Page Content (OCR)
governs (and hampers) so much of our lives. If inertia can be controlled a five- year-old child can bounce an elephant upon its knee; the work of the world may be done with tiny amounts of energy - depending, of course on how much is needed to produce the gravity-inertia screen. We may be able to move mountains with only the quantity of electricity to light a house. The whole phenomena of friction may be within our range of manipulation; railroad trains may be able to rush down their tracks covered with an inertial screen driven by only fractional horse-power motors. The idea of inertia-free flight opens up interesting possibilities for space travel. Given inertia-free flight, space may no longer be a barrier to solar-system travel. Some astronomers and physicists, pointing to the enormous amounts of energy required to accelerate even a tiny payload near enough to the speed of light to make the journey to the nearest star in any reasonable period of time, have held the view that the only communication mankind will ever have with intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is by radio. The distances between stars are measured in light years and only a limited number of stars are within one-half the light year equivalent of four score and 10. Thus the necessity for approaching the optical velocity in interstellar travel becomes obvious. Yet, even to approach it under the old law of inertia is a difficult matter; some scientists believe it is impossible. Dr. Frank Drake illustrates the problem by calculating that to deliver the Encyclopedia Brittanica to our nearest stellar neighbor would require such a huge rocket that its blast-off would incinerate the entire state of Florida. Other scientists, of course, have believed that inter-stellar travel is possible, even under the limitations of an inertial world. The great German physicist, Professor Singer, once proposed an inter-stellar vehicle capable of sweeping up the hydrogen atoms in space in a gigantic net and converting them into fuel along the way. But if we are able to develop a gravity-inertia screen we may be able to approach the optical velocity with very little energy actually required. It also may mean that higher species, who long ago discovered the same technique, have voyaged back and forth between the stars quite regularly. This would, in turn increase the likelihood that our solar system is visited by races from other stars. The following is a descriptive list of Dr. Bernard's complete works -- giving a good overview of his many-sided interests. Dr. Raymond Bernard was born Walter Seigmeister in 1901 to a family of Russian non-practising Jews in New