Talk-Polywell.org

General ranges via wikipedia: Lithium ion: Energy density: 250–693 W·h/L (0.90–2.43 MJ/L) Specific energy: 100–265 W·h/kg (0.36–0.875 MJ/kg) Zinc air: Energy density: 1480-9780 Wh/L (5.328–35.21 MJ/L) Specific energy: 470 (practical),1370 (theoretical) Wh/kg (1.692, 4.932 MJ/kg) However, the fact th...

Also 1500 installations and 6 years of field testing? Could be legit?

I’m a software developer, not a scientist, but I think there’s a strong parallel with the “it works on my machine” phenomenon I’ve experience quite often. Frequently code written on my machine that works great for me ends up not working for a tester (or worse, a customer) because I didn’t account fo...

Heidi Fearn will be taking a working device to Dresden and will stay with them until they get it working. Dresden had problems with a previous device and published bad results.

Hmmm. Does this interfere with the concept of independent validation?

Pathological skepticism is great! I think everyone could use more skepticism. I am comforted that you all are not concerned by this design change, though no one has really addressed how such a large surface area can be reliably/safely actuated at hypersonic speeds. As an aside, why would separate le...

Perk, the question was why further design changes were made, and Musk's response was to describe why fins were added (for aesthetics). He said that added risk, but did not go on to describe how that design might reduce risk in any other way. The only part where reduced risk was mentioned was in rega...

Did the previous designs actually address legs? My recollection is that there was talk that it would "snap into" docking connector on the pad on Earth. I think it may have been glossed over how legs would work without such a pad/dock available. Based on yesterday's info from Musk, it sounds like the...

Who is inventing details? Do you have a good reason to know Musk is wrong when he states the new design is riskier? Aside from that, I'm trying to work out your ground rules here... quotes irrelevant to my point are preferable to ones that spell out my concern almost verbatim? Is there some further ...

“Prior to this the idea was to decouple the legs from the wings. This wasn’t very aesthetic, so now we have 3 large legs/wings that actuate. It is slightly more risky because we are combining multiple functions together”

Disappointed by updated design. Turns out the only significant difference (added fins) were not a result of engineering, but simply that Musk liked the aesthetics more. He even admitted the design was now riskier as a result.

This guy legit scares me now.

From the update they gave last year at this time (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default ... 9_GOTA.pdf)
They were targeting: Ti keV ~1–2 and Te keV ~0.2–1

Looks like they are within both ranges, which is good, though one more than the other.

An exciting update to break the tedium of successful launches today! Moon trip passengers (via BFR) to be announced Monday. Included is a render of an updated BFR design: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnA7hZgU8AAxfxC.jpg:orig All engines now look to be sea-level. Speculation is that the skirt around t...

Was surprised to see next on the agenda isn't until Oct6. I had thought things were supposed to be packed in pretty tight this month to the end of the year.

“Red Dragon” was a thing up until recently— intended to deliver cargo to mars via F9 Heavy.

I was disappointed by target for late 2020s for a commercial demo reactor. Wasn’t it mid 2020s just recently?