Bernard Eastlund

Bernard J. Eastlund ( * 1938, † 12 December 2007) was an American physicist and inventor.

Eastlund studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT; bachelor's degree in 1960 ) and at Columbia University, where he in 1965 with the work diffusion measurements in a fully ionized cesium plasma. doctorate. He was the initiator of a precursor of the HAARP project in the 1980s, for which he has some technology patents. During that time military applications in the context of standing Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI ) of primary interest, this usage is disputed in the present operators of HAARP. Eastlund himself worked on such applications for Advanced Power Technologies Inc. ( APTI ), a subsidiary of ARCO. As an application, not only the development of a missile defense against ICBMs, it was envisaged, but also the manipulation of the weather by influencing the course of the jet stream (both been described in patents ).

Another idea of Eastlund ( and William C. Gough ) is the use of nuclear fusion reactors, for example, for the separation and subsequent recycling of elements ( "Fusion Torch" ) from 1968 ( he received a " Special Achievement Certificate " of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the idea was well received by her then- Chairman Glenn Seaborg ). Eastlund and Gough were then program manager in fusion research program of the AEC.

Eastlund was the founder of the technology consultancy firm Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation (ESEC ) in Houston, Texas.

Besides, he was also involved in Astrophysics and published on pulsars and gamma-ray sources ( Gamma Ray Burster ).