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Back to the logo. The peace symbol would be the best choice for many parts of the country. Boston, San Francisco, perhaps Seattle, but not Memphis, Houston, Salt Lake City, or San Diego. The point I was making is that it is not universally seen as a positive image.

Not having a lick of artistic talent, I cannot personally make a recommendation, but since I live in an art community, I know talented individuals who have the vision I lack. I will be approaching several of them and see if they can come up with something for consideration.

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Along with framing our own efforts in the best light, we should be prepared to describe the opposition with a few choice, cutting phrases. “Nineteenth century (or steam era) technology” is a natural, but also “horse and buggy era thinking” (or technology). Even “retro” or “your grandfathers electric generator” or “as smart (dumb) as boiling water to make electricity.”

At some point we may be in a position to have to out talk the opposition. From my experience in local politics, if you can get the audience and decision makers guffawing at your opponent, it won’t matter what they say, they are done for.

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I have to agree with Jamesr. The peace symbol, which originally was created by the Neuclear Disarmament movement — it is formed by superimposing the semaphore flag symbols for N and D within a circle — does not have universal appeal. I am unfortunate enough to live in a very conservative county ( Orange, California ) and this symbol is generally regarded as representing weakness, surrender, and stoned kooks with no guts. Personally, I like it and it fits the hB11 reaction perfectly, but it carries a lot of baggage with many folks.

Education of the masses about the DPF will be necessary, but no simple task. Most Americans are not well educated and are resentful of having this pointed out. To attempt to acquaint them with something new implies that they are ignorant, and they often have a characteristicly negative response. Since I work with a lot of these people, I have found that presentation is everything. If you want to express something, you have to use the language of the target audience, not your own. The message has to be simple, sugar coated, and have no words or images which could cause brain lockup. It won’t be enough to explain the nuances of the DPF to physicists because there are very few of them. You have to appeal to a much broader and more humble audience.

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Rezwan wrote: As a good girl scout, I think we should be prepared for any eventuality.

Yes, indeed!

Get Sting to sing “I want my D P F”

I would love to see this.

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The DPF is a wholly new concept, and it will require new images and descriptions to frame it. We should be staying away from images and words which have a negative connotation and creating fresh ones in our favor. F’rinstance: “nuclear” should never be used (bombs, radioactivity, etc). “Fusion” should be used sparingly (danger, ridicule). “It can fuse Boron and Hydrogen to produce energy” is more like it. Images of bombs frighten people and should not be used, even with the “not” symbol over it. The peace symbol with the pB11 reaction on it is good but it is not an eye catcher and would need to be explained to be effective.

The representation of the plasma focus used in the animation on the website I think is a winner. It is unusual looking but not threatening. The blue arc of the plasma folding inward to form the plasmoid has great color and draws the eye. The term “Plasma Focus” has a good sound to it and a positive connotation can be established by how it is used. “Is the Plasma Focus the power generator of the future?” “Boron can do it!” and so forth. Explaining “aneutronic” would come later when people start asking questions.

If I were trying to sell a DPF generator, I would want an actual device to show, and I think this would be the best image we could use. It would start out visually neutral but intriguing, and we could describe it any way we wanted. . . .”Not your grandfather’s reactor”. Well, maybe, but you get the idea.

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I am certainly glad that Eric took the time to weigh in on this thread, and reading his words, I am convinced that the right people will be making the decisions when the time comes.

I would only like to add the coal industry to the list of potential opponents. Natural gas and oil will find uses in transportation and heating for some time to come, but coal is only used in this country to generate electricity, to the best of my knowledge. The companies which own these resources will see the development of cheap, pollution free means to produce power as a severe threat to billions of dollars of future profit. The fact that much of the central and eastern part of the U.S. has no alternative to using their product gives them tremendous leverage to continue despoiling huge tracts of Appalachia and charging ever increasing prices. They will NOT be good sports about loosing this advantage. They would be happy to see wide use of FF only after they have sold the last lump of coal and the last barrel of oil. The important thing to remember about these people is that they don’t merely sell fuel resources, they are in the wealth extraction business.

I would like to think that market forces and popular will would be all we need to open this door into the future, but they rarely have been enough in the past. Great changes have needed a little muscle, a bit of guile, some misdirection, publicity, spellbinding, political hustle, and judo, to name a few of the arts which may have to be used.

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When did the fishermen and other vicitims of the Exon-Valdez oil spill to get compensation, and how much did they get. The answers are: “just recently and very little”.

If I wanted to gum up the works for LPP, I would rely on time tested methods. I don’t want to get too specific (you never know who is reading this), but if I have already figured this out, so could the vested interests,. Remember, we are talking about the most vicious and greedy people on the earth, people who would find no difficulty halting production of something which threatens their profits. Underestimating them would be a critical mistake.

The best political strategy I ever learned is to anticipate where your opponent will next leap, get there before him, and cut the ground away so he falls into a hole. If the DPF can become a successful electrical generator — many ifs there — we would be in for a war on many fronts, and we would be wise to consider our moves now. For example: perhaps the U.S. would not be the best choice for introducing a device which generates electricity at 1/10 the present cost. Perhaps better would be a country with chronic budget problems and a hydrocarbon defficiency. Some momentum, a reliability record, and demand could be built up before taking on North America.

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I really like the image of some poor slob shoveling coal into a boiler as what we are trying to step up from.

To a certain extent, Aeronaut is correct about the sales job that will be needed. Technical success will be hard enough, but only the first step because the social and economic obstacles will be many. Some people will refuse to believe in the DPF generator because it is “too good to be true”. A few soothing words and a flashy demonstration may win over many of these. Others will hesitate to implement such a new technology because of the lack of a track record. If a few of these can be won over, many of the others could turn favorable. But the most trouble would come from the few who have a vested interest in the status quo. Coal and natural gas produces most of the electricity in this country, and the owners of these resources would be desperate to preserve their money makers.

