[Aeronaut]

US corporations are having a very tough time deploying capital, so they let it pile up in the savings account to the tune of roughly a trillion dollars while environmental laws and common business sense dictate the need to get more out of every unit of energy. When you look at the economy in 4 to 5 sectors from extraction, processing, transportation, manufacturing, and services, transportation is the common element, and transportation requires energy. Thus energy is a compounded expense category with enormous payoff potential relative to a fixed long-term R&D program.

Where financial prudence says to budget 10% or less per position, 5% is far better, so why not put a number like .1% of currently investable profits? Besides, its probably tax-deductible for almost any corporation.

Something else that’s hidden right out in plain sight is the Inc Magazine 500 List. Nearly 300 of those companies on the current list have grown in excess of 1,000% (!) over the past 3 years. And they’re privately owned, which translates into a far less restrictive decision-making process than in a public corporation.

[Aeronaut]

I like Johan’s points about the Plasma Power tag and a model around 16 to 32 inches across (1/12 to 1/6 scale more or less). A button to push, some LEDs showing where the action is at that phase, and a jackpot type of payoff display- maybe all the LEDS flash in crazy patterns for a second or two.

Plasma Power reminds me of Fluid Power, which the hydraulics industry uses to clean up an image that could also be perceived as oily and leaky. Neutrons alone took too much effort for me to get my head around.

To summarize, think in terms of ultimate end user benefits, package them so the auto industry can easily see how to sell that package, and leave the techie stuff to FF.

[Aeronaut]

zapkitty wrote:

Automakers’ R&D budgets are driven to a very large extent by trying to balance muscle-mobiles with their Corporate Average Fuel Economy (and the implied air pollution) laws. Thus a $100M investment could let them build whatever sells, such as Ego-Boost. This enough to build, staff, and operate over 50 LPP clones per year, a more than respectable Maintenance Of Effort on the auto industry’s part. And it’s enough to get a lot of good press.

… an electric SUV? 🙂

And pickup trucks and muscle cars. The real key to it may turn out to be the ubiquity of top-off charging stations, rather than theoretical range per charge. At least one company is already making some headway selling chargers to parking garages as part of the newer, smarter, grid.

[Aeronaut]

Automakers’ R&D budgets are driven to a very large extent by trying to balance muscle-mobiles with their Corporate Average Fuel Economy (and the implied air pollution) laws. Thus a $100M investment could let them build whatever sells, such as Ego-Boost. This enough to build, staff, and operate over 50 LPP clones per year, a more than respectable Maintenance Of Effort on the auto industry’s part. And it’s enough to get a lot of good press.

[Aeronaut]

Welcome to FFS. Some neon transformers are rated in the 30kV range. Judging from the FFS gallery pix, FoFu’s chamber walls look to be roughly 15mm or thicker stainless steel tubing. There’s a pic around here somewhere of the world’s smallest DPF which can give you some more insight into designing the vacuum chamber. Good luck with your project!

[Aeronaut]

Ivy Matt wrote: EMC2’s latest report, for the first quarter of 2011, can be found here. The relevant part of the report is as follows:

As of 1Q/2011, the WB-8 device operates as designed and it is generating positive results. EMC2 is planning to conduct comprehensive experiments on WB-8 in the next 9-12 months based on the current contract funding schedule.

So, it appears the project is not dead, although there are questions regarding whether or not it is behind schedule. Apparently it will continue to be funded, and there will be further reports. The big question of whether the scaling has been found to agree with Dr. Bussard’s theoretical models does not appear to have been answered yet. Or maybe it has. It all depends on how you interpret “operates as designed” and “positive results”.

If the project is on schedule, testing with hydrogen-boron fuel will begin on or after October 31 this year. However, a possible interpretation of the above report is that testing with hydrogen-boron fuel will not begin for at least another 9 months to a year, as the WB-8 device was designed for testing with deuterium fuel.

Too bad P/W’s a political football. Reminds me of the Johnny Cash song “I got it one piece at a time…”. IOW, I’m expecting every check to specify precisely how little is expected.

[Aeronaut]

YordanGeorgiev wrote:

Anyway would superconductivity ( if affordable ) add benefits to your equipment …

Should help with our coils and transformers, but will definitely be heaven-sent for the P/W and CBFR groups’ magnets. Outstanding sig line, btw.

[Aeronaut]

Military aviation didn’t wait for the Wright brothers, and even today it’s a tiny percentage of aviation. I’m sure the same will hold for space travel, as long as we can keep the Spice Guild from forming their monopoly.

