Need for Differentiation
The fusion field needs to be better understood and differentiated by the public and policy makers.
How does ITER stack up against FoFu? Derek’s Google Earth video does a great job of comparing the two.
While we’re on the subject of visual comparison, it’s a short step to set up comparison parameters that other fusion approaches can be plugged into. As time and volunteers permit, we start collecting the data and turning it into educational products – all of which underscore the context of aneutronic fusion as one legitimate approach in a diverse field, and fusion as a field with many possibilities that aren’t being tried (we can put dismal funding stats on each approach, for example. This is best with a dynamic app that is plugged into live data).
There are many different fusion approaches out there – see https://focusfusion.org/assets/pdf/Woodruff_JFE.pdf
Let’s get visual with this. I want to see all these approaches in many different iterations. I suppose it starts with our website, setting up a form with set fields that can be filled in for each fusion concept. This requires some thinking about how different approaches can be compared side by side. Then an app can be developed, to look at each concept – with as much detail as the wonderful periodic table app now available on the iPad. The periodic chart is also available as various stunning posters and a great set of cards. Once you decide on the basic data you need and how to present something, it’s not much of a stretch to turn out multiple varieties of finished product.
Anyway, for the purposes of this task, let’s just start with the basics of what a few of them look like, from the mega tokamak and NIF to the tiny, mighty DPF. If we do it to scale, the tokamak takes up the whole poster, and you play “find the dpf” game – looking for a tiny dpf somewhere in the room with the tokamak.
Or just have an inserted box with the smaller machines.
Side by side – or like an evolution poster. Energy evolution poster. Cool.
Resources Required for this task: Artists, their time, copyright free images from various other approaches (admin and coordination costs of getting these images from the groups that own/produce them), software and other tools such as collaboration software, money to pay said artists, or the opportunity cost for them of doing the work as volunteers, admin and coordination costs to turn these into products and get them out to the public, etc.
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