Strategizing

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: R;
your diagnosis of the mood and attitude of the ‘advanced fuel’ fusion community is kind of discouraging,

No, that’s the mainline fusion community – but advanced fuel is only LPPX and Tri Alpha etc. (a handful) – and mainline is pretty skeptical about them. They adopt that handy “wait and see” attitude.

And the Tri-Alpha boys were quick to say – “this is just a piece of a much larger puzzle…we’re a long way still”.

[Brian H]

Venture Vultures are notorious for wanting a) control, and b) a hype-point where they can temporarily run the apparent worth of their shares up and bail out fast. Angels vary by adventurousness and specific areas of interest; they’re not quite so exploitive, generally.

Like the chap at Unreasonable Rocket, I think LPP investors will come from those who care about the specific topic and get inspired by the wider possibilities, not so much those looking to make a killing.

[Rezwan]

Rezwan wrote: Of course, quick results with LPPX would go a long way to making all of this moot, but now we have the persistent “inconsistent firing/switch/sparkplug” problem to solve, and that in itself could require a lot more R&D.

To clarify, the switch problem (really a trigger, high voltage issue) has been resolved. The prefiring and sparkplug issues are lingering, but it’s a matter of (not too much) time before the sparkplugs are rugged enough to not keep breaking – at least to hold together long enough to get some revealing data from shots, which is what you need for an experimental device.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Like the chap at Unreasonable Rocket, I think LPP investors will come from those who care about the specific topic and get inspired by the wider possibilities, not so much those looking to make a killing.

Yes, a cool class of investors. I hope they all do make a killing!

[Aeronaut]

The really appealing aspects of FF, to me anyway, are that $2M to $5M across 1 to 3 years could not only prove or fail to prove LPP’s theories in the shorter term, but could significantly contribute the to the capacitor and switching engineering which could be recycled in other pulsed power applications.

Can’t remember the last time anybody recounted how LPP got this far in ~34 years on less than $2M. Or that both JPL projects were successfully completed, thus giving LPP the ability to build the third scaling model at full scale. Nobody to my knowledge has done this in fusion research.

The Emperor’s New Suit keeps coming to mind anytime I think about how the government blows billions on ‘mislabeled’ projects.

[JShell]

Aeronaut wrote:
What this boils down to imo is that their motivations are to protect a wide range of existing cash cows and jobs in the status quo. Think how many smart grid, clean coal, and other research boondoggles will go down the drain (along with the stock prices and carefully cultivated leadership images) if a straight-forward solution, with a definite time frame and budget, should come along.

I can advertise to smart phones around the world for a penny per click. Targeting can be as specific as the handset’s make, operating system, readers’ age group and general interest such as sports or business. Thus we can reach a lot of the world’s early adopters. I’m leaning toward using farce as the vehicle to make the message and branding instantly memorable, but that’s just my opinion. Who knows- maybe there’s a rea$on the TV stations always run hand-wringing ‘news’ stories.

I agree with all of this, and I like Rez’s idea about keeping people’s fears of being labelled a “boondoggle” in mind as we push for win/win solutions.

i like jokes/farce combined with online marketing as a way to support pro-fusion lobbying or demonstrations. . . i also like piggybacking off of larger fossil fuel ad campaigns (including “Let’s Go” and chevron’s recent rebranding attempt). but i think if we really want to get lots of people on board, we have to be thoughtful and targeted, and we have to give them more centralized ways of participating and supporting fusion . . . via letter-writing or something else.

imo if we could create a video telling the “story” behind all of this fusion drama, then maybe people could get their minds around why we are where we are when it comes to fusion. a youtube video could go a long way, or doing a full-length indie documentary could help get the word out. this could make for some high drama! and it could be done while correcting everyone’s assumptions about fusion . .. ie that its hundreds of years off, it could lead to more nuclear waste, it could be used for worse weapons, etc.

maybe if we start making noise politically then folks might start to take fusion’s potential more seriously?

[Aeronaut]

I like the indie documentary approach. The 60 minutes story on the Bloom Box did wonders for their broad public exposure. Without that type of broad exposure, which heavily influences Google Trends, we’re pretty much stuck in the niche marketing approach, where it will take a lot of time to find the right keywords and then place above the fold against the dot gov and dot edu sites with thousands of pages of somewhat relevant content.

[Ivy Matt]

If I were an indie film director I would jump at the chance to film the LPP story. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be the story of the century, it has enough twists and turns, triumphs and disappointments, and even controversy (BBNH; the A&M paper) to make for a good science story. (Not that I feel that controversy is essential, but when you’ve got it, you might as well mention it.) Of course, it would have been best to begin filming a year or two ago. That said, in the absence of a full-time documentary crew, I think Rezwan, Aaron, and Derek have done a pretty good job documenting the story.

However, even if there’s no professionally edited as-it-happens documentary forthcoming, I’d still like to see something sort of like The Soul of a New Machine written for an innovative confinement concept. I guess that’s more up my alley, although I’ve never published anything, let alone won a Pulitzer Prize. ;-P

[Aeronaut]

Publishing is simple, it’s ignoring the Pulitzer potential (most of the time, lol) that can be challenging. $50 will buy 5,000 clicks, and at a 20% click through rate, that’s 25,000 viewers of at least your title line. Nothing wrong with controversy, as long as the facts are accurate.

[Ivy Matt]

The only reason I brought up the Pulitzer Prize is because The Soul of a New Machine won it—deservedly, in my opinion. It was Tracy Kidder’s second full-length book. His first full-length book was a critical flop. Perhaps I should write a flop before I try my hand at something fusion-related. 😉

I’m afraid I don’t know much about publishing, less about marketing, but isn’t a 20% click through rate highly optimistic?

Sorry for drawing things a bit off-topic, but while I’m talking about books, has anyone else heard of The Green Flame? It looks like it could be fascinating and useful, if a bit pessimistic regarding the handling of boranes. Unfortunately, it’s out of print, and it currently goes for $145 used on Amazon.

[Brian H]

Ivy Matt wrote: The only reason I brought up the Pulitzer Prize is because The Soul of a New Machine won it—deservedly, in my opinion. It was Tracy Kidder’s second full-length book. His first full-length book was a critical flop. Perhaps I should write a flop before I try my hand at something fusion-related. 😉

I’m afraid I don’t know much about publishing, less about marketing, but isn’t a 20% click through rate highly optimistic?

Sorry for drawing things a bit off-topic, but while I’m talking about books, has anyone else heard of The Green Flame? It looks like it could be fascinating and useful, if a bit pessimistic regarding the handling of boranes. Unfortunately, it’s out of print, and it currently goes for $145 used on Amazon.

I wonder whether the author of that book and site might be interested in contributing or consulting on the decaborane issue. Sounds like a ‘spert!

“Andrew Dequasie”

[Aeronaut]

Not even the film and recording industries can tell a hit from a flop. Numbers aren’t important at this point- they’re only guesses that mean nothing without the file(s) to sell. Thinking of your piece as a PDF report will help you a lot, since you can drop all the hidden pre-conceptions that come with the word ‘book.’

[Rezwan]

FYI, for those of you interested in fusion policy and meeting Ed Synakowski et al, check out the new post on the NAS meeting on Inertial Fusion, Dec. 16.

[Francisl]

Maybe talk to a company like Siemens USA. They appear to be innovative, aggressive and say they are willing to try new things. Maybe they can provide equipment in place of or in addition to funding for projects.

[Francisl]

Fusion energy could help relieve the water shortage in the Southeastern U.S. by reprocessing water or by desalinization. Maybe the governors from that region can find some money to help LPPX.

[Author]

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