[JimmyT]

Touche’ Tulse.

[JimmyT]

If that’s the case wouldn’t some of it be burned up (in a nuclear sense) by the fusion pulses.

[JimmyT]

I think a major factor in the public safety discussion has to be dispersion. If a train wreck (powered by Focus fusion) were to occur resulting in rupture of a reactor. Would those down wind need to be worried? I believe the carbon 11 in the reactor will be in the form of fine dust. Some might disperse downwind. But I’m thinking that the vast majority of it would remain with the reactor wreckage.

[JimmyT]

If you want to stick with aneutronic fusion (a good idea in my opinion) the options are pretty well summarized in this Wiki article: http://en.wiki.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion

If you look at just at the amounts of energy released you would think that Lithium 6 or 7 would be the preferred fuel.

Lithium 6 + Deuterium yields 22.4 Mev

Lithium 7 + Proton yields 17.2 Mev

Boron 11 + Proton yields 8.7 Mev

But Lithium has a very low cross sections, and thus would require higher confinement time to get comparative yields to boron.

Still, before the dust settles, maybe it would be interesting to try.

The Wiki article contains a link to The Focus Fusion Society BTW.

I think these alternate fuels may have been discussed in prior posts a couple of years ago.

It’s also worth noting that Eric fudges his calculations:

He notes increased linear compression of a factor of 4 which yields increased density of a factor of 20. Four cubed is 32 (64)
not 20. He also claims that doubling the current will increase yield by a factor of 20. But this process has reliably scaled to the 5th power. Two to the fifth power is 32 Not 20.

Overall this is good news, as his projections thus have a relatively large “fudge factor” which can be used to decrease the input current, increasing the net output. Or perhaps decreasing the pulse frequency, thereby making heat removal a bit easier to deal with. Or some combination of the two.

[JimmyT]

Here’s to you Dr Robinson! Congrats.

[JimmyT]

I wonder if it’s strong enough for a space elevator tether?

[JimmyT]

This is all good news. I agree that public funding should occur. There is after all a HUGE benefit to be accrued by the public. I do think that stock ownership is better for everyone involved as opposed to donations. It remains to be seen whether our hired bureaucrats screw it up.

Oh, and I should have said “private placement” not “IPO”.

[JimmyT]

Frankly, I’m wondering if we asking for the right thing. I think a letter writing campaign is a good idea, but maybe we should be asking for something different.

Right now laws restrict stock purchases in IPO’s to accredited investors (investors of high net worth and/or high earnings). This restriction is allegedly put in place to “protect” people who are not rich from investing in “risky” start-up companies. These restrictive laws could just as easily be characterized as restricting all but the very wealthy from the best investment opportunities. In fact the recently passed Dodd-Frank bill makes the definition of accredited investors even more restrictive by excluding home values from the net worth test.

Now I understand that Derick does not want hundreds of individuals each investing twenty dollars. The paper work hassles wouldn’t be worth it. But I strongly suspect that there may be a lot of people who would love to invest thirty thousand dollars or so, but don’t meet the accredited investor standards.

Everyone goes to legislators with their hands out (understandably). But maybe a more fruitful approach would be to ask for a abolition of this restriction.

[JimmyT]

Top ten fusion projects in the world. Guess who made the list.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-34242897/ten-serious-nuclear-fusion-projects-making-progress-around-the-world

Just looking at the technical merits of these ten…. I’d bet big time on that NEW Jersey firm to win the race. Let’s see … what is the name of that company again?

[JimmyT]

Brian,

I agree completely with your assessment of the current rendition of “This is a crisis and only by giving US complete control can it be prevented”.

But won’t they just morph it into some other crisis?

It could be “We are poisoning the oceans”. Or “We are running out of (name practically any natural resource here)” ,or over population. Or one of a million other possibilities which only they can save us from.

After all, the real point is not any given set of perceived problems. It’s giving them power.

