[Rezwan]

There are vast tracts of land on this planet with no one on them. Plop down a desalinization plant and energy, and hey presto, you have useful, cultivable land. Suddenly – a gazillion more acres online.

Maybe that just means a gazillion more wars?

Power – true, something people want. But usually those around them suffer their power-lust because they provide a valuable service, and that service is stability, security, some semblance of societal order. Looking at Iraq, Hussein was a power hungry fellow who shed a lot of blood and caused a lot of misery. Eliminating him is still resulting in a lot of bloodshed and misery and the best trained army in the world has its hands full with no immediate resolution of conflict in sight. So the cost of trying to find a more egalitarian, humane power structure is possibly as high as the thing its replacing. But the real problem in the region is that the natural resource base is so degraded (deserts, salty soils, drought, etc.) and the only resource worth talking about is oil. And oil is an easily centrally controlled resource. This is one reason the mid east has been a chess game for so long with limited grassroots development. Cradle of civilization has long been depleted and needs massive restoration efforts.

If you want peace, have a vision of what that peace will look like and how it will be inclusive.

But yeah, self-defense techniques always come in handy.

[Rezwan]

First, what’s an “Orion”?

2nd, please explain further:

avturchin wrote:
If you replace H-B on the different mix of gases you will get very high level of neutron radiation. It will enable process to enrich uranium or create plutonium for every one. Or al least to produce dangerous radiological weapons.

And third: What’s the motivation? The history of warfare is a history of people attempting to use force to acquire and control the resources of others, and defending, avenging such attempts. Once you start making these resources essentially unlimited, you are in a whole new playing field. It’s not cost effective to wage war (which invites counterattack). Far easier to trade. To just license something and whatnot. Most of the conflicts around our globe today are played out in the context of unequal distribution of resources, usually with some racial/ethnic/religious overtones – but don’t be distracted by that. That’s just the lines around which people organize best to fight each other over resources (including resources such as jobs and weapons). When it looks like resources are limited and you’re in a zero sum game, cooperation goes down and the play gets dirty. If it looks like everyone can be well on the road to progress, my bet is that cooperation and collaboration will flourish. War is just one strategy people use to get things done on this planet.

Fourth: The weapons capacity is a good thing. In case the aliens attack, we need to be ready. Pesky aliens. If European conquest of Americas is any indicator, the meeting of two alien cultures may not go very well for us. We should also stock diseases. : )

[Rezwan]

Transmute wrote: Or perhaps an automated turret or even a remote controlled kill bot?

Hey, ease up on the overkill bot!

By the way, what are those folks stealing the copper for? I’m trying to imagine the copper chop shop. I’d heard of this in 3rd world context, not in general.

[Rezwan]

Thanks for FUD! I learned something new. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Googled it. This link explained it a bit.

As for EPS, the more people working on alternatives, the better! Let’s not FUD each other, but let things develop.

[Rezwan]

OK, I followed the wikipedia link for the “Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI – sounds like creepy!) that Toshiba is allegedly partnering with on this.

Looking around I found this link
http://criepi.denken.or.jp/en/e_publication/2004.html which has two pdf files of interest:

43. The Sodium Cooled Small Sealed Fast Reactor (4S) with Non-refueling and
44. Development Scenario of Fusion Energy following the ITER Project.

It doesn’t say the thing is ready for market yet, but it sounds like it’s cooking!
Also, it doesn’t mention Toshiba in the PDF. Nothing like “in partnership with Toshiba”. Only 2 page document, though, so that might be extraneous info.

[Rezwan]

Back to the original question:

cccccttttt wrote: Curious why Japanese and Chinese physicists are silent on the Focus program?

Have they just not heard of it?

ct

This question assumes Japanese and Chinese physicists are “silent” on Focus, and I just don’t know if that’s true. There may be some discussing it in Japanese or Chinese at this very moment. I have no idea.

I suppose the thing to do is to try and track some down that have heard of it and ask for an opinion.

[Rezwan]

Looking good! Hey, I’m in Iran, and I have access to the site. Yay! Now I just need to find the proper size adapter to charge my camera so I can take a picture here and post it. Stay tuned!

[Rezwan]

Duke Leto wrote:

Why not just make oil out of waste using fusion power to provide heat and hydrogen and run conventional aircraft off of it with no infrastructure change?

Emissions is my worry.

Don’t have the numbers or a handy pie chart, but it seems to me this isn’t that big of a concern. If the DPF works, and we go through and replace coal and oil burning power plants, and a majority of cars switch to electric, we’ll pretty much reduce the bulk of emissions. Then with tree planting schemes, or other carbon-fixing ventures, I’m sure we could balance the rest. Our net impact could be very small. Or no bigger than cows and the methane they emit (and cows get a bad rap. A lot of this is because of their industrial diet – gives ’em extra gas).

