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The only thing remotely like that I’ve noticed is when I’m composing a reply to a thread and someone else posts to the thread while I’m composing and I don’t notice the update before hitting ‘post reply”… *poof!* Post gone and no way to retrieve.

My current solution is to compose offline and paste’n’post a copy of my reply quickly. But of course that *poof!* is not good behavior for a forum application.

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*ping*

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… margins are good 🙂

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Re: achieving fusion power…

benf wrote: The results will benefit mankind for millennia.

… fixed that for ya 🙂

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Lerner wrote: Our plan is to stick with D , which is easy to use, until we have the machine functioning at maximum yield, and then switch to pB11. Not there yet. Patience, friends!

When you do get set to try pB11 are you going to switch to the smaller electrodes you’ve discussed previously? Or will you first try it with the core size you’re using now?

I know you’re currently getting hot enough temps theoretically but I don’t know how much more margin you’d want for those kinds of tests…

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andrewmdodson wrote:
Does it make sense to think of testing switching
devices separate from the reactor proper? I would
hope it feasible to say we can fabricate a small
vacuum chamber with electrodes as a dummy load?

… there’s a bit of a history between the Focus Fusion
project and switches 🙂

LPP ordered switches to the specifications needed
from a commercial supplier… and they didn’t work.

This delayed the project many months while LPP
worked their way through the process of designing
and making their own switches. And all of the FFS
forum posts that you see relating to switches are not
there because LPP feels there is a need to research
switches. LPP didn’t have a choice at that time.

But we’re told, fairly often, that this shouldn’t have
happened. That switches at the level that the Focus
Fusion test article needs should be readily engineered.
Indeed I expect the user asymmetric_implosion to be
along shortly to explain that the switches that LPP
needs are a solved problem 😉

So, and it’s just my opinion, unless the Raytheon
switches fail as well I don’t see switch research as an
immediate need.

Now, will more research be needed on the subject in
the future? Certainly. Operational FF units will need to
bring the cost of reliable, high-repetition switches
down quite a bit… would such a longer-term
undertaking be more in line with what you feel you can
do?

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… and wouldn’t the new switches, from Raytheon I believe, be tested by using them in LPPX-1?

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Lerner wrote: Actually new reports indicate that the adoption of regulations has been pushed back into 2014.

*sigh*

Not surprised… wall street is already making out like bandits with the parts that [em]have[/em] been implemented.

Lerner wrote:
While this would be good when it happens, we also want the government to fudn this work. That is why the Seant letter-writing campaign is important as a first step. And if you write one, cc FFS so we know who is writing.

Does this mean that I have to be… diplomatic? 🙂

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JimmyT wrote:
Right now laws restrict stock purchases in IPO’s to accredited investors (investors of high net worth and/or high earnings).

It’s already happened. It’s called JOBS and it’s what you get when wall street gets to write new regulations for crowd funding equity… i.e. further deregulation for the benefit of the wall street elites.

The Junpstart Obama’s Bucket Shops Act
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewreply/10179/

And it does enable small equity investments by non-elites in startups without paperwork overload… it also does a bunch of other things that will make wall street very happy and those “other things” will surely come back around to bite the rest of us in the ass in a decade or less.

But the framework for JOBS has been implemented piecemeal over the past several months and the final regulations are supposed to be set up just about… now.

As I said in that thread, “This is not the reform that startup regulation needed but it’s what we’ll have to work with.”

And it should enable true crowdfunding for LPP without burying Derick in paperwork… and even 10,000 one-time investors at, say, 50 bucks apiece would solve a lot of issues for startups like LPP.

The crowdfunding portals that the act creates would handle the paperwork, the investors could treat the investment as “if and when” without being able to micromanage LPP… and LPP should be able to concentrate on fusion engineering.

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annodomini2 wrote: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/sectors/aerospace/news/solid-hydrogen-fuel-could-help-shield-satellites-from-radiation/1015613.article

Well, aneutronic reactions such as pB11 need relatively little neutron shielding so this wouldn’t be much of a game changer for FF units.

If FF works then the shielding needed would be about a meter thickness of water or polyethylene backed by a few centimeters of lead. This type of shielding would be quite cheap and could fit in power stations, mobile generators, ships, subs, trains, larger ground transports and larger subsonic air transports.

So the cost of a new type of hydrogen-based shielding even if it was, say, 40% more efficient would only be justified if it allowed FF units to fit into some application they could not otherwise fit into.

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benf wrote: I don’t think you can go around using Lockheed’s name without really representing it.

I don’t think there’s really much doubt that this was official Lockheed… just some people suffering first from the shock of the news and then from being further traumatized by a snarky zapkitty.

benf wrote: When I display the video full screen, the device looks rather Whiffleball-like…v.9?

I don’t see much or well but after spending too much time trying to piece it together I think I can make out, through a port, one (1) coil that looks like it came straight off of a polywell magrid array… and not much else.

It might be a polywell variant… but the shot seems designed to excite speculation without giving out much information.

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Matt M wrote: Sounds like this might be the Carlo Rossi of Fusion Energy.

Except this is from a manager at Lockheed Martin. Regardless of the type, scale or current stage of the project I seriously doubt that he suddenly just decided to drop by for the fun of it.

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

Well, if it’s the skunkworks…

… (or is it?)…

… how would one tell?

But if fusion, as an immediately viable concept, is finally forcing its way into the public eye then it is simply inevitable that the PTB would prefer that it was “dirty” fusion.

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KeithPickering wrote: … years ago with the polywell. Still waiting for that one to work. So they’re going to need a lot more than a new bottle.

Polywell might well be working somewhere behind the Navy info curtain.

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

http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4273

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… just the PTB placing a marker in the race for “dirty” fusion?

You’re not imagining things insofar as it was a bombshell which shed surprisingly little light for all the noise it’s caused.

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Fun fact: that particular hit piece… er, I mean Slate article… is sponsored by a Statoil sidebar ad.

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