to this fact, the government is essentially immune to the effects of profit and loss test, so it goes without saying that it is irrationally allocating these funds on a daily basis, hell, probably on a minute to minute basis.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
Engineer cool down buddy, we all know you're pissed. Go take a cold shower or watch something funny on TV.

Why? People are always demanding lower taxes. How about lower spending (at least SMART spending) to help achieve that? I hate taxes too....and I've paid a good share this year! :Q

And yes, I'm still mad! :|

 

[Gaard]

Just think of it as an investment. How are we going to figure this stuff out if we don't study it.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
Engineer cool down buddy, we all know you're pissed. Go take a cold shower or watch something funny on TV.

Why? People are always demanding lower taxes. How about lower spending (at least SMART spending) to help achieve that? I hate taxes too....and I've paid a good share this year! :Q

And yes, I'm still mad! :|

I just explained how smart spending is impossible for the military. It is the same reason why communism failed in Russia: it is centrally planned, and decisions are made arbitrarily by bureaucrats.

 

[winr]

Nigh on 20 years ago 2 guys got a grant of $84,000.00 to find out how many cows it would take to power a small house with their poots.
If I remember correctly, they put some sort of contraption on their hineys to catch the gas.
I forget how many cows they arrived at.
I read it in an article describing projects people had submitted to try and get grants.
There were hundreds of ideas I thought were goofy, but who knows.

 

[ReiAyanami]

at $426 billion/year i'm surprised ONLY $7.5 million is being spent on quantum physics. i mean it's gotta be more beneficial than $5 bullets? the ratheon lockheed logo on them makes them faster!!

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: ReiAyanami
at $426 billion/year i'm surprised ONLY $7.5 million is being spent on quantum physics. i mean it's gotta be more beneficial than $5 bullets? the ratheon lockheed logo on them makes them faster!!

Ahhh, the $600.00 hammer argument.

Back when the 600 dollar hammer was the poster child of government excess, I challenged anyone with the capabilities to produce a hammer that met the specifications and qualifications for less than 600 dollars to please step forward. Nobody ever did.

So if you can produce the bullets that meet the specs for less than 5 bucks each, please do so and you can snag the contract. The fortune you would make would be stupendous, don't you think?

 

[eclavatar]

There are competing companies that military buys from. So this whole 'wasteful' spending logic is severly flawed. If a company can produce a jet, or weapons that are as effective and much cheaper, you don't think they would do so? It just shows how everyone here is ignorant of anything military. So if you really don't know anything about it , why discuss it? I don't go discussing geology, as I know nothing about it.

Anyway, I think funding for this type of research needs to be dramatically increased.

 

[IEC]

A Colossus Class Capital Ship please. Oh wait, that's Freespace 2.

 

[CycloWizard]

$7.5 million for AFRL? That's a pittance at best. They're spending more than that on a parking garage for the building I used to work in. Oh, and science has shown greater success with teleportation than it has with embryonic stem cells.

Originally posted by: Dissipate
That's what happens in socialism. How the hell do we know how much a B2 bomber is supposed to cost, for instance? There is simply no market for a lot of the stuff the military buys. It just pays contractors to build this stuff some inane amount that is not based anything rational. This leads to inevitable waste.

The military 'remedies' the lack of a market by not giving contracts for any major part to any one company. One company will hold the main contract, but cannot do all the work. For example, even different parts of the communications software for a given plane are written by different companies. The whole idea is to create competition and drive prices down. The result is a great drop in efficiency, so who knows if we end up saving money on it.

 

[Moonbeam]

Psychic teleportation is real. Do you think it's some kind of joke, for one example, that Jesus walked on water.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: eclavatar
There are competing companies that military buys from. So this whole 'wasteful' spending logic is severly flawed. If a company can produce a jet, or weapons that are as effective and much cheaper, you don't think they would do so? It just shows how everyone here is ignorant of anything military. So if you really don't know anything about it , why discuss it? I don't go discussing geology, as I know nothing about it.

Anyway, I think funding for this type of research needs to be dramatically increased.

You know not what you speak of. It does not matter how the government allocates the funds or whether or not there are "competing companies," it is always wasteful.

Government can either deliberately subsidize by giving a service away free, or it may genuinely try to find the true market price, i.e., to "operate on a business basis." This is often the cry raised by conservatives?that government enterprise be placed on a "business footing," that deficits be ended, etc. Almost always this means raising the price. Is this a solution, however? It is often stated that a single government enterprise, operating within the sphere of a private market, buying from it, etc., can price its services and allocate its resources efficiently. This, however, is incorrect. There is a fatal flaw that permeates every conceivable scheme of government enterprise and ineluctably prevents it from rational pricing and efficient allocation of resources. Because of this flaw, government enterprise can never be operated on a "business" basis, no matter what the government's intentions.

The Myth of Efficient Government Service

 

[Dissipate]

All this hocus pocus with "competing companies" is just one big illusion. It is just like how the government has its "employees" pay taxes. This is another illusion as well. Government employees are not taxpayers, they are tax consumers.