[Jolly Roger]

But just think of the damage a 5 MW, Focus-Fusion-powered centrifuge could do! Maybe we could sling bowling balls at 5,000 rounds per minute! 😉

And, of course, those bowling balls would be made from Fusion Oil! 😉

[Jolly Roger]

cheraly wrote: how good are certmagic products for passing the cert exams ? . any advice will be highly appreciated

Here is some advice: Post your questions on an appropriate forum. This is not it.

Posting this question on this forum is evidence that you are certifiable and won’t need to pass an exam. 😉

[Jolly Roger]

Duke Leto wrote: 1) I’m not sure that the Helium stream would provide thrust with anything close to the efficiency that it provides deceleration electricity, since ion drives provide minimal constant acceleration over long distances.

You are right about the Helium exhaust not providing very much thrust. It just does not put through much mass. It is more effective powering a motorized fan/propeller to move large masses of air.

An FF rocket will not be a typical ion drive, however. It will have ~1,000 times more power. It may more closely resemble a plasma rocket like VASIMR.

To get out of Earth’s gravity well we need high thrust, and that means moving a lot of mass quickly. Maybe we could boil water with microwaves, or squirt salt water through a linear accelerator, or even a compressed air/water rocket.

2) I also gather from your description that the alpha stream would be going through the fan system, that would mean that the reactor must be located in the center.

I did not make myself clear. The reactor is located behind the motor, but only so that the electrical cable from the generator to the motor is short. The reactor and generator could just as easily be located somewhere else in the plane. The airflow from the fan does not go through the reactor. It goes around it, to provide cooling.

As the Helium exhaust will provide negligible thrust, we will now minimize it, turn the reactor around and place the decelerator/generator immediately behind the motor, and the reactor at the rear. The reactor, fuel and exhaust will be self-contained and separated from the environment.

I think this would mean that: …
c) You’d be shooting fully energized ionizing alpha particles into the environment, which I believe is nastier then Gamma.

We will now extract as much energy as possible from the Alpha stream and neutralize it with electrons. It may be worthwhile to save the helium and sell it. Unreacted fuel will be recycled back to the reactor.

Alpha particles are only hazardous if taken internally, as they steal electrons and break chemical bonds. Exposure to Alpha gas would damage the mouth, nose, throat and lungs.

Keep in mind I’m looking to have engines that fit into existing vehicles without too much fuss, not next generation machines.

To retrofit existing aircraft, reactor/motor/fan pods can be made to replace wing-mounted turbofan engines on the larger planes. Tail-mounted engines will be more complicated to replace, but possible. The existing fuel tanks will be drained, cleaned, dried and removed if possible. Reactor fuel tanks will be small enough to include in the engine pods.

Medium-sized aircraft will have the reactor/generator placed in the fuselage, with electrical cables to the replacement motor/fan pods on the wings.

Aircraft too small for a reactor will be converted to fuel cell or electric vehicles.

Next generation aircraft will be more efficient than retrofitted ones.

[Jolly Roger]

Duke Leto wrote: … use the electricity to run high voltage/high temperature electrolysis of a saline solution at or close to the point near the jet engines that are going to burn the Hydrogen/Oxygen mix. About the same overall weight, a little more thrust and the fuel isn’t explosive outside the engines.

An interesting idea, but not what I had in mind.

Most of the thrust from a turbofan jet engine is from the bypass air. (see diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Turbofan_operation.png )

In the aircraft engine I propose, an electric motor to drive the fan replaces the compressor. A Focus Fusion reactor replaces the combustion chamber. A particle decelerator/generator replaces the high and low speed turbines. Placing the reactor and generator aft of the motor reduces power losses and cable weight. Total aircraft weight is reduced, as only decaborane fusion fuel is required.

The helium ion exhaust provides some rocket thrust. If mixed with the bypass air to heat it, additional thrust may be obtained.

By changing how much energy is extracted from the exhaust and routed to the electric motor, this engine may be able to function in a space plane both within and above the atmosphere, and perhaps even under water. (Remember the flying submarine from “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”?)

[Jolly Roger]

If you are feeling suicidal, you could simulate this weapon by dropping BB’s on a rotary sander. Sounds like something I would have done as a kid. 😉

[Jolly Roger]

Lerner wrote: Reactor plus shielding is 2 meters across but whole thing, including capacitor bank may be more like 3x2x2 meters.

