[zapkitty]

Ivy Matt wrote: Well, I was aware that the JPL had previously funded Lerner’s work. I’ve been trying to find if that work fell under the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, because if they completed a Phase I study under that program, they would now be eligible to submit a Phase II proposal under the new NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, but I haven’t found Lerner on the list of studies funded by the first NIAC.

That would be cool! And a bit ironic 🙂

[zapkitty]

ikanreed wrote: Well, I suppose that’s pretty reasonable. But, for example FoFu-1 is very sensitive to disruption. Imagine if you had tin whiskers on the electrodes, even very tiny ones.

Tin? Where would the tin come from? The electronics would have to be outside the vacuum chamber.

And even an FF space drive will have a vacuum chamber… as the fuel pressure has to rise to several torr before you can start it.

That it is space-based would just mean that you save on the cost and maintenance of a vacuum pump.

A plasma window should be able to allow the beam to exit the chamber into an exhaust assembly of some kind while maintaining chamber pressure.

[zapkitty]

ikanreed wrote: You know what really scares me about fusion thrusters?

Kzinti?

ikanreed wrote: You have limited resources to restart them once you end the reaction.

As almost all current fusion contenders which are also drive candidates are pulsed concepts that seems to be a non-issue 😉

(Polywell could be an exception)

More seriously, you’re thinking in early NASA’ish terms of all-or-nothing mission parameters. Even the STS did a little better than that.

ikanreed wrote: Low earth orbit is not a place to which I’d like to take a one way trip.

Non-sequitur. LEO is almost certainly where early fusion-powered spacecraft will [em]start[/em] their journeys.

If you’re in LEO and can’t restart your drive and if for some strange reason you don’t have basics like an engineering crew w/ toolboxes aboard then you use maneuvering thrusters to waddle back to the station and make repairs. If the thrusters are also out then you ask station ops to send out a tug to haul you back to the station.

If it’s an emergency and you have to evacuate immediately then you get in your Dragon, Soyuz or Orion lifeboat and return directly to Earth…

And yes, on Titan orbit would be another matter.

That’s why that ships that go out that far will have actual engineering spaces with actual engineers and those engineers will have actual toolboxes…

… somebody could photoshop an EMU into a photo of LPPX and label it “Derek in LEO…”

[zapkitty]

Ivy Matt wrote: In fact, one of the other presentations, by Tarditi, Miley, and Scott, reminded me of the DPF. It’s titled “Aneutronic Fusion Spacecraft Architecture”, and advocates a fusion thruster design that uses the fusion products directly for the production of thrust.

Did you know that NASA’s JPL was funding Lerner-hakase’s DPF work for exactly that purpose — a high-energy, high efficiency space drive — until the Halliburton administration banned NASA from any and all fusion research after 2001?

[zapkitty]

Tulse wrote:
To be perhaps excessively fair, LPPX hasn’t done any pB11 shots yet…

Oh, quite true. But there could be said to be more than a smidgen of difference between an experimental program that is making measurable progress (LPPX) and space drive concepts such as cold fusion, matter-antimatter and wormholes.

By its very nature an FF unit is a space drive waiting to happen 🙂

[zapkitty]

If you mean that you are unsure that the result of the research will be a usable power source then that can be phrased a bit differently in English… as skeptical is usually used in reference to claims by people.

A short mnemonic is: You can be doubtful about physical outcomes but you should be skeptical when people are involved 🙂

[zapkitty]

MSNW seems to have shifted things a bit. That’s not exactly what Helion used to be. Helion used colliding FRCs with the resultant FRC clamped by superconducting coils for the final push.

This is a compromise… a blend of the Helion concept with the MSNW space drive concept. The space drive collapses multiple foil Al liners on an FRC for that final push and thus introduces all the consequent issues of replacement and alignment of precision-machined disposable metal parts for each individual shot.

… shouldn’t be a showstopper but not the best outcome for a power plant

Is this an intermediate step to the proposed Helion design? Do they still regard a Helion sans metal drivers as an achievable goal?

It does bring to mind the rumors that Tri-Alpha has had to scale back from aneutronic to neutronic fusion.

Of course any credible claim at breakeven would start breaking up the interest/funding logjam.

… and I do note that in the pdf linked MSNW takes a deliberate swipe at boron fusion by listing it as not “based on currently accepted principles of physics and reasonable technology extrapolation” alongside cold fusion, matter-antimatter and wormholes.

Oh?

Perhaps the published successes of LPPX since then will be treading closely upon a few heels right about now… 🙂

[zapkitty]

The forum ate my response… give me a few minutes to reconstruct…

… damn, it should react better to intervening posts. Rezwan, is that a setting you can change in expression engine?

