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Anti-Gravity, Aliens, the Spectacle and the Veil ZERO-POINT

THE STORY OF MARK MCCANDLISH AND THE FLUX LINER

Submitted  in  Partial  Fulfillment  of  the  Requirements  For  the  Degree  of  Master  of  Fine  Arts  in  Film  and  Television  at  The  Savannah  College  of  Art  and  Design  

 December  2012,  James  Allen  Higgins  

 The  author  hereby  grants  SCAD  permission  to  reproduce  and  to  distribute  publicly  paper  and  electronic  

thesis  copies  of  document  in  whole  or  in  part  in  any  medium  now  known  or  hereafter  created.          

Signature  of  Author  and  Date  _________________________________________________________________          Kenneth  Carl  Daniel_____________________________________________________/___/_____________    Committee  Chair       (Sign  here)       (Date)          Michael  Chaney_________________________________________________________/___/_____________  Committee  Member       (Sign  here)       (Date)          Jon  Alvord______________________________________________________________/___/_____________  Committee  Member       (Sign  here)       (Date)  

 

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Anti-Gravity, Aliens, the Spectacle and the Veil ZERO-POINT the Story of Mark McCandlish and the Flux Liner A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Film and Television Department in partial fulfillment of requirements for the Degree of Masters of Fine Arts Savannah College of Art and Design by James Allen Higgins Savannah, Georgia December 2012

 

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Table of Contents List of Figures....................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 2 Part I. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4 Part II. Two Journeys .......................................................................................................... 5 Part III. The Weight of Evidence as Transformative Catalyst ...................................... 16 Part IV. The Spectacle and the Veil .................................................................................. 26 Part V. Perspective and the Boundaries of Reason ........................................................ 31 Part VI. Mechanics and Processes of Translation ........................................................... 40 Part VII. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 46 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 48 Appendices ........................................................................................................................... 49

 

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List of Figures

Page 6: fig. 1 – Two of McCandlish’s illustrations for military hardware

Page 7: fig. 2 – McCandlish’s illustration of the ‘Flux Liner’ vehicle

Page 10: fig. 3 – Information text ‘callout’ on the margin of McCandlish’s ARV blueprint

Page 11: fig. 4 – McCandlish’s blueprint of the “Flux Liner” and its display at the 2001 NPC event.

Page 14: fig. 5 – USAF Pilot Harvey Williams’ 1966 photograph of a (possibly man-made) UFO

Page 20: fig. 6 – A 1967 patent by J.F. King for a “Magnetohydrodynamic Propulsion Apparatus”

Page 22: fig. 7 – A graphical depiction of Alcubierre’s ‘warp drive’ theory

Page 27: fig. 8 – Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory featuring a rendition of the ARV

Page 36: fig. 9 – T. Townsend Brown field-testing his electrokinetic disks, Paris 1957

Page 40: fig. 10 - Brad Sorensen’s original sketch and McCandlish’s finished blueprint

Page 44: fig. 11 – McCandlish’s ARV blueprint and the CGI version created for the film.

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Anti-Gravity, Aliens, the Spectacle and the Veil

ZERO-POINT THE STORY OF MARK MCCANDLISH AND THE FLUX LINER

James Allen Higgins

This thesis is an exploration into several extreme and compelling scientific concepts through the

perspective of one man’s unusual journey, and an argument for both documentary film work

and technical illustration as potentially dramatic transformative processes for both

documentarian and illustrator. By undertaking a thorough investigative documentary film

about the life and later work of Mark McCandlish, an American illustrator thrust onto the

international stage in 2001, it asks pointed questions about the subscription to various

probabilities in controversial topics such as: the possibility of interstellar travel and associated

technologies (including extraterrestrial UFOs), development of extremely advanced and

heretofore undisclosed applied sciences, and the potential reality of a limitless free energy

source as proven by contemporary discoveries in quantum physics. The work thoroughly

explores the concepts themselves and addresses cultural and psychological aspects of these

phenomena. McCandlish’s story, combined with a detailed exploration of the mysterious ‘Flux

Liner’ anti-gravity vehicle, serves as an armature and perceptual framing device for the film’s

survey into these disparate but interrelated topics as it chronicles a unique discovery process

from the early 1980’s to the present.

It is also a study in the use of the film/video and visual effects mediums to potentially further

the vast research being undertaken in these areas; provide illustration, distillation and

perspective on several unconventional concepts, and perhaps serve as some minor element of

disclosure to the public at large.

James Allen Higgins

December, 2012

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“Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic? If static our hopes are in vain; if

kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will

succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.”

- Nikola Tesla

“… the technical development of the electrogravitic reaction would usher in a new age of speed and

power and of revolutionary new methods of transportation and communication. Theoretical

considerations would predict that, because of the privilege of sustained acceleration, top limits of

speed may be raised far beyond those of jet propulsion or rocket drive, with possibilities eventually

of approaching the speed of light in "free space".”

- Thomas Townsend Brown

“… reduced-time interstellar travel, either by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations at present or

ourselves in the future, is not, as naive consideration might hold, fundamentally constrained by

physical principles.”

- Dr. Harold Puthoff, Ph.D.

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I. Introduction and Author’s Note

Maybe 25 years ago (longer than I like to ponder), I had a conversation with a couple of

acquaintances about UFO’s. The details are fuzzy but the gist of one of their anecdotes was this:

one night while the young couple was camping in the American southwest, they were star-

gazing and saw something unusual – an odd light above the horizon. They watched as it moved

slowly in the distance and stopped to hover for a few minutes over the desert. Then, as the

young man put it, it ‘shot away in a perfectly straight line’ as he gestured with his arm. This

description was very matter-of-fact, far from attempting to elicit drama; a simple recounting of

a pivotal moment in his life. His girlfriend then corroborated the event. I believed them

(accepting a guileless, straightforward account of the fantastic at face value) and conjured up a

visual of his story. It was a fascinating, euphoric and compelling image with no precedent in

anything I’d ever experienced or imagined. Planes and helicopters don’t float around, hover

and shoot off in straight lines at incredible speeds. I figured: they’d probably seen an alien craft.

Why not?

It was at that point I began thinking about extraterrestrial visitation with a bit more open-

mindedness and, for lack of a better word, belief. That conversation from the dim past has

surfaced in memory many times over the years (especially during the course of this thesis

project) as I’ve struggled to illustrate rarefied theories regarding just how that object could

perform such an unbelievable feat of aerobatics. With the help of the interview subject of this

documentary film, I believe I may have found some plausible answers and more. It’s been a

fascinating and very challenging learning curve.

Lots of people believe some UFO’s are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. Mark

McCandlish may have found out how their engines work.

Which could be important.

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II. Two Journeys

Mark McCandlish’s and my own path crossed in the winter of 2010. At that point, Mark had

been out of the international spotlight for almost a decade and settled into a relatively quiet,

low-key life, though he remained (and remains) a famous individual in some spheres. I’d been

pursuing casual research into the areas of UFOs and secret technology for around a year while

working through the MFA program in film. We met through LinkedIn, one of the numerous

networking tubes that make up the Internet, and began a correspondence. What began as an

impromptu collaboration on a screenplay evolved into a long-term partnership between two

artists on either side of the continent, both attempting to further their understanding of several

interrelated realms of science, speculation and mystery, and to translate and communicate these

concepts through the mediums of documentary film and visual effects.

"Zero-Point: the Story of Mark McCandlish and the Flux Liner" is a feature-length documentary

focusing on a radical, newly discovered energy source and associated technology, and an

individual who has researched (and generated detailed renderings of) one particular spacecraft

design utilizing related applied science for many years. Specifically, a vehicle employing a

radically different means of propulsive force: electromagnetic or ‘field’ propulsion as opposed

to solid or jet fuel, nuclear power, or any other commonly known conventional systems. Using

this example of heretofore-undisclosed technology as a focal point, the film is an exploration of

McCandlish's particular odyssey beginning in the early 1980's, as he pursued a career path as an

aeronautical illustrator with great success before suddenly transitioning, late in the decade, into

a far more radical breed of designer and quantum physics sleuth.

McCandlish’s Life-Changing Detour

A native of California, McCandlish demonstrated a passionate creativity in painting, drawing

and design from his childhood. He began pursuing a career in technical illustration at the Art

Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in the late 1970’s. By the early to mid-1980's, after a

brief stint in the Hollywood special effects industry, McCandlish's career as an aeronautical and

technical illustrator gained formidable traction as he accumulated a client list including the US

Air Force, Rockwell International, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and respected periodicals such as

Popular Science and Aviation Week magazines. He became well versed in conceptual design at

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the highest levels of the US military/industrial and aerospace programs, and his work appeared

regularly in numerous national publications, trade journals, military contract proposals and

corporate reports. He was commissioned for various projects on the cutting edge of aerospace

design, and often called upon to generate classified and highly proprietary material.

Working solely in traditional media, one of his specialties was extremely detailed cutaway

views of precision technology (fig. 1) – a skillset which would become a determining factor in

the strange direction his life would take.

fig. 1 – Two of McCandlish’s illustrations for military hardware

He had a full slate of high-profile projects and had become a very sought-after and respected

talent in a very crowded field of designers and artists, pulling down an enviable salary as a

freelancer. He was on a first-name professional basis with some of the heaviest hitters in the

aircraft design industry, collaborating with such luminaries as Burt Rutan of Scaled

Composites, jet-fighter test pilots and the editors-in chief of top trade periodicals in the

aerospace industry. Generally, things were going very well for McCandlish the

artist/illustrator.

Then, in the autumn of 1988, things took a serious turn for the weird.

Following the impassioned recounting of an extraordinary experience by a colleague, he began

researching and delineating the details of the 'Flux Liner' (fig. 2) – a bizarre vehicle, still

shrouded in mystery, apparently jointly developed by the US military and Lockheed Martin,

and possibly deployed in some form since the 1960's.

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fig. 2 1

According to McCandlish's source, an old Art Center College friend named Brad Sorensen, this

craft (one of 3 of varying sizes) was on display at a top-secret air show on Saturday, November

12th, 1988, at a Lockheed ‘Skunk Works’ facility in Palmdale, CA. The peculiar circumstances of

Sorensen’s admittance to the classified show are detailed in the film, so here suffice to say his

access as a civilian was a major security breach.

Cordoned off from a main viewing area where numerous black-budget prototype aircraft were

on display such as stealth, conceptual hovercrafts and far-supersonic planes, these vehicles

were seen levitating off the floor, nearly silent and without any visible means of support,

apparently the result of their radical propulsion system tapping into the zero-point or ‘scalar’

electromagnetic energy field. This was reflected in the vehicle’s nickname – the “Flux Liner” –

connoting its use of quantum background fluctuations as a power source. It was also named the

A.R.V., short for Alien Reproduction Vehicle, suggesting the craft was possibly reverse-

engineered from extraterrestrial technology (and presumably not, as the name also suggests, a

place for ET’s to mate). To reinforce this, Sorensen recalled an Air Force general present at the

show stating the vehicle was “capable of light-speed or better”, a performance capability

commonly associated with UFO’s.

