[Rezwan]

Ivy Matt wrote: How about nothing? Some people would probably be willing to write the reports for free. 🙂

Time = money. The time taken to explain what’s going on to a pro bono writer is probably more than time taken to write the report itself. One way or another, things cost. And if they don’t cost us something, they cost the person volunteering. It’s better to say that some people might be willing to take the time and effort to write the reports without financial compensation. Don’t discount what they’re doing as “free!”

In the nonprofit world, we put that into the budget as “in-kind donation”.

Which reminds me, it’s time to appreciate the volunteers who have been helping with some of the work so far. I need to put together a list. Fantastic job guys!

[Rezwan]

zapkitty wrote: Speaking of wish lists and stocking stuffers…

Of the things that need doing in addition to finishing LPPX-1… how many of those could be done or at least investigation started by interested third parties (presumably by using existing equipment and sources) without needing to wait on LPPX-1?

I like where this is going. I hear reports of a Japanese endeavor and the Iranians. There’s a big DPF in Las Vegas. To coordinate something like a multi-lab collaboration would take some doing, but may turn out to be necessary.

[Rezwan]

Thanks for pointing this out. It’s really cool! From this page:

http://www.science.doe.gov/ofes/fusioninstitutions.shtml

It’s too bad that map isn’t working. That would be a fun thing to embed in other websites.

I’ve sent them an email to inquire.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: The WSJ ran a 3 page print version of an info-mercial yesterday about Risk Management that could get a lot of corporations looking at aneutronic fusion in a new light. The gist of it was to view risk as an early window into opportunity. 😉

Is there a link to this?

[Rezwan]

MTd2 wrote: The problem with fusion in general is the secrecy of its results. Such doesn`t happen in most of areas of science and nowadays there are great databases with free access to preprints or updated preprints with the published results. So, most of research doesn`t give back to the world Christmas gifts, so it is expected that people do not care about it not pressure for more funding.

I think a lot of the information on fusion is available. Perhaps you have to pay for it via journals, so it’s not free. But it’s not secret – well, except the portions that overlap with stockpile stewardship.

I wish I could collaborate with LPPX. I became a member of FFS because since it works close to it and I thought I would get more detailed reports from LPPX. I requested Rezwan for the older and more accurate reports, but he didn`t answer me… And, what happened to the December report? Was it briefed already or my email is still not included among the members?

The December report is not out yet. I suspect Eric would prefer to go to quarterly reports rather than monthly. LPP is short-handed enough as it is for the experiments, and writing reports every month eats up Eric’s time and slows things down.

In any case, you’re on the list, so you’ll get a peak at the December report first.

The FFS website has more detailed info than that of the LPPX website in that LPP used to just write a summary of the report, and we would put all the information broken down in articles. As for the November report, they have a more thorough posting on their site, and we put up a link to the entire technical portion as a pdf on our site.

[Rezwan]

We can’t let you be low on money! It’s the holidays. It’s easy to issue a refund, we just go into paypal and click “refund”.

For those of you donating, this month is great if you want the tax deduction for 2010. Then again, for those of you who don’t itemize deductions, that wouldn’t make a difference.

Thanks again!

[Rezwan]

Thanks! That’s great! Don’t worry, I’ll put you in the member list.

[Rezwan]

We could change it up a bit, and add a code. If the arms are down, that means the machine has been taken apart for repairs. If the arms are sideways that means firing is in progress, and when the arms are up, that means a good result.

Then again, that might not be properly maintained and send the wrong signal. Just like my uncle who lived across the street from this guy who flew the American flag – but he’d sometimes take the flag down, sometimes have it up. My uncle wondered if there were events going on that he was responding to. I thought maybe this is one of the few people who know you aren’t supposed to leave the flag flying 24/7 (except a lot of people do that – so maybe that whole “take the flag down at sunset” thing is… you know, I really don’t know much about flag protocol. I do know where to take old flags to be retired/burned in NJ).

Ah, so the pentagram is upside down. A star in distress?

[Rezwan]

I’d say a star is pretty generic—a five-pointed star at least. I’m not sure what special meaning an eight-pointed star could have.

