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[ariane] 07/2/2006 06:22

QinetiQ faces £230m claim from hi-tech group linked to Nasa

Richard Wray
Tuesday February 7, 2006
The Guardian


The controversial £1.3bn privatisation of QinetiQ, the government's defence experts, hit another snag yesterday as a small British company accused the business of terminating its right to exploit a new process for the production of titanium which it planned to use to help American space agency Nasa set up a base on the moon.
British Titanium is claiming $400m (£230m) of damages, even though it has yet to produce any revenues from the technology, which was developed by scientists at Cambridge University in 1997.


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The shock claim forced QinetiQ, which has already been criticised for failing to allow retail investors to get involved in the flotation, to issue a supplementary prospectus dismissing the claims from British Titanuim as "unsubstantiated and without merit".
Sources close to QinetiQ said that discussions with British Titanium, founded in 1998 by metals expert James Hamilton, had been going on last year but it was not until the day its prospectus was published, January 25, that lawyers acting for the company threatened legal action. As a result QinetiQ was forced to take the unusual step of effectively issuing an addendum to its original circular to prospective investors.

In its new circular QinetiQ yesterday pointed out that British Titanium's last results, for the year to the end of March 2005, showed no turnover but other operating income of £166,760. QinetiQ said: "The directors believe, having taken legal advice, that British Titanium's allegations are unsubstantiated and without merit and that the quantum of the threatened claim is spurious, speculative and without basis."

QinetiQ's advisers made it clear last night that the group intended to press ahead with its flotation. The float itself has already been heavily criticised, not least because it will generate an eightfold return for the initial investor, US venture capital firm Carlyle, whose stake could be worth up to £338m. Last month the National Audit Office, the government spending watchdog, said it would look at the privatisation, including the sale of part of the business to Carlyle.

British Titanium's case dates back to 1998 when the company was founded by Mr Hamilton to capitalise on a new way of producing titanium developed the previous year by scientists at Cambridge University working under Professor Derek Fray, who subsequently became a non-executive director of the business.

Unable to find industry backing, Prof Fray had approached the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, part of the Ministry of Defence, which took out a licence to develop his process. Subsequently DERA, parts of which were eventually rolled into QinetiQ, sub-licensed the technology back to British Titanium, which worked with the US Office of Naval Research and US titanium producer Timet to try to develop a full-scale manufacturing process. Those attempts have so far come to nothing but British Titanium believes the technology still has prospects.

Separately, British Titanium has been working with Nasa to use the process for the production of oxygen from lunar rock for use as rocket fuel.

Last year, however, Cambridge University suddenly terminated both QinetiQ's and British Titanium's licences to exploit the titanium process. It handed the rights instead to another Cambridge University spin-off firm called Metalysis, which already had the rights to use the process for the production of other metals. British Titanium is understood to also be planning legal action against the university.

[karzy] 08/1/2006 17:31

2006 Phases of the Moon
Universal Time

NEW MOON FIRST QUARTER FULL MOON LAST QUARTER

d h m d h m d h m d h m

JAN. 6 18 56 JAN. 14 9 48 JAN. 22 15 14
JAN. 29 14 15 FEB. 5 6 29 FEB. 13 4 44 FEB. 21 7 17
FEB. 28 0 31 MAR. 6 20 16 MAR. 14 23 35 MAR. 22 19 11
MAR. 29 10 15 APR. 5 12 01 APR. 13 16 40 APR. 21 3 28
APR. 27 19 44 MAY 5 5 13 MAY 13 6 51 MAY 20 9 21
MAY 27 5 26 JUNE 3 23 06 JUNE 11 18 03 JUNE 18 14 08
JUNE 25 16 05 JULY 3 16 37 JULY 11 3 02 JULY 17 19 13
JULY 25 4 31 AUG. 2 8 46 AUG. 9 10 54 AUG. 16 1 51
AUG. 23 19 10 AUG. 31 22 57 SEPT. 7 18 42 SEPT. 14 11 15
SEPT. 22 11 45 SEPT. 30 11 04 OCT. 7 3 13 OCT. 14 0 26
OCT. 22 5 14 OCT. 29 21 25 NOV. 5 12 58 NOV. 12 17 45
NOV. 20 22 18 NOV. 28 6 29 DEC. 5 0 25 DEC. 12 14 32
DEC. 20 14 01 DEC. 27 14 48

[superrod] 14/11/2005 22:34

strategy and luck

most people arent doctors or builders or radio 2 disc jockeys, so what is your point?

i may well have been a teenager ( tho NEVER spotty ), but your comments say more about you than me.
i would guess you are under 35 and SO used to computer generated special effects that you are unable to see the real thing.
the sight of the module rockets firing and the associated flying off of debris would be hard to replicate even today using modern computer graphics......that in itself begs the question......IF man was so SMART all those years ago to perpetrate such a hoax, surely all the "experts" around today would have NO trouble proving thr hoax theory?
Patrick Moore is a believer AND THATS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
( no offence intended, makes a change for a thread to have a bit of genuine argument ).

