Let’s Define Success

[Aeronaut]

From the top down, success could be defined as a certain percentage of the world’s power coming from aneutronic (no radioactive fuels, wastes, or weapons potential) fusion within a specified number of years. This could be broken down by continents, countries, regions, counties, etc.

This would appear to require proof of each aneutronic fusion concept (Focus Fusion, PolyWell, and FRC, possibly ball lightning) in the form of slightly over unity operation, which in turn is going to require visionary funding sources with a relatively high tolerance of risk by today’s corporate standards.

Thus we need to emphasize the multiple bottom lines involved in “cloning” the LPP lab as a million dollar annual investment in building and operating a cutting-edge fusion research lab which can be leveraged to inspire even elementary school students to master science, math, physics, CAD/ engineering, CNC manufacturing, etc. Encouraging local students of all ages to submit thought and real experiments will increase the leverage. Iow, we don’t require over-unity operation in order to begin improving the world on a local basis, community by community, across the planet.

While the target number of clone labs is set and being met, each aneutronic reactor configuration will require it’s own NRC type certification. The lab network provides the numerical data from operations far quicker than can be obtained from a single prototype. The roaring local and global buzzes surrounding these labs will help gain the popular and political support required. Thus we have a chicken-and-egg closed loop regarding these goals and how to manage them.

The infrastructure is also going to require distribution and service networks, which can be developed in the form of agreements concurrently with the lab network growth.

[JShell]

Here are some interesting links. The Breakthrough Institute (among many others) think that investment in clean-energy research is what is needed to get the world off of fossil fuels. FFS and LPP both fall into this category, if we can convince the world that focus fusion is indeed commercializable in a 5-10 year time frame, and doesn’t create radiation or lead to more nuclear bombs in the world (both of which are major “liberal” concerns these days)

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/Case Studies in American Innovation.pdf

Also, might there be support among Republicans for clean-energy research?
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/08/does_new_republican_bill_signa.shtml

[Brian H]

Over-unity is basic to any application of FF or other fusion generator. Otherwise, you are taking energy from an existing (wasteful) source and reducing it by some percentage just for the fun of running a sub-unity fusion device. What is the point?

[YordanGeorgiev]

Focus Fusion success by 2020:
– total superiority by price , quality , safety , scalability , manageability etc. features in energy production compared to fossil fuels
– over 50% market share in global energy markets
– disruptive (price) pressure to national governments to create a global energy grid
– global economic growth accelerator by lowering energy prices, solving eco problems ( water desalination )
– war conflicts killer – ( all wars – even religion and ethnic are actually based on resources scarcity, which could be eliminated by a cheap energy source )
– space travel revolution begin ( VASIMR etc. )
– transportation revolution – new type of (larger) vehicles
– all the thinks we cannot even imagine now …

[Brian H]

YordanGeorgiev wrote: Focus Fusion success by 2020:
– total superiority by price , quality , safety , scalability , manageability etc. features in energy production compared to fossil fuels
– over 50% market share in global energy markets
– disruptive (price) pressure to national governments to create a global energy grid
– global economic growth accelerator by lowering energy prices, solving eco problems ( water desalination )
– war conflicts killer – ( all wars – even religion and ethnic are actually based on resources scarcity, which could be eliminated by a cheap energy source )
– space travel revolution begin ( VASIMR etc. )
– transportation revolution – new type of (larger) vehicles
– all the thinks we cannot even imagine now …

Good list! But I doubt the “war conflicts killer”. Do you think, e.g., that Ahmadinejad, and Kim, and Putin, and Bashir, and Mugabe, and Chavez, and Obama, are motivated by “resources scarcity”? Wannabe tyrants want power for its own sake, not to ease the wants of their subjects, notwithstanding the BS and bumpf and justifications they give for their actions.

[zapkitty]

Calling Obama a wannabe tyrant is as disconnected from reality as calling him a progressive or (even more silly) a socialist. He is only a tool for a plutocratic oligarchy that has accumulated stunning wealth and power at the expense of everyone else.

The current American wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen etc etc are not wars of scarcity but are instead intended to accomplish two goals: to siphon ever-more public treasure into the coffers of the corporations… and from there it goes into the holdings of a very small and immensely powerful elite… and to provide a pretext and a proving ground for the ever-expanding powers that their vassals in office need to perpetuate and enforce the status quo.

And most Americans do not know just how bad that situation has gotten… just how few and just how wealthy the elites actually are… and they are kept ignorant of the fact that their heritage of upward mobility has been co-opted and corrupted to the point where it’s nearly impossible to move up into those rarefied heights.