A five pointed star can also be a pentagram – clearly Satan has lulled you. :ohh:

Warwick wrote:
Then it’s urban legend; all the same, it’s very well-known. At school they said the ‘left-facing’ swastika was a sign of peace and consequently inverting it was a deliberate choice to represent war. (Not that their source for that was likely to itself be anything more than an urban legend necessarily.)

In school they also said things about what it meant if you had an earing on one ear or the other.

So far I’ve found most people don’t register anything is amiss. Of course, I have it both ways on the flyer.

[Rezwan]

Thanks Warwick! A lot to think about.

Warwick wrote: — religion

Well if someone can see an inverted crucifix in a CND sign then they can probably imagine anything, let’s face it.
But I’d steer clear of stars. You may recall that Chernobyl means Wormwood, and the passage in Revelation that says something like “And there was a star on earth, and its name was Wormwood, and it poisoned 1/3 of the waters, and 1/3 of the creatures died” (I haven’t looked it up but it’s along those lines.) To an over-the-top religious person anything involving stars and nuclear power would be fertile territory.

As to Chernobyl, it’s doing much better these days. I saw this documentary called “Life After People” (the first one, not the series) and they use Chernobyl as an example of what happens when people don’t interfere in a place. Due to the accident, the place was vacated completely. It was a scene of devastation, trees burned and killed by radiation, animal carcasses – but it has rebounded. Now it has more of those deer than any other place. Check out the movie, it’s pretty amazing. Don’t think the religious folk can use Chernobyl as a bad thing. Chernobyl’s also the reason Gorbachev cites for bringing about major changes and ending the cold war. So the net impact was positive and transformative.

On the other hand, one could start looking at Revelations as an allegory to bring about fusion energy, that this is the big light we are waiting for and if we don’t pull together and do it, we have armageddon. The parable of the oil lamps is a case in point. People who manage their oil are assured heaven – because we don’t know the day or the hour (that we will figure out how fusion works).

As to wormwood – that thing falls from the sky. To keep track of avoided wormwood encounters, follow @AsteroidMisses

[Rezwan]

FYI, for those of you interested in fusion policy and meeting Ed Synakowski et al, check out the new post on the NAS meeting on Inertial Fusion, Dec. 16.

[Rezwan]

That info is available on Wikipedia as well as wikileaks. EAST is a part of the ITER endeavor – they all collaborate. There are other tokamak devices throughout the world, such as JET, the Joint European Torus, a Tokamak in Culham, UK. And Japan’s JT. Several here in the US. We need a map. They all work on various facets of the larger ITER goal.

As to how good EAST is, I’m sure it’s a great experimental device. 400s and 10 million degrees – don’t know what that means for a tokamak. The goal of a 400 second burn at 100 million degrees, isn’t that a key benchmark for tokamaks?

We need a handy table to lay out some of the goals and benchmarks for each of these devices and how they have divided up the work of pursuing net energy. It’s really an amazing international collaboration when you think about it.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Like the chap at Unreasonable Rocket, I think LPP investors will come from those who care about the specific topic and get inspired by the wider possibilities, not so much those looking to make a killing.

Yes, a cool class of investors. I hope they all do make a killing!

[Rezwan]

Rezwan wrote: Of course, quick results with LPPX would go a long way to making all of this moot, but now we have the persistent “inconsistent firing/switch/sparkplug” problem to solve, and that in itself could require a lot more R&D.

To clarify, the switch problem (really a trigger, high voltage issue) has been resolved. The prefiring and sparkplug issues are lingering, but it’s a matter of (not too much) time before the sparkplugs are rugged enough to not keep breaking – at least to hold together long enough to get some revealing data from shots, which is what you need for an experimental device.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: R;
your diagnosis of the mood and attitude of the ‘advanced fuel’ fusion community is kind of discouraging,

No, that’s the mainline fusion community – but advanced fuel is only LPPX and Tri Alpha etc. (a handful) – and mainline is pretty skeptical about them. They adopt that handy “wait and see” attitude.

And the Tri-Alpha boys were quick to say – “this is just a piece of a much larger puzzle…we’re a long way still”.

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