[Aeronaut]

Why not use the cap bank as a semi-automatic rail gun and skip the explosives altogether?

[Aeronaut]

Something to keep in mind is that this bird operates along several gradients: 1G to virtually no G; atmosphere to vacuum; mass of propellant remaining onboard are the obvious ones. Skin and frame temperatures may be another. There may be a specific flight profile which minimizes required mass (mainly of propellant and its storage).

[Aeronaut]

vansig wrote: Some of these materials, boron nitride included, have intriguing semi-conductive properties. Cheap large-scale fabrication is the key, and the use of something simple like ultrasound could definitely help, quite a bit.

Plastic molding plants are abundant over here. We weld with ultrasound, and some of the sputtering target coating machines we use might lend themselves to layering onions- if you can keep the onion cool enough in operation.

[Aeronaut]

The real story here is between the lines. It’s about how CBS gave them a story on their 60 Minutes program, which was designed to sell this device. The combination of theory, production plant, (ok, they only showed part of the factory-maybe the tech/QA section), and list of customers was very impressive. And it got a lot of searches the next morning, according to Google Trends. Editorial content in mainstream media sure beats advertising!

[Aeronaut]

Ever work somewhere that adds value to plastic flakes by molding them into parts? They use some impressively HD cooling water chillers, which presents a bleak outlook for TE recovery. But those places are ‘self-heating’.

[Aeronaut]

It’s an engineering priority in this phase. The main focus of the LPP experiment is to prove that pB-11 fusion can be reliably achieved while producing more joules of energy than it takes to initiate.

[Aeronaut]

Thanx for noticing, Arvid. I’m 53, and if I wait for the existing organizations to provide the vehicles, I’ll never get into space. I’m looking for the space elevator, myself.

[Aeronaut]

No problem, Nosmoke. Lee’s program is designed to teach plasma physics in countries that lack the budget to build tokamaks. Their main use seems to be making X-rays for integrated circuit wafer plant photolithography. Lerner designed FoFu-1 specifically as the third and final scaling experiment to verify his and Aaron B’s theory that the DPF could fuse hydrogen and boron-11 for commercial power generation. Our chief advantage over the other pB-11 designs is that we don’t need to build electromagnets. We may also have something of an edge in detail of the theory, but that’s just my speculation.

Yes, the ion beam is fusion products, rather than either of the fuel ions.

I’d like to see the 5MW expressed as lower voltage and higher current, but we have to work with what the plasmoid and coils send us. Maybe some smoke and mirrors with paralleled coils and or phase shifting?

[Aeronaut]

Welcome to FocusFusion, NoSmoke. I’ll try to answer the questions I can, and let others fill in the physics parts.

We’re currently burning D-D to confirm that the machine and sensors are working correctly and reliably, as well as proving as much of the theory as practical in the known regime of D-D fusion. But the fuel of choice is pB-11, make no mistake. Like the PolyWell’s venetian blinds, our coil is likely going to be handling some incredible voltages on every single pulse. Fortunately, 5MW at 1MV works out to only 5A, which should help somewhat.

The low energy neutrons are still dangerous, since they drill through flesh just like their high-powered counterparts, which do have the energy to make cells radioactive. These low energy neutrons from the aneutronic fusion side reactions can be shielded to less than background radiation levels using a 1 meter water jacket surrounded by 10cm of boron-10, covered by a few cm of lead. The shielded version would not need much more floorspace than the test rig, except in production units we’d need to add some serious vacuum pumps and power conditioning circuitry. Figure a 2 stall garage with a high ceiling.

In any given machine cycle, the p and B-11 ions are crushed into a near-solid form by the collapsing magnetic field, into what we call the plasmoid- a microscopic magnetic bubble which heats and compresses the fuel gasses into the range where fusion pretty much has to happen if science and theory are both right. This eliminates most of the individual fuel ions, replacing them with the helium ion beam and the electron beam leaving the decaying plasmoid from opposing ends, as directed by the magnetic field. The electron beam is somewhat imaginary, since it is absorbed by the plasmoid, further heating it.

Didn’t know that p-N14 was an option- can’t remember seeing any threads discussing it.

[Aeronaut]

I agree with tcg’s basic premise, and will extend it to my conclusion that we need to develop the infrastructure of companies that will profit enormously by supplying and servicing a mass market for garage-sized fusion generators which can power villages, at prices that almost any business can afford. The political clout of that much of the economy is enormous- and could be more than enough to overcome that of the old-line energy special interests and the greenies who clean up cleaning up after the staus quo. The longer the timeframe, the surer the balance of power can shift, until it reaches the tipping point.

[Aeronaut]

Mining the moon makes no sense to me, although governments have eco-political needs to fund enormous projects which produce impressive images showing how hard it is to do anything (that wasn’t designed to be the most elegant solution to the publicly stated problem).

As for mining asteroids, I’d go to them rather than try to figure out the laws of unintended circumstances regarding moving new and significant masses into earth orbit. Besides, that kind of mobility will open up the space travel and vacation industries. Been waiting for that all my life.

[Aeronaut]

Let’s start with the lack of translations to any of the world’s technical languages, and proceed through the lack of theory to arrive at potential financial motivations. Part of the reason Wall Street’s been in trouble stems from selling concepts which turned out to have untraceable collateral. To paraphrase Jamesr, if he can show me the land (or the legal description of it), I’m in a better position to see if it might be of use to me.

[Aeronaut]

zapkitty wrote:

I thought ‘less than friendly neighbor’ meant drastically limiting shielding mass…

For the concept that I wandered off exploring the FF cores are the thrusters. But that involves passing the alpha beams through the shielding

The only hazard in that concept would be if you were directly behind the ship… but that would get very unhealthy very fast. Thus the cost of doing business with that design goes up equally fast.

And with the power available with FF we’re no longer at the stage of trying to reach orbit by any means possible.

The MHD research means that FF-powered supersonic jets can be done for far less MWe than I had thought… but there’s a ways to go from Mach 3 to orbit.

Doesn’t the alpha (of helium ions) moving at near lightspeed already pass through the shielding? A central core flanked by the remaining cores would only need about a 1 foot spacer in the front to get all the beams to converge where you want to heat the propellant. In that case, existing “Beware Jet Blast” signage should suffice, unless you want to add an image of Donald Duck getting blown *ss over tea kettle.

What might happen if we approached this from ionizing atmospheric nitrogen for the MHD? That’s the bulk of a turbojet engine’s reaction mass. All the oxygen does is make the fuel combustible.

[Aeronaut]

I thought ‘less than friendly neighbor’ meant drastically limiting shielding mass…

[Aeronaut]

jamesr wrote: I ‘m inclined to share this viewpoint from the article:

One comment in the forum contained a message from Steven E. Jones, a contemporary of Pons and Fleishmann, who wrote, “Where are the quantitative descriptions of these copper radioisotopes? What detectors were used? Have the results been replicated by independent researchers? Pardon my skepticism as I await real data.”

I think this thread deserves to be moved to the noise & ZPE category

Seconded.

[Author]

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