                                                                                                               1  Empirical  Analysis  of  Electrogravitics  and  Electrokinetics  and  its  Potential  for  Space  Travel  Thomas  F.  Valone*  

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In a nutshell, the craft was unlike any other vehicle publicly known in both design and function.

A bizarre combination of off-the-shelf Air Force components, a basic life-support system and a

freakishly powerful electromagnetic configuration, it had the appearance of a clumsy diving

bell from the 1950’s but could possibly operate at superluminal speeds under complete control.

Its primary power source was nothing less (or more) than the fabric of space-time itself, in that

it could polarize the zero-point quantum background energy field to use as limitless propulsive

force. And apparently, one could pick things up using the on-board robot arm.

Adding to both the apparent veracity as well as the contradictory strangeness of this account,

Sorensen described the aircraft not as a shiny, Jetson’s-new futuristic vehicle but a beat-up,

mileage-worn working prototype. As McCandlish recounts: “It looked like it’d been around for

decades. It had chips in the paint & runs, you could see fingerprints & smudges, boot prints

where somebody’d walked up the side & this kinda thing. It looked like it was slapped together

in somebody’s garage.”

That description, combined with that of the brutal simplicity of the vehicle’s configuration,

makes sense in two key ways towards the plausibility of the story. For one, it would stand to

reason that a prototypical, proof-of-concept system would be extremely simple with no frills or

flashy details. The vehicles were stripped-down and ugly — exactly what a Skunk Works

experimental tech team might produce before the design moved to more finished production

standards. The goofy inverted Jell-O-mold contours simply reflected minimalistic form

following function. Here was a basic propulsion system (a central core, an asymmetrical

capacitor array and copper windings which together formed a huge, mutant Tesla coil); now

throw in some standard Air Force ejection seats, life support, synthetic vision and navigation

controls, then wrap the whole thing in some composite panels and an airtight ball for the crew.

It doesn’t have to be pretty, just function as the eggheads designed it and not kill the occupants.

The second way this battered dune buggy or banged-up hot rod-like appearance makes sense is

the age factor. Contemporary stealth planes weren’t common knowledge until at least a decade

after they’d been designed, built and flown under complete secrecy (and some aspects of the B-2

are still closely guarded proprietary knowledge). With far more advanced and polished

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examples of the ARV’s technology back at the shop, the Air Force/Lockheed PR team probably

figured: Why not roll out the prosaic, outdated older model just to give VIPs the general idea.

So the hardware displayed, despite its outward appearance of an almost comical steam-punk

contraption with a Captain Nemo submarine door, still offered a glimpse into the next century’s

unthinkable transportation paradigm: Mars in an hour.

This was describing nothing less than real science fiction. To both McCandlish and Sorensen,

who'd been working professionally for some time within what they thought were the highest

levels of aeronautical design, this odd system was a meme-shattering sucker punch from the

future. It was simply unprecedented, next-level stuff they’d never seen or heard referenced

anywhere.

With this in mind, another factor contributing to the story’s possible veracity was Brad Sorensen

himself. According to McCandlish, Sorensen was (and still is) a very confident and outgoing

individual, never at a loss for words or a self-promoting story, certainly not prone to

introspective second-guessing. However in the initial recounting of the event to McCandlish,

Mark described him as being in a state similar to post-traumatic stress, unusually withdrawn

and ‘almost depressed’, as if he were still grappling with an experience which had shaken his

worldview to its foundation. This generally isn’t the condition of someone telling a tall tale or

trying to impress, and at the time Mark genuinely felt his friend was relieved to unburden his

confused thoughts to a trusted colleague.

But despite its subsequent global impact and notoriety, the whole story could have ended with

Sorensen after a single meeting for lunch and a general, abbreviated version of his account (thus

letting McCandlish off the hook to pursue his conventional career without distraction). How

much Sorensen ended up sharing with Mark lends an aspect of fateful serendipity to the entire

saga. As noted above, Sorensen had seen and/or heard references to zero-point energy and

scalar physics connected with the Flux Liner at the secret presentation. Since these were and

remain pretty rarefied concepts, he probably thought they’d be over Mark’s head and the two

men would be on such different conceptual levels there wouldn’t be much common ground for

an in-depth conversation. However to Sorensen’s surprise, McCandlish proved he was able to

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‘keep up’ with some advanced theories he’d pursued independently relating to these concepts,

garnered during his numerous communications with renowned physicist Tom Bearden and

others since the early 80’s. At this point Sorensen may have realized he had genuine company in

this area (and perhaps his innate competitive instincts surfaced) and he opened up further in a

good-natured game of one-upmanship, sharing many more details about his experience and the

classified craft with Mark.

So for better or worse, McCandlish was exactly the right guy at the right time and place for this

information to make its way out. He not only understood the workings of contemporary high-

tech aircraft along with advanced, cutting edge scientific principles, but had the skills and talent

to illustrate a vehicle incorporating these in fine detail as well.

After hearing the full account and being convinced of its authenticity, McCandlish was

immediately transformed and inspired, and began digging into the mystery in earnest. Over the

next few years he began passionately applying his formidable skills as a conceptual illustrator

to the pursuit of delineating this system, collaborating with Sorensen and drawing on

numerous other sources to create a highly detailed cutaway blueprint of the purported vehicle.

Not satisfied with the details of a single eyewitness account concerning the craft and its design,

he leveraged his numerous relationships in the military and aerospace industries and

established contact with several other credible individuals who corroborated the existence of

the vehicle, and who provided additional information concerning aspects of this mysterious

scientific advancement. (fig. 3)

fig. 3 – information text ‘callout’ on the margin of McCandlish’s ARV blueprint

 

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He cultivated relationships with several esteemed quantum physicists (besides Tom Bearden),

notably Dr. Harold Puthoff, Dr. Thomas Valone, and Moray B. King (author of “Tapping the Zero

Point Energy”) who, after numerous conversations and much correspondence, gave him insights

into the mechanics of engineering the quantum vacuum for ARV-related space flight

applications in particular. While the single story is compelling enough, it is because of this

additional verification that McCandlish continued his pursuit of facts surrounding this vehicle

and the associated technology. 2

As a result of his work and research into this vehicle, McCandlish was a featured witness at the 2001

Disclosure Project Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The focus of this world-

famous (some might say infamous) conference, put together by Dr. Steven Greer and the Disclosure

Project, was to promote open hearings in Congress dealing with UFO and extraterrestrial phenomena

going back over 50 years. McCandlish's display and explanation of his bizarre technical drawing – a

precise cutaway blueprint of a man-made flying saucer – was a highlight of the event. (fig. 4)

fig. 4: McCandlish’s cutaway blueprint of the “Flux Liner” and its display at the 2001 NPC event.

The Disclosure event was a major turning point in Mark’s life, one in which he committed to

this new and thrilling world but unfortunately had to leave the other more earth-bound realms

– where reputation, associations and confidential NDA’s have the weight of checkbooks behind

them – back on planet Earth.

                                                                                                               2  Author’s  note  –  it  was  also  because  of  this  subsequent  dogged  research  by  McCandlish,  which  strongly  reinforced  the  initial  account,  that  I  took  on  the  documentary  project  in  the  first  place.  

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The Author’s Disclosure Epiphany

It was this conference (or rather a 2-hour, full-length YouTube video of it) which destroyed my

own personal worldview in regards to the possible realities and potential of extraterrestrial

contact and man-made advanced technology, and led me down an extended rabbit-hole within

which a pivotal point was my beginning to communicate, and later collaborate, directly with

McCandlish.

In 2009 a friend and I had been talking casually about UFO’s for a while, and he recommended

the Disclosure Project website as a source for some interesting interviews. After viewing and

reading several and being intrigued, I ultimately found the astonishing 2001 conference video,

wherein over 20 extremely credible witnesses from all areas of the military and Air Force,

NASA, the scientific community and specialized areas of the private sector, each in turn, gave

impassioned and obviously sincere accounts some of the most bizarre events imaginable. These

included objects under intelligent control, flying around doing impossible maneuvers at

thousands of mile per hour3, 'glowing red orbs' disabling nuclear missiles deep underground4,

alien structures on the moon5, an ET pilot killed on an Air Force runway6 and a score of others.

This was just insane material right out of a Spielberg film. However these witnesses were all

dead serious, highly intelligent professionals of rank and stature, and in fact had been elevated

to these positions because of their rarefied qualities of mind and character. Their presentations

were brief and very matter-of-fact (some were visibly nervous with the subject matter they were

sharing), their bearing was dignified, and all were willing to testify under oath before the US

Congress. The cumulative effect these testimonies had on my state of mind was a mild,

sustained shock. The cognitive disconnect between these individuals’ obvious distinction and                                                                                                                3  Don Phillips An advanced top-secret aircraft designer for the military and Lockheed, Philips talks about a CIA plane possibly designed to chase UFO's, then in 1966 witnessing a radar-documented group of UFO's precisely maneuvering, with full stops & direction reversals, at up to 4,000 mph near Area 51 in Nevada.  4  Cpt. Robert Salas In 1967 while monitoring 10 nuclear-armed Minuteman missiles in Montana, Salas was told of 'strange lights' near the underground facility in the pre-dawn hours. Later that morning a glowing red object was seen hovering outside the front gate and 6 to 8 missiles inexplicably 'went down' into inoperable modes. At another nearby launch facility, all 10 weapons were disabled under similar circumstances. 5  Sgt. Karl Wolf In 1965 Wolf was a top-secret imaging technology expert with the Air Force. He talks about a security breach during an assignment for NASA, where a co-worker showed him images of an alien 'base' on the moon. 6  Maj. George Filer Filer talks about chasing UFO's in the 1960's and capturing them on radar, Iranian air force planes having their weapons systems disabled by unidentified craft, and the aftermath of an alien pilot being shot and killed on a Fort Dix runway as it exited a crashed or landed craft.  

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the surreal nature of what they described was staggering.

For the most part these witnesses seemed to have nothing to gain and everything to lose by

detailing their experiences, and the distinguished and highly articulate manner with which they

presented themselves and their stories eclipsed many of my doubts as far as hoax-mongering. I

was (and still am) convinced of three things:

1. These people truly believed what they were saying.

2. They had very clear, unambiguous and precisely recalled experiences (some bolstering their

claims with hard evidence such as radar data and in McCandlish’s case, photographs).

3. Many of the events they described defy almost everything we as humans in the 21st century

trust as ‘normal’. Such as: our collective perception of world government at the highest levels,

national security, the military and Air Force, the Disney-esque public image of NASA, space

travel itself and the physics thereof, not to mention our place in the universe as homo sapiens, is

lacking the proper perspective to say the least. Furthermore, we've been lied to about some of

the most important events in human history for over 60 years, and aliens are flying around our

planet all the time. Needless to say, it’s difficult to get one's brain around that last one.

In McCandlish’s case in particular (and by contrast), the material had more to do with an

entirely new, previously unknown level of man-made technology as opposed to that of little

green men. His testimony dealt specifically with bizarre and absurdly futuristic working

hardware jointly developed by the USAF and Lockheed Martin; a concrete proof-of-concept

vehicle as real and tangible as a Chevy SUV yet employing unbelievably advanced physical

concepts. Not only that, but here were photographs of what looked like an earlier prototype

flying at 12,000 feet in the mid-1960’s.(fig. 5) He was basically saying, “Hey folks, look at this.

