[Rezwan]

More about the movement: http://www.startupexemption.com/

Help fund them on IndieGoGo : )

[Rezwan]

Yes, it does seem more paternalistic than protective. Also, you can rack up massive unsecured credit card debt in this country, odd that you can only do that on shoes but not on investment.

[Rezwan]

dennisp wrote: To me the key isn’t SEC registration, it’s being able to take investments from people who aren’t “accredited investors” (ie., millionaires). That way I could invest, if FF chose to go that way.

LPP would, I’m sure, go that way.

[Rezwan]

Very cool! Thanks for the info!

[Rezwan]

Thanks Benf for this link: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/10/ceres-20111024.html
These are the folks to have the conversation with to test the message.

[Rezwan]

Great site! Great project! We must show them support.

I see they missed their fundraising goal on IndieGoGo. We’ll have to be more alert to help promote their next endeavor.

Looks like a great project to build a coalition with.

[Rezwan]

Hey Zapkitty,

Got your email. Yes, I’ve been watching this progress – great job! I have some text suggestions (mostly about also inviting EV folks to be part of a “fusion partnership council” inviting them not to invest (because that’s an investment solicitation, and FFS doesn’t do that), but rather to join a conversation about how to be more proactive about fusion… but my brains are a tad mushy to take that on.

ART:
In the meantime, yes, I see the lack of b&w art – try this page for art:
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/358

You can open some of the psd documents and break it down to the elements and modify/decolorize them.

Thanks so much for pursuing this! Very cool!

[Rezwan]

zapkitty wrote: …both Polywell and Tri-Alpha are also aneutronic concepts like Focus Fusion. They also do not boil water and do not require expensive steam turbines 🙂

Per a Los Alamos physicist:

…the one question I would have about aneutronic solutions…..is, that IF they work conceptually in an aneutronic way, then how much easier would they be with DT (which is essentially where TriAlpha has been going the last few years).

[Rezwan]

zapkitty wrote: … but would the flyer be ok if the alternatives were not spelled out?

Yes, keep alternatives vague. It’s a one-two punch sort of thing, where the fusion researchers have the general argument, and then follow up with their pet approach. Maybe a quick list of alt examples so those who get the flyer can google them.

Or should it be converted to an invitation to a fusion coffee klatsch? 🙂

🙂
But of course! Feel free to have fusion coffee klatsches at will! Or not, so that you can save the coffee budget for fusion funding.

Out of water? Try serving Focus Fusion Coffee Mallows. (Also, please, someone who’s drawn to caffeine innovations, try them and write up a review. They’re not my cup of tea, so I can’t ethically promote them myself.)

[Rezwan]

@dennisp – me too! (Rooting for all of them)

@Impaler – well put!

[Rezwan]

Now that I look at it, that last paragraph sounded like a total solicitation.

What we nonprofit folk can do is convene events in which people discuss possible strategies for fusion funding. So we don’t actually make that case ourselves, we just serve the chips.

[Rezwan]

Time is money. The switch problem took up a lot of time that wasn’t spent on actual experimentation and so now the project is in overtime compared to the initial estimates. It was a very small budget to begin with, so it’s not much of an overrun. Two company coffee budgets.

Although as a percentage, that switch problem is pretty big.

What I’m saying is don’t downplay the costs. Until LPP or another alternative demonstrates feasibility, it’s all running cost. Hence you will notice the LPP website has a link for investors – as they could use more (this is not a solicitation – just a point of fact. Education : )) Not a huge cost, but it hasn’t hit the point of return, and we can’t be sure when it will.

If it turns out to be possible, I don’t think fusion will ultimately cost that much. But getting there will still take a reasonable investment, which is required NOW.

And this is the reasonable case to be making to the EV community. If you want to open up a vast supply of electric energy for your EV’s, you need to start tackling the fusion problem now and in earnest. A great strategy involves investment in fusion alternatives, as government is covering the big projects that won’t be online for decades, but the shorter projects, while considered to be higher risk, also carry the possibility of a quicker, much bigger ROI, and major bragging rights.

Don’t wait for it to happen by itself. Some expenditure required!

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: …as far as “all your money”, the coffee budget of those companies would exceed what LPP needs.

Yes, this is the other point to make in the case to the car industry. So many people leave fusion to big government because they see it as too expensive to tackle. Of course, it may not be as small as the company coffee budget, and LPP is going into cost overruns now. Other approaches may yield quick results or drag on a bit, but all within a far more manageable realm than most people think of when they think of fusion.

