[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: There are many excellent fusion websites out there. These Fusion Program Notes, for example.

Things needed for a fusion info website:
Compiling the notes (feeds, microformat issues)
Analyzing the news for our audience,
putting things in context,
translating for a lay audience
Summarizing
drawing out highlights
Publishing said content processing.

What’s the workflow? What tools are needed? How can the website be improved as a platform for this use?

How scalable is this? Note, you’d want to begin with DPF news, from LPPX and from other DPF’s around the world, and feed in Aneutronic news. The process would be similar for any other layer of fusion news thereafter. NIF news, ITER news. ICC news…

We could set it up as departments, and a department would only get going if an editor for that department steps up. Or if others who are broadcasting have set it up for easy feed into our and other websites.

Thoughts?

An RSS aggregating homepage could be a huge headstart. I know there’s several WordPress ways to publish RSS, and a great many sites are built using WP as the CMS.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: Not talking about Focus Fusion Society, the nonprofit here. That has different revenue streams: member donations, foundations, etc. This is about fusion research funding. Anyone have a link to a delineation of the usual and unusual sources of funding for bold tech ventures?

In the unusual category, you’d be educating tomorrow’s entrepreneurs so that they build at least one fortune that helps fusion with funding and possibly engineering & technology. This is the backup scenario which assumes that today’s sources don’t pan out.

[Aeronaut]

Good question, Tulse. I don’t remember seeing a similar thread. I’d guess that the capacitor would be the limiting factor. From Google:

Electrolytic capacitor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The ancestor of the modern electrolytic capacitor was patented by Julius Lilienfeld in 1926. Lilienfeld’s design resembled that of a silver mica capacitor, …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor

[Aeronaut]

Visualizing the timeline as a horse race, the crowd’s going to cheer as each horse crosses the finish line. Each cheer is the publicity that goes with that group’s breakthrough.

[Aeronaut]

We may well end up addressing a dozen super-niches with a dozen or more messages about a universal need: cheap, clean energy. Sounds easy enough, given the universality of the mainbenefit.

So the current logo addresses a few segments of society, investor greed could be another, clean water another, and so on.

[Aeronaut]

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. A portrait of the future could be investing in the fusion infrastructure to leverage existing positions in electric car infrastructure and smart grid supply companies.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote: In principle, any over-unity fusion would be good. But the prospective implementation costs for each are part of the package, and it isn’t even really a contest. FF has by far the best costing prospects.

It seems unfair to deprive FF and LPP of a dedicated cheering section to try and be a Big Tent for fusion, though! It’s not as though the others don’t have their own followers and promoters. Encouraging communication and co-operation is realistic; attempting to be all things to all parties is not.

Underlying all is the implicit/explicit competition for resources (mostly but not solely money, of course) for research and development. It’s pretty hard to fudge on that issue!

Where’s the competition? In stealth mode, which eliminates public scheduling, budgeting,and resource allocation issues. Even PR will be phased if FF achieves unity in 2010 or the first half of 2011. So we’re already one of the cheering sections for aneutronic fusion. Talk-polywell.org is another. Too bad tri-alpha doesn’t have one.

[Aeronaut]

Tulse wrote:

success in one fusion endeavor would breed it everywhere.

I very much doubt that’s true for Big Fusion if LPP or EMC2 or Tri-Alpha or General Fusion or any of the other low-cost “alt-fusion” approaches succeed. Who is going to pay tens of billions for a huge facility to do what someone has accomplished for a few million in the equivalent of a garage?

The big budgets are consumed by cryogenic electromagnets, which give Polywell and the CBFR the ability to scale output with magnet size. Since Polywell’s funding is from the US Navy, they’d rather make 50MW or whatever a ship’s type needs using a single plant rather than stack 5MW to 25MW modules.

Win for all, and all for win.

[Aeronaut]

I’d add one: Don’t be in a hurry to quit your day job

[Aeronaut]

Where it’s going is that non of us needs proof of accomplishment to sell the program. At least I don’t since I’m neither a scientist or formal board member. I recommend we come up with at least a dozen logos to split-test.

What I’m selling is jobs in the info-marketing sector. Out of all the gazillions of possible niches to build marketing funnels around, are a few labeled aneutronic fusion.

[Aeronaut]

No, it’s not a logo. Truly sorry. Btw, is there a rating for this site? PG? PG-13? R? Even erudite sophisticated slobs exhibit physical changes when shown certain types of images which are far more suggestive than they look.

Emotion sells. Logic justifies. When logic can’t back up the impulse buy, the sale is lost. The ivory castle of proof before funding collapses in a heap of overly self-aware introspection.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: OK, I’m hearing what you don’t like, but until we come up with something else, we’ll go with this.

So – some ideas. For fusion in general, we could incorporate DT’s equation and intertwine it? 2 planes of equations?

Or something completely different and abstract? Or apparently abstract until you think about it deeply – which will be even more confusing for we humble masses?

It’s fine with me to use the “nuclear peace” symbol in specific contexts.

Show me some designs, I’m standing by : )

And I think some previous submissions are out there. I will round them up and put them in this forum.

TCG hit the nail square on the head for west Michigan, as well. Show them something like the specter of winter heating bills being divided by 20, followed by trimming that much fat off of next summer’s A/C bills (and perhaps all the vices which they could “afford” as a result), and you just might net them by the shipload.

[Aeronaut]

Great thread. The vacuum system is probably going to be 3 phase power, with single phase for the cap bank charger. But from the first shot on, we’re going to need to deal with 8MWt regardless of operating frequency at that point.

Eric mentions in the patent that the preferred pulse freq is ~1 khz to keep the fuel ionized. Also, if we can offer 5MWe in the package of 2, and do it for only slightly higher cost, I’d expect the existing market to be very interested in The Clean Machine.

[Aeronaut]

vansig wrote:

What’s the creep temperature for a generic stainless steel?

this 1972 westinghouse patent seems like a good place to compare different steels: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3635769.html

interestingly,
operating temperature for the hot side of the heat engine in a CANDU fission reactor is said to be 290 °C. That leads to ~33% efficiency.
— http://www.wordiq.com/definition/CANDU_reactor

Apparently the biggest problem with using steam is boiler system corrosion. — http://www.gewater.com/handbook/boiler_water_systems/ch_11_preboiler.jsp

Do we really need to boil the working fluid to get high efficiency?

[Aeronaut]

Agreed, Keith. Proven science and engineering is definitely the place to start when nobody even knows about aneutronic fusion. Anybody with a winter heating bill can appreciate the use of heat. The commercial electricity can come second and will almost certainly have to.

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