[pvb] 14/11/2005 17:07

"pvb
LASERS are focussed through lenses, similar to telescopes."

And so, what?...

"The "who positioned the camera" question is an old canard I thought I'd throw in for fun!"

Uh huh! Now why would you want to do that?(LOL!)

"The module was made of steel, aluminium and was full of air. There was no vacuum between Neil Armstrong and the rocket motor (even if the module contained no air and Neil/Buzz were relying on their life support suits, vibration from the motor and air inside the suits would conduct the sound)."

Well my quick answer to this would be - as it happened it obviously wasn't a problem! (LOL!)
My longer reply would be to point out that by your own previous Concorde analogy I 'deduce' (ie I used 'nutter logic') that all those cabin shots of people chatting on Concorde in flight are also a 'conspiracy' (gosh!). Similarly all military jet aircraft (MUCH noisier than civilian) can not be operated with flight crew...So there goes the RAF, USAF, RAAF, Luftwaffe, Russian, Chinese, French, Italian, Canadian etc etc etc air forces - OBVIOUSLY as they can't exist they MUST all just be conspiracies...

Isn't it passing strange that NASA, in mounting succesfully the largest hoax ever perpetrated (LOL!), managed to get away with it for 40 years when they made uncountable numbers of easily seen through 'mistakes' every step of the way, according to the conspiracy nutters.

Or could there be another explanation?!!

[Abuse team] 14/11/2005 16:49

Post removed by ADVFN

[Abuse team] 14/11/2005 16:47

Post removed by ADVFN

[pvb] 14/11/2005 16:44

The only REAL mystery, at least to me, is how come in the '60's society could put people on the Moon, but now produces people without the imagination or wit to think themselves out of a wet paper bag.

[Abuse team] 13/11/2005 22:25

Post removed by ADVFN

[superrod] 13/11/2005 21:39

anyone who has been to cape c and seen the awesome size of these rockets would be under no illusion that the moon landings occurred.
a saturn 5 primary stage has 5 engines each burning 7 tonnes of fuel per second......try and imagine THAT. each is hydraulically controlled to maintain stability. an awesome feat again.
the stages ( in fact the rocket was in one piece ), were seperated by explosive ribbons placed round the inside of the rocket.
i dont know the mass of the actual payload ( ie the lunar module ) but it was a small fraction of 1% of the rest mass of the rocket that left earth.
even today, with our blase attitudes to special effects, the sight of the lunar module taking off from the moon could not be surpassed/equalled by modern camera/computer trickery, never mind that these events occurred over 35 years ago.
every conspiracy "item", from the fluttering flag to incorrect shadows has recently been THOROUGHLY debunked to my satisfaction at least.

apart from the header question, a lot of other things i find more fascinating wrt the moon landings.

how on earth ( lol ) they occurred at all given the technology of the time is a minor miracle.
how did anyone have the balls to undertake such a mission? ( imagine you had been prancing round the moon for a couple of days, and were then sitting in the lunar module. just ONE chance that the rocket would fire and start you on your journey to safety ). i doubt they had AA cover.

in 1985 i read somewhere that a "modern" pc contained more computing power than was available to put man on the moon.

the americans spent over $100m dollars developing a ballpoint pen that would write at any angle and in zero gravity.....the russians used pencils.

oh yes.....van allan, discoverer of the famous radiation belts,has personally verified that they would not have represented the slightest hazzard to the moon shots.

a final point, the entire world was tuned in and watching. suppose it was a fake? what were the russians and hundreds of universities across the world tracking?
how did the americans manage to arrange for the lunar module to reenter earths atmosphere ( again with the whole world watching )?

if it was a hoax it was brilliant beyond belief and will never be surpassed......all spoken as a spotty teenager of the time who was enthralled by the sheer enormity of the event.

[strategy and luck] 13/11/2005 21:31

pvb,

LASERS are focussed through lenses, similar to telescopes.

The "who positioned the camera" question is an old canard I thought I'd throw in for fun!

StewJames,

The module was made of steel, aluminium and was full of air. There was no vacuum between Neil Armstrong and the rocket motor (even if the module contained no air and Neil/Buzz were relying on their life support suits, vibration from the motor and air inside the suits would conduct the sound).

[fibbinarchi] 13/11/2005 19:06

crystalclear - 12 Nov'05 - 23:38 - 175 of 181


ct98 - 12 Nov'05 - 22:15 - 173 of 174
fibbinarchi:
1. your name is spelt incorrectly.