So, there will be room in the emissions balance sheet to keep old-fashioned airplanes going.

This in no way is meant to limit innovation in aero-propulsion.

[Rezwan]

Transmute wrote: First of all, what does this have to do with fusion?

It wasn’t about fusion so much as the misapplication of human ingenuity. Talk about wasted energy. But you’re right, probably drawing attention to this waste of human energy just compounds the waste.

[Rezwan]

Why can’t they put all that inventive energy toward making a silent leaf-blower? Blow leaves away.

Are people leaves that you should blow them away?

[Rezwan]

Rezwan wrote: Back to the practicalities: It’s all about timing. If that freshwater falls into the ocean and shuts off the current, well, they say that it takes 2 years without snow melting to form a glacier, and only 10 to launch an ice age. So, from the time Greenland spills into the sea, we have 2-10 years.

I am not convinced that this ever happened. A careful examination of pilots’ “rutters”, et cetera seems in order here and I haven’t heard anything about these guys having done any such thing. When did the weather fend off the Spanish Armada for the English? Why did the Spaniards, then among the greatest of sailors, have so much trouble sailing around England? Yep, the Gulf Stream.

The armada? What is a pilot’s rutter? Which guys?

But yes, I just lumped two things together here. One is the thing about if you have weather conditions which result in the lack of snow melting, it only takes 2 years of the snow on a mountain not melting to start a glacier. Then the thing can grow, and in 10 years without melting, you’ve got an ice age.

The thing about greenland is just that a sudden influx of cold freshwater into the saltwater current could switch it off. With the current in chaos, it stops heating Europe, and hey presto, 2-10 years you’ve got another iceage there.

Again, that’s a theory out there. I don’t know, but I’ve been told 🙂

[Rezwan]

Frenetic wrote:

It would be nice if humanity could leverage the global warming crisis to learn how to regulate global temperature and keep it at a nice, net-life sustaining temperature for millions of years, rather than the paltry 20,000 we get between ice ages.

Am I off the deep end here?

I am inclined to say yes, simply because we are talking about a very large system with an enormous amount of momentum and we are unable to make weather forecasts that are good for more than about a week.

Yes, this is fantasy speculation. But when people speculate about anthropogenic environmental impacts, they tend to specluate in the direction of catastrophe. I’m just speculating in the other direction. It’s more of a psychological thing. Although I think there is potential here. After all, plants are big climate regulators. Photosynthesis is what turned the planet from toxic ball of chaos to…well, without algae and then grass this would be a much different world.

All life-forms have an impact, there must be ways for them to tune into it, and leverage it towards bringing about an environment in their favor. Again, I refer back to the holistic management folks, the gardeners of eden folks. We’re just out of touch with our micro and macro-climate regulation feedback systems. Some links: Animal impact and environment;
A slideshow on water cycle;
Great book on human role.

[Rezwan]

It’s not deleted.

You posted it in this thread: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/75/

We get more than one thread per forum group. Try clicking the forum itself to see all the topics under it.

In other words, click on the words/link “plasma focus forum” in the left column, rather than whatever post is in the right column.

The link in the right column takes you to the most recent specific thread within that forum. The link in the left takes you to a listing of all the threads in the forum, and then you have to click one to go and read the posts.

Another way to see all your own posts is to click on “Your Public Profile” in the top of any webpage. Look up now. See that, right after “Logged in as: your name”? And that gets you to see what other people see of your profile.

Once you’re at that page, in the box underneath your picture/name and member group is the link to “View all Posts by this Member“.

Click that and it should take you to a page with links to every thread you’ve posted in.

You can also see what threads other people have posted in. When you see their name in a posting, click it and you get to their profile and you can see the threads they’ve posted in. For example, in the heading of this post, you will see “Rezwan”. To the left. Click it, and you’ll see all my posts.

To update your profile and add pictures, a bio, a webpage, or what ever, you click on “Your Control Panel” at the top of any page.

[Rezwan]

Ooh! I just came up with another one. This one appeals to the American Spirit:

I liked it so much, it’s on the home page now:

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Fusion

Maybe we can have a T-shirt of this. W/ stars and stripes? Because of course, stars are big burning balls of nuclear fusion.

[Rezwan]

Go ahead and upload # 2. It looks great! I like the strange patterns of # 1 as well, but it’s hard to read “it’s closer than you think.” – That needs to be filled in. Anyway, simpler is probably better, so let’s stick with 2.

Thanks so much!

[Author]

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