[Aeronaut]

Based on googling “how are molding machines cooled?”, you’ll find an entire industry dedicated to throwing away excess heat as quickly as possible. I submit that we have a much larger cooling system budget than we’ve been thinking, and that plant owners will even expect to see that type of auxiliary equipment near their DPF generators.

[Aeronaut]

High ground is a strategic advantage that the military will not willingly yield.

[Aeronaut]

zapkitty wrote: Still smells cheesy to me, but working with the given assumptions…

Getting past the translation errors and obvious typos… apparently a standard 10 kwt “E-cat” unit can be expected to produce 3 to 3.5 kwe (an optimistic assumption given that it’s a very low grade heat source) and that 3.5 kwe would be 3.1 kwe net as it’s supposed to take ~400 watts to run the unit. The cost is supposed to be $2000 per kwt so a standard 10 kwt unit would cost $20,000 US.

So an E-cat array capable of producing 5 mwe would need 1428.57 units… call it 1429 units at a cost of $28,580,000

For comparison a 5 mwe FF unit is hoped to come in at ~$300,000 and comparative costs per kw/h are similarly disproportionate even given the varied estimates for FF.

So with these assumptions, and if the tech pans out, would the E-cat unit be better than fossil fuels? Hell yes, and on several fronts.

But in a market with multiple fusion sources working FF or Polywell units would beat E-cat easily in economics at the subdivision or town scale and up… and FF at least is aiming at the same sort of distributed market as E-cat.

Rossi steps hard on the idea of selling to the individual home market, which is good if only because our lords and masters would kill outright if they thought that was a possibility, but at these figures such micro-marketing may the only venue where E-cat could compete with FF or PW.

But it sure would be nice to have the choices, wouldn’t it? 🙂

I’ll believe it if I see it. Beginning with next month’s announcement. Will he provide ordering information? That sort of question. Until then, anybody can get some publicity, so only working hardware coming from a production facility through some sort of distribution network matters in my opinion. Assuming he overcomes that reality check, his price and the FF price you cited above are FOB factory. A more accurate cost for either is going to involve sales channel and other expenses, such as financing, to arrive at a true installed price for any given installation.

10kW caught my eye because that’s enough to run my house on. And even if it cost $30k installed, that’s on par with solar, but without the uglification factor of the array or the current local wiring infrastructure, which FF will not be able to eliminate on its own. If Rossi really does produce, that would expand my view of practical clean energy possibilities to Rossi for small scale installations (residential is the most obvious), FF for smaller businesses, and PolyWell for dense, large-scale applications such as defending the Status Quo.

But hearing “lords and masters” and/or conspiracy theory is a dead give-away that somebody hasn’t done their homework about how the system works, why it works that way, and why any emerging technology needs to fit itself within that system. This doesn’t mean sell out. It means design lots of ways for existing energy providers and distributors to look good and profit more by doing the right thing in our opinion. I outlined this last year on the FaceBook discussions tab.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: OK, I added the “action blurb” (design note: we need to make those more visually distinctive and build the theme through the website. Lots of actions to coordinate).

Also, a while back I set up a wiki – and mentioned it in a post, but nothing seemed to come of it. Here is that link again, perhaps this is a place to use for working on educational documents. https://focusfusion.org/index.php/wiki

FYI, we are in the middle of coming up with a grant proposal on making an educational module for focus fusion, in which we put it in context with other approaches – a hyperlinked knowledge map, with room to grow. Using our approach to FF as a model that other fusion alternatives can use. The outline we’re developing is pretty useful. I’ll put that up and then we can work to fill in the content and expand the themes.

Great strategic move. Back in the 80’s, Intel processors were by far the easiest ones to get detailed information about- so they earned top of the mind status in an entire generation of engineers.

[Aeronaut]

zapkitty wrote: Myself, I’d think just LPPX-1. The final objective of LPPX-1 has been defined as the validation of boron fusion and that still lies ahead.

The basic design of the experiment still holds and the new switches will be just doing what the original specifications called for.

I agree. We’ve refined the machine’s high voltage sub-system to properly support the pb-11 experiments. Part of FF’s appeal to me is the simple elegance. Why detract from that- and confuse new readers- by tracking every last bug fix in the machine’s public name? We can track all of that trivia in an errata thread or something similar.

[Aeronaut]

Why not use a clip from the Bogart movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre- “Doan need no wasteful steam” ?

[Aeronaut]

Which implied context(s) must the viewer be upset by? Also, the call to action is too vague imo.

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