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They seem to be confusing friction due to interaction with air and water with inertial mass. This is crackpottery at the highest level. It's a bunch of technoba

by wbhart 7y ago

They seem to be confusing friction due to interaction with air and water with inertial mass. This is crackpottery at the highest level. It's a bunch of technobabble. How does writing a patent for a device that obviously can't work as described achieve anything. They can't come along years later and say, oh we invented that, if something similar emerges, as it will be abundantly clear from the nonsense description that they did not invent it.

empath75 7y ago
There seem to be two plausible reasons for getting such a patent — the navy genuinely thinks this is just around the corner and doesn’t want to pay extortionate license fees to an American company to use it or they want China to think we are pursuing such a technology and want them to waste resources pursuing it themselves.
- wbhart 7y ago
  The first doesn't seem plausible for the reason I gave. The second occurred to me. But how stupid do they think the Chinese are? If the top Chinese military researchers really have such a poor grasp of physics, then their research efforts present no difficulties for the security of the US. The only serious explanation I can come up with is that buried in this application is some element of the design which is feasible and which they do want to protect. But even that seems unlikely, given that they could have just made it secret. Another less likely explanation is that someone in the navy is playing a prank on the public and the patent office. If the person who submitted the application doesn't actually exist, the navy might have trouble tracking down the perpetrator of the hoax. One final possibility is that it is a recruiting tool. Perhaps by making this public they get a bunch of correspondence from talented individuals who capably point out that is nonsense, or that are capable of doing experiments that demonstrate parts of the patent to be nonfeasible.
  - empath75 7y ago
    Possibly also they do have some real advanced program that actually is working and they want a smokescreen up to explain it. Maybe some new stealth craft or propulsion or guidance system that is a normal leap forward. Maybe a drone with especially advanced ai guidance systems that allows for more maneuverability. Something the Chinese could copy if they knew how it worked. Or the reverse — that we have discovered some system the Chinese created and are trying to copy it and want them to think we have gotten it wrong.
    - wbhart 7y ago
      The first seems quite reasonable. The very public smokescreen would be to control the narrative. Every time someone reported seeing such a thing, the public could be told it is probably just the US working on UFO technology. Certainly I believe the average person without a science degree will not see just how impossible this patent is. What's really odd is the reply of the patent examiner. It's almost like they are asking, "so just to make sure I understand you, this is quite impossible, right?". The military replied, "yeah of course it is, it would require more energy than could be produced by all the power stations on earth, even if the physics were sound. If it makes you feel better, we could add that we are doing this on battery power".
      - krapp 7y ago
        The general public doesn't seem concerned enough to need a smokescreen, and I wouldn't necessarily consider this "very public." Most people either already believe it's nonsense, or probably secret classified terrestrial craft, or aliens regardless of the official position. The military could probably get away with simply ignoring any rumors and sightings and letting them disappear into the noise of pop culture.
  - samstave 7y ago
    Does anyone recall the missing hard drives from LLL or los alamos, which were grabbed by the chinese spy? Or the theft of an AWAX by the chinese? They are not stupid. When i was at lockheed the chinese were phishing lockheed staff who had attended defense conferences. They managed to get a worm in lockheed that trickle fed them stolen data. When it was discovered they opened the flood gates and tried to dump mass data out of the lockheed network - which, at the time, only had three egress points to the internet such that lockheed had to shit them down. Then, lockheed tried to keep an air-gap between vendors they were using... but the chinese hacked the vendors such that they coulld compromise the usb drives being used as the sneakerbet between lockheed and the vendors.... The chinese are not stupid.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      You could argue that there are more stupid Chinese than stupid Americans, but only on the basis that there are way more Chinese than Americans. The real question is whether they have stupid people making important decisions for them. Or, more stupid than the US has. At least we can be sure that they don't elect them to do it.
    - empath75 7y ago
      Stupidity is not always evenly distributed. Both the Russians and Americans threw away money on paranormal research, for example, largely because they thought the other side was doing it.
- dgoodell 7y ago
  I don’t think the first one is true because the US government doesn’t have to pay a license to use US patents. It can even allow a private company to use another company’s patents for work being done on behalf of the US government.
bsaul 7y ago
I just had a look at the last jre podcast with some ufo guy that supposedly worked at some secret facility, and i think the coïncidence between what the guy described (some weird propulsion mechanism from fallen UFOs) and the patent linked in the article troubling. There’s definitely some very weird stories gaining popularity at the moment.
- pluto9 7y ago
  I don't think there's a connection. The interviewee, Bob Lazar, is pretty well known in UFO enthusiast circles and has been telling the same story for decades now.
toast0 7y ago
> How does writing a patent for a device that obviously can't work as described achieve anything. If I did this where I work, I'd get a small cash bonus for the application, and a larger, but still small cash bonus if it issued and a commemerative trinket. Plus, I'd have something nice to write about myself in performance reviews. Sounds like an acheivement to me.

