[Breakable]

Another major issue I see with Space Elevator besides the tether material is its throughput. What is the planned speed and the amount of payload it can deliver?
If we say that it can deliver a few tons of payload per day,
then the infrastructure costs (especially with alternative cheaper-than-currently methods) will be a very long term investment
and might not even pay for itself.

[Breakable]

I think it is as credible as north Korean announcement and similar to their space program. Hopefully i am wrong…

[Breakable]

I would like to point out that the only reason a space elevator makes sense is due to the inefficiency of current rocket engines and the total costs (environmental and energetic) of producing rocket fuel. Space elevators purpose is just to reduce the price of delivering loads to orbit.
In case we have cheap energy and/or reaction-less drives and/or cheap easy to produce environmentally friendly fuel (aluminium rockets are being tested now) space elevator becomes more of a attraction than practicality. Yes it would be nice for kids to take an excursion to, but in case you could buy semi-orbital flight for ~1000 usd, it becomes less of an interest.

[Breakable]

I don’t see much to elaborate about, but here it is:
There is just no investment opportunity available for fusion if you don’t have a million bucks. The only alternative I see is to short some sector or to invest in sectors that could benefit – but it would be less profitable and no way to directly influence the outcome.
If there was a way to gather all the funds together from all the small investors and put them in a diversified portfolio of stocks (mutual index), that invests in all perspective fusion approaches depending on which ones are the most perspective that would probably be the dream. It could probably help (not sure about the legal side) to make IPO’s for the small companies that engage in fusion research and cant afford it themselves, for some share purchasing deal’s. Alternatively in case investors are plenty the fund could just throw the money at anything that seems remotely possible and see if something sticks around. I expect the profit to be so huge in the end that 100/1 ratio of successful investment will be pocket change.

[Breakable]

Give me, give me, give me an opportunity to invest into fusion energy!!!
I would put a thousand bucks on FF, Poly-well, FRC and any other investment-accepting perspective approach and wait-see which one succeeds.
It would be like buying MSFT in the 80’ties.

[Breakable]

In case digging&drilling; needs to be done deeper&cheaper;, not much can be done about workplace safety.
And in the world where resources are scarce and current living philosophy of consumerism is still promoted, human life will probably drop in value.

[Breakable]

http://www.forevergeek.com/2006/07/usb_self_destruct_button_hub/

[Breakable]

I just want to remind you how this thread started. So does anyone has a legislation draft, that for example would support Innovative Fusion Concepts? In case FF does not, maybe somebody else will need to succeed?

[Breakable]

Just to get back on topic I totally see underwater communities appearing after dream of FF is realized.
It is because human imagination is currently limited by energy requirements in most areas.
After we get cheap energy, well get cheap materials and probably cheap labor due to robotization so everything becomes possible.
Other types of communities that I think would become also possible:
Desert cities (think Las Vegas, but smaller many in numbers and self sustaining),
Antarctic cities,
Underground cities,
Floating cities.

Probably later:
Flying cities or at least castles,
Moon/asteroid/other planet cities and communities,
Cloud cities in gas giants

[Breakable]

The difference between fusion bubble and other bubbles is probably be that it wont pop afterwards, but explode even more.

[Breakable]

Aeronaut wrote: I am planning to mass produce and market these. Hopefully under the Aquarius brand name. Can you say legal monopoly and first-mover advantage?

Let me know when you can start accepting investments. I might not have much, but I am willing to risk it.

[Breakable]

Aeronaut wrote: TCG, the operating numbers are probably a lot better than I floated as worst case above. They charged the installation and setup engineering fees for each and every core swap. I see the installation as a very minute share of the real pie for the salesmen, much like printers make the money by selling ink. If you can lock PG&E into a 20 year service contract for 1,000 or more reactors, you could price the lot however you wanted in order to get the real prize.

FF could probably use the same method for ramping up the sales.
Sell the printers cheap and the cartridges expensive…

[Breakable]

LPP ruled out diamond switches (if I remember correctly) because none had experience making powerful enough.
William is talking about something similar to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignitron
which for some reason are not used (response time?)

[Breakable]

Rezwan wrote:
Can you provide an example/link?

Tree like thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/clrkk/a_man_buys_a_goat/
I am not sure if you can build it on this base though… what is the name of it phpBB i know the CMS is “ExpressionEngine”, but wonder what is the forum itself?

[Breakable]

I am not an engineer, but I would expect that the first prototypes and production units would function at a much lower shot frequency allowing for easy thermal management.
Maybe after this technology is tried and proven we can have world class scientists and engineers work out more efficient cooling and energy conversion methods.

[Author]

Posts