I remember spartan looking websites with thorough and somewhat level headed journalism and research made by often highly educated hobbyists into the history of all kinds of stuff from CIA to Oluf Palme, from Göbekli Tepe to the backside of geopolitics.
This is probably partly my mind playing tricks on me but what stood out was the depth of research, the common courtesy and the long well thought out replies people would write. People really had read the books, the docs, the papers and made up their minds from that.
Today so much gets derailed into superficial identity or tribal politics, completely bonkers conspiracy-fiction ala Inforwars or psyop bullshit that is hard to attach any messenger to.
Does anyone know where to get that hit of fringe without all of the hysteria and insanity today?
1) Engines requiring "tons of mercury" (and, presumably, more tons of thorium etc. dissolved in it) are likely to be heavier than competing technologies. For aircraft use, it's a significant drawback.
2)An engine that is based on heavy spinning parts might perhaps drive propellers, but military propeller aircraft have stopped being secret futuristic tech between 80 and 100 years ago.
3) Thorium is quite stable. How could its decay be exploited as a power source? Other radioactive elements, like the plutonium isotopes used in space probes (for heat production) offer a better compromise between stable enough to store and use as fuel and unstable enough to be weight-efficient.
4) Patent US20120105181A1 is illustrated with an actual Levitron toy. I'd assume it's a joke, but US20130175895A1 by the same author is a bit more interesting and along the same lines, and it has the appearance of egregious crackpot material (competing in the prestigious free energy/perpetual motion division).
The reason this tech will never be publicly released: they are flying nuclear hazmat nightmares. They put out an identifiable form of radiation when they operate. They can be detected, once you know how they run.
And we already have something better, there are rumors about newer ones with a better tech, but I dont quite understand the technical claims they make for how those work. Something about pulsed lasers and antimatter, the phrase Schwinger limit kept showing up.
Anyway, go buy an old Levitron off of Ebay, set it on your desk, any whenever you feel glum about the future, give it a spin and remember that its a hand powered UFO.