[belbear42]

Reproduction of claimed results can be very time-consuming as well, if you can find anyone who is WILLING to reproduce them,
Maybe by institutions who DO have a DPF that meets or is adaptable to the necessary specs for p-B11 fusion, I doubt it exists at all.

It’s not like cold fusion in a fish tank with some electrodes, and debunking is cheaper than building a new DPF… (oh nooo, it’s from the one who says the big bang never happened, that CAN’T be correct!)

[belbear42]

To move more elaborate discussions more smoothly from article comments to the forum more smoothly, maybe it’s an an idea to create a separate folder for article follow-ups in this forum, and immediately create a new topic there with the same name as the article itself.

A direct link to that forum thread can then be posted along with the article itself. No new web technology needed.

[belbear42]

The main problem of getting in space (LEO, at least) is not reaching a certain altitude, it’s reaching a certain velocity (about 7 km/sec) and once you are above an altitude where wings provide lift, you have accelerate to orbital speed within a given time with a given minimal acceleration or else you will simply fall back to Earth.

All non-chemical methods of thrust (including those hypothetical focus fusion powered ones) appear to fall short of that goal because of lack of raw thrust. That’s why I propose a vehicle with a conventional rocket upper stage (LOX-LH2 as NASA would do or a much cheaper hybrid rocket as private organisations are proposing.) That upper stage is much smaller than any single stage solution and may be re-usable.

Once you are in LEO, things are different. Motors like VASIMR or direct focus fusion beam can be used to get away from Earth and roam around the solar system.

Anyone wishing to gain some hands-on experience with spaceflight, I can recommend the ORBITER software simulator on http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

And the best of all is that this form of spaceflight is VERY cheap: Cost is ZERO dollars. Give it a try and find out how spaceflight REALLY works!

[belbear42]

Rezwan wrote:
This raises another issue for me – comments vs. forum. We have both capabilities. But they don’t really dovetail. The comments link will take you down the same page to where comments start. “Discuss in forums” will bring you here to the forums.

Comments are more limited. They only follow a specific article. On the forums, you can initiate topics independently. Also, forums gives you more flexibility for quoting, going back and editing, uploading images and so forth.

There is another important difference between comments and forums:

In the forums you can immediately see where new replies have been posted (the dark folder icons), so even if you post in a “dormant” thread, discussions can quickly pick up again.

Comments do not have this very useful signaling feature, so comments on somewhat older articles are probably never looked at again, because every regular visitor has already read the article and doesn’t bother to re-read. Passers-by don’t have a login, they don’t write at all.

And no, there isn’t a delete button I found. There is an edit button, but even in edit mode you can’t delete an already posted reply.

[belbear42]

HermannH wrote: otherwise you end up heating your room not cooling it.

ok, you are right, no two stage coolers. Back to the drawing board. Good thing I didn’t launch it yet… 🙂

[belbear42]

jamesr wrote:

That is the worry I have as well. According to Eric’s simulation results in the Technical Paper 1 the maximum reasonably achievable ratio of (Xray + Beam) / Input is 1.57.

There seems to be a little error in this paper:
On the bottom of page 5, it says “Fuel: B10H1” Shouldn’t that be B11H1?

I think it means the B_10H_14 decaborane – which when sublimed into the moderate vacuum will begin to dissociate and the hydrogens get knocked off. The partially ionized plasma will then completely break up the molecules when the discharge goes through it.

Even in that case, it’s a different kind of error, because B10H1 makes no sense in either way.

[belbear42]

Tulse wrote:

The element produced is He3. It could be used for dirigibles

Fusion-powered zeppelins that never need refilling — awesome!

If it was He3 you could make a fortune selling it to various science labs instead of blimp filling.
I thought focus fusion produced plain ordinary He4

[belbear42]

HermannH wrote:
That is the worry I have as well. According to Eric’s simulation results in the Technical Paper 1 the maximum reasonably achievable ratio of (Xray + Beam) / Input is 1.57.