Everything you think you know about advanced aircraft, propulsion and space flight is

hopelessly outdated.” And by extrapolation, there’s a select group of people who’ve been

secretly developing systems on the next rung of our evolutionary ladder since who-knows-

when.

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What this idea constitutes is nothing less than that of a breakaway civilization; a tiny fraction of

the human population playing with real technologies straight out of Star Trek while keeping the

rest of the world in the dark. “They” have working anti-gravity vehicles and all the associated

capacities for a fundamental change in the global human condition, and nobody knows about it.

To a layperson, this is pretty much on the same level as visitors from outer space or showing an

iPhone to Teddy Roosevelt.

I’d been fairly ambivalent on the whole UFO/ET thing up to that point, but after watching the

entire conference with a few rewinds, things were never the same. For me the pivotal moment

in watching the Disclosure video was similar to that of Neo in The Matrix: take the red pill and

believe that at least a few of the witnesses were describing real events (even one was enough).

This, of course, meant throwing away everything I’d trusted about related subjects since

childhood and embracing a host of troubling unknowns. Take the blue pill and rationalize away

all that the witnesses said and apparently believed; re-set to familiar reality and get on with

living as a member of a slow-moving species on a very isolated, unique planet in a Milky Way

barren of advanced life.

fig. 5: USAF Pilot Harvey Williams’ 1966 photograph of a (possibly man-made) UFO over Provo, Utah at 12,000ft. McCandlish displayed this photograph during his Disclosure Conference testimony as possible evidence of an ARV forerunner.  

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Like McCandlish, I took the red pill.

For him it was giving the benefit of the doubt to a fantastic account from a trusted friend; for me

the same to a video on YouTube. To follow the similarities to Neo and the ‘rabbit-hole’ of a

parallel reality further, the more research we engaged in, the more unbelievable yet credible

historical and scientific facts, evidence and testimony further supported the stranger path. With

Mark’s journey the fuel to continue was numerous subsequent witnesses and hard cutting-edge

science, which reinforced and expanded many aspects of Brad Sorensen’s initial account. For

me, it was dozens of historical cases (yes, including Roswell) wherein the facts and testimony

around very dramatic, inscrutable events didn’t seem to add up time and time again, unless you

factored in at least the possibility of something as fantastic as extraterrestrial contact, or a

complete paradigm shift in what human technology has accomplished.

This continuing exploration on my part, combined with my love of screenwriting, led to a

concept for a script about black-budget Air Force technology and possible alien contact, which

led me to meeting McCandlish. This meeting and the subsequent collaboration on our film has

led to a truly mind-bending chapter, in which I’ve become aware that UFO technology,

including faster-than-light travel with the option of an in-flight cocktail, perhaps isn’t so

mysterious after all.

McCandlish’s journey has turned out to be both an inspiring and profoundly thought-

provoking case study in how new information can expand an individual’s consciousness and

intellect, and lead to wondrous new horizons in their worldview. It is also a somewhat tragic

cautionary tale on the dire consequences this fundamental shift in perception and subsequent

behavioral changes can manifest.

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III. The Weight of Evidence as Transformative Catalyst

“In the middle of the last century, physicists made an astounding discovery. And that is

what we ordinarily consider empty space isn’t empty at all. Even if you go to the far

reaches of space it turns out that rather than emptiness – what we call the vacuum – is

really a seething cauldron of what we call quantum energy, or zero-point energy. ‘Zero-

point’ simply means that if you froze the entire universe down to absolute zero, froze out all

motion where everything would be as as quiet as you could possibly get it, this energy is

still there.”

- Dr. Harold Puthoff, Ph.D.

As stated above, McCandlish had a very comfortable and successful career from the early

1980’s to mid 90’s. His was an enviable vector for any professional freelance artist, especially

fortuitous in the fact of his passion for aeronautical subjects combined with great success in that

realm. After finding a niche in illustrating advanced weapon system components and moving

into conceptual design for the latest vehicles at the top of the military/industrial food chain, he

had entered an exclusive inner circle with direct access to the editors, designers, scientists, test

pilots and other distinguished individuals who commissioned, created, flew and documented

the latest in advanced technology.

His work was seen by millions on the covers of Popular Science

and Popular Mechanics magazines (his cover for the February

1989 issue of PS is at left), along with numerous other extremely

high profile and respected periodicals such as Aviation Week

and Space Technology. Add to this his more covert work with

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and others

wherein he created conceptual designs under various

nondisclosure agreements, which became classified material

upon completion and presumably integrated into the design

  17  

and fabrication pipeline for some very advanced projects. His combination of hard-won skills

and accuracy in traditional media (Mark has never learned modern digital imaging tools), his

passion for the designs and related technology, his keen intellect, and his enthusiastically honed

imagination in the aerospace realm earned him the respect and repeated, lucrative sponsorship

of the top names in the business.

There wouldn’t have been any obvious motivation for this disciplined professional to begin

pursuing even more secretive technology at the risk of his reputation and very rewarding

position in the industry. However when Sorensen’s apparent bombshell from the land of

science fiction arrived at his front door, he grabbed hold of it, ran for the 100-yard line and

never looked back. After hearing those first hesitant words from his friend – “I just saw a few

man-made flying saucers.”- everything was different from then on.

Sorensen’s account fired up McCandlish’s boyhood daydreams of Star Trek hyperspace drives

and Mach-500 interstellar travel, only this time it wasn’t just idle flights of fancy – it was a first-

hand account of an Air Force general talking about a very real vehicle directly behind him

travelling faster than light. From the winter of 1988 through the mid 90’s, McCandlish dove into

fleshing out the description of the vehicle into an extremely accurate delineation of it, bringing

all his skills as a technical artist to bear on the task. Here was a talented illustrator at the top of

his game pushing the limits of what he was capable of in the medium, however now it wasn’t

for an R&D team from Northrop Grumman. It was to figure out how we could, as Ben Rich,

Lockheed Martin’s former head of Advanced Development Programs (the Skunk Works) put it:

“… have the technology to take ET back home.”7

Thus began his transformation from a successful conventional illustrator into an entirely

different kind of conceptual artist; from an expert in visualizing contemporary cutting-edge

tech into a vocal and inquisitive proponent and illuminator of ‘fringe science’ bordering on, and

at times immersed in, what is considered the paranormal. He gradually but irreversibly

transitioned from being a conventional, highly respected but relatively unknown illustrator to

Mark McCandlish, famous Warp Drive evangelist.

                                                                                                               7  Ben  Rich  is  quoted  as  stating  “We  now  have  the  technology  to  take  ET  back  home”  on  March  23,  1993  at  a  UCLA  School  of  Engineering  Alumni  Association  lecture.  

  18  

His insatiable curiosity in this new territory ultimately led him to corroborating accounts from

various credible individuals in the military and private sectors, as well as copious examples of

related inventions from the US Patent Office (what is allowed to be shared publicly is possibly

only a fraction thereof), official documentation in the form of government and corporate

records, and fascinating new developments related to gravity control and propulsion in

contemporary quantum physics as chronicled in numerous scientific publications.

Thus Mark was far from being discouraged by lack of supporting evidence. What could have

been a simple, intriguing random anecdote or prank by an old friend grew into an entire

network of mutually supportive verification for the concept of this strange new device. There

was simply too much apparent evidence, credible testimony and hard science surrounding the

ARV to write it off.

Among the compelling elements of corroboration Mark found were:

• Another first-hand witness named Kent Sellen, who had apparently seen either the same

ARV as Sorensen or a very close variant, at Edwards Air Force Base in 1973.

• A pair of 1967 photographs from Harvey Williams, a military pilot, of a strange craft for

all appearances like a direct forerunner of the ARV, flying at 12,000 feet over Provo,

Utah.

• An employee at a Northrop facility near the Lockheed Skunk Works in 1992, who stated

he’d seen a far more advanced anti-gravity vehicle being launched and recovered at a

Skunk Works hangar on two separate occasions.

• Numerous scientific patents and other documentation related to gravity control from

current day dating back to the turn of the 20th century and Nikola Tesla, specifically

those of Thomas Townsend Brown and his contemporaries in the mid-century.8

• Numerous similarities between the ARV system and historical accounts of esoteric

advanced technology, from the ancient Vimana spacecraft, to purported UFO crash

retrieval documents, to the anti-gravity ‘Nazi Bell’ from WWII.

• Inter-office communications between aerospace defense contractors describing work with

the zero-point field of energy as being, among other things, a ‘fundamental enabling

                                                                                                               8  These patents represent only a small fraction of the total number in this field, as many (if not most) patent applications in the area on electrogravitics and anti-gravity are summarily classified.

  19  

technology’.9

• An apparent UFO abductee who described (with no prior knowledge of McCandlish’s

story or materials) propulsion system components strikingly similar to those of the ARV

in an alien craft.10

• The work of Thomas Bearden, Dr. Harold Puthoff, Dr. Tom Valone and numerous other

highly respected quantum physicists, wherein discoveries related to limitless, high-

density zero-point energy and ‘engineering’ the quantum vacuum gave credence to

claims of the ARV’s ability to travel faster than light.11

Add to this the fact that Brad Sorensen and Kent Sellen, the two primary witnesses who may

have actually seen the vehicle(s) up close, have never recanted or changed their stories. Rather,

they have dropped off the public radar entirely and refuse to speak of the vehicle on the record.

Going all the way back to 1928, Thomas Townsend Brown – a great pioneer in the field of anti-

gravity – was granted a foreign patent (British Patent # 300,311) rather awkwardly entitled “A

Method of & an Apparatus or Machine for Producing Force or Motion”, which is generally viewed as

the first recognized patent for applied electrogravitics, or anti-gravity. He sums up his

invention in the introductory abstract:

“This invention relates to a method of controlling gravitation and for deriving

power therefrom, and to a method of producing linear force or motion. The

method is fundamentally electrical.”

In the next paragraph he goes on to challenge the foundations of known physical science,

perhaps one of the reasons he was compelled to acquire his patent in Britain.

In the United States however, there are plenty of examples supporting a long history of

invention in the anti-gravity realm (listed in Appendice A, beginning with another device from

                                                                                                               9  Hercules Aerospace inter-office memo concerning zero-point and ‘scalar’ energy applications, dated 1989  10    McCandlish shares this investigative technique with the McDonnell Douglass aerospace corporation (during an extended project in the 1960’s) and possibly numerous other organizations including the US military. 11  •  "Utilizing Scalar Electromagnetics to Tap Vacuum Energy," 26th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, Sweet, F. and T. E. Bearden, 1991 •  “The Energetic Vacuum: Implications for Energy Research,” Spec. in Science & Technology, Puthoff, H. E. (1990), •  Progress in Electrogravitics and Electrokinetics for Aviation and Space Travel, Thomas F. Valone, presented at the Space Technologies Information Forum (2006)

  20  

T.T. Brown). In the titles chronicled in Appendice A, one may read the term ‘electrokinetic’ as a

synonym for electrogravitics or anti-gravity, and many of these patents were granted up to a

decade after their initial application dates in the 1950’s. Primarily targeted towards space flight

applications, none of these inventions use conventional propellants in any way and all are

purely electromagnetic in nature. Again, this may only be a fraction of what has actually been

reviewed and granted by the Patent Office, since many advanced technology patents are

immediately classified.

fig. 6: A 1967 patent by J.F. King for a “Magnetohydrodynamic Propulsion Apparatus”

Along with copious documentation, a primary example of McCandlish’s discovery of top-tier

supporting information is in his relationships and ongoing communication with eminent

quantum physicists such as Dr. Harold Puthoff. Puthoff, his contemporaries such as Dr.

