Obtaining Vorlax

[mquezada]

Hello, since Vorlax is not available with the OpenVSP release, is it
possible to contact someone at NASA about licensing its use? If so,
which department/person could I reach out to?

Thanks!

-Marco

[Rob McDonald]

NASA is not set up at this time to accept requests for Vorlax.

Rob

[Stephen Richey]

Nor to launch people into space. ;)

--
Stephen Richey
Founder and Chief Researcher/Designer
Kolibri Aviation Safety Research
5174-B Winterberry Circle
Indianapolis, IN 46254
317-985-4740

 "I think the best thing, and the only thing in our infinite
inadequacy in making up for the loss of life, is to say something we
have been able to say in a lot of other accidents to grieving
families.  That is 'Those deaths will not be in vain. We will not let
them be in vain. Every one of those lives will be made to count in
terms of making sure that three, four, five or ten other people do not
die."- John J. Nance

[Mark Moore]

If you have a prior VSP release, you can simply copy the vorlaxwin.exe from that old release to the new location of VSP 2.0, and it will work.

But we weren't permitted to distribute with the open source version...

mark

[Nelson]

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?N=0&Ntk=Report-Patent-Number&Ntt=cr-2865

See Appendix B.

[Mark Moore]

Correct - the code is listed in this report, but that doesn't make it public according to the NASA attorneys.

Vorlax is around and be used by many universities.  There is little question that it is open - but that doesn't mean much to attorneys.

Mark

[Ricardo Díaz]

Hi, does anyone knows where to get a transcripted version of the
vorlax code?

Thanks.

[Mark Moore]

If you are a prior user of VSP, then you had access to vorlaxwin.exe as part of the standard distribution.  In that case, you can simply copy that .exe over to the same folder as vsp.exe and vorlax will work.

It is likely that if you do find another version of Vorlax, that it probably will not be a drop in working version for execution inside VSP.

I think what will be required is for a user to write to the Langley attorney and ask for permission to receive NASA's vorlax code, since it freely available to all in the Contractor report about that program.  There is nothing protected or of unique IP value for the version that NASA Langley has.  So one letter of request may work...  But an external request is far different than an internal request from me, to open source one more tool.

I am up for helping, but not felt inclined to take this on by myself.

Mark

2012/2/7 Ricardo Díaz <rdg...@gmail.com>

[Ricardo Díaz]

Hi,
I was thinking more about the source code, but in a legibible form,
not some sort of scanned pdf with lousy quality.

[ed]

Wondering how the vorlax files are generated / run- looking at what happens when one hits "execute" for vorlax within OpenVSP, it looks like it generates a .hrm file for the geometry, a .cas file with vorlax run conditions and reference quantities (along with a few other files). 

Is a file of the format specified in the NASA report ever generated?  i.e. if a user has a different version of vorlax, or copies and compiles the code in the report, will it run?  With my cursory look, it looks like the answer is no, correct?

[Mark Moore]

If you use the code exactly in the CR report - no, it will not work.  But our version of vorlax puts out the exact same files (and a few more than in the original report).

[Rob McDonald]

VSP writes out a hrm file - and then reads it back in. That portion
of the code the slices the file and subdivides it into the panels used
for Vorlax. That file (as well as the *.cas file) are written out --
which are all read by the NASA modified version of Vorlax.

The NASA additions are extensions for things like camber optimization,
control surfaces, automatic trimming, use of tabulated airfoil data,
and simple calculation of control derivatives.

That mostly means there have been some extensions to the standard
*.cas file -- and some additional files have been written. The
fundamental Vorlax geometry file is written (somewhere in there) and
should be pretty much unchanged.

If someone had a bone-stock version of Vorlax, it would not be
impossible to modify VSP to execute that version -- more code would
need to be removed than would need to be written. It won't work 'out
of the box', but it isn't impossible.