Duke Leto wrote: So barring some miracle discovery in radiation containment, there’s an asymptotal lower limit on unit size of about a cubic meter. Ergo no fusion-electric car or propellor airplane…

It may be possible to design a semi-tractor or bus around a Focus Fusion reactor, but I wouldn’t be too comfortable being stuck in rush hour traffic next to an active gamma and x-ray source. But then again, I have been involved in shipping low-level fission waste down the road, so there is not much difference.

Trains and ships will not be a problem fitting an FF reactor aboard. A large plane could carry one under each wing or in its belly to power electric ducted fans.

1 Watt = 1 Newton-meter/second, therefore 5 MW = 5,000 kN-m/s. The engines of a Boeing 747 develop ~280 kN of thrust. (The units aren’t quite right, so this might be mixing “apples-and-oranges”.)

Does this mean that if a reactor/engine system had an efficiency higher than ~6% a Focus-Fusion-powered 747 could fly? If not, why not?

[Jolly Roger]

Irrigation with desalinated water would not only turn desert into arable land, but could also restore over-irrigated land that has become too salty to yield a full crop.

Adding water does not guarantee turning desert into cropland. We might end up with just wet sand. Nitrogen-fixing plants will need to be tilled under for a few seasons to build up soil that other plants can use.

While we are extracting the salts from seawater, let’s not forget to harvest the boron for more p-B fusion.

[Jolly Roger]

Duke Leto wrote: One problem we’re going to have is that if this works, the US coal industry dies.

Focus Fusion will not kill the coal industry, at least not entirely, and not immediately. The electric utilities have a lot of money invested in coal burning plants and will keep operating the existing ones until the cost of cleaning up their emissions gets too high, or they just get too old. As the coal plants are retired, they will be replaced with Focus Fusion.

Coal has more uses than just fuel. It can be used in the manufacture of steel, plastics and maybe pharmaceuticals.

Coal mines are dirty places. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there are a lot of heavy metals in coal mines. They may be inappropriate for any sites having to do with the food chain.

Coal mines are dangerous places. It would be better to get the miners out of there as soon as possible.

Most of the underground coal mines I have seen pictures of have low ceilings, too low for fruit trees. How about mushroom beds?

It would be nice to shut down the strip mines in the western states, though, and return the land to a near-natural state.

[Jolly Roger]

knome wrote: … it appears that they are still operating with the terms and descriptions of the standard model (solar wind, magnetic clouds). Do you think that they’ll be in for some surprises if they get a prototype into space?

You seem to be speaking of something other than the standard model and I am guessing that is the Electric Sun Hypothesis.

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm

Please supply some links so I can get on the same page as you.

What surprises do you think they are in for?

[Jolly Roger]

knome wrote: Has there been any idea work on using the Sun’s electric field, or any other consequences of our having an electric solar system, as a propulsion method for an ‘electric sail’ powered spacecraft? I seem to remember seeing -something- about that but I was wondering if any could point me in the right direction.

Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2) creates a magnetic bubble to ride the plasma of the solar wind. It might also interact with the magnetic field of the Sun, Earth, Jupiter and other planets with magnetic fields.

http://www.ess.washington.edu/Space/M2P2/

Variable-Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) may be able to operate in M2P2 mode.

http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Sep01/MSC23041.html

Both require a source of power and plasma. Focus Fusion (FF) is both.

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/university_of_illinois_space_propulsion/

I hope this is of some help.

[Jolly Roger]

Borated polyethylene may be a viable substitute for water as neutron shielding.

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/johncaunt/shielding/html/neutshort.html

Coming from a commercial fission background, I was thinking of borated water for neutron shielding instead of/in addition to solid boron.

One advantage of water, borated or not, as neutron shielding is that it is also a coolant, removing the heat of the low-energy neutrons. The particle decelerators and capacitor banks will need cooling too.

I know we are trying to stay away from the steam cycle. It doesn’t sound like we are talking about a lot of excess heat anyway. There are many ways to extract energy from heated water.

[Jolly Roger]

Glenn Millam wrote: As far as I am concerned, if we were getting large amounts of net energy from FF because tiny 10-dimensional space monkeys were found to be dancing inside the plasmoids and making the p-boron fuse, then go, monkey, go!

Glenn,

Would those space monkeys be related to the critter Wm. Shatner shot off an airplane wing in “Twilight Zone”? 😉

But seriously, I agree. Let’s get the gizmo working. Take lots of notes and figure out the particulars later.

[Jolly Roger]

ptrubey wrote: What is the x-ray capture device?

There is a brief mention of the x-ray/electricity converter in this article on the main Focus Fusion site.

