[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

The reason I mentioned PERT was to force you to acknowledge the existence of nodes: events which MUST occur before others can proceed. I think you are hand-waving away a number of them. Properly done PERT would force you to confront that.

So which comes first- the ion conversion or x-ray conversion? I see both subsystems as being subject to continuous R&D;and improvement, even decades after the first FF ships. At fewer than five shots most hours (allows for data to be matched against projections, parts to be swapped and measured, etc.), a perfect cooling system is not needed at that point. Establishing and improving on baselines for these three critical systems will eventually raise steady output power to the 5MW (nominal) that we’re expecting.

Engineering, like politics, is the art of managing tradeoffs. I like the number 5MW (nominal), but I’m sure it will sell like hotcakes at only 1MW (nominal). The point I want to make is that we will never have a perfect machine, so if another year of engineering only adds a few percentage points, what was the rest of the world’s gain?

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: And I’m still not convinced that Religion is just a pretext in many cases. Or ideology. There’s this “uber alles” thing going on with people. I’m not sure people are that rational. There’s an imp in the works.

The reason for war always traces back to one or a few people who want what is not rightfully theirs. Everything else is packaging the idea so it can be sold to enough people to get group-think to kick in. No matter how enlightened the human race would like to see itself, the primitive part of the brain is still the decision maker.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Optimist that I am, a commercial prototype in 2012 is not out of the question.

Regarding “real marketing”, it can take a while to raise a megabuck. Asset(s) may need selling, corporate boards need to be sold on the overwhelming need, etc. Marketing is all about creating desire. PlayStation debuts are an excellent example of whipping the market into a pre-availability frenzy. 😉

I’m not sure where you trim that extra year, or why it’s so urgent for you. We’re still talking lightspeed here compared to any other competitive initiatives. Not that “competition” is a problem. Whenever FF comes onstream, its economics will RULE!

Are you familiar with PERT/critical path charting? It seems to me you might benefit from drawing one up and passing it by Eric and Rezwan. I think you would find it very enlightening and useful.
Yes, I know PERT charts as flow-charting. Actually I think I’ll do PERT and Ghantt charts. Thanks for mentioning that. My site needs graphics to improve skimability and visual appeal while cutting the word count.

Lightspeed is measured FOB for my purposes (implies a sale was made). Have you read a book called “From steam engines to search engines- They made America”? Its not about the inventions that made the 19th and 20th centuries as much as the innovators who got the technologies to market. Asaferinstance, Google did not invent the search engine, Billy Bob didn’t invent the GUI or multi-threaded operating system, and Fulton was not the man who got steam into small boats.

Success is measured in results delivered to a hungry market.

[Aeronaut]

Optimist that I am, a commercial prototype in 2012 is not out of the question.

Regarding “real marketing”, it can take a while to raise a megabuck. Asset(s) may need selling, corporate boards need to be sold on the overwhelming need, etc. Marketing is all about creating desire. PlayStation debuts are an excellent example of whipping the market into a pre-availability frenzy. 😉

[Aeronaut]

Stealing land for its own sake will never go out of style, unfortunately.

[Aeronaut]

Lerner wrote: Aeronaut,

Is your site on line? If so, what is the URL? You may be running into a problem. As we discovered, it is not legal in the US to raise investment funds on the web unless your security is registered with the SEC (publicly traded). So please, don’t do that! We can raise charity for FFS over the web, but not investments.

Also, we can’t achieve our goals by Dec 2009 because we will not be running at all with pB11 this year. Got to walk before we run.

Eric

Eric,

Thanx for the legal and testing details. Yes, the site is up at http://subatomicprecision.com . I’m aiming at soliciting social support for FF and linking to LPP for more details, such as device, business plan, etc.

Rats. I was hoping the deuterium phase would only run for a week, possibly a month to confirm projections rather than further investigate the deuterium, but I forgot LPP’s x-ray and neutron bath projects.

[Aeronaut]

Yepper, I’m an optimist, and Eric is a scientist. I’m guessing that we may see unity just in time for the new year. Maybe- just maybe- unity will bring alumni out of the woodwork to fund replication machines, but I’m hedging that bet by looking for somebody with the vision and faith to commit before unity. An unsigned Sir Richard will do just fine.

I’ve worked in stamping plants, and I can tell you for a fact that a thousand or more foils of varying thicknesses would be a logistical and assembly nightmare. CVD would knock the engineering down to the ion recovery tube/coil imho.