Thomas Valone, Dr. Tom Bearden, and other scientific predecessors in the late 20th century

began to prove inexorably how the quantum zero-point field – the pure vacuum of space,

indeed all physical ‘space’ itself – was in fact an unbelievably dense field of energy which, by

rights, should be available for extraction and conversion to facilitate useful work. This energy

density is on the order of 1026 joules per cubic meter, a staggering amount of electromagnetic

energy potential. In layman’s terms, this means a shot glass’s worth of empty space, if fully

exploited, can power the entire Eastern seaboard for a century. Or as Dr. Puthoff states: “There’s

  21  

enough energy in the volume of a coffee cup to evaporate the world’s oceans.”

In other words it’s been proven the Sun, indeed any star, is in fact a greatly diminished expression

of the potential energy in the raw space it takes up. And a gallon of gasoline or jet fuel is

absurdly inefficient by several billion orders of magnitude.

Furthermore, these discoveries in quantum mechanics dovetailed with new breakthroughs in

the field of space flight propulsion and potentials for interstellar travel, specifically

contemporary theories in agreement with general relativity, positing alternatives to the speed-

of-light limitation. In particular is the central theory of ‘dynamically engineered local space-

time’, in which a vehicle like the ARV and its occupants can travel in a self-contained, mass-

and inertia-independent gravitational environment at “arbitrarily large speeds”.12

Basically what this means is a given vehicle and its occupants are enclosed in a space-time

‘bubble’ with the equivalent potentials of an exploding star behind the craft and a black hole in

front of it. As illustrated in the Zero Point film with the ARV as an example, this field or bubble

can be under the complete control of the pilot in power output, velocity and direction, in a

method similar to helicopter throttle and swash-plate navigation. And since space itself isn’t

constrained by speed-of-light limits, Einstein’s theory of infinitely increasing mass as you

approach that speed doesn’t apply. In many cases this concept is contingent on driving the zero-

point background field out of equilibrium, or ‘polarizing’ space-time to gain unlimited access to

the energy required for this phenomenon. (fig. 7)

Dr. Puthoff writes:

As an example, one specific approach that has generated considerable commentary in

the technical literature is the so-called Alcubierre Warp Drive, named after its creator,

general relativity theorist Miguel Alcubierre. Alcubierre showed that by distorting the

local space-time metric in the region of a spaceship in a certain prescribed way, it

would be possible in principle to achieve motion faster than the speed of light as

judged by observers outside the disturbed region, without violating the local velocity-

of-light constraint within the region. Furthermore, the Alcubierre solution showed

that the proper (experienced) acceleration along the spaceship’s path would be zero,

                                                                                                               12  The  Warp  Drive:  hyper-­‐fast  travel  within  general  relativity;  p.  1  Miguel  Alcubierre∗  Department  of  Physics  and  Astronomy,  University  of  Wales  

  22  

and that the spaceship would suffer no time dilation, highly desirable features for

interstellar travel.13

fig. 7 – a graphical depiction of Alcubierre’s ‘warp drive’ theory

Alcubierre’s revolutionary theory has become a touchstone for the concept of scientifically

vetted superluminal travel, and with some adjustments and improvements may represent a

basic mechanism for interstellar flight. It’s been cited in countless papers, presentations and

discussions in all media since its publication, for example in a special report for the US Air

Force in 200414, in the Conclusions section under “Future Advanced Propulsion Concepts”:

Engineering the Spacetime Metric

Another way to engineer the spacetime metric is by resorting to the solutions provided by

General Relativity Theory (Einstein, 1916). (among) these are:

• The Alcubierre Warp Drive Effect: Alcubierre (1994) derived a spacetime metric that

induces a bubble-shaped geometry surrounding a spacecraft, which uniquely allows for

FTL motion through space without violating the Special Theory of Relativity. A thin shell

of negative energy (i.e., “exotic” energy; referring to forms or states of mass-energy that

violate general relativity energy condition theorems, which are now invalid) must be

                                                                                                               13  Engineering  the  Zero-­‐Point  Field  and  Polarizable  Vacuum  for  Interstellar  Flight,  p.  141  H.E.  PUTHOFF,  S.R.  LITTLE  AND  M.  IBISON,  Institute  for  Advanced  Studies  at  Austin  14  Advanced Propulsion Study by Eric W. Davis, 2004, pp. 63-64, prepared for the Air Force Material Command, Edwards Air Force Base.  

  23  

distributed around the spacecraft in order to generate the warp-bubble geometry.

Krasnikov (1998) and Van Den Broeck (1999) proposed refinements to this geometry. This

concept will not be considered further in the study because it is best suited for interstellar

flight applications, and the negative energy density required to generate FTL motion is

presently estimated to be on the order of a stellar mass. The concept is presently

undergoing further refinement and technical study.

This plethora of inspirational and fascinating supporting material – some admittedly

questionable, some indisputable – wasn’t about to let McCandlish go. This in turn led to his

being further engrossed in some generally unappreciated (even scorned) areas of research,

which unfortunately then led to a negative impact on his previously laser-focused and stellar

career as an illustrator within the military/industrial complex. Lockheed Martin, for example,

may not have been thrilled with one of their freelance artists making noise about their Skunk

Works flying saucer, whether it existed or not, and they abruptly phased Mark out of their R&D

design pipeline. Other major defense contractors and former regular sources of commissioned

work followed suit, and his illustration career began an inexorable downward turn. When he

began to go public about this material however, it earned him an understandable level of

notoriety within the UFO and black-budget conspiracy-theory communities.

Throughout the 90’s his drawing and Sorensen’s account made the rounds of many closed-door

meetings and discussions between high-level individuals within and beyond the military and

aerospace industries and the scientific community. The notorious conspiracy theorist and

entrepreneur Gordon Novel and his collaborator, a physicist named George Uhlig, were

extremely interested in the account and served as front men for McCandlish in many of these

meetings with corporations such as McDonnell Douglass. At one point Sorensen personally

delivered a copy of the Flux Liner blueprint to the office of Scaled Composites founder and

aeronautical design luminary Burt Rutan, who had never heard of the vehicle, and therefore

pronounced it couldn’t possibly exist. This was indicative of the general official response to the

entire affair, and in publicly acknowledged spheres at least, McCandlish and Sorensen’s

endeavors didn’t gain much traction.

  24  

In February 1994, an ethically impaired Gordon Novel

handed off a preliminary blueprint of the ARV to a potential

backer for one of his financial endeavors centered around

the story. This was without Mark’s permission, and the

illustration ended up in the pages of a Popular Science

article on Area 51 (cover at left), and the cat was out of the

bag. At this point a certain amount of paranoia had been

building up in Mark’s previously placid life (possible phone

taps, vehicular pursuits and other surveillance; his girlfriend

receiving a threatening phone call strongly suggesting Mark

keep quiet, etc.), and this breach of trust and containment

spurred Mark to get back on top of the information publicly, in part to protect himself. Besides

other altruistic motivations, he figured if anything unexpectedly bad happened to him, at least

some people might know why.

So in the mid 90’s McCandlish began going public with the story of the ARV, his subsequent

findings and the cutaway blueprint. He was a featured guest on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast radio

program on several occasions and was invited to numerous conferences and presentations to

share his material and conclusions. Along with the above self-preservation angle, he did this as

a means to not only get the word out about the possibilities of the technology (acting to a degree

as a proponent/evangelist), but also to potentially connect with other individuals who could

provide further verification related to his results thus far. To date he seems to have succeeded

on all three fronts.

To Mark’s credit he has continually asserted – and his actions over the last two decades have

bourn out – that he’s never pursued this story for personal gain, fame, or to breach national

security in any way. He’s simply been enthralled and insatiably curious about the potential

technology, and consistently endeavored to solve the mysteries surrounding it. Unfortunately

the adverse attention he gained through public discourse on the subject (and perhaps other

related factors) has ultimately led to his abandonment of professional illustration altogether. As

Dr. Thomas Valone attests in Empirical Analysis of Electrogravitics and Electrokinetics and its

Potential for Space Travel:

  25  

Sincere gratitude is given to Mark McCandlish, who has suffered personal trauma for publicizing

this work, (and who) offers us one of the most conclusive renditions of a covert, flat-bottomed

saucer hovercraft seen by dozens of invited eye-witnesses, including a Congressman, at Norton

Air Force Base in 1988.

After his turn at the explosive 2001 Disclosure conference he and the ARV blueprint were

suddenly on the global stage, and the story began showing up all over the Internet and

numerous popular TV shows, usually in a somewhat sensationalist format or in

hyperventilating discussion forums. While in some ways this was beneficial in terms of an

element of possible disclosure to the general public, here is where the detrimental effects of the

story’s UFO associations began to arise for McCandlish and Sorensen in quantifiable form. They

both lost a degree of professional credibility and associated valuable clientele, and the pure,

genuinely thrilling scientific concepts at the core of the story became muddled together with an

entire host of fanatical philosophies, the paranormal fringe, tabloid journalism, quasi-science

and baseless speculation.

  26  

IV. The Spectacle and the Veil

When one turns on the television to any number of ‘conspiracy’ or paranormal-related

contemporary programs, there are generally several very particular sensibilities and

psychologically manipulative factors at work. First and foremost these programs are produced

for entertainment, thus facts are embellished or ignored, testimony is hacked and sculpted to fit

a particular narrative, questionable connections are enhanced, graphics flare and soundtracks

thunder. By necessity the subtleties and grey areas of a given story are flattened out or smashed

into barely recognizable form, and an expansive and convoluted concept will often be

abbreviated into a 3-second sound bite. To serve the spectacle, the sexiest and most sensational

aspects of new information on the Great Pyramids or Mars are juxtaposed with bat-winged

demons and exploding supernovas.

Stories and accounts like that of the ARV are just more grist for the mill in the context of

programs like Ancient Aliens, Unsolved Mysteries and Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory (fig. 5). By

2002 the now-iconic image of Mark’s cutaway blueprint began showing up in various forms on

numerous cable network programs and network news pieces around the globe. The initial

account was exaggerated and distorted by various ‘experts’, and garish, inaccurate 3D

renditions of the ARV replaced McCandlish’s less flashy original draft on a regular basis. The

craft’s odd shape was a central focal point, and the elegant, game-changing concepts of applied

zero-point energy and the polarization of space-time were absurdly distilled into propulsion by

“high voltage electrical charges”. Despite his best efforts to set the record straight and present a

clear and accurate rendition of the historical and scientific record, the Flux Liner narrative had

taken on a life of its own with McCandlish watching from the sidelines.

