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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Nearly Released 20 Tons of Mercury Annually Into Atmosphere

The Why Files · Project Chronos | Hitler's Last Weapon · July 3, 2026
Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Nearly Released 20 Tons of Mercury Annually Into Atmosphere
The Why Files
The Why Files
Project Chronos | Hitler's Last Weapon
"In 2018, Apollo Fusion, Inc. began quietly pitching Mercury engines to satellite manufacturers. Mercury is cheap and efficient. A few pounds of mercury could power a satellite for a year. Thousands of satellites mean saving billions of dollars. Small problem, though. All those engines emit their mercury waste back to Earth. A whistleblower did the math. In 2018 alone, about 4,000 satellites were launched. Just a thousand satellites would dump around 20 tons of mercury into the upper atmosphere, and that was 20 tons every year."
A Silicon Valley company called Apollo Fusion attempted to commercialize mercury-powered satellite engines in 2018, which would have released approximately 20 metric tons of mercury into Earth's atmosphere annually. A whistleblower calculated the catastrophic environmental impact before the UN closed the legal loophole in 2022. The Minamata Convention had banned mercury in manufacturing and healthcare but had not addressed space applications.

About this episode

The Y Files host AJ examines claims that Nazi Germany developed an anti-gravity weapon called Die Glocke (the bell) during World War II and traces alleged connections to modern US Navy patents for advanced propulsion technology. The episode explores how ancient Indian king Bhoja wrote about mercury-powered flying machines in 1010 AD but deliberately withheld construction details due to mercury's toxicity. AJ details how the Nazis allegedly attempted to build a bell-shaped device powered by counter-rotating mercury cylinders that could warp time and gravity, though project leader Hans Kammler and the bell itself disappeared at war's end. The episode reveals that NASA engineer Harold Calfman successfully built a mercury-powered ion engine in the 1960s that operated for 11 years on the SERT 2 satellite before the program was abandoned due to mercury poisoning of workers. In 2017-2018, aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais filed multiple US Navy patents for gravity-warping, cloaking, and advanced propulsion technologies allegedly based on spinning charged matter, with the Navy claiming the technology works and that China is pursuing similar capabilities. Most dramatically, the episode exposes how Apollo Fusion, Inc. nearly commercialized mercury-powered satellite engines in 2018 that would have released 20 metric tons of mercury annually into Earth's atmosphere before a UN treaty closed the loophole in 2022. AJ ultimately concludes that while the Nazi bell story lacks solid documentation and likely originated from a single journalist's unverified source, the recurring pattern of mercury-based propulsion attempts throughout history demonstrates humanity's repeated failure to heed ancient warnings about the metal's catastrophic toxicity.

Key takeaways

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