Rob

[ed]

On Tuesday, February 7, 2012 10:12:09 AM UTC-8, Mark Moore wrote:

I think what will be required is for a user to write to the Langley attorney and ask for permission to receive NASA's vorlax code, since it freely available to all in the Contractor report about that program.  There is nothing protected or of unique IP value for the version that NASA Langley has.  So one letter of request may work...  But an external request is far different than an internal request from me, to open source one more tool.

I am up for helping, but not felt inclined to take this on by myself.

I put in a request yesterday- thanks for the help.  We'll see where this goes.  ;D  any idea how long they might take to generate a response?

[Mark Moore]

For outside parties, it should be pretty fast (within 1-2 weeks), for internal requests (5-6 months...)

Let's track it and find out.  You private citizens have no idea how seriously a formal letter of request is taken by govt agencies - because we are so unaccustomed to dealing with normal people.

[mquezada]

Wow, when I started this thread it did not look like there was much
chance to succeed :).

Would you guys mind if I ask where you got the contact information for
the Langley attorney? Is there a template for the request letter or
you type your own?

-Marco

[ed]

On Friday, February 17, 2012 7:03:00 AM UTC-8, mquezada wrote:

Wow, when I started this thread it did not look like there was much
chance to succeed :).

Would you guys mind if I ask where you got the contact information for
the Langley attorney? Is there a template for the request letter or
you type your own?

I emailed Mark Moore (above, who suggested contacting NASA), and he provided me a contact information.  He also provided an outline for the request which I modified.

[Mark Moore]

I provided the contact info, as Rob and I interacted with her a great deal during the final steps of making VSP open source.  She is actually a very nice person, but her job is to dot every i in terms of data rights - which is incredibly cumbersome.  My job is to get research done - different objectives.  But I think you have a very good chance of getting this done.  The key question she needs to get an answer to is whether Lockheed (who wrote this code for NASA) wants to claim any rights to it - and that might take a while...

Mark

[ed]

On Friday, February 17, 2012 8:28:47 AM UTC-8, Mark Moore wrote:

I provided the contact info, as Rob and I interacted with her a great deal during the final steps of making VSP open source.  She is actually a very nice person, but her job is to dot every i in terms of data rights - which is incredibly cumbersome.  My job is to get research done - different objectives.  But I think you have a very good chance of getting this done.  The key question she needs to get an answer to is whether Lockheed (who wrote this code for NASA) wants to claim any rights to it - and that might take a while...

Maybe it's a good thing I requested this from my LM account then.  :D  The technical folks won't have any problem with it, but I guess we'll see about the lawyers...

[Nelson Brown]

“We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”
--Werner von Braun

[Brian Champlin]

Can I get the contact info for this?

 

Thanks.

[Mark Moore]

Address correspondence to Robin Edwards, NASA Intellectual Property Attorney, Mail Stop 030, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA  23681-2199

Good luck.  So far Robin has contacted me to get further information (about 2 weeks ago) - and then went silent.  So unless their is specific interest from the private sector, I don't think we'll get her attention to this matter (as there is no gain for NASA to invest time or effort in this).

Mark

[Nick Brake]

Where would I request a development feature to make VSP spit out geometry for a more freely available vortex lattice tool such as AVL? 

 

N

[Rob McDonald]

Nick,

The best place to voice a feature request is the GitHub Issue tracker...

https://github.com/OpenVSP/OpenVSP/issues

I very much agree that inter-operation with tools like AVL (open,
available, actively maintained, etc.) is the way to go vs. tools like
Vorlax.

So, I have some ideas about integrating with AVL, and I am on the hook
to take some steps in that direction, but if you wait for me to do it,
it will take quite a while.

Rob

[ed]

Hey Mark-

After some good initial response, Ms. Edwards has seemingly disappeared and hasn't responded to queries regarding status / going forward plans.  Any chance you could ping her?

Thanks,

-Ed

[Mark Moore]

I have, without any response from her as well...

[Karén Melikov]

Hi, Rob.

Has anything changed since then?

среда, 25 января 2012 г., 13:50:23 UTC-5 пользователь Rob McDonald написал:

[Mark Moore]

Not yet

Mark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OpenVSP" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openvsp+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.