[Ivy Matt]

100+ keV ion energies: good news indeed. Now looking forward to 1+ joule of fusion energy firing on all twelve cylinders. I’m not sure how you get from 1 to 10,000+ joules in a few months, but I guess I’ll just sit back and watch what happens next.

One thing I like about this report is that it touched on pretty much everything: kV, MA, torrs, keV, and joules. (Am I missing anything?) If each update does that, then it’s fairly simple to follow progress from one update to another. Once you’ve got your 1+ joule, it would be nice to see an update to the fusion yield [del]timeline[/del] chart, if only to show skeptics that it’s not so much a logarithm approaching an asymptote as it is a hyperbolic sine. 😉

[Ivy Matt]

Well, I suppose I might as well attempt to answer my own question, although I don’t know if it’s possible to give a definitive answer. The two most well-known US contenders were the Wright Brothers and Samuel Pierpont Langley. Langley received a $50,000 grant from the War Department in 1898 to build a full-scale, piloted, powered aircraft. According to Wikipedia, he also received $20,000 from the Smithsonian Institution (of which he was the Secretary), but I only see the War Department grant mentioned in other sources. I don’t know exactly where that money went over the next five years. Some of it undoubtedly went into producing a quarter-scale powered model aircraft which was first tested in 1901. However, the lion’s share of the money must have gone into the full-scale aircraft, which was test-flown in October and December of 1903. Both tests failed. The second failure was highly publicized, and resulted in much ridicule. Langley understandably did not dare to ask for more funds to continue his work.

According to Wikipedia, the Wright brothers spent less than a thousand dollars on their Flyer I. This information is credited to To Conquer The Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight by James Tobin. The Flyer I would have been their main expense in 1903, although they had no doubt incurred similar expenses since they began experimenting with aircraft in 1899.

Total US revenue was $494,300,000 in 1898 and $662,000,000 in 1903. If my math is correct, Langley’s War Department grant was about one hundredth of a percent of 1898 revenue, even less of 1903 revenue, and even less considering it was spread out over five years. Of course, it’s possible the War Department gave other grants related to aeronautics (such as ballooning) during the same period. Total US revenue in 2010 is $2,165,120,000,000. If the US spent $400,000,000 on fusion research in 2010, that would be about two hundredths of a percent of 2010 revenue. Of that, $124,000,000 went towards ITER, about six thousandths of a percent of 2010 revenue. In comparison, the total cost of each F-22 was about $339,000,000 per aircraft with the total program cost included, or $138,000,000 for each new aircraft manufactured, ignoring total program cost.

In other words, Rezwan’s point, that spending on fusion research is relatively miniscule, even if you include the big, expensive projects, is quite true. However, my counterpoint is that spending on fusion research is most likely to remain miniscule until after some exciting advance, such as “scientific break-even”, is announced or leaks out.

On the other hand, how many people can say they helped fund the Wright brothers before their first successful powered flight?

[Ivy Matt]

Well, I have to say I like it. On first sight I was impressed. On second sight I wondered why the electrodes were green. Not that it matters. After maximizing the image, I still like it, but I think I’d prefer it if the edge of the sheath between electrodes were a bit more parabolic. But that’s purely personal aesthetic taste. I don’t know much about how the sheath is supposed to look in real life.

There are ten outer electrodes, whereas the current experiment has sixteen. Is that because of aesthetic considerations? I suppose the design might be a bit busy with sixteen. With eight it would perhaps be a little too concentric.

I’m trying to think if there’s another logo in use that it could be easily mistaken for. (Well, I guess that’s why you have “Focus Fusion” next to the stylized DPF.)

[Ivy Matt]

I wonder how much money America spent on aeronautical research in 1903.

[Ivy Matt]

I think the current logo is rather clever and effective at getting across what needs to be gotten across, although perhaps it may mean nothing to someone who knows little or nothing about nuclear reactions. Any new logo would need to get the job done at least as effectively. And, of course, it would have to exist. We can’t really replace the current logo with nothing.

[Ivy Matt]

I suspect Mr. Burns is behind current fusion policy.

[Ivy Matt]

It looks like a case of the headline not quite matching the article. Fox News overreacted, in my opinion. Either that, or they made their satire a little too subtle.

[Ivy Matt]

I remember when I first read up on energy as a curious preteen. I was slightly disappointed to find that we had all these different technologies for generating electricity, and most of them ended up doing the same exact thing: heating water until it boiled, using steam pressure to turn turbines, generating electricity by way of electromagnetism.

I guess steampunk isn’t as retro as we tend to think. 😉

[Ivy Matt]

Torus? Sphere? Whatever it is, it’s a speculative diagram. And it’s located in South Korea. The North Koreans didn’t bother to produce a publicity photograph of their contraption—assuming it has a physical existence. Perhaps they’ll provide further details for the next anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth.

[Ivy Matt]

I don’t watch much television lately but I seem to remember Conan O’Brien doing the same sort of thing. Or was it Craig Kilborn? *shrug*

[Ivy Matt]

For some reason I’m reminded of this.

[Ivy Matt]

Obvious? Practical? I don’t know about that, but LLNL does have some kind of a plan for a power plant, albeit a hybrid fission-fusion one.

[Ivy Matt]

http://gizmodo.com/5570817/no-sleep-til-fusion#

This is a more detailed article on the same guy, albeit from a less mainstream source. If other media outlets start investigating this or similar stories, we may be in for a fusion summer.

[Ivy Matt]

Whoa, I take that back. The article does mention boron. I’m not sure how I missed that before. :red: But, still, no mention of why boron is important, and in the sidebar it says deuterium and tritium are the “best” fuels for fusion, even as the article quotes the ITER guy as saying you can’t use fusion for proliferation.

Phil’s Dad wrote: Steam age.

I’m not sure what you mean. If you’re referring to a particular reactor design, I’d say fusion is fusion and breakeven is breakeven. Plenty of people can credibly claim to have achieved the former. Nobody yet has a credible claim to the latter. When somebody does achieve the latter, I’m not going to be too picky about how they did it. I’d like to see lots of people eventually achieve the same thing using a number of different designs. Then, when the inevitable shakeout occurs, we can be assured that the one to three winning designs have weathered real competition.

If you’re referring to the method of generating electricity, well, the Polywell folks hope to fuse boron and hydrogen some day. They haven’t yet, but who has? (Of course, I expect LPP to be the first. ;-))

[Ivy Matt]

epimenide wrote: I’ve already played (and extended for my own purposes) that part: it’s very nice, however I wouldn’t use it for more than visual effects… What I expect from the output power formula is an approximate and empirical result, calculated in discrete steps with not much computing power: after all, we have no supercomputer at hand to do the real work, and we don’t want the player to wait forever!

Visual effects are what I was thinking of.

Yes, of course, and possibly ideas for the components and factors for each of them. No need to think about levels right now, let’s get to the point where we have a running reactor of each type to test the game.

Perhaps one of these days I’ll post my “fusion menagerie”. I believe I have at least one reactor type I haven’t seen mentioned on this forum. Of course, I suppose the wildest ideas would be the least likely to be considered for the game.

there must be enough public knowledge available in order to build the pseudo-simulation

Yes, and that might be a showstopper for most of the reactor types.

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