[Aeronaut]

There’s a tricky interaction here based on the facts that (almost) everybody knows at least 100 people, and that birds of a feather flock together. In this case, the pols get the early heads-up, pass it on to their business friends who fear they’ll need a break on carbon taxes, then I test the copy by buying visitors from StumbleUpon’s business sections.

AFAIK there is only one existing DPF large enough to even think about replicating. I think it safer and more productive to find the right personality type to invest as much as 1M$ to get 2 machines and campuses ready to confirm. This psychology is the all-important ice-breaker- like the first guy to cross the gym to get the dance started.

Sustained output? I’m not sure why the engineering phase would start with anything less than a solid promise of an operational ignition and control system happily pulsing in a repeatable manner.

[Aeronaut]

All I’m after right now is lining up the early adopters who will get the snowball rolling downhill so there is an aftermarket and huge public interest.

My current working headline is “Psst- can you keep a secret?”. The new copy is aimed squarely at visionary leaders with the balls to invest 1M$ in lining up 2 or more state universities to rapidly confirm breakeven, before the proof, so that they can lead the way into Industrial Revolution 3.0 . I’m also suggesting that a license and plant could cost less than 50M$ for very well-qualified licensees. That may be priced too low for credibility.

[Aeronaut]

Very well said, Brian.

I still haven’t topped and tailed the copy, so it’s a good time to inject scarcity, urgency, insider knowledge type excitement. Above all else, it has to be a very good read to go viral. Maybe I’ll tell the story like a Western, where the hero, in hot pursuit, has to switch horses to overtake the quarry and save the day. The longer it takes to switch horses, the greater the risk…

Eric, precisely how much of the system is covered by a manufacturing license? Senator Stabenow (D-Mi) mentioned that a wind turbine has 8,000 parts, so I made a list including foils, capacitor plates, cables, fasteners, etc. that I could put on page 3 if only the vacuum chamber and its contents are protected by licensing. What I’d like to be able to present is the thriving aftermarket potential similar to the auto and computer parts aftermarkets.

The GM plant I’ve been eyeballing was on the news last night. It’s 2 million square feet, double my rough guess. If we make foils the hard way, this stamping plant was made to order. And We The People now officially own most of it.

[Aeronaut]

Lerner wrote: There are two main reasons. First, if we wait until the completion of this experiment to publicize FF and raise money for ther next phase, there will ineivitbaly be a gap and delay. Better we publicize now, paving the way for getting money either privately or from the government. Second, it is only reasonable to expect that there will be resistance to FF, even once proven, from a lot of powerful interests connected with existing energy sources. We need a broad educational effort to counter this resistance and that means a big organization. It will take years to organize that, so we better start now!

Hopefully we can skip the several years to public awareness part and get private donations to pay for the engineering phase in the process.

Part of the reason I set my site up the way I did is to pre-sell new visitors so they aren’t overwhelmed like I was for several months. Closely aligning with http://stabenow.senate.gov/infocus/index.htm is another.

The links are in my site now. A few more will be added when I re-proof tomorrow morning. You’re going to get a kick out of the venture capital and career path contextual links. Enjoy!

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

We DO want publicity–all the time and any time! We especially want some after the machine starts to operate.

Brian is right that there are many steps between starting the machine and demonstrating scientific feasibility. But we will be running initially with only deuterium, not with DT, which we don’t intend to use.

Thanks for weighing in, Eric! Please enlighten us what you hope to gain from early publicity, and whether you think my concerns about getting premature hassles or intervention are paranoid. Is it a matter of hoping to drive up the attractiveness and hence value of participation shares for the second tranche of development & investment?

Yes, please keep us up to date on what you need for publicity, Eric. My aim here is that everybody on the planet is eagerly anticipating FF solving all those problems. Politicians should see it as politically suicidal to oppose FF and/or its desired regulatory changes. Big business should take those cues (no political support for their status quo) as a clear signal to see if they qualify for a license (see the foreign aid paragraph). :bug:

[Aeronaut]

jowabea wrote: If the plasmoid is small enough, and perfectly located at the center of the chamber, wouldn’t all of the X-rays and neutrons have essentially the same point of origin, and a spherical chamber would guarantee pretty much a 90 degree exit angle?

What am I missing?

That’s pretty much what I was thinking, Jowabea, but this machine’s fine print involves a touch of quantum physics that prevent the x-rays from excessively cooling the plasmoid. This alters the flight plan, of course, since at least the x-rays leave hyperspace wherever they want to….

Also, the electrodes are around 13 inches long, so the geometry is more cylindrical than spherical.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Aero, I piled on with a supporting comment at Eco-Geeks after seeing Patrick Davis’ Feb/08 and your June1/09 comments.

