[Elling]

The space industry is impressive for its engineering, maybe not so much for it’s science. For climate control we would need large solar sails to adjust the solar constant over the surface of the Earth. Specific g performance may not be the parameter in demand rather total low payload and the thrust to pull the sails’ shadow into position over the poles fex

[Elling]

Imagine that some disruptive energy device, something like the Borax garage Megawatter, manages to make it to the mass market despite the conspirations of the major oil and grid companies. Of course I subscribe to all the wonderful descriptions of the future dream society. However, going back to cheap oil is not going to make the unstabilities in the moslem world any easier. We’re talking geopolitics and civilisational evolution here, factors that regerattably determine human action and the flow of history much more than technological advance.

The catch is that even with abundant energy to provide clean water and fresh food, we need the collaboration of all the regions to fix the climate. The Russians need to dim the sky so that methane does not leak out of the taiga. The Canadians and the Aussies need to keep the poles on ice. And the Maghrebs and the Arabs may need to green the Sahara and the Empty Quarter. Even with cheap, non-proliferation technology, it remains to be seen if such a global sharing of tasks is indeed possible. Let’s hope that the world has moved from settling disputes with big armies to playing it out on the soccer arenas. But the world has never been truly cooperative, even when resources were plentiful. A pattern of struggle always emerges. I’m sure the Egyptian press will sell the Borax Megawatter as just another sionist plot. The Chinese machiavellians will never yield to foreign dependance to clean their environment. Do you think the Iranian maniac will accept the foreign energy source so as to give up his excuse to make the bomb ?

[Elling]

I was thinking about the new commercial superconducting cables. Generally, superconductivity is permanently destroyed in the presence of a strong external magnetic field. I guess the local plasmoid magnetic field would qualify as strong all right ..but I’m not totally convinced that the global magnetic fields existing in the pinching plasma would penetrate destructively into the superconducting material? .. since the currents setting up the fields are generated in the superconducting material itself ?

[Elling]

Don’t put too much trust in the Nobel Committee. By the time they discover Focus Fusion, the project doesn’t need the fame any more. It’s like the money, it will be pouring in when no longer needed. Going after an eccentric billionaire with a physics degree on his CV is probably the best.

As for the economic logic of the grid, we have a rather hopeful situation here in Scandinavia. There’s a legislation for socalled micro- and minipower stations, allowing small producers to feed their surplus on the lines. Also the last mile in the grid is the property of local operators often owned by the county itself.

As for the prospect of global peace, love and understanding, I’m afraid the biggest challenge after Focus Fusion would be climate control. Even if the GH gases can be controlled by abandoning hydrocarbonpowered transport, there’s already so much of them that the solar constant will have to be reduced by large space panels ….

The real global geopolitical challenges will be : how to teach 1 billion young angry moslems to use the new energy source, other than oil, to green the desert and cultivate the steppes in the Stans and in Siberia

[Elling]

From your answer, the elementary plasmoids both get bigger and the ions in it collectively gain an azimuthal velocity component. I guess elementary plasmoids form in a characteristic size and at a characteristic pitch in the reference case, ie without angular momentum injection. So given the right amount of stir, the thoroid could merge into a single huge plasmoid ? But, the faster the merging, the better .. because this leaves a maximum amount of time for the creation of fusion reactions before collapse ? However, too much stir would cause elementary plasmoids to fly thru each other or destroy each other upon collision?

What about the 3rd dimension – along the axis ? The thoroid sheath is thin, what determines the thickness ? Could the rate of voltage buildup at the starting line influence the thickness of the slab that ignites into plasma filaments that start running ? I understand that the rundown velocity depends on the geometry, plasma particle’s mass and pressure. What about repeating the helicoidal trick at the end of the runway so to speak ? Tapering to a smaller electrode separation would modulate the local rundown velocities so as to compress the thickness of the slab – and tapering wider would strech the domain in the time window capable of plasmoid formation ?

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