On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 4:54:38 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Monday, January 12, 2015 at 11:57:50 PM UTC+13, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 11/01/2015 1:51 PM, William Mook wrote:
On Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 1:33:41 PM UTC+13, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 10/01/2015 11:04 AM, William Mook wrote:
On Friday, January 9, 2015 at 8:32:22 PM UTC+13, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 9/01/2015 4:38 PM, William Mook wrote:

Patent applications are granted after an examination process
by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand. The
applicant may not under New Zealand law disclose or publicize
in any way any detail for which patents are being sought.

Convenient for you.

How so? Its actually a damn nuisance, as you pointed out
previously.


But also wrong, I think,

I prefer to take the advice of someone who actually practices IP
law in NZ rather than your gut instinct.

Why would you assume I posted before looking at the relevant
legislation?

Why do you assume I'm talking about what you did online? I merely
assume you know less about NZ IP than my patent attorney who
practices IP law in NZ. I believe the assumption is a sound one.

at least once the patent application has been filed.

Once the patent has been issued certainly. Prior to that, no
information that appears in the application can be made public.
Now, those whom you have special relationships with; employees,
vendors, clients, who are told that the information is
confidential and agree to keep its confidentiality, can see
information on a need to know basis.

Care to cite the relevant part of the legislation?

You have already cited the relevant legislation below. Section
76 to 82 discuss when information may be published and the impact
of publication on the patent process.


Those sections relate to obligations on the commissioner to
publish certain information.

Correct.

The relevant section for publication by you is section 57.

Correct. I was looking for that, but glad you found it.

"A patent is not invalidated--

(a) by reason only that the invention, so far as claimed in a
claim, has been made available to the public (whether in New
Zealand or elsewhere) on or after the priority date of the claim by
written or oral description, by use, or in any other way;"

Which is the normal state of affairs. Once you've invented
something and filed your patent application, thus establishing your
priority date, you're free to start commercialising it

Your contention that the USA and NZ are comparable with regard to
publicizing information before the priority date is in error.
Establishing a priority date is something I can initiate certainly,
but must be completed by the NZ patent office - (please look at the
helpful flow chart on that website you're reading from) and unlike
the USA, I cannot discuss anything until these dates are established
by the NZ PO.

without waiting for the patent to be granted, secure in the
knowledge that, provided the patent is eventually granted, your
interests are protected.

Publicity prior to the priority date is the issue. Your contention
that the USA and NZ laws are comparable wrt publicity before a
priority date is established is in error. Your contention that I
have established priority with the NZ patent office is in error. On
this basis, your conclusions are wrong.

I haven't said anything about the comparability of laws.

If you've filed an application, and the application is eventually
accepted, then the priority date is the date of the application (not the
date of acceptance).

The implication is that either you've not filed, or you're not sure the
application will be excepted (acceptance being distinct from the
granting of a patent).

Sylvia.

Yes its a process, and I'm in the middle of it, following the advice of my counsel here.

That said, I would never go around telling the juiciest parts of my ideas to people I didn't already trust, or post them online where anyone and their mom can steal them without much remorse.


Then perhaps you should stop blithering on about how wonderful they
are if you're not willing to support your claims?

What claims are these exactly?

That's how it's
supposed to work in a 'sci' group, Mookie.

When did you become the soul of propriety in these groups? lol.

Claims

What claims exactly?

supported only by
handwavium fail and people are prone to treat them with derision.

You and your sock puppets treat anything with derision that doesn't contribute to the toxic environment you create and maintain here.


You would have to admit that's a reasonable approach. You would also have to admit asking folks to be qualified before talking to them is not the same as asking them for any sort of money.

You seem to be very clear on some things I've said, and let other things remain fuzzy while others you let slide. lol.

I wonder why that is?


No doubt it's because you're still suffering from paranoia

Now you're an psychiatric expert? lol. NOT!

and think
we're all part of some half-vast conspiracy that exists only in your
head.

Then by all means, tell the DOD and Congress that its all in their head!

Good luck with that one! lol.

Information Operations is a category of direct and indirect support operations for the United States Military. By definition in Joint Publication 3-13, "IO are described as the integrated employment of

electronic warfare (EW),
computer network operations (CNO),
psychological operations (PSYOP),
military deception (MILDEC), and
operations security (OPSEC),

in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp human and automated decision.

Information Operations (IO) are actions taken to affect information and information systems.

This includes rumors deliberately spread widely on the internet to influence opinions.

With respect to USENET, in October 2001, the New York Times published an article claiming that al-Qaeda had used steganography to encode messages into images, and then transported these via e-mail and USENET to prepare and execute the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack.