Why's that?
I had assumed the name was a poke at Geoffery Archer and nothing to do with the golden ratio. Am I mistaken ct98?

=================================

Crystalclear

Ahh, a breath of fresh air, someone with IQ, and half correct. My name is as you say a pishtake of our Geoff and also the golden ratio (1.618 fibonacci)in which I use with reasonable success with my trading as I have advanced Fibonacci training/experience, it was miss-spelt on purpose, but that goes over the heads of some on this site. I thought it was well thought out, and most would 'get it'.
People like ct98 assume. Well, we all know what assuming leads too.

[stewjames] 13/11/2005 19:01

Also, that Neil Armstrong can talk to NASA in a calm and quiet voice whilst taking off from the moon's surface with a 10,000HP rocket engine 3 inches under his ass! In practice, it would be like standing a few feet away from Concorde taking off.

Would it? If there's no air to transmit the sound?

[stewjames] 13/11/2005 15:49

I have freemasons in my family maestro. You haven't got the slightest clue what the organisation is really like, do you?

[maestro.] 13/11/2005 15:40

stew..they are all bloody freemasons so its obvious they friggin lied!

[stewjames] 13/11/2005 15:34

If Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, then who shot the video of him descending the ladder and taking his initial steps on the lunar surface?

The TV camera was stowed in an instrument pallet in the LM descent stage. When Armstrong was at the top of the ladder, he pulled a lanyard to swing open the pallet, which was hinged at the bottom. The TV camera, which was attached to it, also swung down. Buzz Aldrin then switched on the camera from the LM cabin. The camera was pointing at the ladder of the LM so that TV pictures of Armstrong's initial steps on the Moon could be relayed to the world. The camera was later removed from its mounting and placed on a tripod some 30 feet from the LM, where it was left unattended to cover the remainder of the moonwalk.


From

[strategy and luck] 13/11/2005 12:12

Whilst I'm here I would like to dispel three incorrect conspiracy theories:

Q1. Why are the shadows in the photographs not parallel? A. Because the ground is not flat!

Q2. Why didn't the electronics and astronauts not burn to a crisp outside the Van Allen Belt? Because the solar/interstellar radiation is many orders of magnitude too weak. Sky TV satellites are 36,000km away (well outside the belts) and are not significantly affected by radiation.

Q3. Why are no stars visible on the photographs? Sensitivity range. Try turning up the brightness button on your TV and watch less bright things disappear. Also, try turning the brightness down and watch less bright things disappear!

[strategy and luck] 13/11/2005 11:59

If hubble (the most powerful optical instrument ever) doesn't have the resolution to see something the size of a small car at lunar distances, what chance does a LASER have of hitting a reflective cube 1 foot by 1 foot? What chance does an Earth (satellite?) based detector have of receiving a reflected signal?

pvb,
The Radio Ham stories were carried by all of the papers in 1969, including the subsequent retractions. Unfortunately, I don't have any copies of 36 year old newspapers to hand! Try the internet if it concerns you that much?

The buggy is an interesting concept. The designer went on to advertise Audi's in the 1990's as "made from Aluminum (sic)". However, no-one can be found who was involved with designing the stowage space for the buggy. In fact, the landing modules are about the size of a small car themselves (excluding the rocket engine section used during landing) and did not have anywhere near enough space to store a buggy!

The best one of all is that hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive fuel is required to lift off the Earth but a tiny rocket engine with a couple of gallons can lift of the moon and into lunar orbit! I appreciate that the moon's gravity is less than a fifth that of the earth and the escape velocity follows a square-law but the difference between what was required to leave the Earth and what was allegedly required to leave the moon stretches belief way beyond sensible limits. Also, that Neil Armstrong can talk to NASA in a calm and quiet voice whilst taking off from the moon's surface with a 10,000HP rocket engine 3 inches under his ass! In practice, it would be like standing a few feet away from Concorde taking off.

I still want to know who positioned the camera which shows Neil Armstrong jumping down the Eagle's stairs for the first time and why wasn't he accredited with the First Man on the Moon honour?

[crystalclear] 12/11/2005 23:38

ct98 - 12 Nov'05 - 22:15 - 173 of 174
fibbinarchi:
1. your name is spelt incorrectly.

Why's that?
I had assumed the name was a poke at Geoffery Archer and nothing to do with the golden ratio. Am I mistaken ct98?

[fibbinarchi] 12/11/2005 22:06

Lord vold

Quite simply to win the space race during the cold war. It was a flexing muscles thing between the US and USSR. The US are still flexing their muscles as we speak as they continue with their Arabian world tour.

[maxk] 12/11/2005 22:02

Why would anyone want to create always?






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