Miniaturizing Focus Fusion

[Brian H]

Timo wrote:

I’m currently resigned to a 1 meter water jacket and the same caps, maybe even switches, that LPP’s using for my sketches.

One meter radius ball would weight roughly 4.2 tons, and that doesn’t leave much space for actual equipment. Not quite car material. Does it have to be that big? Is there a better material?
It’s a 80-100 cm. shell, not a ball. The calcs are somewhere on the site; try https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/91/#346 (from 2006).

I guessed that it is not a ball, but ball is a shape with smallest possible volume to surface area and as such also weight. So I minimized it right there, and still got 4.2 tons of weight. Any other shape and it weights even more. Water is heavy stuff.

(which reminds me a case when I explained someone the power of tsunami by giving him mental image of one cube of water coming at 50kph to the wall of a house and telling that is basically same as small car hitting the same place at same speed, and that is just tiny one meter high wave. His face was worth looking when he realized what that means).
No, Timo. Its walls are only 80cm thick, hollow, diameter about a meter internally. Imagine if it was 1 cm. or 1 mm. thick. How much would it weigh? It’s not a solid/continuous sphere, it’s a container.

[Timo]

Brian H wrote:

I’m currently resigned to a 1 meter water jacket and the same caps, maybe even switches, that LPP’s using for my sketches.

One meter radius ball would weight roughly 4.2 tons, and that doesn’t leave much space for actual equipment. Not quite car material. Does it have to be that big? Is there a better material?
It’s a 80-100 cm. shell, not a ball. The calcs are somewhere on the site; try https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/91/#346 (from 2006).

I guessed that it is not a ball, but ball is a shape with smallest possible volume to surface area and as such also weight. So I minimized it right there, and still got 4.2 tons of weight. Any other shape and it weights even more. Water is heavy stuff.

No, Timo. Its walls are only 80cm thick, hollow, diameter about a meter internally. Imagine if it was 1 cm. or 1 mm. thick. How much would it weigh? It’s not a solid/continuous sphere, it’s a container.

80cm thick is not one meter water jacket. It’s 80cm water jacket. Anyway any other shape than perfect ball weights more. 1mm thick would obviously weight less, but then it would be 1mm water jacket, which is not enough. You just increase the weight with any other shape (there is obviously the structural integrity issue, which probably require less spherical shape to reduce structural stress and weight of structure itself, probably a kind of arc, but you get the picture).

[Aeronaut]

A modified 1,000 gallon plastic storage tank should do just fine for fixed applications. Once the reactor’s core diameter and length are known, all that needs to be done is to run a tube that diameter down the tank’s axis. Should cost less than a steel tank.

[Rezwan]

Timo wrote:

Timo, is that you? Same Timo who infests and informs over at TeslaMotors forums? Welcome, buddy!

Yes it is me. I finally decided to join after lurking quite a while. Actually I got my “membership” due a donation, I didn’t know it would lead to that, but here I am.

That’s odd. It doesn’t work that way. You must’ve registered to post here. The donation route is separate, via paypal. You can be registered on the forums but not pay dues, and you can be a dues-paying member who never registered on the forums.

Thanks for being both! Our favorite kind.

[Author]

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