[zapkitty]

ikanreed wrote: Isn’t it supposed to be fusion via dense plasma focus? Am I just demonstrating my ignorance here, or is “Dense plasma fusion” not actually a thing?

Ah, I’m being especially dense… you meant the appropriateness of the use of the phrase as opposed to whether the author of the article knew what it meant.

The plasma in an FF unit is much denser than the plasma in devices such as a tokamak, albeit much smaller, so dense plasma fusion is indeed an appropriate phrase.

… and, come to think of it, it can be a nice way to separate the concept in the public mind from the other fusion contenders…

Note to self: try to wake up before posting.

… we’ll know if the phrasing is successful if the NIF gang tries to glom on to it… 🙂

[zapkitty]

ikanreed wrote: Isn’t it supposed to be fusion via dense plasma focus? Am I just demonstrating my ignorance here, or is “Dense plasma fusion” not actually a thing?

Well, any form of “hot” fusion can be referred to as dense plasma fusion, and the article explicitly excludes “cold fusion” so that may have been what the author was after.

And remember:

“There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is [em]not[/em] being talked about. – Oscar Wilde”

Or its modern descendant [em]”Any publicity is good publicity.”[/em]

With that in mind I’d worry more about the sudden excursion into a pro-fission PR piece in the middle of an article about fusion than I would worry about the phrase “dense plasma fusion.”

[zapkitty]

Glenn Millam wrote: I created the art that Reswan posted at the top of this topic. I would like to clarify my intentions when I came up with it. Here is a breakdown of my concept for the new t-shirt design.

The effort is appreciated, and I admit that I was somewhat puzzled by the art.

Glenn Millam wrote: The problem I had with my earlier designs wsa that they were trying to say too much. The point of the design should be “Will this peak the interest of someone who has never heard of fusion, much less focus fusion, and will it make them go to the site and find out?”

A good starting point.

Glenn Millam wrote: Thus, I abandoned the expositionary approach of showing aneutronic fusion in action with lots of words and other symbols, and instead did a design based on a stylized plasmoid formation meant to be pleasing, energetic and a bit enigmatic. I then put more effort in choosing the typography for both a sense of energy and conservation of space on the substrate (the small area on the front of the t-shirt that Cafe Press can put an image on).

Well, the words seem to be fine but the art, to be honest, didn’t match up to the words.

Glenn Millam wrote: The colors were chosen to symbolize the two components, hydrogen and boron, but more importantly, I chose them to draw people’s attention and get them to consider the question, “What is focus fusion?” The reversal of the type through the ellipses played a key role in choosing the saturation of the colors. The type had to be instantly readable, but the graphic portions need to be enigmatic. I want the viewer to get out their smart phone or go home and google “focus fusion.”

Unfortunately, the impression I garnered instead was of the fusion of two hairy walnuts… damn, that sounds cold. Sorry! 🙂

While I have the disadvantage of having to examine any given image closely and repeatedly to make it out, to piece it together, in turn I’ve developed an appreciation for conciseness and clarity in art.

Glenn Millam wrote: The copy on the back uses the same colors and font as on the front, providing symmetry of design. The typography and message was deliberately simple, meant to create more questions in the mind than are answered. Is it possible we are close to having a clean, cheap, and unlimited power source? Who is working on this? What is this focus fusion thing again?

The words could be fine, it seems to be the fusing hairballs that are distracting…

Glenn Millam wrote: I hope this clarifies the design concept a bit. I would also like to add that I don’t think it is a good idea to get too representational with the t-shirt design. We want to attract people who may not know or care what a neutron is, and get them on board.

Well, my idea with the boron 11 atom was just to inspire some clarity in the line art.

You might well be able to get the idea across with just the plasmoid if you could somehow treat it as a single entity instead of its current bifurcated state.

Perhaps the dark color as the lines of the plasmoid on a field of the lighter background? or the plasmoid lines as the dark color with the light color filling in the plasmoid?

As for the glyphs? The glyphs are an in-joke 🙂 I’ve had a version floating around here for some time now. It’s a spoof of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the form of a royal cartouche… (Pharaoh Lernerhakase the 11th, I think)

[zapkitty]

*…daydreams about the capabilities of an outer system probe powered by an FF unit…*

[zapkitty]

… I still say there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit cryptic…

Attached files

[zapkitty]

Focus Fusion: We Put The Nano in Microplasmoid!

[zapkitty]

While what you seem to be after is different from my procedural 3D stuff (to say the least 🙂 ) It did give me an idea going off of Derek’s remarks about fuel.

Used stuff I had lying around… maybe this can inspire some line art?

Attached files

[Author]

Posts