More On "Moron" Karl Schwarz
Pat beat me to the 9/11 Blogger article, but it appears Karl is up to more than just that. He may have been left out of the most recent remix of Loose Change, but he is busy writing an assortment of weird essays, running for President, and running his assortment of businesses.
Interestingly enough, he still claims to be CEO of Patmos Nanotechnology, which appears to be expanding quite nicely.
Their LiftPort facility is 15,000 square feet and will make mid-grade multi-wall carbon nanotubes. Our facility that will be under construction very soon is 300,000 square feet and a Phase II plant of over 2,000,000 square feet is on the design boards. We do not make mid-grade, we make maximum purity.
We are making an announcement in 2-4 weeks that will rock some worlds and break some hearts of some of our competitors.
I can hear many of you going boo-hoo for Halliburton, not!
Unfortunately, they still have been too busy to hire someone to finish filling out the template on their website.
One of his previous companies, I-Net Security has been dropped from his resume. But never fear! He is now the CEO of The Sassenach Capital Trust, LLC, another company for which I can find no reference other than on his website. Oddly enough, I did finally find a reference for Patmos Nanotech on Hoover's. It is not listed as a multi-billion dollar technology company though, but a "junior college", with 7 employees and $300,000 in revenue. It is also still listed as a PO Box in Alpharetta, Georgia
posted by James B. @ 8:44 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
Don't know the guy, never heard of him. I do wish that he'd leave our name out of his ramblings.
Brian Dunbar
Liftport
Brian,
That would be because unlike Karl, you are involved in an actual business, with telephones, buildings, employees, and websites that work.
I didn't realize this project was over in Bremerton. Right across the pond.
From the Patmos Nanotech website: "Patmos has had over a year in the research of specific applications based on what the company excels in. . ."
Wow! More than one whole year!
"The Patmos CNS machine represents 10-12 pending patents."
That's funny. A search for "patmos" on the USPTO's Patent Application Database turns up 6 completely unrelated applications.
Yes i noticed that "more than a year" line and almost choked on my diet coke.
Still no "Location" provided for them...I guess listing his basement and barnyard would be too personal.
what a wingnut.
TAM
Junior College is good.
I have a GED.
Dylan, are we famous yet?
unlike Karl, you are involved in an actual business, with telephones, buildings, employees, and websites that work.
To be fair we are a modest concern - about half the staff isn't drawing a salary.
I didn't realize this project was over in Bremerton. Right across the pond.
The office is in Bremerton but half of us aren't - I'm in Wisconsin, Seth the web guy is in D.C. for example. Michael (the head cheese) lives there but he's on the road maybe half the time.
By the way, how is Wacky Karl's "presidential campaign" going?
Is he raising funds, doing the lecture circuit in Iowa and New Hampshire, meeting the folks?
Or is he busily trying to get out of that straitjacket he is in?
LiftPort isn't a "real" business because the technology required for space elevators is still a good century in the future. I considered LiftPort to be a little wacky....until I read this "article". At least the guys at LiftPort are somewhat realistic about their goals. These other clowns are right out of 'er.
LiftPort isn't a "real" business because the technology required for space elevators is still a good century in the future
We're more hopeful than that - best guess now says a deployment could be possible by 2030. This assumes that the requisite material for the ribbon is available in the next few years.
But we are a real business. Our plan as us using the enabling technology for a space elevator to build subsidiary companies (thus our official name is 'The Liftport Group) to keep us going while we work on the main effort.
Currently Liftport Robotics is shopping for a customer who can use a long-duration aerostat resupplied by robotic lifter. A niche market to be sure but one we think we can provide a service to.
As an approach it beats the snot out of 'wait for the government to solve our problems' or 'pray for a miracle'.
Brian, I didn't mean to mock your efforts, but I do think you're being a bit overly optimistic. From what you've said, I take it that your primary focus is the robotics side of the project, which is, really, the easy part of building a space elevator. The climber/elevator car is technology that deffinitely CAN be ready by 2030. The actual cable on the other hand? Not likely. Claiming success because you can build the car before the cable seems a little silly, don't you think? In the words of a friend of mine:
"The design of my teleportation shoes is coming along smoothly. Durability tests have gone well, and so far we've undergone 2,000 trials of shoelace tying and untying. Teleportation will be tested on Wednesday."