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/lpp_submits_patent_application/

I assume that it has not yet been perfected and that much research will be needed to find the right (best) materials.

[Jolly Roger]

DaveMart wrote: Focus fusion should be hugely switchable – nothing to heat up or cool down, no building up to any critical level, not even any boilers to heat up.
Should be power at the flick of a switch.

I agree. According to info on the Focus Fusion site:
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/focus_fusion_reactor/
fusion energy is initiated by a pulse of electricity lasting a few milliseconds. The pulse can be repeated (switched on) several hundred or several thousand times per second. The amount of energy produced per second is proportional to the number of electrical pulses per second, which is completely controllable, within certain limits. Other controllable factors involved are the charge size of the electric pulse, the fill gas pressure and fusible ratio of the fill gas.

[Jolly Roger]

From
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=359

Clint Seward:

Your most important point was that others have suggested that I should be
able to demonstrate a collision of EST’s and even a level of fusion with a few hundred thousand dollars and about a year. I agree. Here is what I need to do:

1. Capture the EST in a way that I can measure them. I have designed a
method in the last two months that will do this.
2. Measure the density of the EST. This requirement is something everyone
is asking for, and will enable me to get serious funding from sponsors.
3. Collide two EST’s. I have found a simple way to do this based on the
TRISOPS work by Wells.
4. Consulting work by Chen to verify the physics I have outlined for the
density.
5. Make and measure an EST based on Deuterium.
6. Collide two Deuterium EST’s.

Each of these requires some cash outlays, so I am working them as I can get resources. Several people, including yourself, are considering helpful investments of $5k to $10k to 25K to 50K to 100k. Work will progress with any investment, no matter how small. Capturing an EST is a $5k investment..

Your second most important point is that more people want to see more data and even a video. I have many of these, but have not published them yet. I have concentrated on the physics, which I feel I now know completely, and
can get confirmed. This is a smaller effort, about $15k.

============================

Clint Seward:

It remains clear that we have made and patented a new discovery in physics: a plasma toroid the remains stable without external magnetic fields. This is so far beyond the experience and understanding of plasma scientists today that, to say the least, we are having trouble convincing reviewers. We have completed the design of an improved neutron tube. This is what we have to build to demonstrate a clean energy source, and I plan to do the first steps in 2006, with a first demo in 2007 if all goes well.

In 2005 we completed a detailed design of the apparatus we need for the first demonstration. This is possible because of two things. First, we understand the EST is really just a special case of a spheromak, a plasma ring that is being studied by others, except that the EST is high density spheromak, which will overcome the limitations of spheromaks for the clean energy application. Secondly, we can adapt the EST Spheromak to the well known neutron tube, by applying all of the pieces we have developed over the years.

We plan to do this by making a new, high energy neutron tube. There are several thousand neutron tubes in use in the US today that safely collide hydrogen ions to produce neutrons, which in turn are used for explosives detection, industrial process control, and medical testing. Figure 1 shows the neutron tube schematically. An ion source produces hydrogen ions (deuterium), which are accelerated to 110 kV, then directed to hit the target (also deuterium), a process which produces neutrons (see reference below).

Neutron tubes today are limited by the low density of the hydrogen ions. We plan to overcome this limitation by adapting the EST Spheromak to increase the ion density to produce a high output neutron tube. The EST Spheromak is patented jointly by EPS Inc. and MIT scientists who also have published papers confirming the physics and data. Since each part of the development has been done by others or by EPS, we anticipate that this will be an engineering project to produce a proof of concept lab demo in two years, with modest funding.

The major application is a high output neutron tube for clean energy applications. The high output neutron tube can be thought of as a heat generator to replace a furnace and/or generate electricity. Fuel costs for energy will 20:1 less than fossil fuel costs. Ultimately we plan to use the hydrogen/boron process to produce clean energy without neutrons.

The development is a scale up of work completed to date. We make EST Spheromaks in the lab and accelerate them. Each step has been shown to work individually, and we plan to adapt them to produce a lab demo in two years.. Milestones:

1. Defining Patent: (Note: co-inventors are MIT scientists). 2000

2. Spheromak acceleration: 2001

3. Spheromak capture in a magnetic trap: 2006

4. Spheromak collision for a lab proof of concept demonstration: 2007

5. First neutron tube commercial prototype: 2008

6. First commercial product: 2009

Our best estimate at this time (December 2005) is that we will need 24 months and approximately $500,000 to demonstrate a colliding EST fusion process.

[Author]

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