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You can basically detect the chemical makeup of the fluids using X-Rays and CT techniques if you have the proper source and detector setups. At $300K for each machine, I'm guessing they have the capability to do this in the hardware, just not implemented and/or validated yet in the software.

They are using L3's ClearScan scanner, described as combining "dual-energy CT technology and advanced explosives detection algorithms". It's not really x-ray spectroscopy, but it can be used to measure effective atomic number as well as density.

To quote a paper on the subject:

An object’s material type can be better determined by using both its density and
effective atomic number than by using the density alone. For example, water and the explosive ANFO
(Ammonium Nitrate and fuel oil) can have similar physical densities. However, they differ significantly
in effective atomic numbers.

And it seems to have a 4.5 kW power input, a specific impulse of 34 kNs/kg (insert an anti-Imperial rant here), and gives a thrust of up to 165 mN, which is fairly decent, Dawn has to do with about a half of that.

So you pretty much need 175kW average power in X-band.

Actually I don't think the average power is really the limiting factor here. Rather I think it's the maximum pulse width before the device fails due to excess heat. I could wait minutes between pulses if necessary. But I'd prefer to keep the pauses under 30 seconds.

Your 5uS pulse of >20GW alternative is well beyond anyone's state of the art. How much money you got anyway?

Hehe. Yeah I think gigawatts is a bit too ambitious. But that means that I need long pulses, getting pretty close to CW. As far as a budget the answer is not nearly enough for an actual device, probably not even off the shelf, but maybe enough for some consulting time with an expert or even a fair price to have a physicist design one for me. The actual construction of the device would be a separate problem. The actual amount I have to throw at the problem is somewhere between a BMW and a small house.

Also, why won't L3 sell you anything?

Well I don't think it was that they wouldn't sell me anything per se. They just wouldn't sell me the PM-2000X 9.3 Ghz, 2 MW, 0.0002 duty cycle, 4 uS pulse width, coaxial magnetron that I was inquiring about at the time. I think they were only supposed to sell it to US government agencies or something like that. It was a couple of years ago when I last looked into it. Even if L3 would have sold that to me and even if I had had enough money that 0.0002 duty cycle and 4 uS maximum pulse length are big problems. If L3 could have increased the pulse length without destroying the device I'm assuming they would have done so. Its not actually the short pulse length that is the problem directly. It's the high bandwidth that results from it. Without gigawatts of output power the bandwidth kills the link budget.

Maybe you could pick one of the higher power of the X-band magnetrons here:
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm
or here
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_cm.htm
and modify it with heroic cooling to raise the duty cycle from .001 to something which works?

Well I did notice that most of those magnetrons are listed as only requiring air cooling. With water or liquid nitrogen/helium phase change cooling it might well be possible to increase the pulse length, but it's a risky endeavour due to the very high cost of the device. It may be possible for me to repair/modify the thing when I melt whatever melts at longer pulse lengths, but the whole device may need a complete redesign to reach the pulse lengths I need. I think only the coaxial magnetrons would have sufficient frequency stability. The L-4666 coaxial magnetron is rated for 350 kW. If it can do a 1/3 or 1/2 second pulse without melting down that means I could turn it on as often as every 8.5 minutes (for a 1/2 second pulse). That is if only the duty cycle matters and not the actual pulse length. I suspect that the actual data sheet will list a maximum pulse length that trumps the duty cycle. By going with water or phase change cooling I should be able to increase the pulse length but probably not to the near CW lengths I need. I'm going to try to get the data sheet for that though.

Or is the moderate amount of noise you get from magnetrons too much for you?

That's actually a possibility I hadn't considered. I was more worried about the frequency stability which for a standard magnetron would be more than enough to screw things up. A coaxial magnetron may be sufficiently stable however.

And actually I just peeked at L3's klystrons, how about the bottom one on this list?
http://www2.l-3com

So you pretty much need 175kW average power in X-band.

Actually I don't think the average power is really the limiting factor here. Rather I think it's the maximum pulse width before the device fails due to excess heat. I could wait minutes between pulses if necessary. But I'd prefer to keep the pauses under 30 seconds.

Your 5uS pulse of >20GW alternative is well beyond anyone's state of the art. How much money you got anyway?

Hehe. Yeah I think gigawatts is a bit too ambitious. But that means that I need long pulses, getting pretty close to CW. As far as a budget the answer is not nearly enough for an actual device, probably not even off the shelf, but maybe enough for some consulting time with an expert or even a fair price to have a physicist design one for me. The actual construction of the device would be a separate problem. The actual amount I have to throw at the problem is somewhere between a BMW and a small house.

