
US10144532B2 – Craft using an inertial mass reduction device - Jerry2
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
======
mabbo
There's two distinct possibilities...

1\. A lot of physics is about to be rewritten. Travel to other planets and
stars is within our grasp. The entire world is about to change. We'll all
remember this day for the rest of our lives.

2\. The Navy has been paying a very convincing snake oil salesman to make
patents for impossible devices.

~~~
OatsAndHoney
This is more than travel to other planets. This is travel to other times,
maybe even other dimensions or universes.

~~~
noobermin
Which leads one to think explanation #2 is most likely.

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Mizza
Smells a lot like the EmDrive. That didn't pan out so well under increased
scrutiny!

This isn't the first time a physics-violating patent has been granted -
anybody else remember the Orbo?

[https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2011110951A3/en?oq=WO201...](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2011110951A3/en?oq=WO2011110951)

~~~
surak
How do you know emdrive did not pan out? It's shown that the used
configuration was wrong by the German institute.

------
fncypants
Being a patent lawyer, I had to dig a little deeper because there is a record
behind every patent.

As you some of you already know, the patent office does not freely give
patents for impossible devices. No perpetual motion machines, no magic
invisibility cloaks, nothing that an ordinary person in the relevant art could
not build after reading the patent. This is a doctrine called “enablement”—the
patent, plus what is already known in the art, must be enough to enable one to
build a working device without undue experimentation. This is the quid pro quo
of the patent system: to get ownership of the invention for 20 years, you must
tell everyone enough about it to build it themselves.

This patent almost suffered the fate of non-enablement at the patent office.
What led to its issuance is the interesting part because patent examiner tried
and tried to reject this patent as not “enabling” the invention. Yet it issued
anyways.

I cannot link directly to the patent prosecution documents, but the files are
public and you can find them at the USPTO database[0] by searching for the
patent's application number 15/141,270.

The patent was filed in April 2016. The first action by the USPTO was in
November 2017 with the usual delay and it rejected all claims as not enabling
the invention. Simply put the examiner said: “You’re claiming a perpetual
motion machine, good-bye.”

The patent examiner and the applicant held an interview in January 2018, which
is an ordinary event to try to convince the examiner is wrong. The examiner
pointed out “that he still felt there were enablement issues.” The applicant
disagreed. No agreement was reached.

A few days later, the applicant filed his formal response to the rejection. He
attached a published article under his authorship in AIAA Space Forum[1]. He
also cited other publications on how to “generate extremely high EM flux
intensities.” Basically, he's saying I'm peer-reviewed here is some other
peer-reviewed articles, and it being peer-reviewed that's all you need to
know.

But most interestingly, he attached a letter from Dr. James Sheehy, Chief
Technical Officer of the Naval Systems Air Command, indicating that the amount
of magnetic field and electricity described as being required by the patent
“can be created, and thus the invention is enabled.” Dr. James Sheehy is a
real dude, with that real title and corresponding resume.[2]

Dr. Sheehy’s letter is fascinating. It asserts that the applicant is currently
one year into a project to demonstrate the feasibility of high EM field-energy
and flux and has begun experimenting with associated propulsion systems. Dr.
Sheehy says he believes the research shows the invention will be a reality.
Then he says (seriously, he says) “China is already investing significantly in
this area and I would prefer we hold the patent opposed to paying forever more
to use this revolutionary technology.”

The examiner at the patent office (who is typically kind of knowledgeable in
the field) nevertheless called B.S. Peer-reviewed, shmear-reviewed. He
rejected the application again finally in March 2018. He pointed out "for a
high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it
would take 10^9 teslas and 10^18 V/m." He said "these levels are not feasible
with current technology so how would someone of ordinary skill be able to know
how to create this craft? The largest magnetic field ever created is 10^3
teslas and a neutron star is 10^ teslas so how are you using a microwave
emitter that produces a magnetic field that is three orders of magnitude
greater than a neutron star?" And so on... Basically, the examiner said this
is bullshit.

As is often done in this situation, the applicant filed an appeal from the
patent examiner’s rejection. This is usually a procedure that is next
addressed by a board of patent judges, with more briefing, typically oral
argument, and takes months to years. But the appeal was never picked up after
it was lodged, and it is unclear why. Two months after the appeal was filed,
on October 31, 2018, the examiner (for no reason apparent in the file) allowed
the patent to issue without comment and on the same day the government paid
the fees it owed. The patent was issued in due course.

Whether or not the named inventor was a crank, and whether or not the
invention was equally frivolous, this was a patent prosecuted by a Navy
attorney, vouched for by the Navy CTO, and pushed through under atypical
circumstances, in a public forum.

What's even more intriguing is that, if the Navy wanted, it could obtain the
patent under a secrecy order that would keep it from the public's eyes until
it was declassified.

Knowing all this, now ask yourself why this impossible sounding patent issued
in a public forum with high-level brass support under tax payer dollars.

[0]
[https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair](https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair)

[1]
[https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2017-5343](https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2017-5343)

[2] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-
sheehy-28437a8/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-sheehy-28437a8/)

~~~
king07828
Excellent writeup, big thanks.

From the file wrapper (parent post reference [0]), the examiner's main point
in the rejection was apparently that the generation of E-fields of 10^18 V/m
and B-fields of 10^9 Tesla, as needed for the device, are impossible.

The 2018-10-31 Notice of Allowance states that the application was allowed for
the reasons in the 2018-08-21 Appeal brief.

