This message is being forwarded to you on behalf of Marc Millis (NASA-BPP).

Dear Dr. Desiato,

Thank you for informing us of your work.

First, regarding your request for a non-disclosure agreement: As a condition of government employment, NASA employees are already legally bound to protect proprietary information sent in for our review, hence, we are not allowed to sign further non-disclosure agreements...(more)

Second, I regret to inform you that the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project has been cut, therefore, we will not be able to solicit and review proposals. Although efforts are underway to restore funding, it is too soon to know if these efforts will succeed.

Third, I have recommendations below as to how you can proceed to disclose your work in a manner that both protects your competitive advantage and establishes the credibility that you will need to obtain paying customers.

Please be aware that there has been a deluge of people who make "breakthrough" claims, that are, to put it politely, "not credible." Because of this, ANY individual or group that claims to be on the verge of a breakthrough is suspected of being similarly non credible. This is a regrettable reflection of the current state of affairs on this topic.

To truly distinguish yourself from the others, it will be necessary to establish a credible track record in the peer-reviewed literature about your technical approaches. Obviously, this presents a challenge as you do not want to lose your competitive advantage by disclosing too much. At this point, you might think that a working demonstration of your device, well publicized, will satisfy credibility. This is not the case. To give an example, there are plenty of demonstrations for "Lifters," out there, but none of these is seen as credible proof that their claimed "antigravity" effects are genuine. Instead, to establish yourself as a RELIABLE provider of new innovations, you MUST establish credibility through INDEPENDENT assessments.

To not reveal too much, and to make it easier for you to get your work reliably reviewed and accepted for publication, break down your approach into smaller issues, where any one step is not too provocative nor too revealing, and get that step credibly published.

After that increment is successfully and independently verified (such as being published in a peer-reviewed scientific or engineering journal), then you can give a public demo of the more complete device, stating that it is based on operating principles whose credibility has already been established.

Please note that there are degrees to this. When you are at the point of publicly demonstrating a device, the magnitude of the effect should be unambiguous. If you are not at that point, then go back to publishing increments of progress until you are at that point.
If you are starting from a theory, you'll want to aim the progression toward a testable experiment. First publish the predictions, then publish the experimental findings, and do both of these with the utmost rigor and impartiality. Be willing to confront the possibility that your device or theory does not work.
If you are starting from having a physical effect, then publish observations of this effect as if it were an "anomaly" - even if you understand it. Publish the observations in an impartial manner where you show that you have checked for false positives. Offer no explanation of what you think is going on. Be sure to offer enough details for independent verification. Also, publish the version of the effect that is clearly detectable, but not your best version - bank the better version for later. Once the effect has been independently verified and published as being genuine, then you can go public that you have developed a better model that is for sale.

Please heed this advice. Again, there is no shortage of big claims out there, and it does not help to make big claims. To distinguish yourself above the others, you must first prove that the information you share is reliable enough for other people to stake their reputations and resources on it.

Good luck with your projects.

Marc

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Jean Schuerger
QSS Group, Inc.
Document Control Specialist for the
Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project

Breakthrough Propulsion Physics PROJECT site:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/