  27  

fig. 8: Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory featuring a rendition of the ARV by black-budget aerospace historian Michael Schratt (right).

The writers and producers of these shows encouraged and/or implied associations between the

ARV and any number of purely speculative, far-fetched concepts related to top-secret aircraft,

classified technology and UFO’s in this circus-like environment. In this sense the spectacular

context served (and/or serves) as a smokescreen and stage mirror to obscure the genuinely

thrilling, fundamentally challenging aspects of the story based in hard science and the real

world. A century of documented scientific progress in the realm of gravity modification, along

with many genuine breakthroughs in contemporary quantum engineering, can lose all

credibility when juxtaposed directly with a crude watercolor of a Nazi flying saucer.

For the public in general, these lurid programs are often the only available delivery system for

information related to truly confidential and suppressed technologies (besides copious Internet

web sites and forums teeming with unfounded theories and skewed information), and the self-

referential feedback loop of pure speculation accreted onto real facts can lead to an often-

incomprehensible fog. A classic example of this phenomenon is that of the National Enquirer,

the salacious tabloid famous for outrageous tales of celebrities in trouble, UFO abduction stories

and Bat Boy. Ironically, in many cases the possible ET/UFO stories in those garish pages were

in fact highly accurate reporting of unexplained events with extremely credible witnesses at

their source, for example an Air Force pilot (with better credentials than many sources for front-

page New York Times articles) sharing the experience of witnessing a large metallic ball off the

plane’s left wing at 17,000 feet. The irony, of course, is the veteran pilot’s sworn account would

be directly across the fold from a piece on John Travolta vs. the Swamp Monster.

  28  

Mass media itself, regardless of demographic orientation, is basically an exclusive medium to

the consumer in the sense of a one-way information flow and an inability to dig deeper into and

around the central narrative. Television programs and news articles will seldom provide a

contact number for interview subjects or suppliers of other content, let alone access to extended,

un-cut raw footage or full interview transcripts. What they allow us to see is pretty much all we

can get, and how something is packaged can make all the difference in what is revealed and

how it is perceived. This is changing somewhat with the advent of interactive media but is still

generally the rule. As Guy Debord puts it (italics mine):

The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result

from his own unconscious activity, works like this: The more he contemplates, the

less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he

understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the

acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own;

they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.15

With McCandlish and the ARV story, it’s been my opportunity and privilege to pull the curtain

back a foot or two. Beginning with direct correspondence via email, followed by lengthy phone

conversations, exchanges of thoughts, ideas and gradually more personal disclosures, I’ve

become a close, trusted and trusting friend of Mark’s. And everything I’ve learned from the

many experiences and perceptions he’s shared have backed up the general consensus when one

types in a Google search for him: he’s a highly intelligent, respected, credible and genuine

individual with no ulterior motives concerning his fantastic decades-long assertions about the

ARV. He’s an illustrator who has gone from second-hand witness to high-profile proselytizer,

telling it exactly how he sees it with no regard for personal gain. Whether you believe his story

or not, Mark’s quest for veracity, his integrity and his sincerity aren’t the issue.

Over the course of the last year and ½ I’ve been privy to a great deal of off-the-books

information, detailed back-story and personal communication between key players I probably

(in an ethical or need-to-know sense) shouldn’t have seen, heard and read. But I did. And the

aggregate conviction I now hold is yes, Mark’s friend did indeed see an example of man-made

anti-gravity technology back in 1988, and Lockheed Martin probably manufactured it.                                                                                                                15  The  Society  of  the  Spectacle  by  Guy  Debord,  p.  39.  Published  by  Zone  Books,  1994.  

  29  

I contacted Brad Sorensen directly via email roughly a year ago, in a generally cordial message

of introduction and inquiry as to his possible willingness to talk with me about the story. His

response was immediate and unmistakably clear: do not use his name, visual materials or any

concrete references to him in association with McCandlish’s narrative and the documentary. He

went on to threaten me with legal action if I continued to do so. I wrote this off as shyness,

consulted a lawyer on fair use and retroactive copyright law, and went ahead with including

any content of his I saw fit into the film (however this is a continuing ethical issue I’ve been

grappling with, and have yet to determine exactly how much to include or exclude from the

finished film based on his requests/demands). And there was one thing I still consider very

telling, even thrilling about his otherwise openly hostile and extremely defensive response: in

no way did he deny the story or any aspect of it. He simply didn’t (doesn’t) want his name

connected to the ARV any more than it already is. But he didn’t say it didn’t happen. This is a

direct quote from his first response to me (line breaks are his, perhaps for emphasis):

I communicated with Mark under strictest confidentiality. Mark can not keep a secret. You better be able to keep a secret.

Later in August 2011 he and McCandlish had been corresponding fairly regularly, and my

name had come up several times with Mark making the case for Sorensen’s permission to use

his content in the film. In the context of Gordon Novel’s desired use of Sorensen’s materials for

another get-rich-quick-with-zero-point-energy scheme, Brad wrote this:

A few rich families own this planet, regardless of country affiliation. Like sharks, these families are just bumping Gordon to see his reaction before simply swallowing him whole. James Allen, you and I are the next meal.

Subsequent private emails (which again weren’t technically any of my business, but… thanks

Mark) between he, McCandlish, Gordon Novel and others convinced me, by their tone and

general content, that here was a group discussing the actual, prolonged and messy aftermath of

Sorensen’s decades-old experience with ultra-classified ‘hardware contact’. My overall

  30  

impression was one of pervasive sadness, resentment, mistrust and mutual perceived betrayals;

friendship and partnerships stressed beyond repair and the transcendental, white-hot

knowledge gained by Sorensen’s accidental security breach now overshadowed by ordinary,

banal human dysfunction and misunderstanding. Obviously this scenario is very far from the

fast-paced editing and scorching lens flares on the Discovery Channel.

I had another interesting experience digging into the Lockheed angle of the story. Sorensen and

McCandlish attest the location of the classified air show wasn’t at the original, public-access site

at Norton Air Force Base on November 12th, 1988. Apparently Sorensen was flown with his

high-level military/government client (possibly Frank Carlucci) to a second location at a

Lockheed Martin ‘Skunk Works’ facility in Palmdale, CA. So I looked up the media contact list

at Lockheed and found a number for a Dianne Knippel at the Palmdale facility. After I left a

message saying I was a filmmaker researching ‘alternative energy systems’ and she called back,

I went for the boneheaded, frontal assault approach and asked her straight up:

“What can you tell me about your electrogravitics program?”

Dianne: “We’re not at liberty to discuss those programs.”

Me: (again the simple rube) “Oh I see. So… why not?”

Dianne: “It might threaten our competitive advantage…”

And the conversation basically wound down from there. I’d gotten very little besides an official

dodge and stonewall but was exhilarated nonetheless: she didn’t say they didn’t have it. This

exchange and some similar (with a Lockheed recruiter and NASA technical engineer) have

inspired a concept for another documentary: “TR-3B and Me”. This is of course modeled after

Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me”, only instead of attempting to interview a tyrannical CEO, the

protagonist would be seeking proof of an advanced anti-gravity craft rumored to exist since the

early 90’s – the TR-3B, a far more sophisticated variant of the ARV. Look for the pitch for this

film on Kickstarter.com in the spring of 2013.

  31  

V. Perspective and the Boundaries of Reason

"… you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to

descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they

desire to dwell.”

- Plato’s’ Allegory of the Cave’

A prolonged exploration into the realms of secret technology, UFOs and related global

conspiracies can lead to subscribing to one of two basic views of the world, both troublesome

and deeply unsatisfying:

1 (the blue pill):

• In numerous cases involving UFOs, many thousands of otherwise very smart, very

credible individuals (some of which our lives can depend on, such as airline pilots) are

either lying, delusional or mistaken, and often come to laughably inaccurate conclusions

about what they’ve witnessed.

• In many cases, compelling hard evidence to support the above either never existed, was

of no value, and/or innumerable accounts of such evidence being confiscated and

withheld are false.

• The long documented history of bizarre events followed by even more bizarre, covert

behavior and absurd explanations by the government and military is somehow easily

explainable.

• Despite the 50-year record of vast research and proven science in alternative means of

propulsion (particularly in electrogravitics), there are no viable alternatives to

conventional solid-fuel rockets and jet engines, nor will there be in the foreseeable

future. Internal combustion engines still make the most sense, and technology dating

back to Chinese fireworks is the best we can do for space travel.

• The government and mass media don’t keep huge secrets which could benefit and/or

enlighten all mankind.

• What we see and hear on CNN and Fox News is pretty much the whole story, aliens

  32  

exist only in movies, and the gas we buy and jet planes we fly around in will be with us

for a long, long time.

2 (the red pill):

• Technology and intelligence of extraterrestrial origin visiting Earth is the most logical

explanation for countless events going back thousands of years.

• Great forces are at work secretly developing (while publicly suppressing) advanced

technologies which represent nothing less than the next evolutionary step for mankind.

• We can (or will soon be able to) travel to other planets and distant stars quickly and

easily, there’s no reason to believe extraterrestrial civilizations haven’t done the same to

come here (indeed there’s overwhelming evidence they have), and those same great

forces are keeping this all under wraps.

• There’s a grotesquely powerful cabal of international (as well as politically and

nationally unconstrained) individuals and/or families who maintain control over the

most fundamental aspect of our lives: energy itself, and in their eyes we’re nothing more

than a world full of consumer–slaves.

• Most forms of culturally accepted mass media, for example the New York Times,

television news programs and official government statements, are virulent

smokescreens and disinformation delivery systems.

• The global scientific community is in some ways just as dogmatic and backward as it

was during the Reconstruction.

• NASA is a costly and inefficient public relations fiasco while Northrop Grumman pilots

taxpayer-funded, mach-30 field-propulsion vehicles on its own, maybe just for fun.

• We have the ability to pull limitless energy from nothing more than the space around us.

• Mark’s notorious drawing represents an accidental window into an inevitable but

currently denied future for us here on Earth. And aliens might have helped.

Obviously, both of these worldviews have their inherent problems. The first, despite being the

prevailing view amongst most of the human population, generally isn’t supported by basic

logic. The second view is in some ways far better and worse concurrently; in one sense thrilling

and inspiring (Yay! We have Star Trek space ships!), in another pretty grim (Wow – we’re a

world full of ignorant consumer–slaves.)

  33  

To argue against a primary tenet of this first scenario (and sum up the core dualistic quandary),

in which dramatic, anomalous events are easily explained and seemingly absurd government

reactions make sense, Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, former head of the UK Ministry of Defense

and esteemed researcher, had this to say about the facts surrounding the famous

Woodbridge/Bentwaters UFO incidents at an Air Force nuclear weapons facility in Britain,

December 1980. The official investigation into a 3-night series of UFO events witnessed by

numerous high-ranking military personnel concluded that the events transpired were “subject

to straightforward, rational explanation” and of no national defense interest16:

“There are only two explanations for what happened that night in Suffolk. The first is

that what the people concerned — including Colonel Haut, who was at the time the

deputy commander of the base (and a lot of his soldiers or airmen) — they claim that

something from outside the earth’s atmosphere landed at their Air Force base. They

went and stood by it, they inspected it, they photographed it. The following day they

took tests on the ground where it had been and found radioactive traces. That is one

explanation, that it actually happened as Colonel Haut reported.