The first part of the appeal brief (in response to the 112a rejection) more or
less states that the peer reviewed papers are sufficient to overcome the
rejection by proving that electromagnetic flux values of 10^33 Watts/m^2 are
possible, which are equivalent to the required E-field and B-field values.

The second part of the appeal brief (in response to the 112b rejection) gives
a little more context on the situation with a quote from the AIA 2017-5343
paper (parent post reference [1]):

"It is a well-known facet of quantum field theory that everything can be
described in quantum mechanical terms. The complex interactions between a
physical system and its surroundings (environment), disrupt the quantum
mechanical nature of a system and render it classical under ordinary
observation. This process is known as decoherence. However, it is argued that
we can retard (delay) decoherence (and possibly even suppress it – namely
decouple a physical system from the environment) by accelerated spin and/or
accelerated vibration of electrically charged matter under rapid acceleration
transients. This may be the very condition to achieve a state of macroscopic
quantum coherence, the idea being that we never let the system achieve
thermodynamic equilibrium, by constantly delaying the onset of relaxation to
equilibrium (hence the production of maximal entropy is delayed). The system
may ‘violently’ react by generating ‘anomalous’ emergent phenomena, such as,
but not limited to, inertial mass reduction."

The idea of "macroscopic quantum coherence" is fascinating. This could be the
next major technological race outside of computing.

[0]
[https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair](https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair)
(search for application number 15/141,270, then click on "Image File Wrapper"
tab, then click to select all and download PDF) (includes several other peer
reviewed references to support the patent)

[1]
[https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2017-5343](https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2017-5343)

------
Rebelgecko
This dude has some crazy patents, including for room temperature
superconductors.

A few comments in previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229584)

------
maxander
From the description:

> Matter is confined energy, bound within fields, frozen in a quantum of time.

> Polarization of the local vacuum is analogous to manipulation/modification
> of the local space tie topological lattice energy density.

> If we can engineer the structure of the local quantum vacuum state, we can
> engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level

If _real_ physics sounded that cool, it would convince me I took the wrong
major in college. :)

~~~
didgeoridoo
I’m pretty sure that last quote is direct from the Alpha Centauri datalinks...
Prokhor Zakharov, maybe?

“Time dilates as the speed of light approaches. To the extent that light
consists of particles, it is in its own way, timeless. Through simple
perturbations of the temporal manifold, we can refract or repel photons most
efficiently.”

~~~
deytempo
Those were the days!

------
imglorp
More details here: [https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/if-these-us-navy-
paten...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/if-these-us-navy-patents-are-
made-then-we-are-in-a-star-trek-technology-world.html)

I was about to dismiss as speculative woo woo (there is plenty of "may"
passive language in the patent), until I noticed the assignee is the US Navy.
Taxpayers are funding this.

~~~
mattkrause
I wouldn't read a _ton_ into this. He also has a patent on a room-temperature
superconductor.

In one of his autobiographies, Richard Feynman talks about ending up with some
bizarre patents on nuclear-powered aircraft. In brief, the patent office at
Los Alamos went around and solicited patent ideas, though he tells it better
here: [https://youtu.be/rc9gwPB78lk](https://youtu.be/rc9gwPB78lk)

~~~
dogma1138
The nuclear powered jet engine technically did work both the Russians and the
US worked on it and had what you can call a functional prototype; however
irradiating the sky wasn’t a good idea after all, it required a normal engine
to take off and with the development of aerial refueling and much more
efficient jet engines the loitering time you get form superheating air using a
nuclear reactor instead of burning fuel just bring enough of an advantage to
make up for the cost, complexity and the risk.

That said at least for the US the nuclear jet was developed into the liquid
metal cooled reactors that became the first submarine nuclear reactors to be
deployed [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-
cooled_fast_reactor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-
cooled_fast_reactor)

The US navy stopped using sodium reactors once the small pressurized water
reactors have been developed.

~~~
mattkrause
If you listen to the story I posted above, it's pretty clear that Feynman's
patent was issued _well_ before that--he basically rambled off a list of
nuclear <things> to the patent officer, who then ran with it.

~~~
dogma1138
The US army (Air Force didn’t exist then) started the Nuclear Energy for the
Propulsion of Aircraft program in May of 1946, Feynman was 28 at the time
however he did work on the Manhattan Project and using nuclear propulsion for
submarines, aircraft and surface vessels heck even trains were things that
people at Los Alamos and other labs were actively working on since the late
30’s.

So it wasn’t that much of a crazy thing to work on, heck while looking back at
it I’m sure Feynman was in jest but I’m not sure it was the case when he was
in his mid 20’s.

------
jakobegger
Well that's going to shorten travel time to Mars! Now we just need a
gravitational mass reduction device so we don't need so much fuel for take off
and landing!

~~~
64738
Done! The device in the patent claims to be a gravitational mass reduction
device.

------
powera
I am going to wait for CERN's research on measuring the gravitational
interaction coefficient of antimatter to be published before I even try to
understand this.

------
AnimalMuppet
I predict that this patent is legally irrelevant, because it will expire (20
years) before there are any (working) implementations.

------
equalunique
Any vessel that burns fuel reduces it's total mass.

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ohiovr
Still can't reverse entropy though.

------
simonsays2
This is emdrive hoax.

Navy got took.

~~~
corndoge
This is not EmDrive, just because there is a resonant microwave cavity does
not make it the same thing. I suggest reading the patent.

------
dvh
Thunderf00t will have field day with this

