My newest prototype is just about finished. I still have to seal it up and add a valve, to run a hose to the bubbler. Then I can test my tiny torch (which is already ready) and see if it meets my expectations. And there isn't really any mystery as to what my unit is doing. I've got all that figured out. I even posted a clue. (That was ahead of time, before I thought about using these spirals.) But, to be honest, the actual composition of the gas IS still unknown.
The possibility that this system might be producing some amount of hydroxyl, as well as hydrogen and oxygen, is rather interesting. Unless someone knows how to differentiate the gasses, I'll have to think about that one.
Of course, I could team up with NASA and utilize their spectroscopy equipment. The only issue I see with doing that is they will end up with full rights to use the invention, in the process. (If it is an invention.) Their resulting patent - under my own name - would start with "The United States government has certain rights to this invention". (THEY decide if a patent will be filed.) On the other hand, if I just file a patent myself, I would start it with "This invention may be used by, and manufactured for, the US government, for any and all governmental purposes, without payment of any fees thereon or therefor". Otherwise, they could slap a secrecy order on it, and use it anyway. The difference between these two approaches is that if I file the patent, it'll cost me a ton of money. And they still get to use it for free. But if they file the patent, they pay all the fees AND send me a check for $1,000. Unfortunately, there's also a little fine print called the NPR program, or New Technology Report. There's a federal law which says that if I'm working with NASA - or any other government agency which even partly funds my work - NASA also gets full rights to use ANYTHING I'm also working on during the contract period. And this includes "conceptualizing"; if I even THINK about one of my other projects, I'm required by law to submit an NPR form about it. If, by chance, NASA thinks something I'm working on isn't worth a patent, they can still open source it for me by publishing it in their Tech Briefs magazine, "so that other people can start a business and make money with your idea". There's nothing wrong with that since trying to enable Cottage Industries everywhere, to help expand the economy, is the whole idea behind open sourcing something to begin with. And if something is published in NASA's magazine, they'll send me a check for $350. So I can open source something for free, on a small Internet forum where very few people will see it, taking the chance that someone will decide to file a patent on it anyway. Or I can let NASA's patent attorneys decide if it's worth a patent, then open source it to their very large audience if it's not, with me making a little bit in the process. Once a patent issues, I can publicly give everyone the right to use it. And that is the safest method to open source something.
All of this sounds pretty tempting. If they'll pay me a thousand bucks for every idea I have which can be patented, those checks could pile up pretty fast. But there are some things I'm working on which I don't necessarily want to reveal. If I change my mind later, I could be caught up in a big court battle trying to prove I didn't do at least some little thing during the crucial time frame. So what should I do? At one point, right out of the blue, my father told me: "You've got to stop thinking about selling your stuff to NASA". This might be a case of trans-temporal advice because it hadn't even occurred to me to try to sell something to the government. But I value his advice more than what could quite likely be 'external input' urging me to contact NASA.
So I may use the tried and true method of public demonstration, or use, then waiting one year before disclosing the details. By law, this puts something into the Public Domain. Except in England, where you can't patent anything which has already been disclosed, regardless of when. And that's how it should be over here.