The other explanation is that it didn’t. And in that case one is bound to assume that

Colonel Haut and all his men were hallucinating. My position is perfectly clear:

either of those explanations is of the utmost defense interest. Surely, to any sensible

person, either of those explanations must be, cannot fail to be, of defense interest. That

the colonel of an American Air Force base in Suffolk and his merry men are

hallucinating when there are nuclear-armed aircraft on the base, must be of defense

interest.”

The Bentwaters case is, unfortunately, all too common in the UFO field, and is indicative of

many hundreds of documented cases in which an extremely anomalous event transpired,

apparently involving far-advanced technology, and any in-depth public investigation was

discouraged or flatly prohibited. Apparently since the dubious (quite possibly foregone) and

dismissive conclusions of the Condon Report17 and the official close of Project Blue Book in

                                                                                                               16  UK  Ministry  of  Defense    file  DEFE-­‐24/1948  –  “UFO  –  Report  of  Sighting,  Rendlesham  Forest  December  1980”  17  The Condon Committee was a group funded by the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study unidentified flying objects, under the direction of university physicist Edward Condon. The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects and known as the Condon Report, appeared in 1968. Its conclusions were unilaterally dismissive of ET (or otherwise unconventional) explanations for anomalous and unexplained UFO accounts.

  34  

196918, reports of manufactured aircraft and/or objects under intelligent control performing

unbelievable feats of maneuverability and speed aren’t worth investigating. Or if they are, we

aren’t being told about it.

On the more earth-bound topic of black-budget technology, there was a great deal of publicity

in the early to mid 1950's about every major aerospace company doing frenzied research into

the areas of gravity control and electromagnetic propulsion. Companies at the top of the

military/industrial food chain were throwing huge budgets and top scientists at the concepts

and development of anti-gravity systems. Dr. Paul LaViolette, author of Secrets of Anti-Gravity

Propulsion, quotes a famous British document from 195619 concerning anti-gravity development

in his 1990 paper submitted to NASA – “ELECTROGRAVITICS: AN ENERGY-EFFICIENT

MEANS OF SPACECRAFT PROPULSION”:

By 1956 several major aircraft companies had become involved in electrogravitics

research. The list includes: Glen Martin, Convair, Sperry-Rand, Sikorsky, Bell, Lear, Clark

Electronics, Douglas, Hiller, and General Electric. The electrogravitics report states:

"...in the trade much progress has been made and now most major

companies in the United States are interested in counterbary (anti-gravity).

Groups are being organised to study electrostatic and electromagnetic

phenomena. Most of the industry's leaders have made some reference to it.

Douglas has now stated that it has counterbary on its work agenda but does

not expect results yet awhile. Hiller has referred to new forms of flying

platform, Glenn Martin say gravity control could be achieved in six years,

but they add that it would entail a Manhattan District type of effort to bring

it about. Sikorsky, one of the pioneers, more or less agrees with the Douglas

verdict and says that gravity is tangible and formidable, but there must be a

physical carrier for this immense trans-spatial force. This implies that where

a physical manifestation exists, a physical device can be developed for

                                                                                                               18  Project BLUE BOOK was an official US government program from 1947 to 1969. During that time a total of 12, 618 sightings were reported to project representatives, and of these 701 remain "Unidentified." On December 17, 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force announced the termination of the project, stating: “Further extensive study of UFO sightings is not justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby”. 19  ELECTROGRAVITICS SYSTEMS – An examination of electrostatic motion, dynamic counterbary and barycentric control. Prepared by: Gravity Research Group Aviation Studies (International) Limited Special Weapons Study Unit 29-31 Cheval Place, Knightsbridge London, S.W.7. England Report GRG-013/56 February 1956.  

  35  

creating a similar force moving in the opposite direction to cancel it.

Clarke Electronics state they have a rig, and add that in their view the source

of gravity's force will be understood sooner than some people think. General

Electric is working on the use of electronic rigs designed to make

adjustments to gravity – this line of attack has the advantage of using rigs

already in existence for other defence work. Bell also has an experimental rig

intended, as the company puts it, to cancel out gravity, and Lawrence Bell

has said he is convinced that practical hardware will emerge from current

programs. Grover Leoning is certain that what he referred to as an electro-

magnetic contra-gravity mechanism will be developed for practical use.

Convair is extensively committed to the work with several rigs. Lear Inc.,

autopilot and electronic engineers have a division of the company working

on gravity research and so also has the Sperry division of Sperry-Rand. This

list embraces most of the U.S. aircraft industry. The remainder, Curtis-

Wright, Lockheed, Boeing and North American have not yet declared

themselves, but all these four are known to be in various stages of study with

and without rigs.”

Judging from this report there was pervasive industry-wide attention on anti-gravity or

‘dynamic counterbary’, backed up by actual brick-and-mortar development such as ‘rigs’ and

‘practical hardware’, by the biggest names in the business. There were dozens of articles in

publications ranging from Aviation Week and Space Technology and Jane’s Defense Weekly to the

New York Herald Tribune declaring a new, rich, established frontier in conquering gravity. Why

wouldn’t there be? The awesome potential for propellant-free engines and cancelling the effects

of gravity for aerospace and military applications (let alone civilian use) can’t be overestimated.

Then, towards the end of the decade, all news regarding this phenomenon suddenly

evaporated.

This leaves a couple of options: by 1960 either everybody hit a dead end and all that applied

physics and science from some of the world's smartest people turned out to be frivolous and

useless, or they hit paydirt and didn't feel like talking about or sharing it. While the first option

is definitely possible if you discount the success of Townsend Brown and many others’ work

(and as a rule discontinued military projects don’t make headlines), one could make a strong

  36  

case for the second alternative: as soon as quantifiable results began to emerge in this

admittedly world-changing field, they went classified or ‘black’ and stayed that way.

Lockheed’s Ben Rich offered an unexpected, startling validation for this scenario in no uncertain

terms (along with his ‘taking ET back home’ statement) during his 1993 alumni speech at the

UCLA  School  of  Engineering. Keep in mind, Rich was head of the Lockheed Skunk Works in the

late 80’s when the ARV demonstration would have taken place at its Palmdale location:

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked

up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit

humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do."

One well-known example of the ‘it works – it’s gone” phenomenon is when Thomas Townsend

Brown, the famous anti-gravity scientist and inventor (fig. 9), gave a demonstration to some

military officials in the early 1950’s. Apparently the results were so successful, dramatic and

striking they were immediately classified and remain so to this day. Paul LaViolette writes in

The Repression of Nonconventional Energy Technologies (2000):

The Pearl Harbor Demonstration

Around 1953, Brown conducted a demonstration for top brass from the military. He flew

a pair of 3 foot diameter discs around a 50 foot course tethered to a central pole.

Energized with 150,000 volts and emitting ions from their leading edge, they attained

speeds of several hundred miles per hour. The subject was thereafter classified.

                   fig. 9: T. Townsend Brown field-testing his electrokinetic disks during Project Montgolfier, now declassified, Paris 1957.  

  37  

In its March 9, 1992 issue, Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine made a surprising

disclosure that the B-2 Stealth bomber employs very powerful electrostatic charges in its design

— a negative charge on its exhaust stream and trailing surfaces, and a positive charge on the

leading edges of its wing-like body. Those familiar with the electrogravitics research of

Townsend Brown will quickly realize that this is tantamount to stating that the B-2 is able to

function, at least in part, as an anti-gravity aircraft. Theoretically this also means that once in

high-altitude, high-velocity flight, the vehicle could potentially fly without fuel of any kind

indefinitely.

The concept of this entire field mysteriously vanishing, and the ripples of controversy generated

since, is illustrated beautifully in a metaphor by aerospace journalist Nick Cook in “The Hunt

for Zero Point”20, his doggedly-researched novel about classified anti-gravity technology:

“Looking for the black world was like looking for evidence of black holes. You

couldn't see a black hole, no matter how powerful your telescope, because its

pull sucked in everything around it, including the light of neighboring stars. But

astronomers knew that black holes existed because of the intense friction they

generated on their edges. It was this that gave them away.”

So if we really have this stuff, why the secrecy? If these technologies are so wondrous and have

so much potential for lifting humanity up out of its dependence on fossil fuels, offering untold

                                                                                                               20  The  Hunt  for  Zero  Point  -­‐  Inside  the  Classified  World  of  Antigravity  Technology,  p.  15  by  Nick  Cook  

T. Townsend Brown’s diagram from his 1960 “Electrokinetic Apparatus” patent,

and the B-2 Bomber

 

  38  

benefits in space exploration and saving the world from a catastrophic environmental collapse,

why wouldn’t we and John Q. Sixpack know about it?

First would be the ‘national security’ angle. Let’s say the USAF and Lockheed actually built a

functioning anti-gravity, mass-canceling vehicle back in the 70’s or 80’s. With the performance

capabilities of the ARV you could fly from Fresno into enemy airspace halfway around the

world, deploy a weapon or surveil a site, and be back in 40 seconds. It would mean an absurd

tactical advantage over every other military force on earth. The US military has a history of

keeping things like that to itself.

Another reason something so huge could be kept secret is personal motivation, something of

which McCandlish can provide a textbook example. As we were finishing up the 3rd day of

interviews in California I asked him a hypothetical question: if he had the choice to work in

black-budget programs, helping design variants of the ARV and other super-secret anti-gravity

crafts, would he forsake his evangelist role, sign and abide by nondisclosure agreements, and

never speak about it in public? His answer was an immediate, unequivocal “Yes”, absolutely no

doubt in his mind. If he’d gone to that airshow with Sorensen in 1988, seen the technology and

subsequently been hired by Lockheed to work in the program, the world at large would have

never heard of the Flux Liner. He would’ve gladly joined that exclusive club with its one-way

membership and never looked back. Chances are good he represents a majority on that side of

the ethical fence, myself included.

"Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the

world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels."

- Nikola Tesla

Another key point: gravity control systems don't use gas from Exxon or coal from Massey

Energy. They apparently tap into a limitless, super-concentrated, free source of power just

hanging around everywhere, which needless to say would disrupt a few trillion dollars in

annual sales if applied to everyday life. This phenomenon is related to the science and research

of ‘over-unity’ devices (machines which generate more power than it takes to run them) such as

cold fusion, permanent magnet motors and self-sustaining batteries.

  39  

Going all the way back to J.P. Morgan’s abrupt cutoff in funding Tesla’s free energy tower at

Wardenclyffe around 1902 (Morgan was quoted as saying “If anyone can tap into this energy at

any point on earth, where do we put the meter?”), the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries

would logically rather keep a lid on unlimited, free juice for everybody. And rumor has it the

heads of these global cartels can exert a great deal of control over mass media, geopolitical

power dynamics and even general scientific progress.

