[theanphibian]

… in fact there’s some idle speculation that the lockmart device might actually be a polywell since emc2 doesn’t have the patent.

mind = blown

I think this is Pie in the Sky talk. Not a real on-going SkunkWorks project.

His talk does show a team, indicating that they have or had a group on it at some point. Their machine also looked pretty expensive. What I don’t get is how any manager could have possibly greenlighted a project like this that. Do they at all understand the similarities to what other people are doing? Do they really have a design tweak that gives them a chance diverse from the other approaches? Maybe they just think that their organization could put the resources into it to succeed when others couldn’t.

[theanphibian]

Man, forget the problems with the Coulomb barrier, I want to know how they expect 3 to 5 protons to magically fuse into the nucleus at the same time…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but basically every proposed fusion reaction has 2 reactants. Anything else doesn’t make sense unless we’re talking about a basic decay. Well, it makes sense, based on physical principles, but it’s the most obviously useless reaction possible b/c the probability of it happening will be laughably small.

Yes there have been particle accelerator experiments for proton reaction for many materials. It is interesting for nucleoli-synthesis theory’s even if not for fusion.

Right, it’s not that there’s anything crazy about proton + nucleus reactions, quite the contrary. The activation energy for the reaction is very very well established, the only problem is engineering a device that produces that activation energy efficiently enough to gain net energy, which comes down to a problem of engineering scaling. For the pB reaction, the highest reaction rate is at 600 keV, so it’s true that:

energy in: 600 keV
energy out: 8.7 MeV

And for this reaction, it proceeds at a sufficiently fast rate. The idea of the plasmoid in FF is that almost all of the fuel within the microscopic pinch gets used up. Everybody knows that the reaction would work for energy production is sufficient compression could be accomplished.

[theanphibian]

Ok, I’m kind of curious, can someone even write the reaction the E-CAT uses? I’m not talking about discussing the plausibility of any of this. Seriously, write:

A+B -> C+D

You know, it can have different numbers of reactants and products, that’s fine. But is there a reaction that people can clearly identify the system is supposed to be using? Or is this in doubt?

[theanphibian]

The reaction is not energetically favorable. Free neutrons decay into a proton and an electron with a half life of about 15 minutes. So it could hit, but what would it do? There is not enough energy in the system to turn it into a neutron.

This does occur with electron capture, but only in nuclei that are proton-rich. However, the mechanics for why the electron isn’t always interacting directly with the nucleus is quantum and more puzzling.

Why doesn’t the mater around us fall apart? If all we had were the 4 forces, matter would fall apart very quickly, but we have materials that hold together. That is due to the fact that the wave-nature of the electron prevents it from existing within the nucleus. The electron is very light (and probably the most fundamental type of particle in the universe) and because of this lightness, the wave nature of it exerts a very significant “outward pressure”, if you will.

Regarding hydrogen, it’s not hard to believe looking at a S orbital. The P orbitals are comparatively mind-blowing. P orbitals of electrons plow straight through the nucleus. Do not deceive yourself – this is physical. At any given moment, the electron has a definable probability of being within the nucleus, but the size of the nucleus as well as a few other factors make this somewhat improbable. It only matters when a reaction within the nucleus is energetically favorable, like in electron capture. In that case, the probability of the electron being in the nucleus is what drives the rate at which the reaction occurs.

For Hydrogen, the reaction is not permitted and never occurs, although the electron certainly spends some time within the structure of the proton itself. But it also spends some time on the other side of the universe too.

[theanphibian]

I found a fantastic research tool!

http://mazamascience.com/Minerals/USGS/

It gives graphs for mineral imports, exports, and world production (US data). You can look at Boron, and I think the price evolution is the most useful. You can find the pdf of it here.

http://mazamascience.com/Minerals/USGS/output/xvar1_yvar1_zvar1_all_boron_ProductionPrice_600.pdf

Most important are the recent numbers for word-wide Boron production and price.

4e6 metric tons
$800 / ton

So if we’re going by the figure of needing 400 tons for the task of powering all the energy needs of the world, that would come out to a total cost of $ 320,000 and would require 0.01 % of worldwide Boron production. I’d say this is case closed for the pB fuel availability. The fuel simply isn’t a consideration.

[theanphibian]

Aeronaut wrote: Glad to have you with us, theanphibian.

A simplified view of the DPF is the Lee model, developed by professor Sing Lee of the UN University. http://www.nsse.nie.edu.sg/research/plasmaphysics/ComputationPkg.htm will get you the Mather style DPF simulator and all of the math behind the simulator, which includes the physics. This model divides each machine cycle into 5 phases, the Axial, Radial inward shock, Reflected radial shock, compressive/radiative, and expansion. As the names imply, the last 4 phases use a cylindrical model.

