[Aeronaut]

Now that they have the most powerful laser(s) on the planet, and presumably the mirrors to control the output, I guess it’s safe to aim at fusion. should they actually achieve ignition, what might happen to their chamber? Also, have they any idea how to capture and use all that glorious heat? If so, is that part of the 3.5 to 5G$ already budgeted?

[Aeronaut]

MTd2 wrote:

To understand how this works, you have to understand that charged particles like to follow magnetic lines. If there is no external magnetic field to guide the ions and electrons, they converge in a chaotic mess when the filaments combine, losing energy in the process. .

The LPP site says that the intensity of that magnetic field has the magnitude of earth’s, which is 0.5 gauss. The converging filaments is like an infinite solenoid. But the one inside the solenoid, near the equilibrium point, goes up to 1.2 billion gauss, that is 9 orders of magnitude higher and any bending of the solenoid would create a non-zero radial, whose projection on the perpendicular could locally disturb the guiding magnetic field. In this case, there would be chaos.

I still don’t see a solution for that.

The 12GG field is the fuel and energy containment field, which would be produced by any DPF designed to be operated in the 2MA to 3MA input current range. The angular momentum coil is an entirely separate coil, hence the much lower strength. It can be likened to rifling a gun’s barrel to impart a stabilizing spin.

[Aeronaut]

tcg wrote: This makes a lot of sense, especially with regard to the several smaller projects like LPP which labor mightily with little notice. A positive attitude here would allow an important spirit of cooperation and some mutual benefit. However, would the same apply to the “money into black hole” projects like NIF and the Tokamak? When the NIF finally gets ignition, the emotion I would be suppressing would sound like “better late than never — and this cost you how much?” I suppose I could suck it up and grin, passing along a “well done” if it would help, but would they even notice?

May I suggest dry wit, delivered straight faced on YouTube, followed by tweets and other social media posts linking to the video? Since the big boys will definitley use a press release, and big media will copy it, those are the keywords to put into your congratulatory video.

Yes, the high road is strategically the best path, no matter who crosses energy breakeven line first. But never forget that theoretical breakeven and practical breakeven are not necessarily going to the same project, or even the same fuel group or confinement method. We got us a real horse race, and I’m wondering if the aneutronic gang just might be forcing the others to get with the program.

[Aeronaut]

Sorry, Brian. The basic cycling speed is going to be limited by the basic design parameter of the critical speed, which translates directly into length of the axial phase. Since we won’t be able to appreciably shorten the electrodes in this timeframe, I’d be looking for ~1khz PRF.

Are you sure it’s going to stand up to X-ray bombardment in the anode? If yes, will it be installed below the skin effect depth?

Other than those questions, there are a lot of parts like the pumps, vacuum housing, and caps that can be partially powered this way. I saw an ad in Green Manufacturing (?) magazine last week for an industrial air compressor which, under certain circumstances, could recover 100% of the electrical input as compressed air and heat. I’ll give them more like 80% to 95%. The ingenuity came from using the waste heat to make hot water.

Whodathunk? 😆

[Aeronaut]

The machine was designed for 12 caps and switches, laid out to deliver the power to the anode symmetrically. This means that if even 1 switch is out of spec, it should be balanced by unhooking the counterpart directly across from it. Thinking of it as a 12 cylinder race car, are you planning to race without your machine working precisely as designed? While it can be done, you know it’s going to cost more than it should.

[Aeronaut]

Langley blew a bunch of his capital on engine development before he had working lift or control systems. The Wright brothers built their theory and experiential base using gliders. This may cross into the fusion arena as the debate about electromagnets vs self-induced magnetic containment fields.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

The current issue of Forbes reports that close to a hundred billion dollars worth of investments moved from money market funds to government bonds over the last year or so. …

Just as an aside, that’s awful news. Pulling money out of the private markets and putting it into the public purse reduces its multiplier effectiveness by at least ½.

I can’t help but thinking of that much flowing power as heat or steam moving around a system without doing useful work. :grrr:

[Aeronaut]

MTd2 wrote: But the report said there was something already to be reported.

They’re going to need to know that the machine reliably fires all 12 caps within the required timeframe before anything else is going to matter in the big picture of repeatability. There are also newer sensors in the diagnostic suite which must be calibrated in order to cross-check results several different ways. Only then will the new frontiers of 2 to 3 MA, HMFE and or pB-11 become a reasonable series of experiments.

[Aeronaut]

I like the idea of a professionally researched and written white paper which would explore the costs vs potential benefits to arrive at the price, talent, resources required and the various side benefits which each technology examined could provide, but which haven’t been able to be heard in the mainstream. Properly promoted, this could be a blockbuster.

Now, about doing anything useful within 20 years, you’re going to need a new breed of entrepreneur who has nothing to lose by betting on changing the world’s energy supplies. Such an entrepreneur realizes that his or her $250 to $500 startup can and should be designed to grow into a new Palo Alto Research Center, for instance.

We need a new rulebook, iow, where innovation is rewarded.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote: They aren’t even using enough D & T to achieve it this time.

It’s hard not to resent $5bn being blown on this kind of mega-Rube Goldberg contraption when 0.1% of that would have had FF over the top years ago.

The common denominator in government fusion programs is that they’re designed to produce headlines, photo-ops, and link bait rather than useful results for real people. Something like welfare for physicists.

[Aeronaut]

From the LPP site: Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc.
40 Ridge Drive
Berkeley Heights, NJ 07922

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

…

that depends on the size of the wire. if 50 ns is the needed rise time (= 1/2 wave, ie: 10MHz), and you can tolerate a .006 ohm resistance, the skin effect limits the wire dimensions (in copper, ρ = R·Area / length = 1.68×10^−8 Ω·m; skin depth= 20.5 μm @10MHz) to a length no more than 7.2 x the circumference.
…

So, per the formula, a 1″ wire connector could be only a bit less than 2′ long. Tight quarters! The caps would be in a tight ring around the vacuum chamber, I think.

I’d build the ring to minimize distance to the anode, where it exits the base plate, which is at the high voltage system’s ground potential. The extreme is to build with a single cap.

[Aeronaut]

Looks great!

[Aeronaut]

What would Tesla have done? At what points were the machine tool trade and understanding of the quasar sufficient to build one? Could it have been physically built in Maxwell’s day?

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: Nervous to try. What is this app supposed to do? A line or two describing it would be useful. Thanks!

App now has 2 contexts- the original applet, and the newer mobile phone-oriented alternative which can work like a website, PDF file (this app is a quick overview of FF’s aspirations and boilerplate).

I agree with the clunkyness and other hassles of the download process. This program seems to make a better outliner than it does a communication media. Thanx for the feedback.

[Author]

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