As a result, the Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development, makes the following statements:

"...immediate concerns also include the use of cyberspace for covert communications, particularly by terrorists but also by foreign intelligence services; espionage against sensitive but poorly defended data in government and industry systems; subversion by insiders, including vendors and contractors; criminal activity, primarily involving fraud and theft of financial or identity information, by hackers and organized crime groups..." (p. 9-10)

"International interest in R&D for steganography technologies and their commercialization and application has exploded in recent years. These technologies pose a potential threat to national security. Because steganography secretly embeds additional, and nearly undetectable, information content in digital products, the potential for covert dissemination of malicious software, mobile code, or information is great." (p. 41-42)

"The threat posed by steganography has been documented in numerous intelligence reports." (p. 42)

It would be foolish to believe in this environment NO resources were allocated to monitoring and controlling USENET channels having to do with something as strategically important as missiles, rocketry, nuclear power, and space travel.

In this context, its not about me, its about the subject of these groups. I'm not identifying you as propagandist sock puppets that disrupt discourse and maintain a toxic environment, you are through your own activity.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

The fact remains, using single point deformation of titanium and aluminum foils, in combination with 5-axis laser welding and laser cutting capability, very fine small cryogenic tanks can be fabricated.

In combination with MEMS rockets and other micro-scale devices significant missions can be carried inexpensively with tiny rocket systems. Furthermore, small rocketry permits the testing of complex systems on a small scale at low cost before scaling to a larger scale.

This can be important in complex systems that improve performance. For example, the use of suerpsonic propellors has been discussed here previously. Also important for early stage flight, air augmented rocketry. Here the energy contained in the exhaust products of a highly energetic rocket is used to mobilize larger quantities of air, increasing efficiency at low speeds..

Air-augmented rockets are also known as

rocket-ejector,
ramrocket,
ducted rocket,
integral rocket/ramjets, or
ejector ramjets

All use the supersonic exhaust of a rocket engine to compress air collected by ram effect during flight to gain additional working mass, leading to greater effective thrust for any given amount of fuel than either the rocket or a ramjet alone.

It represents a hybrid class of rocket/ramjet engines, similar to a ramjet, and is able to give useful thrust from zero speed.

A conventional chemical rocket engine carries both its fuel and its oxidizer. The chemical reaction between the fuel and the oxidizer produces reactant products in the rocket's combustion chamber. The reaction releases tremendous energy in the form of heat; that is expanded through a nozzle producing very high exhaust velocities. The exhaust is directed rearward through the nozzle, thereby producing a thrust forward.

In this conventional design, the fuel/oxidizer mixture is both the working mass and energy source that accelerates it. It is easy to demonstrate that the best performance is had if the working mass is as low as possible. Hydrogen, by itself, is the theoretical best chemical rocket fuel. Mixing this with oxygen in order to burn it lowers the overall performance of the system by raising the mass of the exhaust, as well as greatly increasing the mass that has to be carried aloft - oxygen is much heavier than hydrogen.

One method of increasing the overall performance of the system is to collect either the fuel or the oxidizer during flight. Fuel is hard to come by in the atmosphere, but oxidizer in the form of gaseous oxygen makes up to 20% of the air and there are a number of designs that take advantage of this fact.

Another idea is to collect the working mass. With an air-augmented rocket, an otherwise conventional rocket engine is mounted in the center of a long tube, open at the front. As the rocket moves through the atmosphere the air enters the front of the tube, where it is compressed via the ram effect.

As it travels down the tube it is further compressed and mixed with the fuel-rich exhaust from the rocket engine, which heats the air much as a combustor would in a ramjet. In this way a fairly small rocket can be used to accelerate a much larger working mass than normal, leading to significantly higher thrust within the atmosphere.

The effectiveness of this simple method can be dramatic.

Typical solid rockets have a specific impulse of about 260 seconds, but using the same fuel in an air-augmented design can improve this to over 500 seconds.

The best hydrogen/oxygen engines at 455 seconds can't match that! Of course, using hydrogen and oxygen rockets in the same way improve their performance, to over 1000 seconds! This was the idea behind NASA's GTX vehicle.

Air-augmented design can even be slightly more efficient than a ramjet as the exhaust from the rocket engine compresses the air more than a ramjet normally would; this raises the combustion efficiency as a longer, more efficient nozzle can be employed.

Another advantage is that the rocket works even at zero forward speed, whereas a ramjet requires forward motion to feed air into the engine.

The intakes of high-speed engines are difficult to design, and they can't simply be located anywhere on the airframe whilst getting reasonable performance - in general the entire airframe needs to be built around the intake design.

This is where small systems flown cheaply and rapidly, with a short supply chain that allows simple and rapid variation in airframe construction at very low costs pays huge dividends! (and why we don't want to make pictures of things that actually work!)

