Reply To: safire project and coronal fusion

[meems]

SAFIRE have released their 2017 Summer conference lecture to the public on youtube.
I was a little disapointed, seems they haven’t made much progress in terms of science since 2 years ago. However they now have an expensive high-tech laboratory.
– Accidentally melted 2 expensive tungsten langmuir probes.
– chemically analysed one of the melted probes and found it to contain unexpected elements
– recreated the results they got with their preliminary lab and experiment of 2 years ago.

– Melted the surface of their anode

– inadvertently chemically eroded \ veneered the inner wall of their test chamber due to plasma experiments

It all seems a bit amateurish compared to Lawrenceville. But their efforts are sincere and their funding is copious, so I’m hopeful they will make progress after what I’d like to assume are teething errors. Plasma physics ain’t easy, and they are proceeding without much advise from veterans in plasma research , e.g. u lot. They have Donald Scott, an experienced and capable electrical engineer as an advisor, but he’s not a plasma scientist.

It’s sad for me to see that my 2 favourite plasma research groups are not associating with each other.
One of them has copious funding but lacks expertise, the other has experts but lacks funding. I wish Eric would lay his battleaxe to one side and phone Monty and advise him on plasma. If Eric refuses to stop the war, then maybe someone more pacifist within this group can contact the SAFIRE group. There’s a good chance it’d be mutually beneficial. The private backers of safire would likely be willing to fund Lawrenceville.