There seems to be a little error in this paper:
On the bottom of page 5, it says “Fuel: B10H1” Shouldn’t that be B11H1?

[belbear42]

Rematog wrote: Hmmm…. In Louisiana a water crisis is when the levee breaks……..

I was actually referring to the “Ogalalla Aquifer” getting depleted because of excessive irrigation. Once saw a docu about that on National Geographic.

Talking about levees in Louisiana, I’ve read that New Orleans could better be abandoned entirely as sea level continues to rise and a new Katrina is probably only years, not decades, away..

But we can stop it! We (almost) have the technology! Focus Fusion can reduce CO2 emissions to pre-20th century levels.
Go, FoFu, Go!

[belbear42]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: …Although skeptics like Jimmy T argue against the idea of lithium…… that pB11 is still the so – called ” Holy Grail ” of fusion…… I still think that lithium may still have the best potential chance for a ” kick – starter ” to help get pB11 going. It has only three neutrons, which means less X – ray energy loss. It also has a lower ignition temperature. Which means it may ignite first before the boron does, dumping more energy into the plasma to pre – heat it more than the power supply alone can. And it might even help to extend the reaction time window beyond only 6 picoseconds so that more reaction events can occur. Forget large atom fission. I still think lithium has the best possibilities.

Hydroboranes like decaborane and pentaborane have only two chemical elements: boron and hydrogen. But there’s another class, or family, of chemical compounds which contain all three: hydrogen, lithium and boron. I wonder…… has Lerner thought about these as possible fuel candidates yet ?

Are you sure about that ignition temperature being lower for p-Li6 ?
I took a look at the “nuclear fusion” wiki and found several interesting fusion reactions compared.
Just assuming here these values are correct:
p-Li6 fusion has a lower optimal burn temperature (66keV) than p-B11 fusion, (123keV), but achieving practical ignition is a whole different story.
The power density of p-Li6 appears to be appallingly low, so it also appears to have an even higher ignition temperature (Ti=800KeV) than p-B11 (Ti=300KeV) These values take into account the bremsshtrahlung losses in a thermalized plasma.

Remarkably, I was surprised by the very high value (Ti=500keV) for the “mainstream” D-D reaction. Although it burns at a marginally higher temperature than D-T, D-D break-even is even harder to achieve than p_B11! That’s why all tokamak research focuses on D-T and its 50keV Ti, with the next (and for a tokamak only) possible upgrade being D-3He (Ti=100KeV). That’s why they dream of mining it from the moon!

I could be wrong, but it could as well be the other way around, p-B11 fusion serving as a kickstart for p-Li6 🙂
And besides that, I think using three reactants introduces two more useless collisions (Li-Li and Li-B), draining more energy.

Also interesting is the Pfusion / Pbremsshtrahlung ratio. For p-Li6 this is only 0.21, less than half of the 0.57 for p-B11
Both values are below 1, which means less fusion power than X-ray losses.
But Dr Lerner appears to have just found a solution for that little problem…

[belbear42]

Lerner wrote: The new LPP machine will have a maximum electric input of close to 100 kJ. Our calculations indicate that this is what will be needed to get Q>1. A generator would be similar in energy, but would pulse much more rapidly–500 times a second or so, compared with 6/ hr for the experimental device.

DianaHitech, which was located in NJ, unfortunately went out of business and the device no longer exists. It was never fully built, so I believe the peak current obtained was about 0.9 MA or so. We’ve had several discussions with Dr. Brzosko and the cross arrangement of our device was inspired by his.

By the way, in a generator, some of the electric discharge energy that is not actually absorbed by the plasma can be recaptured by well-designed circuitry, so the energy that needs to be captured from the plasma for break-even is less than 100 kJ.