by wbhart 7y ago

empath75 7y ago

There seem to be two plausible reasons for getting such a patent — the navy genuinely thinks this is just around the corner and doesn’t want to pay extortionate license fees to an American company to use it or they want China to think we are pursuing such a technology and want them to waste resources pursuing it themselves.

wbhart 7y ago
The first doesn't seem plausible for the reason I gave. The second occurred to me. But how stupid do they think the Chinese are? If the top Chinese military researchers really have such a poor grasp of physics, then their research efforts present no difficulties for the security of the US. The only serious explanation I can come up with is that buried in this application is some element of the design which is feasible and which they do want to protect. But even that seems unlikely, given that they could have just made it secret. Another less likely explanation is that someone in the navy is playing a prank on the public and the patent office. If the person who submitted the application doesn't actually exist, the navy might have trouble tracking down the perpetrator of the hoax. One final possibility is that it is a recruiting tool. Perhaps by making this public they get a bunch of correspondence from talented individuals who capably point out that is nonsense, or that are capable of doing experiments that demonstrate parts of the patent to be nonfeasible.
- empath75 7y ago
  Possibly also they do have some real advanced program that actually is working and they want a smokescreen up to explain it. Maybe some new stealth craft or propulsion or guidance system that is a normal leap forward. Maybe a drone with especially advanced ai guidance systems that allows for more maneuverability. Something the Chinese could copy if they knew how it worked. Or the reverse — that we have discovered some system the Chinese created and are trying to copy it and want them to think we have gotten it wrong.
  - wbhart 7y ago
    The first seems quite reasonable. The very public smokescreen would be to control the narrative. Every time someone reported seeing such a thing, the public could be told it is probably just the US working on UFO technology. Certainly I believe the average person without a science degree will not see just how impossible this patent is. What's really odd is the reply of the patent examiner. It's almost like they are asking, "so just to make sure I understand you, this is quite impossible, right?". The military replied, "yeah of course it is, it would require more energy than could be produced by all the power stations on earth, even if the physics were sound. If it makes you feel better, we could add that we are doing this on battery power".
    - krapp 7y ago
      The general public doesn't seem concerned enough to need a smokescreen, and I wouldn't necessarily consider this "very public." Most people either already believe it's nonsense, or probably secret classified terrestrial craft, or aliens regardless of the official position. The military could probably get away with simply ignoring any rumors and sightings and letting them disappear into the noise of pop culture.
- samstave 7y ago
  Does anyone recall the missing hard drives from LLL or los alamos, which were grabbed by the chinese spy? Or the theft of an AWAX by the chinese? They are not stupid. When i was at lockheed the chinese were phishing lockheed staff who had attended defense conferences. They managed to get a worm in lockheed that trickle fed them stolen data. When it was discovered they opened the flood gates and tried to dump mass data out of the lockheed network - which, at the time, only had three egress points to the internet such that lockheed had to shit them down. Then, lockheed tried to keep an air-gap between vendors they were using... but the chinese hacked the vendors such that they coulld compromise the usb drives being used as the sneakerbet between lockheed and the vendors.... The chinese are not stupid.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    You could argue that there are more stupid Chinese than stupid Americans, but only on the basis that there are way more Chinese than Americans. The real question is whether they have stupid people making important decisions for them. Or, more stupid than the US has. At least we can be sure that they don't elect them to do it.
  - empath75 7y ago
    Stupidity is not always evenly distributed. Both the Russians and Americans threw away money on paranormal research, for example, largely because they thought the other side was doing it.
dgoodell 7y ago
I don’t think the first one is true because the US government doesn’t have to pay a license to use US patents. It can even allow a private company to use another company’s patents for work being done on behalf of the US government.

bsaul 7y ago

I just had a look at the last jre podcast with some ufo guy that supposedly worked at some secret facility, and i think the coïncidence between what the guy described (some weird propulsion mechanism from fallen UFOs) and the patent linked in the article troubling. There’s definitely some very weird stories gaining popularity at the moment.

pluto9 7y ago
I don't think there's a connection. The interviewee, Bob Lazar, is pretty well known in UFO enthusiast circles and has been telling the same story for decades now.

toast0 7y ago

> How does writing a patent for a device that obviously can't work as described achieve anything. If I did this where I work, I'd get a small cash bonus for the application, and a larger, but still small cash bonus if it issued and a commemerative trinket. Plus, I'd have something nice to write about myself in performance reviews. Sounds like an acheivement to me.