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Ivy Matt wrote: NIF released their April update halfway through May this month. Usually they’ve been very punctual. I thought the following quote of note:

A NIF Facility Maintenance and Reconfiguration period began on April 25 and was scheduled to continue until May 15. The NIF team’s goal is to upgrade NIF’s peak power to 500 trillion watts in preparation for this summer’s experiments.

That’s insane. The Hiroshima bomb was in the neighborhood of 60 trillion joules of energy. They’d pass that in an eighth of a second. I don’t pretend that’s even near how long they’re firing, but that’s still an unimaginable amount of power.

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zapkitty wrote: Hey, hey… I’m sure that 2 million amps at 45 thousand volts with temperatures exceeding several billion degrees is low energy in comparison to something… somewhere…

… but when did Lerner-hakase start writing KDE desktop applets?

I don’t really think it’s charming to attach Japanese specific supplications to American names while speaking in English. It’s actually really off-putting.
And, yes, that’s low energy compared to the LHC beam, which tops out in the single digit trillions. It still sounds like the category of things we call “High Energy Physics” though.

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zapkitty wrote:

Well, I suppose that’s pretty reasonable. But, for example FoFu-1 is very sensitive to disruption. Imagine if you had tin whiskers on the electrodes, even very tiny ones.

Tin? Where would the tin come from? The electronics would have to be outside the vacuum chamber.

And even an FF space drive will have a vacuum chamber… as the fuel pressure has to rise to several torr before you can start it.

That it is space-based would just mean that you save on the cost and maintenance of a vacuum pump.

A plasma window should be able to allow the beam to exit the chamber into an exhaust assembly of some kind while maintaining chamber pressure.

Tin whiskers come from the sodder used to finish circuitry. In the absence of gravity and friction, that sodder, bearing slightly electrical charge(caused in part by the very circuits they are part of), will, atom by atom, move into long whisker shape leading to short circuits and variation in electric/magnetic fields. I’m not saying that WOULD happen in a space based FoFu, just that when alignment is so critical, it’s the kind of failing you wouldn’t want to have happen.

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Well, I suppose that’s pretty reasonable. But, for example FoFu-1 is very sensitive to disruption. Imagine if you had tin whiskers on the electrodes, even very tiny ones.

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You know what really scares me about fusion thrusters? You have limited resources to restart them once you end the reaction. Low earth orbit is not a place to which I’d like to take a one way trip.

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So, 2013 will be the year of fusion. It sounds like a whole bunch of major projects are set to make breakthroughs.

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Since you asked for help on your English: pseudoscience is one word.

On point: If not the underlying theory, what’s left to be skeptical of? The motives? The engineering skill?

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willit wrote: Hey………. I am a republican. unfortunately scientifically uneducated people cannot see the benifit. if you made them realize that the cell phone in their pocket came from research(mostly unfunded by govt) they might see things differently. if they are tied to big oil/coal they will most likely not vote for anything that would jeopardise that position.
all research answers questions but sometimes the wrong questions were asked.
teasing tidbits of information from mother nature is inherently difficult at times.

Ok, I’ll try to keep the political jabs at a minimum, because this is a fusion board, not a politics one, and no one would win from a protracted political debate. I do think this budget would have a much stronger chance without a republican controlled house, as a matter of practicality.

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Too bad republicans hate science and will never vote for that.

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Isn’t it supposed to be fusion via dense plasma focus? Am I just demonstrating my ignorance here, or is “Dense plasma fusion” not actually a thing?

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I have a hard time watching RT. When I do, I see serious instances of systemic biases. They’re very much in favor of anything the Russian government is, even in cases like Syria where people are being massacred. They also predicted total economic collapse of the US by 2011 in 2008. I wish someone a bit more credible would pick up this story.

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What’s depicted in the first design?

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Did you know that some people like meaningful context on forum posts? It’s hard to believe, but true.
But seriously, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Greek letters(especially the first 4) are so overloaded with different meanings that just arbitrarily using them without context is meaningless.

Could you explain in more detail what you’re seeking?

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It’s always a shame to see a scientist pass on before their dreams are achieved.

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If they do achieve ignition, I guarantee that investors will be reexamining fusion as an actual possibility. It will be a really important time to get real media attention to LPPX’s situation. It will probably be the last opportunity to inform the public about fusion’s progress until someone achieves break-even.

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