Politech: Tax $$$ at work: Air Force report wants $7.5 million for psychic teleportation

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

USA Today article:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/usat110504.html
"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss 
of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek, 
a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He 
describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable 
theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."
---

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf

Report date: 25-11-2003
Sponsor:
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFMC)
10 E. Saturn Blvd.
Edwards AFB CA 93524-7680

The concept of teleportation was originally developed during the Golden 
Age of 20  century science  fiction literature by writers in need of a 
form of instantaneous disembodied transportation technology to  support 
the plots of their stories.  Teleportation has appeared in such SciFi 
literature classics as Algis  Budry’s Rogue Moon (Gold Medal Books, 
1960), A. E. van Vogt’s World of Null-A (Astounding Science  Fiction, 
August 1945), and George Langelaan’s The Fly (Playboy Magazine, June 
1957).  The Playboy  Magazine short story led to a cottage industry of 
popular films decrying the horrors of scientific  technology that 
exceeded mankind’s wisdom: The Fly (1958), Return of the Fly (1959), 
Curse of the Fly  (1965), The Fly (a 1986 remake), and The Fly II 
(1989).  The teleportation concept has also appeared in  episodes of 
popular television SciFi anthology series such as The Twilight Zone and 
The Outer Limits.   But the most widely recognized pop-culture awareness 
of the teleportation concept began with the  numerous Star Trek 
television and theatrical movie series of the past 39 years (beginning 
in 1964 with the  first TV series pilot episode, The Cage), which are 
now an international entertainment and product  franchise that was 
originally spawned by the late genius television writer-producer Gene 
Roddenberry.   Because of Star Trek everyone in the world is familiar 
with the “transporter” device, which is used to  teleport personnel and 
material from starship to starship or from ship to planet and vice versa 
at the speed  of light.  People or inanimate objects would be positioned 
on the transporter pad and become completely  disintegrated by a beam 
with their atoms being patterned in a computer buffer and later 
converted into a  beam that is directed toward the destination, and then 
reintegrated back into their original form (all  without error!).  “Beam 
me up, Scotty” is a familiar automobile bumper sticker or cry of 
exasperation that  were popularly adopted from the series...
This study was tasked with the purpose of collecting information 
describing the teleportation of material objects, providing a 
description of  teleportation as it occurs in physics, its theoretical 
and experimental status, and a projection of potential applications. 
The study also consisted  of a search for teleportation phenomena 
occurring naturally or under laboratory conditions that can be assembled 
into a model describing the  conditions required to accomplish the 
transfer of objects... The author proposes an additional model for 
teleportation that  is based on a combination of the experimental 
results from the previous government studies and advanced physics 
concepts.  Numerous  recommendations outlining proposals for further 
theoretical and experimental studies are given in the report.  The 
report also includes an  extensive teleportation bibliography...
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