Also, why won't L3 sell you anything?

Well I don't think it was that they wouldn't sell me anything per se. They just wouldn't sell me the PM-2000X 9.3 Ghz, 2 MW, 0.0002 duty cycle, 4 uS pulse width, coaxial magnetron that I was inquiring about at the time. I think they were only supposed to sell it to US government agencies or something like that. It was a couple of years ago when I last looked into it. Even if L3 would have sold that to me and even if I had had enough money that 0.0002 duty cycle and 4 uS maximum pulse length are big problems. If L3 could have increased the pulse length without destroying the device I'm assuming they would have done so. Its not actually the short pulse length that is the problem directly. It's the high bandwidth that results from it. Without gigawatts of output power the bandwidth kills the link budget.

Maybe you could pick one of the higher power of the X-band magnetrons here:
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm
or here
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_cm.htm
and modify it with heroic cooling to raise the duty cycle from .001 to something which works?

Well I did notice that most of those magnetrons are listed as only requiring air cooling. With water or liquid nitrogen/helium phase change cooling it might well be possible to increase the pulse length, but it's a risky endeavour due to the very high cost of the device. It may be possible for me to repair/modify the thing when I melt whatever melts at longer pulse lengths, but the whole device may need a complete redesign to reach the pulse lengths I need. I think only the coaxial magnetrons would have sufficient frequency stability. The L-4666 coaxial magnetron is rated for 350 kW. If it can do a 1/3 or 1/2 second pulse without melting down that means I could turn it on as often as every 8.5 minutes (for a 1/2 second pulse). That is if only the duty cycle matters and not the actual pulse length. I suspect that the actual data sheet will list a maximum pulse length that trumps the duty cycle. By going with water or phase change cooling I should be able to increase the pulse length but probably not to the near CW lengths I need. I'm going to try to get the data sheet for that though.

Or is the moderate amount of noise you get from magnetrons too much for you?

That's actually a possibility I hadn't considered. I was more worried about the frequency stability which for a standard magnetron would be more than enough to screw things up. A coaxial magnetron may be sufficiently stable however.

And actually I just peeked at L3's klystrons, how about the bottom one on this list?
http://www2.l-3com

So you pretty much need 175kW average power in X-band.

Actually I don't think the average power is really the limiting factor here. Rather I think it's the maximum pulse width before the device fails due to excess heat. I could wait minutes between pulses if necessary. But I'd prefer to keep the pauses under 30 seconds.

Your 5uS pulse of >20GW alternative is well beyond anyone's state of the art. How much money you got anyway?

Hehe. Yeah I think gigawatts is a bit too ambitious. But that means that I need long pulses, getting pretty close to CW. As far as a budget the answer is not nearly enough for an actual device, probably not even off the shelf, but maybe enough for some consulting time with an expert or even a fair price to have a physicist design one for me. The actual construction of the device would be a separate problem. The actual amount I have to throw at the problem is somewhere between a BMW and a small house.

Also, why won't L3 sell you anything?

Well I don't think it was that they wouldn't sell me anything per se. They just wouldn't sell me the PM-2000X 9.3 Ghz, 2 MW, 0.0002 duty cycle, 4 uS pulse width, coaxial magnetron that I was inquiring about at the time. I think they were only supposed to sell it to US government agencies or something like that. It was a couple of years ago when I last looked into it. Even if L3 would have sold that to me and even if I had had enough money that 0.0002 duty cycle and 4 uS maximum pulse length are big problems. If L3 could have increased the pulse length without destroying the device I'm assuming they would have done so. Its not actually the short pulse length that is the problem directly. It's the high bandwidth that results from it. Without gigawatts of output power the bandwidth kills the link budget.

Maybe you could pick one of the higher power of the X-band magnetrons here:
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm
or here
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_cm.htm
and modify it with heroic cooling to raise the duty cycle from .001 to something which works?