Returning to the ET question, if some UFO's are in fact extraterrestrial, that may be one great

reason they're kept secret: their flying saucer engines pose a formidable threat to the world's

most profitable industries. You don’t get from Zeta Reticuli to here using premium unleaded.

The same goes for the ARV's simple and elegant system if it actually exists. The ARV’s method

of propulsion is clean, free and represents a total game-change in human energy use. It’s actual

kick-the-tires ‘paydirt’ for all that electrogravitic R&D up through and beyond the 1950’s, and to

this day no one's been interviewed about it on CNN.

In order to get one’s brain around both of the above color-coded scenarios (and maintain a

degree of optimism and sanity), one must accept and foster a degree of cognitive dissonance,

allowing for the mind’s occupation of an unstable middle ground. Maybe we have the

technology, maybe we don’t; no use getting worked up about it. There’s a good chance aliens

are out there but we don’t know for sure. Sometimes even highly trained people make errors in

observation and judgment. The government and powers-that-be generally have our best

interests at heart. News about major breakthroughs like the recent discovery of the Higgs boson

is plenty of information about cutting-edge applied science.

Move too far in either direction on the red or blue scale and risk slamming into walls of

uncertainty, paranoia or worse. Surely indisputable proof of aliens, anti-gravity and limitless

free energy would forever change life on this planet and usher in a new epoch for all humanity.

But if pondering these concepts doesn’t put food on the table next week, are they really worth

renting space in your head? The answer, of course, is yes and no.

  40  

VI. Mechanics and Processes of Translation

First and foremost, McCandlish is an illustrator. The primary focus of his work and

skillsets have always been in the accurate translation and rendering of other specialist’s

concepts and ideas, as opposed to making ‘fine’ art with its inherently personal, emotional and

psychological vectors. His full-throttle immersion into creating an accurate depiction of

something as ephemeral and strange as the ARV might represent a complete break with the

deeply ingrained, impartial discipline of his earlier career and show an entirely different side to

his temperament as a visual creative: artistic passion. He embarked on an intensely personal

quest to make the most accurate representation possible of a goofy-looking and highly

improbable flying saucer. Again, this wasn’t for personal gain; he did it just because it might

have been there. He was confronted with an extremely compelling mystery, and above all else

he simply wanted to figure it out, and he did that the way he’d approached challenges like this

since art school: by taking pen to paper, leading to a professional draughtsman’s precision ink

on vellum.

While there were undoubtedly some heady emotions flying around the process, his inspiration

and subjectivity were anchored in his discipline as a fastidious technical illustrator, and steered

by a thorough, long-term granulation of Sorensen’s account, hard science, mounting evidence

from other witnesses, and the historical record as a few more years passed. His years of training

were now focused on translating vaporous testimony into concrete line work; on the

clarification, distillation, extrapolation and synthesis of various threads into one, single

blueprint draft.

 fig.  10  -­‐  Right:  Brad Sorensen’s original sketch from November 1988; left: McCandlish’s finished blueprint with technical callout notations, 1994    

  41  

By meticulously deconstructing Sorensen’s account in November 1988 and referencing a rough

sketch of the Flux Liner Sorensen provided soon thereafter during a subsequent meeting (fig. 8),

McCandlish brought his analytical skills to bear to flesh out and quantify some ill-defined

details of the vehicle’s configuration. Extrapolating from Sorensen’s description of the 24-foot

diameter craft, he determined the approximate relative size of the crew compartment; the width

and circumference of an outer copper coil housing (the ‘Antennae’) along with aspects of the

coils themselves; the dimensions, number and distribution of triangular copper plates in the

lower capacitor array; the rail-mounted ejector seats with bizarre navigation controls for the

pilot; the arrangement of cameras in the synthetic vision system; the general size and number of

on-board oxygen tanks, and many more refinements lending cohesion and accuracy to the

design. Sorensen vetted each step as conforming to his recollections of inspecting the craft and

information gathered at the air show. Kent Sellen, the other eyewitness McCandlish discovered

in 1992, provided further details such as a number of explosive bolts designed to separate the

upper crew compartment during an emergency evacuation event.

Every contour and proportion was carefully considered for veracity and plausibility, its

depiction of known material constraints and fabrication tolerances (for example how thick a

pultruded fiberglass barrier would be), and its adherence to established technical parameters.

The overarching motivation and guiding principle was for this thing to make sense as an

example of functioning hardware, no matter how farfetched the concepts it employed.

Compared to many illustrations Mark had generated for military and aerospace clients (such as

cutaway views of advanced weapons systems and next-generation aircraft) it was an absurdly

simple configuration. The challenge was in generating an accurate technical diagram of an

unprecedented vehicle with no publicly known technical specifications whatsoever. There

aren’t many references in aerospace trade journals for flying disks that generate millions of volts

and bend space-time.

A major irony of the process in this case, not lost on McCandlish, is that of his attempting to re-

invent the wheel (or faster-than-light spaceship). As he struggled for years to figure out various

discrepancies and mysteries in his understanding of the ARV, he knew full well that if

Sorensen’s and Sellen’s stories were true, there were naturally copious, very real engineering

  42  

and production blueprints of the vehicle he was laboriously piecing together from incomplete

sources, not to mention photos and video, and of course the vehicles themselves. He was

attempting to make a realistic facsimile of an actual cutaway diagram displayed at the show in

the Skunk Works facility years before, his only reference being the equivalent of reflections in

passing windows. Yet somewhere, stashed in the archives of Lockheed and God knows where

else, there may be a diagram eerily similar to Mark’s with a different signature at the bottom.

McCandlish’s final blueprint signature block with “REVISED 7/94” as the finish date.

The final version of the blueprint was finished in 1994 (including technical callouts surrounding

the main image), six years after McCandlish heard the initial account from Sorensen. It was the

product of numerous iterations and revisions (at one point McCandlish integrated, then

discarded the addition of a small nuclear reactor in the core), and while it may not be seen or

accepted as a masterpiece, it is undeniably masterful in its execution. The final 24”x36”

blueprint has a straightforward boldness, elegance, simplicity, intelligence and restrained

audacity which dare the viewer to question its basis in fact. There’s good reason it has resonated

deeply with so many people, been showcased in such a wide range of media from sensational

television to lofty academic papers, and generated so much controversy.

Mark's blueprint represents a very rare item in the huge and often esoteric fields of black-

project research and UFOlogy: a detailed, concrete depiction of something which may well

exist; an actual 'chunk of stuff' in a vast area where vapor is almost always the coin of the realm.

Sincere eyewitness testimony, shaky video, blurry pictures and countless pages of verbiage are

all too familiar and common in UFO and military/government conspiracy publications, TV

documentaries and Internet sites. A thoroughly researched engineering blueprint is an entirely

different animal. The antithesis of a pulp sci-fi novel cover, it's a powerful delineation of

  43  

plausible magic; a snapshot of insanely advanced military hardware grounded in real science and

extremely compelling evidence. It's become a kind of cultural beacon, anchor and lightning rod;

a treasure map for believers in this technology and a strong challenge for skeptics.

This could be seen as a mixed blessing. McCandlish recalls that when he finished the basic

design in 1989 to roughly 90% of its final state, Sorensen was so impressed with its accuracy and

precision he issued a clear warning: if Mark “was smart”, he’d tear up the drawing, destroy any

record of it and never talk about it again. McCandlish ended up doing almost the exact

opposite, and it’s still unclear just how smart that course of action has been.

As stated previously, since its unveiling on the international stage in 2001 the diagram has

become somewhat of a cultural icon, embedded in the mythology, legacy and historical record

of gravity control technology and setting the bar for depictions of this sort which nothing else

has approached in the last two decades.

Making the ‘Zero-Point’ film has added another layer to the ongoing discovery process.

I knew we primarily wanted to make a documentary focusing on McCandlish, since without

him there would be no ARV story. So as writer and director I drafted a series of basic interview

questions and possible follow-ups, knowing the structure and flow of the film would be

contingent on his answers on camera. We filmed Q&A interviews over the course of 3 days in

his hometown of Redding, CA, and McCandlish proved to be a very articulate and generous

subject, with full and consistent recollections of specific events, at times even going into some

obviously painful details about his experiences within the story. After going through the

roughly 10 hours of footage I formed a basic narrative structure for the now feature-length film:

• McCandlish and his background

• The pivotal event of Sorensen recounting his experience at the air show

• McCandlish’s subsequent pursuit of ARV-related information, evidence and witnesses

• The process of the drawing itself, and the components of the vehicle and their functions

• The concepts and science of zero-point energy and quantum space-time engineering

• The ramifications of limitless free energy and plausible motivations for its secrecy

  44  

• McCandlish’s experience with the Disclosure Project and its aftermath

• The ‘dark side’ of nondisclosure and McCandlish’s personal challenges within this realm

 McCandlish on camera during a series of interviews in Redding CA, March 2011

Concurrently with making a basic rough cut of the film, a colleague and myself began

developing a detailed 3D version of the Flux Liner (fig. 11) to lend further visual detail to the

narrative. Built over the course of many months and aided by periodic vetting of the design by

McCandlish, this may now be the most accurate CGI rendition of the vehicle in the world (save

Lockheed CAD drawings). This process also brought up a number of possible gaps, omissions

and oversights in the now 20-year old blueprint design (and naturally some of Mark’s

contributing information base and theories have grown and changed), which McCandlish and I

worked through to bring the 3D version up to date.

Here my background in visual effects has served well to flesh out the original 2D representation

(along with the film), and will hopefully enable a deeper, faster and more thorough

understanding of the machine and its inherent concepts for the general public.

fig. 11: McCandlish’s blueprint and the CGI version created for the film.

 

  45  

Beyond the purely mechanical design-oriented process, my personal extrapolations applied to

the narrative (derived from a broad distillation of research) are apparent in the final segments of

the film in particular. I’d come to learn from the more private disclosures from Mark about his

personal challenges, first-hand accounts he shared concerning other individuals, and dozens of

similar (and sometimes far more sinister) case histories on record, that there is strong evidence

for an active suppression of information and public advancement regarding technologies

surrounding the ARV. Along with the official stonewalling and secrecy detailed previously, this

includes the possible silencing of numerous high-profile proponents of free energy technologies

using various methods up to and including murder. To some degree the inclusion of material

supporting this view has possibly meant crossing a line in the objective documentarian sense,

however the historical record lends credence to this interpretation without much need for a bias

towards the darker track. One could make a strong case for either a ruthless global whack-a-

mole machine taking out a number of noisy, successful scientists and inventors, or a long series

of unfortunate coincidences. And as the saying goes - “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t

mean they’re not out to get you.”, one could use the variant: “Just because there’s a conspiracy

theory doesn’t mean there’s not an actual conspiracy.”

The primary goal for this project has been to construct an effective and compelling delivery

system for a number of unusual concepts, using Mark’s work, experiences and point of view as

springboard and foundation. Despite any personal interpretation and evolving opinions on my

part, I’ve consistently strived for accuracy, depth and impartiality throughout the entire

production and post-production process in relaying the many aspects of McCandlish’s and the

ARV’s story. In this sense it ideally parallels Mark’s endeavors with the ARV drawing; creating

an in-depth and veracious rendition of the material with a minimum of subjective input.

