I have very little positive feelings about NASA’s ethics and their scientific/engineering capability. IMHO they are under the thumb of the solid propellant rocket industry which supplies the military with rockets and other kinetic energy missiles and shells for large guns.
In the late 70’s NASA ignored an improvement in solid propellant design to avoid the CHANGLLER loss in the 80’s. The design was to introduce a casing with no O rings seals and the potential joint failure that happened with CHALLANGER. The fix involved the use of cryogenic fuel preparation, allowing a continuous pour of propellant into a shell casing with no mechanical joints, replacing the batch preparation of solid propellant used by the existing rocket manufacturing companies. Bob Cook Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10 ________________________________ From: JonesBeene <jone...@pacbell.net> Sent: Monday, July 8, 2019 11:49:39 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [Vo]:Of interest - abandoned LENR patent applicationUS20130044847A1 Bob, For some reason – despite the logic which you mention and the obvious problem with activation, NASA still believes that W&L got it right. Go figure. I suppose that if they were proved to be accurate, and NASA may know something which we do not – then the redeeming feature of that hypothesis would have to be this: the neutrons are so deflated that the boron-10 would not produce the normal high energy alpha at all. In fact the neutrons could all decay and all you have is low intensity betas. Is there another option? – who knows, unless there are results that are unpublished ? It seems more realistic now to dump the ultra low momentum species altogether. From: bobcook39...@hotmail.com<mailto:bobcook39...@hotmail.com> Jones— Slow neutrons are not very nice in engineered items. They can activate many stable isotopes,s making a practical invention problematic. I was worried from the get-go that, if W-L was correct, LENR would be a tough technology to make practical. I think the B-10 reaction with a slow neutron produces an energetic alpha. It should be readily observed in CR-39 shields doped with B. I don’t think the alphas were observed as much as predicted. The SPAWAR research would have confirmed the W-L theory. I do not remember that it did. (See the final report of 2016) Bob Cook _____________________________ From: JonesBeene 1 I must have signed up to get notices from USPTO since neither the inventor nor the application is familiar. Anyway – today this effort to Patent a particular concept for a LENR reactor was abandoned by Dan Steinberg, whoever that is - and the claimed operational mechanism appears to be strongly influenced by the low momentum neutron conjecture of Widom and Larsen. Perhaps there is some connection. No wonder that it was abandoned. These neutrons have yet to be documented yet the hypothesis lingers on. “Apparatus and Method for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130044847A1/en Abstract Provided are a method and apparatus for low energy nuclear reactions in hydrogen-loaded metals. A nickel cathode is disposed inside a pressure vessel loaded with heavy water. The vessel is heated to a temperature at which nickel oxide is reduced in the presence of hydrogen. The cathode is electrified, thereby producing hydrogen at the cathode, which removes any oxide layer on the nickel. The nickel can therefore more easily be loaded with hydrogen. The nickel cathode preferably has embedded particles of neutron-absorbing and/or hydrogen absorbing materials, such as boron-10… Boron-10 appears to be the key to this particular claim – and the reason is clear. This isotope has a cross-section for low energy neutrons of at least 3840 barns – “bigger than a barn” so to speak and if you believe W&L got it right – then this would have been your winning lotto ticket. Never mind that the claim was never “reduced to practice”… as they say in Crystal City. Unless that is – you are old enough to remember so called “Zip fuel” … <g>