Well I did notice that most of those magnetrons are listed as only requiring air cooling. With water or liquid nitrogen/helium phase change cooling it might well be possible to increase the pulse length, but it's a risky endeavour due to the very high cost of the device. It may be possible for me to repair/modify the thing when I melt whatever melts at longer pulse lengths, but the whole device may need a complete redesign to reach the pulse lengths I need. I think only the coaxial magnetrons would have sufficient frequency stability. The L-4666 coaxial magnetron is rated for 350 kW. If it can do a 1/3 or 1/2 second pulse without melting down that means I could turn it on as often as every 8.5 minutes (for a 1/2 second pulse). That is if only the duty cycle matters and not the actual pulse length. I suspect that the actual data sheet will list a maximum pulse length that trumps the duty cycle. By going with water or phase change cooling I should be able to increase the pulse length but probably not to the near CW lengths I need. I'm going to try to get the data sheet for that though.

Or is the moderate amount of noise you get from magnetrons too much for you?

That's actually a possibility I hadn't considered. I was more worried about the frequency stability which for a standard magnetron would be more than enough to screw things up. A coaxial magnetron may be sufficiently stable however.

And actually I just peeked at L3's klystrons, how about the bottom one on this list?
http://www2.l-3com

Those are pretty steep requirements, and yeah, I don't know of anything off the shelf that meets your requirement, doesn't mean there isn't something though.

Your 5uS pulse of >20GW alternative is well beyond anyone's state of the art. How much money you got anyway?

Also, why won't L3 sell you anything? They don't have what you need, but they have close:

So you pretty much need 175kW average power in X-band. Maybe you could pick one of the higher power of the X-band magnetrons here:
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm
or here
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_cm.htm
and modify it with heroic cooling to raise the duty cycle from .001 to something which works?

Or is the moderate amount of noise you get from magnetrons too much for you?

And actually I just peeked at L3's klystrons, how about the bottom one on this list?
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm

Again, you'd have to cool it quite a bit to get your average power, and could you live with higher peak power and less pulse length?

As for gyrotrons, CPI has built a CW gyotron at 95GHz that can do 100kW. It seems like they have some gyotrons that are pretty close to your 3rd alternate requirement, or won't they sell to you either?
http://www.cpii.com/product.cfm/1/18/30

What're you building anyway? (I mean, what's your application for the microwaves?)

Those are pretty steep requirements, and yeah, I don't know of anything off the shelf that meets your requirement, doesn't mean there isn't something though.

Your 5uS pulse of >20GW alternative is well beyond anyone's state of the art. How much money you got anyway?

Also, why won't L3 sell you anything? They don't have what you need, but they have close:

So you pretty much need 175kW average power in X-band. Maybe you could pick one of the higher power of the X-band magnetrons here:
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm
or here
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_cm.htm
and modify it with heroic cooling to raise the duty cycle from .001 to something which works?

Or is the moderate amount of noise you get from magnetrons too much for you?

And actually I just peeked at L3's klystrons, how about the bottom one on this list?
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm

Again, you'd have to cool it quite a bit to get your average power, and could you live with higher peak power and less pulse length?

As for gyrotrons, CPI has built a CW gyotron at 95GHz that can do 100kW. It seems like they have some gyotrons that are pretty close to your 3rd alternate requirement, or won't they sell to you either?
http://www.cpii.com/product.cfm/1/18/30

What're you building anyway? (I mean, what's your application for the microwaves?)

Those are pretty steep requirements, and yeah, I don't know of anything off the shelf that meets your requirement, doesn't mean there isn't something though.

Your 5uS pulse of >20GW alternative is well beyond anyone's state of the art. How much money you got anyway?

Also, why won't L3 sell you anything? They don't have what you need, but they have close:

So you pretty much need 175kW average power in X-band. Maybe you could pick one of the higher power of the X-band magnetrons here:
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm
or here
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_cm.htm
and modify it with heroic cooling to raise the duty cycle from .001 to something which works?

Or is the moderate amount of noise you get from magnetrons too much for you?

And actually I just peeked at L3's klystrons, how about the bottom one on this list?
http://www2.l-3com.com/edd/magnetrons_vsm.htm

Again, you'd have to cool it quite a bit to get your average power, and could you live with higher peak power and less pulse length?

As for gyrotrons, CPI has built a CW gyotron at 95GHz that can do 100kW. It seems like they have some gyotrons that are pretty close to your 3rd alternate requirement, or won't they sell to you either?
http://www.cpii.com/product.cfm/1/18/30

What're you building anyway? (I mean, what's your application for the microwaves?)

Is that a technical term?

TFA is Michael Cooney's Layer 8 blog. I'll give Cooney the benefit of the doubt and assume he did the 30 seconds of research necessary to find out the correct term and just assume he misplaced a key memory part.

