[Glenn Millam]

The more I look at the 2 versions of this second design, I do not like it. I will give my thoughts couched in answers to Charles’ concerns.

Charles Wilcox wrote: Glenn, a few thoughts (#4 is the most important):

1. Is it necessary to have the plus sign between ‘H’ and ‘B’? Since the diagram arrows imply they are combining, the plus sign is redundant.

I am beginning to question the idea of having the entire reaction on the shirt. We shouldn’t assume that people know much about physics or scientific diagrams. I put the “+” in there after thinking about how someone with little knowledge would think about the diagram… there was little for them to grab onto. Diagrams such as these are too arcane for most viewers. They would understand a plus sign, and see that there are two things being added together. Still, I think it is too complicated, too messy, and too abstract for the average viewer, and it detracts from the aesthetics of the design as a whole.

Charles Wilcox wrote: 2. Should there be a depiction of the temporary ‘C’ atom formed where ‘H’ and ‘B’ combine?

3. The ‘He’lium symbol shouldn’t be in the center of the reaction; there should be three arrows going away from the center with three ‘He’lium labels on the output nuclei, just like the two nuclei going into the reaction.

4. Where’s the energy release depicted?! The whole point is that this is a huge source of energy. It needs to be listed along with the ‘He’lium output, but with much more emphasis; bigger font, bold… something. Actually, I’d place it at the center as some “explosive” icon with a “+ 8.7 MeV” label. The ‘He’lium output lines that I suggested in point 3 should then come away from that explosion.

Like I said, I believe the diagram concept may be too much for the t-shirt’s scope. What is the purpose of the shirt? Two things, I think. First is to be an interesting thing for people who wish to support the project to wear around their friends, and make a statement. Second, it should peak a viewer’s curiosity about the message the shirt is conveying, and get them to visit the website for a proper education. Wearable advertising that people will actually wear.

Thats why I like Reswan’s tag-line for the shirt. People have an idea of what fusion is, and they know that we still have yet to make it work as an energy source. Telling them its closer then they think plays on their hopes to get them to find out more.

My placement of the He in the center of the burst was to show the timeline of the diagram, i.e. 3 He atoms and a lot of energy (the burst) are the end result. Still, I think that this weakens the whole message. People do not care about how it happens so much as they care IF it can happen. I am thinking about reducing the whole diagram down to what is really important about focus fusion, which is that it will make hydrogen-boron fusion energy a reality.

Perhaps we can make this shirt two-sided, and on the back have a short list of the main benefits of focus fusion, and put a more detailed diagram there. Maybe even include a link to the “What Is It?” section of the website, assuming that people will have time to memorize it from reading someone’s moving back.

The energy release is in the purple starburst background. It is the object showing the energy from focus fusion, and is also meant to be what draws the eye.

Charles Wilcox wrote: 5. With the current top-to-bottom layout, it will be cramped if you add any of these details. Changing the reaction to proceed left-to-right would give you room to expand, and keep the very top and bottom text where it is.

I didn’t intend to be critical of the current design, but I do think my ideas would provide clarity and potency to the idea depicted.

Please be critical. This is the time to hash out ideas. The nice thing about CafePress is that, for no money down, you can create lots of different concepts and sell them all on shirts (or mugs, or all sorts of stuff). I don’t see a problem with making several designs with different goals.

A t-shirt design with a well-made and attractive diagram may not be the best design in mixed company, but worn by a physics student in class, it might turn some heads, and win some converts. I will work on that next, after I get this one out the door.

I guess the way to think about this current design is that it is intended for a general audience, and it does its work by drawing the eye (the burst), putting a question in the viewers head (the tag-line), and gives them a way to sate their new-found curiosity (the URL). Another design can be for showing the hard science behind focus fusion, for those who have more knowledge on the subject.

Charles Wilcox wrote: P.S. I really like the stylized plasma focus you created here for the background.

Thanks. You have no idea how much time I spent trying to get that to work right.

[Glenn Millam]

Uhh… and I did notice that the URL is wrong and I will fix it in the next round. 😛

[Glenn Millam]

Here is a version with larger type.

Attached files

[Glenn Millam]

This t-shirt design has used the t-shirt template for CafePress. The image I have uploaded is a very low-res version that has been downsized to stay under the upload size constrains of the forum. The actual art us a PNG file that is 10×10 inches at 200 dpi.

