Kenya — 1973 Solar Eclipse Experiment

While developing new observing equipment, Dr. John Rather supervised construction of a 1.6 meter diameter, portable calibration telescope that he realized could be taken to Kenya in 1973 to observe the longest total solar eclipse until the year 2150.

The complete experiment weighed about 5,000 pounds, including 75 liters of liquid helium and 200 liters of liquid nitrogen. The optimum site was at Loiyangalani in the Chalbi Desert on Lake Turkana, 350 miles north of Nairobi. To accomplish this, Rather put together collaborations with the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the Kenyan Air Force and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

PAMELA — "Phased Array Mirror, Extendible Large Aperture"

During five years at Kaman Aerospace Corp., Dr. Rather's initiatives engendered about $125 million in new-start technology programs for the company. He also managed the company's Advanced Technology Innovative Research and Development (IR&D) efforts.

They invented and patented a revolutionary approach to construction of very large, low cost, low weight telescopes and laser beam expanders for deployment on ground or in space. This became the subject of a $5 million Strategic Defense Initiative Organization/Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (SDIO/DARPA) technology development contract obtained by Rather in 1989.

In the process of seeking support for PAMELA, he conducted briefings at NASA Headquarters to numerous decision makers. He also briefed the concept to J.R. Thompson, then Director of Marshall Space Flight Center and many others there.

Another IR&D effort at Kaman led to the Controlled-Length Strut, a high-precision adaptive structural component that became a centerpiece of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Controlled Structures and Large Deployable Reflector research. Yet another effort led to the Coarse-Fine Wavefront Sensor for adaptive optics systems, which Rather also patented.

Laser Power Beaming

Dr. Rather (back row, far right) with his laser beam expander development team meeting at CalTech. Rather conceived numerous systems concepts for laser weapons and civilian applications. In the 1980s, he initiated work on ground based high-energy free electron lasers (FELs) with space-based relay mirrors at 1000 km orbital altitudes. Detailed studies were funded by DARPA and SDIO, supporting SDIO's decision to pursue the Ground Based Free Electron Laser Technology Integration Experiment (GBFELTIE). When this program ended at the end of the Cold War in 1991, Rather shifted attention from weapons work to civilian space applications.

High Thrust Electric Propulsion for Space Applications

Dr. Rather proposed and obtained funding for technologies to transmit power to plasma-propelled space "tugboats" as a method of making high-orbital operations and lunar development affordable. The same system, beaming energy from four desert sites on Earth, could supply continuous power to the initial lunar base, solving the problem of two-week lunar nights when solar energy is unavailable. Overall cost benefit is estimated at a factor of nine. These concepts are highly viable and important for the current NASA Exploration Initiative.

Medical & Materials Diagnostics

After moving to Detroit in 1997, Dr. Rather focused his TISL method on many ways to greatly improve medical diagnostics at low cost to the patient. He generated a breakthrough synthesis of new physics, micro-electronics and computer strategies for identification, diagnosis and cure of very early cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other pathologies. More than a dozen patents have issued or are pending based on breakthrough devices created by Rather and his teammates. Related technological approaches apply also to materials diagnostics for national security and other purposes.

Ultrasound Holography & Spectroscopy for Medical & Materials Diagnostics

If cancerous lesions can be detected when they are no more than 3mm in diameter, there is compelling evidence that simple procedures can eliminate the malignant lesion and effect a cure in most cases. This has been amply proven clinically for melanomas of the skin, and there is informed medical consensus that the same is true for at least 80% of epithelial carcinomas in situ in the breast, prostate, colon, lungs and other organs. Such lesions initiate more than 75% of all fatal cancers. The daunting challenge is to develop nearly infallible methods for locating such small lesions hidden in tissues of internal organs and distinguishing malignant growths from the more common benign ones. Success in this effort will also have extremely favorable impacts on cardio-vascular disease, orthopedics, gynecology and other branches of medicine.

In 1998, John Rather and his team of distinguished consultants developed and patented methods for achieving the required performance. The physics basis of the project is that detailed measurements of all possible ultrasound wave propagation parameters at a surrounding boundary will permit full recovery of the tensor field characterizing the internal tissues. Advanced hardware, algorithms, and computer architecture have been demonstrated. A completely safe and painless device that can detect and identify very small cancers in mice has been proven.

The problem of finding a small cancer is similar to finding a submarine in the ocean: The successful suite of technologies must identify a relatively small object with subtle but distinctive signatures in a very complex environment where any single measurement by itself will not be conclusive, and where changes over time — even small periods of time — can add significant information for detection, and where sophisticated post-processing of data from multiple sources can extract the signal from the noise.  Many of the most elegant technologies ever created were the objects of billions of dollars of R&D during the cold war decades. These concepts and methods are well known to Rather's RCIG team. Mobilizing this knowledge can be of great value in reducing costs of health care while greatly improving the accuracy of diagnosis.

PATIE/STARLAB — "Pointing and Tracking Integrated Experiment"

The “Pointing and Tracking Integrated Experiment” addressed shortfalls in laser optic and beam control. Dr. Rather’s contribution to laser pointing and tracking at weaponry-level precision resulted in $87 million in new work for Kaman Aerospace Corp. and a $600 million program at SDIO.

In 1984, a major shortfall in laser technology development lay in the areas of optics and beam control. Billions had been spent on unsuccessful exploratory development and engineering prototype work, with a factor of 10,000 performance deficit still remaining.

Rather mobilized a "crash" effort at Kaman Aerospace Corporation generating a breakthrough-technology program to offer General James Abrahamson, the new Director of SDIO. He selected team members from the firm's 5,500 employees and added new hires, consultants and corporate teammates. By the time his workshop team was convened, Rather had created a new concept that drew upon his knowledge of the capabilities of NASA's Kuiper Airborne Telescope, the Space Shuttle Spacelab, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) laser program. By 1989, Rather's team demonstrated laser-pointing precision of 10 nanoradians rms, sufficient to hit targets at ranges of several thousand miles. The key innovation was controlling the wave fronts of light instead of mechanical bearings.

Microprocessor and MEMS Production

John Rather is focusing much attention upon innovations that achieve revolutionary improvements in performance capability for applied systems on Earth, in space and under the oceans. While at Wayne State University, Rather worked closely with the Smart Sensors & Integrated Microsystems (SSIM) laboratory to develop highly innovative technologies and systems applications. Subsequently, after forming RCIG, Inc., he patented chip fabrication methods for Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), shown schematically in the figure below. Applications include not only all of Rather's ultra low-weight PAMELA optics devices, but also many kinds of agile robotic devices and medical sensors.

Projects in Development

RCIG has promising projects in various stages of development. As they mature, the company can make the fruits of its research available to business, public and government sectors.

One example is concerned with human physical-performance analysis, and a team of experts in several fields has already performed initial trials and proof-of-concept testing. RCIG anticipates great interest in this research, because its core concepts are both scalable and transportable to many environments and specific requirements.

RCIG's team-workshop approach enables the firm to run parallel investigations as dictated by our clients' needs and our collective interests and areas of expertise. It is an exciting, collaborative manner of development that allows each of the participating experts to perform in the ways they best excel. The results can be unequaled in their innovation, foresight and even cost-benefit ratio.