It’s possible (and hoped) the Zero-Point film and this version of McCandlish’s story can

eventually reach an audience as broad as that of the Disclosure Project conference through

festivals, television and the Web, thereby offering a new dimension of the ongoing saga for

current and subsequent generations to ponder. A single technical diagram and a feature

documentary biopic with visual effects are very different means of communication. Time will

tell how successful we’ve been in translating an artist’s life and his drawing of an odd machine

into the motion picture medium. And of course, assassination by the Illuminati may be in the

cards as well.

  46  

Conclusions

In the course of the extended research, in-depth communications, numerous discoveries and

various technical processes involved with making this documentary film, it has been my

experience that such an endeavor can lead to profound intellectual growth and great newfound

awareness in a given field, for better or worse. By undertaking extended immersion in the

material for the Zero-Point film in particular, with its focus on liminal subjects and ‘occult’

(meaning forbidden and/or secret) knowledge, I as the filmmaker found myself committed to a

headlong odyssey into unknown and mysterious territory; simultaneously fascinating, inspiring

and deeply disconcerting, which in many ways mirrored the path of the documentary subject.

The biggest and most challenging of my discoveries and/or conclusions was this: the weight of

evidence strongly suggests the Flux Liner is a real thing, a fact which carries many vexing

concepts along with it. From everything I’ve learned over the past couple years I’m convinced

to within .5% that Brad Sorensen’s story is true, and we probably have functioning anti-gravity

and associated technologies. Whether the ARV is indeed an ‘Alien Reproduction Vehicle’, i.e.

reverse-engineered from ET technology, is still a grey area (pun regrettably intended). I believe

Mark McCandlish has created a fairly accurate rendition of what Sorensen saw in 1988, and

despite much personal hardship and many challenges in doing so, has altruistically and

generously shared his most direct and honest account of the story with the world for the past 15

years. I feel the film we’ve made is an honest, accurate and comprehensive expansion of this

story. And like Mark, I’m still genuinely thrilled and fascinated by the implications of what the

story might mean. We hope the film will similarly inspire many others to at least consider these

possibilities and ask some interesting, difficult questions.

The ARV represents many things - interstellar travel including possible extraterrestrial

technology and visitation, a secret military government and 'rogue civilization', the dreams of

Nikola Tesla and the cutting edge of science itself. For many years Mark researched, explored

and depicted something very few people can even comprehend - perhaps one of the coolest

machines in human history. By making and eventually displaying a great drawing of this

vehicle, McCandlish just may have delineated one of the most important technological concepts

ever presented to the public at large.

  47  

Mark once told me an idea he had for a short story related to all this. He imagined some

humanoid entity on a distant planet, perhaps a million years ago. This being was watching ball

lightning materialize and hover around an active volcano or storm front, and had a ‘eureka’

moment similar to the Wright brothers watching seagulls in flight. It thought: “Well that’s an

interesting way to get around – why can’t I do that?” and began the process of inventing

electromagnetic flight as opposed to the wing-shaped airfoil variety. From that point it was

only a matter of time before his species figured out electrogravitics, zero-point energy and

interstellar faster-than–light travel.

Why not?

-- James Allen Higgins

November 2012

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Works Cited /  Bibliography: Empirical Analysis of Electrogravitics and Electrokinetics and its Potential for Space Travel Thomas F. Valone, Ph.D., 2008 Disclosure Project Briefing Document Steven M. Greer, M.D. and Theodore C. Loder III, Ph.D., 2001 The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity Miguel Alcubierre, 1994 Engineering the Zero-Point Field and Polarizable Vacuum for Interstellar Flight Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., 2002 Electrogravitics Systems – An examination of electrostatic motion, dynamic counterbary and barycentric control Gravity Research Group Aviation Studies, 1955 The Repression of Nonconventional Energy Technologies Paul LaViolette, 2000 The Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord, 1994 Report of Sighting, Rendlesham Forest December 1980 UK Ministry of Defense , 1983 Advanced Propulsion Study for the Air Force Material Command Eric W. Davis, 2004 The Hunt for Zero Point - Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology Nick Cook, 2001

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APPENDICE A: Partial Listing of US Patents Related to Electromagnetic Propulsion

• US Patent # 2,949,550 – “ELECTROKINETIC APPARATUS”, granted 1960

• US Patent # 2,958,790 – “ELECTRICAL THRUST PRODUCING DEVICE”, granted 1960

• US Patent # 2,997,013 – “IONIC PROPULSION SYSTEM”, granted 1961

• US Patent # 3,018,394 – “ELECTROKINETIC TRANSDUCER”, granted 1962

• US Patent # 3,022,430 – “ELECTROKINETIC GENERATOR”, granted 1962

• US Patent # 3,120,363 – “IONIC FLYING APPARATUS”, granted 1964

• US Patent # 3,130,945 – “IONOCRAFT”, granted 1964

• US Patent # 3,155,858 – “ION ACCELERATION DEVICE”, granted 1964

• US Patent # 3,187,206 – “ELECTROKINETIC APPARATUS”, granted 1965

• US Patent # 3,223,038 – “ELECTRICAL THRUST PRODUCING DEVICE”, granted 1965

• US Patent # 3,227,901 – “ELECTRICAL THRUST PRODUCING DEVICE”, granted 1966

• US Patent # 3,263,102 – “ELECTRICAL THRUST PRODUCING DEVICE”, granted 1966

• US Patent # 3,279,176 – “ION ROCKET ENGINE”, granted 1966

• US Patent # 3,322,374– “MAGNETO-HYDRODYNAMIC PROPULSION APPARATUS”, granted 1967 Note – this design bears a striking resemblance to the ARV in form and function (fig. 6), something McCandlish has referenced for many years.

• US Patent # 3,464,207 – “QUASI-CORONA-AERODYNAMIC VEHICLE”, granted 1969

• US Patent # 3,626,605 – “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR GENERATING A SECONDARY GRAVITATIONAL

FORCE FIELD”, granted 1971

• US Patent # 4,663,932 – “DIPOLAR FORCE FIELD PROPULSION SYSTEM”, granted 1987

• US Patent # 5,052,638 – “ELECTROMAGNETIC RAMJET”, granted 1991

• US Patent # 5,142,861 – “NONLINEAR ELECTROMAGNETIC PROPULSION SYSTEM AND METHOD”,

granted 1992

• US Patent # 5,146,742 – “ION THRUSTER FOR INTERPLANETARY SPACE MISSION”, granted 1992

• US Patent # 5,211,006 – “MAGNETO-HYDRODYNAMIC PROPULSION SYSTEM”, granted 1993

• US Patent # 6,098,924 – “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR GENERATING PROPULSIVE FORCES WITHOUT

THE EJECTION OF PROPELLANT”, granted 2000

• US Patent # 6,193,194 – “MAGNETIC PROPULSION SYSTEM AND OPERATING METHOD”, granted 2001

• US Patent #6,317,310– “APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR GENERATING THRUST USING A TWO

DIMENSIONAL, ASYMMETRICAL CAPACITOR MODULE ”, granted 2001

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APPENDICE B: Reference List for Zero-Point Energy Related Publications Authored or Co-Authored by Dr. Harold E. Puthoff H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D., Director Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin Austin, Texas 78759 H. E. Puthoff, "Ground State of Hydrogen as a Zero-Point-Fluctuation-Determined State," Phys. Rev. D 35, 3266 (1987). H. E. Puthoff, "Zero-Point Fluctuations of the Vacuum as the Source of Atomic Stability and the Gravitational Interaction, "Proc. of the British Soc. for the Philosophy of Science Intern'l Conf. "Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory," Imperial College, London, ed. M. C. Duffy (Sunderland Polytechnic, 1988). H. E. Puthoff, "Gravity as a Zero-Point-Fluctuation Force," Phys. Rev. A 39, 2333 (1989); Phys. Rev A 47, 3454 (1993). H. E. Puthoff, "On the Source of Vacuum Electromagnetic Zero-Point Energy," Phys. Rev. A 40, 4857 (1989); Errata and Comments, Phys. Rev. A 44, 3382, 3385 (1991). H. E. Puthoff, "Everything for Nothing," New Sci. 127, 52 (28 July 1990). H. E. Puthoff, "The Energetic Vacuum: Implications for Energy Research," Spec. in Sci. and Technology 13, 247 (1990). H. E. Puthoff, "Zero-Point Energy: An Introduction," Fusion Facts 3, No. 3, 1 (1991). H. E. Puthoff, "On the Feasibility of Converting Vacuum Electromagnetic Energy to Useful Form," Intern'l Workshop on the Zeropoint Electromagnetic Field," Cuernavaca, Mexico, March 29 - April 2, 1993. D. C. Cole and H. E. Puthoff, "Extracting Energy and Heat from the Vacuum," Phys. Rev. E 48, 1562 (1993). See also Fusion Facts 5, No. 3, 1 (1993). B. Haisch, A. Rueda, and H. E. Puthoff, "Inertia as a Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force," Phys. Rev. A 49, 678 (1994). See also Science 263, 612 (1994). B. Haisch, A. Rueda, and H. E. Puthoff, "Beyond E = mc2," The Sciences (NY Acad. of Sciences) 34, 26 (Nov/Dec 1994). H. E. Puthoff, "SETI, The Velocity-of-Light Limitation, and the Alcubierre Warp Drive: An Integrating Overview," Physics Essays 9, 156 (1996). B. Haisch, A. Rueda, and H. E. Puthoff. "Physics of the Zero-Point Field: Implications for Inertia, Gravitation and Mass," Spec. in Sci. and Technology 20, 99 (1997). H. E. Puthoff, "Space Propulsion: Can Empty Space Itself Provide a Solution?" Ad Astra 9 (National Space Society), 42 (Jan/Feb 1997). H. E. Puthoff, "The New Vision in Physics and Cosmology," State of the World Forum, San Francisco (Nov. 4-9, 1997). M. A. Piestrup, H. E. Puthoff, and P. J. Ebert, "Measurement of Multiple-Electron Emission in Single Field-Emission Events," J. Appl. Phys. 82, 5862 (1997). H. E. Puthoff, "Can the Vacuum be Engineered for Spaceflight Applications? Overview of Theory and Experiments," Jour. Sci. Exploration 12, 295 (1998). M. A. Piestrup, H. E. Puthoff and P. J. Ebert, "Correlated Emission of Electrons," Gal. Electrodynamics 9, 43 (1998). B. Haisch, A. Rueda and H. E. Puthoff, "Advances in the Proposed Electromagnetic Zero-Point Field Theory of Inertia," Pres. 34th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, Cleveland, OH (13-15 July 1998). H. E. Puthoff and M. A. Piestrup, "On the Possibility of Charge Confinement by van der Waals/Casimir-type Forces," subm. to Phys. Lett. A (1998). H. E. Puthoff, "Condensed-Charge Technology," Technical briefing package, including vugraphs and videotape, presented to numerous government agencies and panels, corporations, and academic colloquia, 1987 - present. H. E. Puthoff et al., compilation of research reports on the laboratory evaluation of novel energy devices, posted on EarthTech Intern'l, Inc..