Attached files

[Glenn Millam]

I think, with the t-shirt, the keys are making it something that will be interesting to look at and wear, and gives enough of a message to push viewers to the website. I am almost finished with a rework of my design. It is almost, but not quite, unlike what I had before. It will be up soon.

[Glenn Millam]

Wow. With this we may not even need Hydrogen powered cars. This is really good stuff. I can’t wait to see what happens when they perfect it.

[Glenn Millam]

Ahhh… don’t you love politics?

Anyway, the Thorium reactor looks really good. It is the startup costs that is killing it, and I hope that some country out there will take the risk and do it. At our current state, we don’t need to be turning down really hopeful solutions just because a few people feel their current investments may be threatened.

What is important to look at in this with Focus Fusion is that the startup costs for a single reactor capable of proving the technology will be under a million dollars (US). (Current estimate is $200,000.) That means that it can be achieved by a private investor willing to take out a mortgage on their house. Think about that. Without the need to have a government or huge private firm to put up the cash, the all-important testbed can be done by individuals for less than the cost of an independent film. And think about the return on that investment.

Hmmm… I wonder how much equity I have in my house…

[Glenn Millam]

The holistic management site is great! It gives me a lot of hope in that area.

A good read that will give some insight about Ice Ages (and a lot of other things) is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Everything. He’s a Big Banger, but don’t hold it against him.

[Glenn Millam]

Using the Georgia coal plant as an example, lets run the numbers.

Coal: 1.2 GW @ $1.4 Billion = $1.17 per W

Focus Fusion:

240 5 MW plants = 1.2 GW

240 x $200,000 = $48 Million

1.2 GW @ $48 Million = .40 per W

And that is just startup costs. Look at fuel costs, upkeep, labor, the lessened need for large power lines…

The ROI of Focus Fusion is outstanding. Perhaps the best ever seen.

[Glenn Millam]

Here is a good link to show you what the costs are for coal-fired power plants.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf

If you look on the page with the map, they propose building single 1.2 GW plant in Georgia at a cost of 1.4 billion dollars.

[Glenn Millam]

TheTeacher wrote: No plasma over about 4,000 deg K can be confined by material walls; there has to be electric field or magnetic field containment. As such, the plasma must be 100% ionized. Symmetric electrical field containment is intrinsically unstable; hence the Farnsworth fusion generator constantly produces emitted jets of plasma through the confinement electric field, effectively reducing the ability of the unit to maintain constant over-unity power generation. Similarly, magnetic field containment, as exemplified by Tokomak type fusion reactors, suffers from inability of long-term (i.e more than 3 seconds) containment due both to instabilities in the magnetic field and instabilities in the plasma itself.

Hence the plasma focus approach in using naturally-occurring magnetic containment.

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/focus_fusion_reactor/#dpf

TheTeacher wrote: The trick then, is to create a specific engineered surface, which is attractive to heavy hydrogen nuclei, and which will provide a sufficient electron field to shield two adjacent nuclei to let fusion occur. Calculations show that this is possible with a specific type of charged nanoengineered surface. This is the approach to be taken to actually create a heavy hydrogen fusion generator.

What is your estimate on the time frame of finding such a surface, that can provide significantly better than break-even performance? Is it any better than what we are hearing from ITER and other fusion researchers? What is the theoretical output of such a device? What would its remnants and wastes be? What fuels are you proposing to use?

I have followed cold fusion, catalytic fusion, and sonofusion for the last decade or so, and, not to be too pessimistic, but I have heard a lot of hopeful talk and just-around-the-corner speeches, but have seen no significant working devices that have produced real breakthroughs. One of the things I like about this project is that they have done significant science; the temperature breakthrough at Texas A&M;is repeatable and real, and points to a real solution (in fact a better solution in that non-radioactive Hydrogen-Boron fuel can now be realistically looked at). This project has more than hope; it has direction, and a realistic goal based on good theory and experimental results.

Perhaps doing what you say will bring about a way to produce fusion energy using means that do not produce the kinds of heat and x-rays that PFF does, even though it seems to need radioactive fuel, and will probably produce a lot of radioactive byproducts in comparison to focus fusion. I just wonder about the timing. Will it be there when we need it? Can it be there when we need it? The time is running short.

