[Augustine]

QuantumDot wrote: to solve the thrust problem with the focus fusion you just need to add some material in front of the ion beam and let the beam heat and then eject the material, it would basically function like a pulse detonation rocket engine with the FF acting as a ignition source. so there would still be a lot of engineering problems but it would be possible for a single stage craft. using a deep cooling precooler and then the ff to ignite and then when it gets too high use some stored fuel as a rocket and then when in space just use the pure ion beam or when you need more thrust revert it back to a rocket. adding in optical and magnetic refrigeration would reduce the weight add simplify the design and be useful at all stages of the vehicles life.

I think that you violated the law of conservation of energy. If for example a FF pulse imparts 10 Joules of energy then you can’t make it 100 Joules of energy by putting something in the way of the blast unless you put something in the way that explodes (releases additional energy by breaking chemical bonds) when hit with by an ion beam.

[Augustine]

Very exciting. How are they going to confirm fusion? Will they look for Helium?

[Augustine]

Scientists do not work with consensus. Scientists do research, create a hypothesis, test to verify their hypothesis, work to eliminate alternate explanations to their hypothesis, and then they publish their data and methodology so that others can look at what they have done and reproduce it. This last step is quite important as the goal of science is to find and disseminate new knowledge to other people.

Looking at the CRU code snippets I can say in my professional opinion that they have the quality of a second semester undergraduate computer programmer. If I wrote code that was that sloppy I would be fired and probably my boss would perform a post mortem on our hiring practices. The code is a hodge podge of various subroutines with next to no organization and irrelevant documentation. The data sets that the code operate on seem to be in a similar poor condition. What this means is that if asked, the researchers at CRU probably could not reproduce their findings as the code is a mess and they don’t seem to know which data set they should run against.

I think that this debacle is a real black eye for science. I also think that this shows the real need for transparency when researchers are working on problems of this scope (problems of the “lets rearrange our economies” scope). Researchers should have to publicly explain their methodologies (publicly, not through peer review), researchers should use commercial software libraries or open libraries (things that are known to work), and researchers should make their own code publicly available. Real scientists and researchers should not fear skeptics- one of the advantages of science is that it survives in the face of skeptics.

[Augustine]

I think that this will only work in hard vacuum. I recall that you won’t see quantum vacuum effects at room pressure because there is quite a bit of matter present. If this works then I am curious as to what it means for the momentum of the em waves to be changed. What does that *mean* exactly?

[Augustine]

Augustine wrote:

[Admin note: poster originally titled this topic: Asymptotically approaching zero.]

Under new management, the FFS site and forum information flow is asymptotically approaching zero. It is indistinguishably close to it already, so we’ll never be sure when all information is cut off entirely.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Prove me wrong. PLEASE prove me wrong!

Engineering takes time, not to mention hard science (not the make stuff up as you go kind of science).

Let me put this into some perspective: Look at how long it has taken to for GM to go from the announcement of the Chevy Volt to its (yet to happen) introduction to the general population. The Volt is just an engineering problem- no new battery chemistry and from a company that still has some institutional knowledge left over from making the EV-1.

And the FF forums are chatty compared to the polywell forums of late (navy data embargo and all).

[Augustine]

Brian H wrote: [Admin note: poster originally titled this topic: Asymptotically approaching zero.]

Under new management, the FFS site and forum information flow is asymptotically approaching zero. It is indistinguishably close to it already, so we’ll never be sure when all information is cut off entirely.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Prove me wrong. PLEASE prove me wrong!

Engineering takes time, not to mention hard science (not the make stuff up as you go kind of science).

[Augustine]

Phil’s Dad wrote:

Welcome Augustine. 🙂

I hope however that a neutron count will not figure significantly as a sucess criteria. :sick: Ideal result? 0
(Although I understand the inevitability of it with Deuterium)

The neutron count seems to be more of a smoking gun. Of course we all want p-B for our reaction but i’ll take the neutron count of a Deuterium reaction. Once you show that you can fuse Deuterium all you need to do is establish how the machine scales. The rest is engineering.

[Augustine]

Rezwan wrote: For more detail on the 8 goals, read this post on 8 goals of LPP’s experiment

First goal: machine assembled, and a pinch. Check!

Four goals are supposed to be wrapped up in just two months. Is this realistic?
2. At 25kV: Produce 1 MA, determine optiumum gas pressure
3. Test theory of axial magnetic field
4. Move to 45kV, 2MA, with Deuterium
5. Confirm Texas results, with better instruments

OK. Discuss.

This will be a success if you can pass step 5. I think you really only need three things:

1. Show that fusion is really happening (neutron count)
2. Empirically measure how the potential and amperage of each attempt influences the rate of fusion
3. Have the empirical data from step 2 verify the theoretical model

[Author]

Posts