Reply To: Richard Branson – Virgin Pledge

[Duke Leto]

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/91/

That was more or less the consensus opinion in my thread on DPF miniturization.

I’m more worried about radiation shielding then scaling the decelerator or the capacitor bank for several reasons:

1) Anyone in close contact with the things will be a bit more worried about radiation then anything else.

2) I don’t think much work has been done on capacitor miniturization as compared to transistor miniturization because there hasn’t been a need to do it. There’s probably a lot of potential approaches to mega-capacitor scaling that simply haven’t had the research money thrown at them.

3) It seems to me there are 2 ways around the decelerator problem in a standard motor vehicle:
a) Lay it out parallel to the transmission where the exaust no longer needs to be.
b) Increase the intensity of the magnetic field proportional to the needed decrease in length.

My primary concern about the need for DPFs retrofitted in existing motor vehicles is cultural. Our existing motor vehicles have a far greater range then the present electric vehicles. People are going to resist the loss of the road trip.

Much more importantly is the existing infrastructure. We can probably slap a DPF on existing Diesel Electric freight locomotives without any problem, it’s the trucks that worry me. Large scale construction equipment can probably be powered from medium range cables onsite, but self contained plants would add a lot of mobility.