[JimmyT]

Brian H wrote:

…

No hopes for immortality here. But a few extra years would be welcome.
…

Are you familiar with the “actuarial immortality” concept? The idea is that lifespan expectations are climbing faster as time goes on, and when it reaches the point that it climbs one year or more per year, the expected span becomes “indefinite”. So you/I/we just have to make it to that point! 😉

BTW, anyone else having smiley trouble again? All my browser(s) display is the text from the link page.

Yes, I am familiar with the idea of actuarial immortality from Aubrey de Grey’s lectures. Here’s a link to a couple of them, although neither of these is the exact one I was hoping to link to. In the one I was hoping to find he goes into a bit more detail about methods of repairing cell damage. Possible methods of repair. I can’t seem to find that one.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5TMpIgUDLw

Ahh… Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTMNfU7zftQ

[JimmyT]

Back in the early to mid 20th century a hot topic of discussion was “How are we going to provide care and sustenance to the hundreds of thousands of polio victims from the current and anticipated epidemics?”.

A difficult or seemingly impossible task then, or now for that matter. But instead medical research developed a relatively inexpensive vaccine which completely changed the dynamic. It all but eradicated the disease saving untold billions of dollars and untold human suffering. I think the cost for each dose of vaccine was around 10 cents.

How are we going to provide care and sustenance to the growing population of aging people in this country?

Maybe by curing the disease?

As to my illustration of seeking medical attention for illnesses: It’s just an illustration. It illustrates the inarguable fact that those who are now living wish to continue to do so. At least for a while. I could just as easily have said “Do you eat?” or “Do you breathe?”. Do you take care not to walk out in front of speeding buses? You don’t have to do any of these things. We all make thousands of choices every day to continue our lives. At least a bit longer.

To make a conscious choice not to extend one’s life significantly is a freedom which everyone has. And I respect and defend that freedom to the utmost. But I don’t understand why anyone would maintain that they have the right to limit the right of anyone else to extend their life significantly if they so choose.

I’m all about improving lives. Making people well, or keeping them well. Maximizing people’s choices. Making people more prosperous. I am not so arrogant as to claim to have such a superior vision of the future that I should be able to foist my vision of the future on everyone else by limiting their choices.

After all, the future I envision may be all wrong. It may not turn out anything like I envision. And with some of my more pessimistic predictions I hope it doesn’t!

Oh well, I just had to vent. This post has been worth every penny you paid for it.

[JimmyT]

Rezwan wrote: Experimental arborealists are a powerful voting bloc. I wouldn’t stand in their way. Like the trees, we’ll have to walk carefully around them.

The cost…”Kurzweil ingests “250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea” every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to “reprogram” his biochemistry.[45] Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.[46]” I want PIE! Do or die! The red wine sounds OK.

You guys keep working on that immortality thing – I’m going to shop around the movie idea, get a three picture deal, crank it out. The “Singularity Resurrection” film project.

The clock is ticking.

No hopes for immortality here. But a few extra years would be welcome. I did plant 3 giant sequoia trees in my back yard a couple of years ago. (That is to say the species is “Giant”, my trees were around 6 inches tall.) Alas, they fell a bit short of my hoped for lifespan for them of 5,000 years or so. They only made it to 6 months. A deer ate them.

Does that make me an experimental arborealist?

[JimmyT]

Like I said: When you get sick do YOU seek medical attention?

[JimmyT]

wolfram wrote: If we’re still using some form of democracy after we’ve developed functional immortality, we could consider having the power of an indivuals vote decay assymptotically to zero with time, to off set the fact that they’ll have had more time to accrue other kinds of influence. This way we still give the next generation space to breathe. Also, if we reproduce at replacement levels (each person only making 1 more person in the course of their life times) the population will only grow linearly with time (assuming death rate=0, laughable, really), which is much more manageable than the exponential malthusian cluster fluff that would happen eventually at reproduction above replacement.

How about having their vote increase to one only after a couple of centuries to reflect their accumulated wisdom. And thus lessen the detrimental effect of their relative youth.

[Author]

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