and fundraise?

Here are some things that I believe we, as a community, could do:

-Create a myspace account for Focus Fusion

-Fundraise by using the old can donation trick i.e march of dimes.

-Create a focus fusion X-prize, or in our a case a F-prize(it might have to be created by people with little to no association with Focus Fusion though) like the M-Prize.

-Raise awareness by printing up and distributing flyers.

-Create a short Youtube video(5-10 min detailing it)

-Recruit family and friends to help contribute to Focus Fusion(time, money, etc.)

-Lobby the Bill Gates Foundation in attempt to provide funds for an F-prize or more directly Focus Fusion.

These are just a few ideas. If even a few of these were done we could raise significant attention to the focus fusion cause and perhaps even fund some of the research. If anyone would like to contribute to these or come up with their own ideas, please feel free to respond.

Thanks.

Oh and by can trick I mean the kind you leave in a store, not the salvation army(although… )

I personally plan to place a few cans around my area and see if anyone bites. I will ofcourse make sure the money gets to you guys.

I have yet to personally meet even 1 person who could comprehend the difference between DPF and a tokamak. I might as well try to raise money for frumjoogles.

You would probably be lucky to find a person who knows what the Tokamak is…. hehe.

Dear focus fusion researchers,

                            To help along focus fusion I am putting it foremost in my preamble for my submission to the Virgin Earth Challenge. If your idea cannot work neither can mine!

Having discovered a productive way to extract the CO2 from the air and restore the climatic balance by cooling the ground and warming the stratosphere the problem remains as to an energy source to replace the conversion of C-H bonds to C=O bonds which is the primary cause of global warming. Focus fusion is very much in the lead here due to its no-free-neutron implications; unless focus fusion can be set up my Virgin Earth challenge will remain non-functional.

Hence I hope to be able to direct his desire for funding towards you as it is vital for Branson & Co. to understand that focus fusion be realized first, i.e. before global warming can be tackled in any meaningful and effective way. After all even the Chilean Government at its most sympathetic cannot provide the bucks needed for investigating all the practical ins and outs (as opposed to theoretical modeling) required to get focus fusion working.

When I get confirmation of my submission, probably not for another 3 months or so, I will post again here.

Yours faithfully

Mark Lofts

I’m fomenting an insane scheme to rapidly acquire all the investment capital myself and buy LPP, and then whip poor old Eric like Groves did to Oppenheimer.  Only without the subsequent blacklisting.

webtaz99 - 11 June 2007 09:47 AM

I have yet to personally meet even 1 person who could comprehend the difference between DPF and a tokamak. I might as well try to raise money for frumjoogles.

Frumjoogles!  I want one!

On a more serious note, this is a job for the “Concept Monitor”, inspired by the “Confidence Monitor”.  We design a quiz/info thing that will spread virally, getting people to realize they don’t know the difference between frumjoogles, tokamaks and sundials.  It all links back to handy information on our website, and so on.  If it’s a fun quiz, it becomes viral and gets people talking to each other and about fusion.

I just got back from a “meet the candidates” gathering for people running for State office. I was testing the hypothesis that these candidates may be aware of FF’s timetable but waiting for the success headline before publicly endorsing fusion, since fission is known to work and fusion is technically speculative at this point from their point of view.

Only one knew about aneutronic fusion and its implications on many levels. If I did it right, and the follow-up Monday night in another town reinforces and expands the number of state and local candidates I’ve pitched, we’re going to be getting some new members, looking for more detail.

Something I noticed while working my way around that room and back was how many of these people were mingling with each other as well as the potential voters. This is a good thing when you’re pollinating the idea of practical aneutronic fusion power scheduled for energy break-even in 2010 or 2011. If they’re talking about you and / or your message, you’re promoting every time any of them think about energy, emissions, job creation, budget fiascoes, etc. etc.

Right now this seems to be the most productive way I’ve found to leverage my time promoting FF. So get out and ask your candidates if they’ve heard of aneutronic fusion, and its ability to become history before the election. http://politicsone.com will give you the slates for your state (sorry, US only) and federal candidates in 2010 and 2012.

I like the idea of asking people if they’ve heard of aneutronic fusion before, because then if they don’t know about focus fusion, it provides a window to explain the process.  It also gets LPP and focus Fusion on various candidates radars—and some of them might want to research the technology more on their own so that they can answer the question with more knowledge the next time it comes up.

Although the Oppenheimer analogy is a vivid one, since the shares Eric is selling are *nonvoting*, I don’t think the shareholders have that much leverage to apply extra pressure. I also feel like Eric and the LPP team are already working as hard and fast as they can, and would benefit from support more than any kind of additional pressure.

As far as investments go, I feel like lots of people are investing some of their portfolios in Focus Fusion because even if its risky, if LPP is successful, the technology could be worth a lot.  But success (and any kind of commercial viability) is still probably ~5 years off (if not 10). So its a long-term investment with a lot of uncontrollable factors. And LPP would still benefit from additional government involvement.

The more people we ask though, the more chances that other will find out about it and want to learn more and get involved in spreading the word themselves. . .

Aneutronic fusion power is a wonderful tool for spotting qualified 21st century leaders. There’s at least 2 types of these right now- since most haven’t heard of AF, let alone FF, those qualified leaders are the ones willing to immediately apply FF in their mind’s eye to the office they’re running for.

When a few good leaders begin spreading the word, we’re going to become much more visible.