[Glenn Millam]

The Big Bang is considered such a given that most people accept that every finding is confirmation, despite the anomalies that show that something is wrong with their conclusion. Ah well. Time will tell.

[Glenn Millam]

Excellent points. If we can get a solution to the coming energy problems, we can fuel a huge increase in our production, which will also bring a lot of wealth to a lot of people who are now on the margins. The mechanisms for this growth are already in place (and have been in place); they are just waiting on something like focus fusion to let it happen. Another reason this is all so important.

[Glenn Millam]

That was an excellent, inspired idea.

[Glenn Millam]

Hehe I’m not saying I am pro-Global Warming. If I was, I wouldn’t be interested in Focus Fusion. I would be interested in New Uses For Clean Coal. (I am from Kentucky.)

As for Ice Ages, one could call them a calamity, but a geologist would say they were necessary for the rich soils of Europe, Asia, and North America. The key in deciding whether a phenomena is positive or negative is to define what nature is, what role the phenomena plays in nature, and define our place in nature along side the phenomena. I think the problem in many scientific circles is the assumption that the world we have today is the way it should be and it should not change. I look over what we have so far discovered about nature, and I see continual yet gradual chaos with occasional events of massive chaos. Change is the nature of Nature. I believe that we humans need to tune our adaptiveness to the point that we no longer have to create huge impacts to live well, and let nature take its course, within defined limits. (Focus fusion is a key to this goal.)

I have noticed that many scientists, as humans, tend to make the mistake of tying a few new discoveries together and creating entirely new world-views from the implications of their new revelations. Sometimes this is valid; sometimes not. The argument over the Big Bang Theory is based on such observations and links. But Big Bang Theorists speak as if the whole picture has been revealed, and the small pieces yet unresolved are of no real value or will be found over time, so we don’t need to bother with it. I don’t find such arguments very scientific. All aspects need to be looked at of a world-view before it can be accepted at the same level as the facts that are used to derive the world-view. Until a complete set of facts can be assembled, the world-view is not yet valid.

Take the asteroid problem you bring up. There is a body of scientists who are very upset about this issue. Here are the facts they speak: Asteroids have, and can, cause catastrophic damage to the Earth, and we need to develop the capacity to detect and deflect asteroids capable of causing catastrophe on Earth. These are true facts, and I accept them. Now, despite what many panicked scientists who have researched this subject say, the odds that the Earth is going to get hit by a massive killer asteroid capable of wiping out civilization in the next 100 years is slim to none. So, while we do need to develop the technology, we also need to build up to it, not bankrupt economies to relieve the night terrors of a few scientists. All the close calls are close according to astronomical distances. “Scientists believe such-and-such asteroid will come within a million miles of Earth!” They don’t mention that the Earth is only 8,000 miles wide, and has a thick atmosphere that deflects most objects. The Apollo spacecraft had to be careful during reentry so as not to skip out into space. What are the real odds that a large object has of hitting our small planet at the right angle to do the damage they are so afraid of?

Now, with Global Warming, there is enough evidence for us to take immediate action, but what action? On the website for An Inconvenient Truth, there are a lot of things we can do, many of which don’t seem that hard. The problem is human inertia. Half the world believes adolescents shouldn’t dance together or God/Allah/Buddha will smite us; the other half won’t recycle their plastics because they might have to drive it to the recycling center, and you KNOW how much time that takes. Getting people to change their culture before they are up against the wall is nearly impossible, and is only possible via education, and time. And time we do not have.

So, what we have to do instead is work for what I call a One Person solution. It goes back to the concept that one person can make a difference, and others of a like mind following that concept can create a wave of change. The hard work ends up going on to that small group, but that small group also is unhindered by the bureaucracy necessary to get everyone to do tons of small changes. The small group gets to define the change, and set it in motion. The change then becomes seemingly self-evident, and the rest of the world follows it.

I’m hoping the one person in this case is Eric Lerner, and those he works with and we who visit this site are the kernel of the small group. With Focus Fusion as the catalyst for solving Global Warming, we will have an energy source that will let us stop producing greenhouse gasses, live through the effects we cannot avoid, and repair some damage that would otherwise go unrepaired. It may bring about technologies, so far unthought of, that may cure the problem before it gets out of hand. Since Focus Fusion can touch on so many things, it is extremely important to do the research, but the one thing we don’t need to be panicked. Panic is never the solution.

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