Deploying an elevator stretching from LEO to the earth isn't just a matter of being able to build buckeyball cables, you also need to be able to build multiple strands of cable that can stretch the entire distance. You also need to be able to do so while in earth orbit, or you need some seriously strong rockets to be able to launch that mmuch weight into orbit. I think the year 2100 is a conservative estimate for the earliest date we might be able to start building one of these. I can't claim to be an expert in the field, but everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate we're nowhere near reaching the techniology required to build the space elevator cable.
P.S. I deffinitely agree with your last paragraph; without provate entrepreneurs such as yourself, space exploration will continue at the current slow pace forever. We need to get private business working on it, and it will eventualy become a VERY lucrative business. I just don't think the space elevator will be viable any time soon, but I certainly hope you can prove me wrong.
, I didn't mean to mock your efforts, but I do think you're being a bit overly optimistic.
I have a reasonably thick skin; you have to keep a sense of humor about you. And I am a glass half-full kinda guy.
From what you've said, I take it that your primary focus is the robotics side of the project, which is, really, the easy part of building a space elevator.
It's the current focus, but not our only one. Our general plan of attack is make money with all the SE related tech excluding the actual ribbon.
The reasons why are pretty simple; we can't hope to gear up a R+D effort that duplicates the work ongoing in dozens of established CNT labs (commercial and academic) around the world. However no one there has any reason to do any of the scut work that will be needed before you can build and operate a space elevator.
Building a working railroad in the 19th century wasn't just about building a reliable steam engine for the purpose - it was also a lot of work on organization, infrastructure and so on. There are analogs here; you can't operate an SE without a lifter, or an organization dedicated to the task.
Or a legal and political environment favorable to your business.
That last is where the project will founder if it's not done correctly. History is chock full of grand but failed projects that went nowhere; an engineer had a good idea but failed to get a lawyer so it went nowhere.
Notably the Grand Coulee dam was given life not by an engineer but a lawyer. This is more true than not of other projects in the 19th and 20th century American West.
We're not claiming that we'll have a space elevator without the ribbon; but you can't have just a ribbon and claim you can build a space elevator.
We're claiming that we're going to be working on the non-sexy but essential stuff while thousands of guys are beavering away on the CNT composite. They have good reasons to; the composite will have thousands of uses aside from our humble effort.
We think we're exploiting a niche that no one else is, by doing the scut work. Time will tell.
You also need to be able to do so while in earth orbit, or you need some seriously strong rockets to be able to launch that mmuch weight into orbit.
Naw. See Brad Edward's NIAC paper published in 2000. The preliminary deployment plan called for six Shuttle flights to LEO, assembly of the package in orbit then deployment of a seed ribbon. Then you send up construction lifter and they addon to the ribbon.
Of course if this can't be made to work (it's still early days yet) then you're right. More I predict an SE won't be built if this first bare-bones effort can't be. If we must lift the entire package to orbit then doing so in a cost-effective manner implies we have solved the problem the thing is intended to resolve that is; cheap access to space.
everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate we're nowhere near reaching the techniology required to build the space elevator cable.
This was true until Edwards used the NIAC grant to rethink some basic assumptions. Briefly everthing you need for a basic cargo-only 20-tons-at-a-time model has been developed for commercial use or in the lab.
Except that damned ribbon.
It still might not be possible but we keep running down objections and finding ways around them, or ways that might work. We think we'll be at a go/no-go point in 2009. Either it will be doable by a private venture or we'll archive the site, release the data to the public and call it a day.
without provate entrepreneurs such as yourself, space exploration will continue at the current slow pace forever. We need to get private business working on it, and it will eventualy become a VERY lucrative business.
I like to think that what I'm up to is not exploration so much as enabling exploitation. It's raining soup just fifty miles away: grab a bucket.
I just don't think the space elevator will be viable any time soon, but I certainly hope you can prove me wrong.
Time will tell. Stay tuned, stay skeptical and keep in touch.
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