And thanks to a media that was at first complacent and is now complicit you can’t even,tell them that the elite has no intention of allowing them even the possibility of ascending to the higher ranks… the Pavlovian screams of “Bootstrap!” and “Self-reliance!” start before you can even finish phrasing the question.

So how can fusion fix that can of worms? Because if you don’t address the problem then all you will have is a fusion-powered oligarchy waging fusion-powered wars of choice.

[Aeronaut]

Too much talk radio, Zap? I’ll cede the point about it being impossible to eliminate war. But a poisoned attitude will never find anything worth finding.

[zapkitty]

Aeronaut wrote: Too much talk radio, Zap?

Sorry, but dismissing the facts with a label doesn’t change the facts. The wars are extremely profitable for those who dictate policy and thus they will continue unless circumstances are changed drastically… and those holding the reins of power, the quite literal financial reins on the politicians, will regard any attempts at such changes as attacks on their wealth and power. They will resist, and they have the means to resist.

Aeronaut wrote: I’ll cede the point about it being impossible to eliminate war. But a poisoned attitude will never find anything worth finding.

If you don’t attempt to reduce and mitigate the causes of the wars then all else you might wish to achieve will be in vain… as those achievements will promptly be torn down and used to fuel the next set of wars.

[Rezwan]

JShell, great link about thebreakthrough.org – we’ll have to follow up with that.

Re: wealthy elites, I like this quote from bajillion hits:

All we wanted to do was have some wine, eat the apps we ordered, and go on our merry ways making billions and billions of dollars within the byzantine self-sustaining system of insular wealth we worked so hard together to create.

(the guy that brought you the elevator pitch film.)

Re: causes of conflict: resource scarcity v. power for its own sake? Worm can alert!

I might rephrase the latter as desire for sovereignty that was thwarted and devolved into ugly counter-imperialism. And I’m sure resource scarcity is a big amplifier of conflict. Disproportionate control of resources is certainly an amplifier of tyranny. Underlying it all may be the narcissism of small differences. We do just like to disagree, for its own sake and to preserve our sense of self. Resource imbalance turns this narcissism nasty.

Checks and balances are required to keep any of us petty people from holding too much sway.

[Brian H]

Status and being one-up is certainly a driver. Given a choice of a $500K home in a neighborhood of $300K homes, or a $600K home in a neighborhood of $1M homes, most people choose the former. And the actual improvement in lifestyle and survival level of the poor in the last few decades doesn’t make them feel richer, since they’re still low on the totem pole. Hence, perhaps, the temptation to go for “social justice”, AKA enforced equality of as many as possible. A kind of beggar-thy-neighbor solution to envy!

[Rezwan]

Good to know you won’t feel tempted to complain when you find out we’re paying you 40% less than everyone else for the same job. We like employees like you! We’ll give you a carrot award. A coupon to Applebees. Way to go!

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote: Good to know you won’t feel tempted to complain when you find out we’re paying you 40% less than everyone else for the same job. We like employees like you! We’ll give you a carrot award. A coupon to Applebees. Way to go!

You talkin’ t’ me? ‘Grats, that’s more or less the opposite of what I said. IAC, if you pay someone 40% less than equivalent co-workers, you won’t have that employee long.

[emmetb]

Status and being one-up is certainly a driver. Given a choice of a $500K home in a neighborhood of $300K homes, or a $600K home in a neighborhood of $1M homes, most people choose the former.

It’s a story about us, people, being persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people that we don’t care about. (Tim Jackson; http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html)

[emmetb]

On a related note, i would suggest a minor refinement in one of the paragraphs found on the FFS front-page:
“How Green is it? Hands down, the greenest energy imaginable. Greener than the greenest renewable. Much greener than conventional fusion. Clorophyll, bring it on.”
Into something along the lines of:
“How Green is it? Hands down, the greenest energy imaginable. Much greener than conventional fusion. The only greener alternative are trees, yet organic material can never yield the high power-density needed for our transportation and industrial needs. With Fusion for high power-density applications and Photosynthesis for sequestering CO2 mankind has a chance of developing a truly sustainable global economy.”
I don’t mean to be nitpicking here, but i did meet many fusion-skeptics on a sustability congress i attended last week in the Netherlands. They reason more or less as follows, we already have a fusion power plant: the sun. So all we need to do is catch more of its rays.

[Brian H]

emmetb wrote:
…
I don’t mean to be nitpicking here, but i did meet many fusion-skeptics on a sust[ain]ability congress i attended last week in the Netherlands. They reason more or less as follows, we already have a fusion power plant: the sun. So all we need to do is catch more of its rays.

Tell them, “Yes, and there are immense amounts of gold dissolved in the oceans. Here’s a bucket. Go for it!”
Density, availability, cost, and distribution. Solar fails on all counts.

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