Correction to more detailed product page with the actual different versions: L-3 Advanced Imaging Tech

They're much larger and look like a little room/glass-pod/transporter platform you stand in and in most US airports have a big L3 logo on the side. (red circle white text).

Here's the product page from L-3 Communications.

I'm gonna hook up one of these to my mimo n backhaul
http://www.l-3com.com/products-services/docoutput.aspx?id=1042

Maybe this technology could be used to further enhance wireless communication here on earth? How about 100 gigabit wireless backhauls - or even better, 100mbit wireless to your phone? I dunno, anybody have any data on these devices?
http://www.l-3com.com/products-services/

http://www.l-3com.com/cs-east/ia/smeped/ie_ia_smeped.shtml

So let met get this straight. You're comparing a document that's several centuries old to a scientific paper written by a dispassionate mathematician studying the data results from an array of cinetheodolites? One of those two documents is by it's very definition the heart of theology. The other is very clearly scientific analysis. One we trust based on our belief system. The other we trust because we can replicate the experiment and verify the data with other equipment.

If you honestly stand by your statement that, "Yes, roughly as well as the Bible proves god exists." It sounds to me like you have a very low opinion of science and the scientific method.

Furthermore I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers, but this isn't isolated to the United States. There are more sightings coming from Mexico and South America now than there are from the US. Also historically speaking most sightings during WWII (ie/ foo fighters) were seen over the pacific. Also if you look at the big flaps there was the Belgium incident; as I mentioned above there was the '56 Bentwater case; and Russian reports galore. I can get you the distribution of sightings per year per location if you're genuinely interested in that sort of thing, but it's more even than you seem to realize.

As for your statement to no pictures / video. Not true. We have fairly good photographic evidence. The problem is most people discredit it due to advances in video editing / tracking and 3D animation / modeling. Usually I point people to NASA's footage. And no, I'm not talking about the tether incident. That's complete bunk in my opinion. David Sereda has his heart in the right place, but he's not much of a scientist. If you want some good examples take a gander at:

NASA footage -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pawTzpNKW4&feature=rec-fresh

Italian footage -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TASsaTZMvTc

Nellis footage -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85L77Z5-ENw

Belgian UFO -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TriangleBelgium1990.jpg

Personally I have a very hard time accepting any photographic / video evidence. I only pay attention to new video reports if there's radar data or other tracking mechanisms in place to corroborate it. Even then I'm very suspicious of fakes. I tend to put most of my efforts in to looking at historical footage. Here's a quick sampling:

http://www.santafeghostandhistorytours.com/ufos.html

And as to your last statement that there are plenty of plausible explanations - absolutely true! Most people that research UAPs find that 95% of all cases have mundane explanations. The problem is that last 5%. A fair question would then be, "are the 5% unknowns given more information statistically likely to become knowns?" Based on Blue Books own investigation the chance that "the 'Unknowns' [are] the same as the 'Knowns' [is] less than one in a billion!" (The Hynek UFO Report, p. 243).

I wish I had the time to go in to more detail here, but if you want to learn about the cases that have been thoroughly studied / vetted that can't be explained I suggest you *first* research the cases I mentioned above. Then I recommend reading Hynek's "The Hynek UFO Report." Following that I recommend Firestorm by Ann Druffel. The book is a biography of James McDonald a rather prolific atmospheric physicist. And finally read 'The UFO Evidence.'

Not exactly exciting reading, but it's a mountain of data that the scientific community really ought to investiga

I don't know why you can't. If I were a terrorist I would. If I was discussing a business deal that was valuable enough that I would worry about foreign intelligence services picking up on it and passing my conversation on to competitors, I would find a way. What does it take a crypto license or something? VOIP over a VPN sounds like what I would do. Looking at the L3 web site http://www.l-3com.com/cs-east/ia/ste/ie_ia_ste_faq .shtml I don't see any licensing issues etc listed in the FAQ. They do have a direct sales number :)

- 168 bit 3des, Diffie-Hellman (1024 bit modulus)
- fips 140-1
- installs on handset side, which means it can work with digital/pbx, ISDN, IP phone, etc, and would require a tap to be placed in the handset, not just in the phone base
- no password for you to find or beat out of me, so your recording of my modem noise is that much harder to figure out

They ran out of money like so many other dotcoms. There's some chance of a revival but I'm not holding my breath. I'll forward the url of this thread to Eric Blossom and maybe he'll post something. Meanwhile, here's a comparable product. And there's always Nautilus and PGPfone (disclosure: I'm a co-author of Nautilus).