I will say that a the air eventually runs out, as the vehicle rises, limiting the additional thrust, we do end up with a three stage vehicle;

Stage 1 - Supersonic propellor,
Stage 2 - Hypersonic ram,
Stage 3 - Hydrogen/Oxygen rocket,

Since the air ducting weighs about 5× more than an equivalent rocket that gives the same thrust. This slows the vehicle quite a bit towards the end of the burn, and knowing when to drop the hardware to gain greatest advantage, is an important detail.

The Soviet Gnom rocket design, implemented by Decree 708-336 of the Soviet Ministers of 2 July 1958, was one of the first air-augmented rockets.

While the USA focused on making smaller payloads, the USSR focused on building more efficient rockets.

This was an ICBM was so improved that it weighed half that of conventional designs. This led to it being light enough, about 30 tonnes, that it could be mounted on the back of a large tank chassis and made fully transportable..

Design and test work continued on the design throughout the early 1960s, but ended in 1965 when the chief designer, Boris Shavyrin of the Kolomna Bureau of Machine Industry (KBM) died. This occurred at the same time Sergei Korolev died, and given the other events that happened in the Soviet space programme, such as the continuing difficulties with the N1, at that time, it is very likely the result of the intervention of the US intelligence agencies to derail and destroy the Soviet space programme.

NASA's GTX program was part of an effort to develop SSTO spacecraft using air agumented flight.

My approach is to substitute air augmented systems at appropriate points in the flight regime of a multi-stage rocket, and then recover the parts and pieces that are dropped.

The advantage of this approach is that the parts that are dropped are dropped close to the launch point and are more easily recovered than parts dropped later.

Generally speaking we advance 1 km/sec with the supersonic propellor along the 7.9 km/sec needed to attain orbit while adding 2.0 km/sec to the 9.2 km/sec total delta vee required(when air drag and gravity losses are added). The ram-rocket stage adds another 2 km/sec before being dropped to the actual speed while adding another 2.3 km/sec to the total delta vee required.

This leaves 4.9 km/sec for the chemical stage to achieve with rocket action alone. With a 4.5 km/sec exhaust speed the third stage requires 66.4% propellant fraction and with a 12.6% structure fraction leaves 21.0% of the stage weight as useful load. Also, a thrust to weight of 1.0 is more than sufficient to carry the vehicle, which is moving horizontally at 3.0 km/sec, reducing the size of the rocket.

So, we have a coaxial supersonic ramjet powered rotor that lifts the vehicle off, and takes it to an altitude of 40 km 90 km downrange. The ramjet is started, and the air bearing is lifted, using a very low thrust setting on the third stage engine to start things off. When the propellor has done its work, it then drops off the stack. The prop flies back to the launch centre and executes a powered touchdown.

The vehicle is accelerated using an air augmented ram around the third stage. This ram is a true second stage in that it carries hydrogen along with it, which is injected into an after-burner like arrangement and ignited by the third stage engine, which is still operating at a low thrust, though slightly higher than during the prop stage.

The ram tube slides down the side of the rocket, which increases its thrust to maximum. The tube when it clears the stage slows to subsonic speed. It then deploys an inflatable airfoil, and glides easily back to the launch centre. There it executes a powered touchdown in a manner similar to many tail sitter designs from the 1950s and 60s.

The third stage, which is quite conventional in many respects, continues to orbit.

Without;

(1) supercomputing & accurate modelling,
(2) rapid prototyping,
(3) ultra-low-cost flight testing,

it would be impractical to carry out a test flight programme to work through all the variables involved in finding the 'sweet spot' for this three stage programme.

With these aspects, its really quite easy.

The two air augmented stages together mass less than the payload. So, there is a gain in payload fraction - though some would argue the propulsion system if more complex than in a simpler three stage design.

A three element system - with two outboard chemical stages in parallel - operating as two additional stages - with three props and three ram tubes operating in parallel for the first and second stages - increases the payload to orbit by a factor of 3.52!!

So, a 1,000 kg payload to orbit system has a 4,762 kg third stage that masses 600 kg empty and carries 486.5 kg of LH2 and 2,675.5 kg of LOX. A stage that's 1.4 m in diameter and 7.7 m long.

Scaling from the small systems tested.

A piloted system, that uses advanced mechanical counter pressure suits with MEMS life support and fuel cells (biosuit)- combined with integrated thermal protection system and parachute - requires less than 200 kg per person.

This means five people can be orbited by this advanced system. Allowing one pilot, and 400 kg for an inflatable habitat, a couple can spend several days on orbit before parachuting back to Earth.

So, this would be a very interesting vacation - for $20 million or so.

With a highly reusable system, one flight per week is possible. 50 flights per year translate to $1 billion in revenue per year.

Increasing to 2.3 m diameter and 10.7 m length, increases payload to orbit for the three element system to 4500 kg. The same as the DNEPR. This begins to get interesting for automated asteroid mining, space power, and human return to the moon, and human exploration of Mars and the asteroid belt.