The upshot is – the challenge is to show costs as reasonable, with the incentive that uncertainty may work in your favor for a huge upside. Part of this balanced nutritious energy portfolio.

[Rezwan]

No injury!

Quite the opposite. I’m just casting about for ways to justify my more cautious approach and the NYT article gave it some validity with a bit of gender discrimination to make it unassailable. 🙂

But back to the serious matter at hand, each person will have a different pitching style, and different pitches will work on different people. I, personally, am not comfortable with pitching a single technology, first because I legally can’t (that’s soliciting investment and I’m the head of a nonprofit). Second because I’m too conscious of the uncertainty, and the history of fusion and “overselling”. So my approach is to acknowledge the uncertainty and work to build the capacity and stamina for risky research so that no one ever needs to oversell fusion. We (citizens, investors, researchers) need to roll up our sleeves and get the work done. It’s the harder sell, but ethical and reasonable.

I think when you sell the potential of Focus Fusion as a done deal, you get more people saying, “OK, I’ll wait and see if it works out”, whereas if we acknowledge the risks up front and show that you’ve thought through all the possibilities, you attract more serious, committed people. I like starting with a broader context: why EV folks should be interested in fusion in the long run, especially given that there are potential “pleasant physics surprises” (selling fusion just on mainline fusion is a non-starter). And then, in a separate one sheet, you could pitch focus fusion – or another fusion person could pitch their idea.

The one sheet I’m going for here is the general one, it should be usable by a variety of fusion researchers. Industry to Industry pitch. Leave specifics for the actual companies when they talk to actual investors.

[Rezwan]

Johan Clemmesen wrote:
…
4. Success. We (focused fusion society) is ALREADY SUCESSFUL! The experiment is already up and running it is not sci-fi. The tests already far exceed those of other huge national and international experiments. The problems are completely known and a plasma plants cost are specified, and it is again tiny compared to ITER…. SO we don’t need much, due to the 3 previous stated points so you can easily help the sustainable EV industry put by helping us!

I don’t think more points than 4 is appropriate. There of cause needs to be small images of the lab and plasma plant design, and very important a visualized scale model a one. Also the test results compared with others should be available.

Best regards Johan

Ah, but that’s the less certain part. Yes, the experiment is a real experiment, testing a fascinating possibility, and ahead of other national experiments in terms of energy out for unit of energy in. However, this is still not breakeven, and I’ve found that most VC’s or people in the environmental community want to know first of all if they can plug in to the technology, if you have a working prototype, etc. The truth is, this is still proof of concept, and the answer to that question is no, not yet, and there’s a chance not at all. That’s the nature of proof of concept research. Possibility of a stellar payoff, but don’t put all your money into it. Keep your portfolio diversified.

This is why I wasn’t going so much for selling one particular research approach, but for making the message that the electric car industry needs to take a broad, long term perspective on fusion research to make sure that promising alternatives get funded, because that could really help the auto industry, even if today things look a bit sketchy in the fusion realm. If you look at the bigger picture, it sounds pretty reasonable, and there’s no need to oversell on any one fusion approach. Then, when something works out, people will be pleasantly surprised, even though they probably would have been funding it just to hedge their bets.

It seems like our approaches fit gender generalizations. I prefer the argument that fusion is a necessary part of a balanced portfolio, and am interested in a broader fusion fund to make it happen.

I’m looking at ways to make the argument to the EV folks as an industry, on behalf of fusion as an industry, with specific projects as an educational example* to give people a sense of what might be possible (without overselling it). Focus Fusion is a great technology to show-case because it shows the picture of the range of approaches, small scale distributed vs. large scale; and most importantly, the range of nuclear energy – aneutronic vs. neutronic vs. fission. It’s an ideal energy source to aspire to, but can it, in fact, be realized? Only the research will tell, and only when it’s all said and done and you have a beating prototype in your lab, producing net energy.

The upshot is, we have to stay the course on the research, mind the costs, look for diversified sources of revenue and keep a diversified portfolio. That’s the logical approach.

That’s logical enough for me. I don’t see the appeal of the oversell, in fact it makes me nervous. But according to NYTimes generalization, men like the whole overconfidence thing, so this approach might be seen as weak and a possible turn off to them. Go figure.

*Also, as a nonprofit, we can’t solicit investment, so this is all purely about education for us.

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