Thanks for answering, Dr Lerner. Seems to be that my estimate for pulse energy was not that far off. 🙂
How much of the 100kJ discharge energy should actually end up inside the plasmoid at p-B11 fusion ignition conditions to reach break-even?
My guess is that reaching a good enough discharge-to-plasmoid conversion efficiency is actually the main challenge of focus fusion?

Wishing you all the best with your fascinating project…

[belbear42]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: In a previous topic, I mulled around with the idea of injecting something else to help get the pB11 reaction over the “hump”, so to speak, or to get it going at lower temperature and/or pressures. It seems that after talking to belbear and others that the physics of fission of massive atoms like uranium, thorium, and etc. is just too incompatible with the focus fusion device. But nobody has yet replied back (as far as I know) about the Helium 3 that I also mentioned as a possibility. One major drawback to this lighter helium isotope is that it is scarce here on Earth. It is more common in the lunar soil of the Moon. Could the injection of He 3 and/or deutrium help to ignite the pB11 reaction any easier?

The problem with He-3 – D reaction is not only He-3 being “unobtainium” in large quantities, but mostly that deuterium is much more likely to react with another deuterium nucleus in a neutronic D-D reaction than with anything else.

And D-D reactions are lousy plasma-heaters because most energy is carried away in neutrons.
These neutrons can be slowed and captured to produce thermal energy, but they do little to heat the plasma.
In fact that’s the whole trouble for the Tokamak people, who can’t get their plasmas hot and dense enough to achieve ignition.

Nevertheless, deuterium is a great diagnostic tool to measure your fusion rate in an experiment, because nothing else than fusion produces neutrons.

[belbear42]

AaronB wrote: Radioactive waste is a big problem, but I have a possible solution. I think we could install big accelerator tracks on the sides of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Then we take 500 lb. capsules of radioactive waste and shoot them into the sun. We could also shoot things into other parts of the solar system as the earth turns. It would be easy enought to do the timing, and a little bit of directional control while still in the atmosphere could do most of the course correcting. Each day, you could probably shoot 10,000 lbs. into the sun. That’s only 20 shots, which should be easy to do in 10 minutes. The technology is the same as the high speed roller coaster rides, only the track would be two miles in length. When it wasn’t shooting payloads into space, it could shoot people into the stratosphere on suborbital joyrides. Colombia could make a fortune getting rid of other countries’ waste, and get a booming tourist industry as well.

Since astronomy and spaceflight is one of my hobbies I wish to comment on this:

To begin: You can’t shoot an object into space using a railgun from earth, the atmospheric drag at sea level is just much too high. But you could transport your waste to the moon and build your big railgun there.

To shoot an object into the sun you need not only to overcome the escape velocity of the Earth, but also the much larger orbital velocity of the earth around the sun. If you launch at the roughly 11.5km/s Earth escape velocity your object will have an orbit roughly equal to Earths, risking a re-entry many years later.

To launch into the sun you need to add another 29.8km/s on top of Earth’s escape velocity, to stop the object “dead into the earth’s orbit” so it starts the long drop straight into the sun. Any other velocity is undesirable since your waste will orbit the sun rather than plummet into it.
And then there is the risk of the Sun catapulting vaporized nuclear waste back to earth in a coronal mass ejection.

Actually it takes much less velocity to shoot the waste into a solar escape orbit to disappear forever into deep space, about 20km/s, like they did with the New Horizons spacecraft toward Pluto. This is much less than the velocity needed to launch an object directly into the sun, since the 30 km/s earth orbital velocity can be used as an advantage.

[belbear42]

only 5 days to go before the Google 10^100 deadline!

Has anything been submitted?

[belbear42]

Did anyone actually submit the idea of focus fusion to the 10^100 website? If it ain’t submitted it can’t win and as I see it, it’s not necessary to be “The Inventor Himself” (a.k.a. Eric Lerner) to submit an idea to this website.
The october 20th deadline is quite soon and if nobody reacts I might post a submission myself. (which may not be optimally formulated)
Does anyone has a good 30-second youtube promo flic?

[Author]

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