Bussard quote question…

[opensource]

Hey guys,

I just found a quote I wrote down when watching Bussard’s Google talk a while back. Excuse its accuracy and quality, he wasn’t speaking very clearly:
“The problem is that engineering schools … really don’t train people in this field anymore … because it is an arcane field … it doesn’t fit modern technology … we’ve all gone to silicon, and microchips, and solid state devices … There are very few people who make giant 4 foot high-powered tubes … It is not like the days of Langmuir, and Tesla, and those guys … it’s not in that world. Its’ not that anybody’s evil, but there just wasn’t the market for it… I’ll give you one example of one of the people I would put on the review committee, his name is bob Siemens … he’s been following this field for years … These guys come from another world … [These other guys] think outside the conventional electromagnetic confinement box, and that’s the problem. The box has become so big and so well-funded that is supports thousands of people and labs all over the world. Everyone for decades has been thinking about Maxwellian equilibrium plasmas, and it’s very hard to break that mindset.”

I also think Lerner said something about the science of “solid state physics” being untapped lately in his talk (though I’m not sure how related that is to what Bussard is talking about).

Anyway, can you guys give me a better idea of the concepts and scientific field he is talking about? We’ve truncated our studies to silicon and microchips? What does that mean we are missing? What are the other fields he is implying have the physical science depth of microchips that we’re not really looking into?

Thanks!

[JimmyT]

He is talking about vacuum tube technology. Which is essentially what his device is. That technology was almost totally displaced by solid state devices. Transistors and diodes and such.

The plasmas in vacuum tubes are not in equilibrium. They do not have a Maxwellian energy distribution.

That having been said, I really don’t think he (Dr Bussard) was ever going to reach the density/confinement times/temperatures needed to achieve ignition using his methodologies.

There were some advantages to the old vacuum tube technologies. You could achieve a higher level of amplification in a single stage with them then with solid state devices. They were quirky beasts though. Always displaying wierd harmonics, (Feedback). They kept trying to overcome these problems by adding extra grids. The first tube amplifiers were triodes, containing just an electron emitter, a control grid and a collector. The final ones were pentodes. Containing three grids between the emitter and the collector. They were energy hogs too. Last I knew radio stations still used tube technology for their final amplification stage while broadcasting because they were capable of higher wattage.

Any amplification device is essentially a switch. If the diamond/laser switches ever get fully developed then I’m sure they will be used as amplifiers.

[Ivy Matt]

It was my understanding that the Polywell is not an ignition device which, as I understand it, means that the reaction never becomes self-sustaining, but must be sustained by the constant introduction of new ions and electrons into the device.

[Author]

Posts