Reply To: Need of beryllium and other rare materials for Focus Fusion

[epimenide]

Ivy Matt wrote: The parts that interest me most are the input parameters and the bill of materials.

Agreed for all you write in that paragraph.

Ivy Matt wrote: The only exception I would leave to this rule is the tokamak, just because it seems widely assumed to be the future of fusion energy, and pretty much every alternative approach to fusion compares itself against it.

Again, I agree: tokamak is also the only one that’s likely to be heard about by the public, and I expect most people will try that before anything else, and would probably ditch the game altogether if it wasn’t there…

Ivy Matt wrote: It would probably be easier just to make a basic mathematical model of each device that avoids dealing directly with plasma dynamics.

Yes, that’s probably the way to start: as I’ve stated multiple times, if general public is the target, and awareness the reward we look after, entertainment should have priority over realism (I know, pushing this here sounds heretic!)
After all, no one expects real world spaceships (whenever they’ll come) will look and work even remotely like the ones we enjoy in our videogames…
Basic math will probably be unsatisfactory for scientists, but I’m sure even they would enjoy showing something “almost real” like that to kids to experiment with the concepts (I know I would!)

Ivy Matt wrote: Oh, and, since I’m going on as if some unspecified person (or perhaps epimenide) is going to be doing all the work

Well, not all of it, but I’m certainly available as a programmer for the platforms I work on for a living (namely iPhone / iPod and obviously iPad for the future)

An unfilled requirement is still the graphics: does anyone know a good illustrator that would work for the beauty of it (or perhaps a share, if we decide to go for anything that can generate revenue of a sort)?