Things have progressed with the engine I'm involved with. The assignment holders (people who own a share of the patent) have all been brought together under a corporation so that any action taken (eg someone buying a license) will have only one entity to deal with. And now that corp encompassed by a corp that was brought together to market and even possibly produce the engine, of which the patent owning corporation has 10%. So that really waters down my shares.
But on the other hand.....
The new corp is treating all us assignees very respectful, and keeping us fully in the loop. And I'm told 10% is quite good for the patent holders. And these are the real money guys -- bank owners, even a producer, etc. And they have excellent contacts.
So we now have had the engine design presented to NASA in Cleveland (more geared to general research that might not go into space). They have presented it to the head of the Propulsion branch of DARPA (the research and development agency for Department of Defense) as the best NASA has been shown. The other two represented were the products of highly funded corporate research.
DARPA is suitably impressed, and the meetings soon progressed to talk of application (helicopters, tanks, etc) and procurement. DOD is very strange. They really are not interested in technology itself, but only applied technology. Whereas NASA is interested in how the engine works so they can apply it to their needs, DOD only wants to know if you can operate a specific piece of equipment. So having them ask about application and procurement is a very big advance for us.
I'm not hot about the idea of marketing it to the war industry, but practically, if the government accepts it as credible, so will every other industry.
(visions of military contracts dance in her head?)
Tina