It seems to me that framing the debate about DPF power is partially casting our side as “forward looking” and the opposition as “backward looking”. In this way, we have the high ground, and they are struggling uphill.

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There is something to Emmetb’s suggestion. The animation on the FFS site of the DPF firing is worth more than a thousand words of description, and a self produced video hilighting goals and progress of the project could have real value. It certainly could be produced to put the effort into the best light. It wouldn’t replace the hour long PBS special which we have been discussing and which would present all the fusion projects on an equal basis. However, it could lead to a DVD which could be handed out widely, raising a few eyebrows and possibly making the PBS special easier to accomplish.

I happen to know a qualified cinematographer. With a suitable carrot. . .

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Morgan Freeman was my son’s recommendation too. One can dream.

Bringing in the othe fusion projects would be necessary, but I think that a documentary should include the two high budget projects on an equal basis with the others. It should be a counterpoint to the Scientific American article, “Fusion’s False Promise”, but more optimistic and inclusive. Emphasis could be on three points of comparison: 1) what is it costing, 2) when might it achieve results (power generation), and 3) what is progress so far. The Tokamak and NIF projects look pretty shabby by comparison to the LPP effort, but the comparisons have not been made so far.

OMG. I just had an alegory barge into my head — Cinderella. Guess who would be the ugly stepsisters and who would be the one to get the shoe to fit. Sorry, back to the serious part.

Something about “Fusion’s Promise” would seem possible, even if LPP would have to share the light with all the other contenders. A useful goal would be to incite the suspicion that the “Ugly Stepsister” projects may be hogging way too much of the funding for the results they are producing.

Any more ideas?

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From what I can see, LPP HAS done it yet. The FF-1 fairly routinely fuses duterium, something the high priced competition has a bit of trouble with yet. Of course, the goal is to fuse pB11 and generate useful amounts of electricity from it cheaply, but the mileposts along the way are significant and don’t seem to be heralded as they might. Certainly, pB11 fusion is what is what would make the professional doubters sit up and notice, since this is something the Tokamak and NIF projects cannot ever hope to accomplish, but he interested and curious may be enticed by other means.

We should generate a little exclusivity and mystery, imply that the other guys might not have a clue yet. I do feel that FFS has been a bit too humble about its accomplishments so far. Perhaps our attitude should be: “You want fusion? We got it, but that is last week’s triumph, and now we are out frying bigger fish. Do you want to come along? Don’t miss the action here.”

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It is pretty well known that Iran’s oil reserves are at or past peak production, and they are looking forward to a time when they will loose this resource. Their interest in nuclear fission was understandable if slightly suspicious because they would soon need some an alternate means to generate electricity. Rezwan’s presentation of their fusion effort brings a new angle to this discussion. If they want electricity and will forgo bombs, then they may be heading in the right direction. A DPF installation cannot present the same threat to nearby, nervous neighbors (name starts with an “I”) that a fission installation could.

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I would like to wish the Iranians success in their work with focus fusion — they will be another contestant in the race and should surely liven things up. But I don’t hope they are first over the line. I recognize the “sputnik” effect may operate here, but there is another effect to consider.

Despite the fact that many Persian people live harmoniously in this country, we are not exactly on good terms with the Iranian government . Their possible successes with the DPF may result in a backwash condemnatory effect which we may regret. Remember how the Nazi’s condemnation of “Jewish (nuclear) physics” undermined their own efforts to make progress in this area. Xenophobes and coal industry lobbyists may be quick to brand the plasma focus as “Iranian physics” and set back progress in this country by several years.

However, what benefit for DPF research (the American variety) can we find here? I see the Iranian presence in this area potentially good for fundraising. Just whisper, “You don’t want THEM to beat us, do you?” into a few Sentators’ ears and see what happens.

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Aeronaut’s figures look attractive. If they hold up and if FF proves out, the first place I would think to go would be my own City Council which recently consolidated with our water district. We are right on the Pacific Ocean but rely on often scanty snowpack in the Rockies one thousand miles away for our water supply. Pitching an unrestricted supply of cheap water made independent of conventional sources by using reverse osmosis and a FF generator may be an easy sell. There are many other cities in my state who might find such an opportunity attractive.

The second place I would think to go would be Pacific Gas and Electric, the local monster electric company. Although they don’t generate all the electricity they sell, the chance to lower their generation costs, secure the advantages of distributed generation, and look like heroes by lowering rates (a bit) could be hard to pass up. Outfits like this could be very large scale purchasers. They would have to know that if they didn’t jump at the chance themselves, someone else would and use PG&E infrastructure to make a huge profit.

The third would be any factory which uses substantial electrical power and has to fight for a slim profit margin. The prototype for this is a frozen food producer near me who would probably jump at a chance to lower the cost of running his freezers constantly. I couldn’t begin to count how many such businesses are in my state, but it’s a lot.

There is, of course, a big “if” in this, but if it works, the driving force of FF will have to shift from scientists and engineers to salesmen who have a lot of technical savvy. Opportunities will be limited only by imagination.

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Talk about blazing new trails!

Once they master their technique, I can see annual runs across the Hudson river to New York or across the Mississippi river or the Golden Gate, or even. . . do we dare think it. . . The Catalina Island Run! The sky is the limit. An Olympic event, perhaps. “Water Strider” shoes will be all the rage. Loch Ness, the Bosporus, the Messina Strait, Gibraltar, all will fall.

And to think this all started with the Basilisk lizard.

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