[vansig]

belbear wrote: The advantage of a sphere over any other shape is that every part of the collector receives roughly the same intensity of radiation, assuming the plasmoid is in the centre.

Using depositing techniques to create a thick structure consisting of so many layers will encounter some serious roughness issues. Any uneven deposit creates a rough surface, and in a sputtering or vapor coating technique, the tiniest unevenness amplifies itself. (the tops always catch more new material than the valleys)
Making it increasingly difficult to ensure the conducting layers do not make contact somewhere and short circuit.

AFAIK, it has only been done with micron-thin layers, as in semiconductors, not a multi-inch-thick shell.

But do we actually have the same intensity of radiation? or is the radiation pattern anisotropic?

Aren’t structures thicker than irregularites, and separated by xray-transparent insulative material, presumably of sufficient thickness that short-circuits don’t happen?

[vansig]

This debate could go on, endlessly. Let’s set it aside and place some bets.

Would you wager $100 on a prediction with a 1-2 year time frame, and a set margin of error?
Would you lay odds?
Would you set that money aside, in escrow, to be adjudicated by an impartial other party?

[vansig]

Aeronaut wrote: It’s a motor made entirely from permanent magnets, Keith. That fan gave us several clues that it has enough speed and torque to make a hidden battery highly unlikely. Still, I’d like to have seen them move the table and the machine right up front to show conclusively that there’s no hidden power wires hiding in the table leg.

My concern is how long before it uses the energy stored in the atomic spin alignment that makes the magnets magnetic. He also seems to have eliminated the drive rotor without using the clamshell drive magnet arrangement of another YT magmotor that didn’t do a full walk around.

the power source is that rectangular block, 2x2x6″, seen at 7:40 during disassembly. looks like a stack of fuel cells, to me.

and the remainder of the device is a Minato magnet motor.

[vansig]

OMG! that’s unbelievable. No wonder it’s so expensive: it’s the direct converse of Economy of Scale.

It’s much more like sitting around a pond making mud pies, than building anything real.
I do hope the kids learn something in the process.

[vansig]

belbear wrote:
From an engineering point of view, a spherical device will be extremely difficult to construct because you can’t start from a stack of flat foils.
Most practical will be a cylinder with a flat endcap (and a hole to let the alpha beam pass through). The vacuum vessel will probably already have this shape.

a cylinder of foil would be rather easy to build, yes. but spherical shapes could be made with something like ion beam spattering, alternating layers having different opacity to xrays, and different electrical conductivity.

[vansig]

unfortunately for small research companies, an investment fund manager would rather have one $100M account than one hundred $1M accounts.

[vansig]

this kind of report tells me that ITER was never meant to produce.

if its hidden agenda was to absorb all fusion research dollars and to promote the idea
that energy projects must be massive, expensive, polluting, and dangerous,
then it’s doing its job well.

the public now believes that fusion is an impossible dream.
let’s prove them wrong.

[vansig]

i first encountered this attitude while chatting with an environmental studies grad student at the local university, while i was an undergrad, doing tech support.
he disclosed some ideas that, to me, seemed promising, and i recall encouraging him to talk about them. but he refused, saying the ideas needed further development, before publishing, and then asked me not to tell anyone.
i was annoyed, but respected his wishes. i don’t know whether he took these ideas further.

about a decade later, a hardcover notebook of mine mysteriously went missing from my backpack, at work; not finding it, i had assumed that i must have left it at home, that day. imagine my surprise, when, some number of hours later, i looked again, and it had been returned. this made me edgy, because, at the time, i was participating in a patent process for a commercial venture. i felt violated, and disappointed that it was probably someone close to me, who had taken it away to be copied, but i had no evidence linking any of my co-workers to it. the list of suspects included about 8 people, two of whom i could imagine having a motive.

earlier this year, i found that some of my recent work had been plagiarized. the person who did this claimed to be a doctor. i never found satisfactory recourse. if the dispute were to make it to a hearing, who would be believed?

we learn to mitigate these occurrences after we’ve been burned. but if the cost is, someone else gets the funding, or, someone files a blocking patent, then the damage is done.

[vansig]

Aeronaut wrote: I’m not sure why you’re thinking of paying to host another donate button. How does this differ from a blog or website? Just trying to visualize the benefits. What kind of content would be needed?

i dont think flattr is going to take off very quickly. it was interesting until i got to the “monthly fee”.

[vansig]

Tulse wrote: vansig, what you say may be true for commercial research where the goal is to patent, but isn’t the case for much of basic academic research, which often doesn’t have direct commercial application.

I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.

[vansig]

Open research is about admitting that you don’t have the resources to do the whole thing, yourself.
In this realm, competing research is conducted by adversaries, racing to the same goal.

It’s expensive to conduct research, and if not well-protected, relatively easy to steal it. but if a business desires to patent an invention, it wants to show that the invention is: novel, useful, and non-obvious. So presenting the problem to be solved, information about the market, and even partly disclosing your research direction can be useful, since it promotes healthy discussion and may also attract investors. You just don’t want to disclose too early, or arbitrarily.

Since patents are only valid for 17 years, timing is critical. I still have plans for inventions I thought of twenty years ago, that were infeasible to build at the time. And only today are such things becoming possible.

So work in-progress is jealously guarded. You may not know that a particular direction is going to bear fruit. and everyone has their ear to the ground, listening to the discussion. When another team gets close to your territory, you know it’s time to publish.

[vansig]

i quite like the readers’ comments to that article

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Aeronaut wrote: 2 years from now, just in time for the 2012 Presidential election cycle, the whole world, including Wall Street, will want to know when they can put at least one aneutronic fusion heater and/or CH&P (combined heat and power plant) in each of their commercial building(s). The FF markets and supply/training chains will have been exhaustively analyzed, and many IPOs will have already been floated for the toolmakers, if not a lot of the key components’ market niches.

did you say 2012? here’s what DOE has, on that..

http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

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Breakable wrote: With plenty of cheap energy we might explore the element transmutation option more thoroughly 😉

There’s a problem with that, though. We might expect to make beryllium from lithium-9, through beta decay, (~50%yield), but lithium-9 is hard to obtain, since lithium-8 is unstable with half-life ~800ms. So you’ll need an intense, and highly focused neutron beam to double-bump lithium-7 nuclei, hoping they don’t fission in the process. the yield will be low (which explains why beryllium is rare, here on earth, anyway).

[vansig]

there was a comparison chart, somewhere, showing different fusion approaches and the race toward unity, that i believe also made it into Eric’s google tech-talks video, wherein he said that it’s unknown who will get there first, but at this time focus fusion has a bit of an edge.

with .5 kJ in the electrons, and 1 kJ in the plasmoid, that’s 1.5 kJ; if i recall, someone said that this has to come up to 100 kJ to reach unity. but it doesnt really make sense to say that the clock is at 1.8 orders of magnitude, (does it?) since useful energy isnt coming off, yet.

we know the Rogowski coil isnt ready, and there’s no onion, and the fuel in there, currently, is deuterium, and the anode shape and magnetic field, and pulse have yet to be optimized, and that the device will reach thermal unity before it reaches electrical unity.

but we also know that there are fusion reactions occurring. what’s the yield?

is it optimistic of me to say the clock is at 2.5 orders of magnitude?
should i say 5, instead?

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