Solutions
written by Brian H, July 01, 2009
Yes, Focus Fusion has enormous advantages, starting with being aneutronic and culminating with size and cost. It’s around 1/10 the capital and output expense of even the best alternatives mentioned here. And deployment beginning in 5 yrs. is possible. 7 at the outside if the p-B experiments are successful with a lab prototype by 2010.
It will solve at a stroke the Global Warming/Carbon problem, which does not exist, and the cheap energy and waste disposal problems, which do.

Couldn’t resist a Geek-tweak about AGW, as you notice. :cheese:

Thanx for reminding me of that post, Brian. I’d forgotten all about it. Now its been turned into a full-blown advertorial at http://subatomicprecision.com . Still got some fine points like linking and about pages, but the copy looks good enough (this took me three days so far) to start calling people who think they want to run for Governor and Congress in 2010.

After that comes a $50 stumble-upon campaign that will bring 1,000 visitors- enough to take it viral if I’ve done it right. After all, the six bullet points address how FF can solve the 6 thorniest problems the world says it needs to solve post-haste. :coolsmile:

You’re pretty much trying to cover all bases there! As you know, I have reservations and disagreements about 3 areas you’re keen to emphasize, though.
1) Timing of break-even experiments. AFAIK, Eric has not stated or confirmed that 2009 will see the first pB runs, much less break-even proof.
2) Heat capture; any equipment set up to do that would cost more than simply adding more FF generators to produce the same amount of heat with direct induction coils. Who would throw money away like that to capture low-level thermal waste?
3) Selling politicians and others in advance has marginal value at best, and severe possible downsides. The very last thing FF needs is for existing (political and economic) power brokers to highjack and gain influence and control. Their record of enlightened selfishness is very poor, at best.

Thanx for the quick response, Brian. Yes, I am trying to cover as many bases as I can. Here’s my reasoning thus far:
1) Jimmy T mentioned “Baby’s not due until Labor Day” in the naming contest, and I haven’t seen anybody else say otherwise. Granted, that sounds like physically completing the machine rather than beginning testing, but if all of your dreams were about to come true, wouldn’t you do at least one test shot that week? The important dates for my copy are the Primaries in August, 2010 and the elections in November, 2010. All my copy needs is the credible chance that FF could deliver a confirmation or two by election day.
2) Heat capture makes FF the only fusion reactor with practical uses (sorry- gotta add x-ray generator to the list) before reaching break-even. The Cap-And-Trade bill, HR-1759, is currently in a House committee, but when it resumes moving, greener boilers will look even better.
3) Phil’s Dad can help us with this point. I hate the word surprise, and I’ll bet all politicians do, too. If nothing else, I think of the phone campaign as a professional courtesy that can make sure FF is an open secret in Washington, with each candidate living in fear of being caught by the Media without a plan- or the commanding lead he’d held the day before. Right now we know nothing other than that we will need Very strong, determined Congressional support to get the NRC moving in our direction. Publicly surprising US Senators is a recipe for disaster.
3a) I’m going to follow the phone campaign with a Stumble-upon.com campaign to see if it goes viral. Who can say if it will until I present it? Bottom line is we need friends at all levels of society, and we can’t make them friends until they know what’s in it for them. A foreseeable time frame is great way to start, imho.
3b) If $50 is all it takes to make FF a household name in the sense of solving at least one problem in each household, I’d call that the deal of the century. 😉

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote: Aero, I piled on with a supporting comment at Eco-Geeks after seeing Patrick Davis’ Feb/08 and your June1/09 comments.

Solutions
written by Brian H, July 01, 2009
Yes, Focus Fusion has enormous advantages, starting with being aneutronic and culminating with size and cost. It’s around 1/10 the capital and output expense of even the best alternatives mentioned here. And deployment beginning in 5 yrs. is possible. 7 at the outside if the p-B experiments are successful with a lab prototype by 2010.
It will solve at a stroke the Global Warming/Carbon problem, which does not exist, and the cheap energy and waste disposal problems, which do.

Couldn’t resist a Geek-tweak about AGW, as you notice. :cheese:

Thanx for reminding me of that post, Brian. I’d forgotten all about it. Now its been turned into a full-blown advertorial at http://subatomicprecision.com . Still got some fine points like linking and about pages, but the copy looks good enough (this took me three days so far) to start calling people who think they want to run for Governor and Congress in 2010.

After that comes a $50 stumble-upon campaign that will bring 1,000 visitors- enough to take it viral if I’ve done it right. After all, the six bullet points address how FF can solve the 6 thorniest problems the world says it needs to solve post-haste. :coolsmile:

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