The link you mention defaults to the general research site. The material was removed at some time in the past. I would offer as an alternative:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070216131940/http://www.nsse.nie.edu.sg/research/plasmaphysics/ComputationPkg.htm

This page does offer some novel content, thanks for the leads. The page has some Excel books that can be downloaded with a simulation based in Visual Basic, but it doesn’t work on my computer, oh well. Anyway, I’m not strongly interested in the computational specifics right now, I’m mostly interested in the qualitative physics since I still haven’t fully grasped those yet.

My understanding of the purple image is that its the filaments beginning to kink up near the beginning of Phase 2. I still don’t have a direct correlation between much of the Lee model (simplified but easier to grasp initially) and the LPP model, which is very detailed. But there are 2 simulators being tested. Maybe FF will have a package similar to the Lee model this year.

I understand those are the filaments, that makes sense.

Am I correct in taking that the purple image is from imaging from a real experimental test? Not computational or anything of the sort. But I know the modeling is very important (otherwise you’re wandering around in a 6-dimensional space I hear).

The compressing cylinder is the collapsing magnetic field, which can exceed 10GG, heating the plasmoid containing the fuel for any shot by compressing it into a near solid. The plasmoid diameter for the energy yield charts is 8.6 microns. As the plasmoid is compressed, some fusion begins, producing positively charged helium ions and the resulting free electrons. The magnetic field provides the motion and the tight focus of the beams.

Even though it needs to be shown as a beam for that concept, the electron beam is actually busy heating the plasma even hotter. Something like thermal runaway in an overheating transistor. This is where the majority of the fusion reactions begin occurring.

I was previously looking at the actual pB reaction as a 2-to-3 body problem. But we are mostly interested in the dynamics of a He (as the reaction product) gas within the plasmoid confinement. So at 10 GG we will see a huge effect from that. Also, since it’s so dense, the coulomb interactions between ions will be abundant… I’m just thinking out loud here, I’ll keep reading up. I believe it’s completely possible for the beams to happen but it seems odd that one would be positively charged and the other negatively charged. I could see it happening, but I’m vague on the specifics.

[theanphibian]

Oh, you’re entirely right. A cannon launcher could target any terrestrial location with ease, since it’s already firing rockets that have to make accurate maneuvers to dock in space. The design calls for one-stage rockets and they would have exactly the same effectiveness as present-day ICBMs. But for that matter, anything sufficiently heavy object in LEO could be used in this manner.

Maybe there is an argument that the space elevator would reduce any malicious threats because it raises things to GSO, from where a de-orbit maneuver could be detected before someone in space sent something plummeting onto Earth. But still, putting a huge number of people into space presents a similar terrorist risk as building Quicklaunch type cannons. And in addition to that, the number of appealing terrorist plots directed at the space elevator itself are intimidating. Considering it must be tethered to Earth one could send it flying into space with an ordinary commercial jet. Then consider the other possibility, the space elevator falling down to Earth – even worse.

It’s interesting to hear what people envision for the specifics. Because even at the technically challenging speed of 120 mph it would take 7.6 days to get to GSO. Even with multiple 30 ton payloads on the tether, something like a Quicklaunch design or just conventional rocket innovation could take up ~1 ton payloads with a frequency greater than what the space elevator could theoretically do before we’ve ever manufactured a square meter of sufficient strength carbon fiber.

[theanphibian]

I agree that Carbon Nanotubes have great potential for the future. But that’s the future. The specific strength needed has only dubiously been achieved in micro-materials and practically we would need about the mass of Mount Everest of this material to lift something as large as a human up. And even THEN it will only be able to slowly lift item-by-item at a rate that will not allow for quick development of space.

I’m less encouraged by the idea of a space elevator than I am of Iter.

Consider…

http://www.quicklaunchinc.com/

We have established technology that with significant but realistic investment can catapult materials into LEO. Humans remain a separate issue, but there remains much potential for revolution in that area – epically we have a separate and cheap delivery mechanism for material supplies.

The only cost limitation for such a plan is, yes, energy. Regardless of the specifics, by increasing the volume of what we send into space the price of launch will eventually approach the energy costs required to put something into orbit, most people agree with this. But… if energy suddenly became abundant by a revolutionary technology then space exploration would correspondingly become accessible.

[theanphibian]

I just want to address the price thing again. And hopefully simply. Consider the US electricity production in a year – around 3500 TW.

The mass of Boron-11 needed to accomplish this energy can be found.

(3.5×10^15) kWh / ( 8 MeV ) * 11 amu = 180,000 kg = 180 tons

We’ll say 400 tons for energy conversion efficiency.

Even the absurdly high price of $2 / g would translate into $2000 / kg and $2 M / ton.
That comes to $ 800 M to power the USA for a year.
Current oil imports run around $ 600 B / year. The entire power industry is also of that magnitude.

With conservative calculations we see 3 orders of magnitude cheaper than current energy.

p-B fuel is simply free. Free in the sense that it’s so cheap it’s completely out of the picture compared to the other challenges.

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