Talk-Polywell.org

Is worth mentioning that a cheap source of Nitrogen outside earth would be one of the most important factors to enable cheap Space farming. This is very off topic, but I agree about the nitrogen part. I think that asteroids containing Carlsbergite might be the source of nitrogen on Earth and we cou...

The one with the 3.3TW that is 3300GW power output? Yes you would indeed have to inject "extra propellant" to prevent overheating. I am not sure how big of a deal the heating really is for this design. Unfortunately the paper does not go into details on that. But let's assume that they have about h...

I think the most interesting fusion engine concept so far is the one based on the Sheared Flow Stabilized Z- Pinch. That thing has an Isp of ~370,000 seconds and a respectable thrust of 330 KN in a tiny package (by fusion reactor standards anyway). You would likely have to inject some extra propella...

I don't think that the MIT sees any show stoppers for going forward with SPARC. I am a bit confused why you think they could not? My concern is not that there is a "design" show stopper from the physics side, but engineering design for components like the divertor are simply not yet mature to be us...

We should take that debate over to the SPARC forum, I think.
See my response there:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6341&p=132747#p132747

I don't think that the MIT sees any show stoppers for going forward with SPARC. I am a bit confused why you think they could not?

Their seven papers are available for open access here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... sics-basis

Looks like TAE will (as usual) present a flurry (33) of papers at this year's APS meeting.
Here is one of them that sounds interesting:
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP20/Session/VP13.4

No news on Copernicus, it seems. I wonder how that is going.

LOL! I was just about to post the same :) ZAP is definitely one of the top contenders in the field right now and it is amazing how quickly they got to this point, which makes me quite optimistic. It will be extremely interesting to see where they are going next. A demonstration of notional break eve...

Can't wait to see the actual papers/presentations!

IF their design checks out, they could have a higher Q than ITER and before ITER even has first plasma. That said, I would still put Tokamak Energy ahead of them, right now (though they were slowed down a bit by COVID). TE's approach seems to be different from Commonwealth in that they are building ...

Yeah, that's what I am afraid of. McConnel has refused to put bills to a vote in the past even if they would pass with bipartisan support.

Yeah, but Mitch McConnel blocks everything that comes from democrats out of principle and that bill had mostly democrat support. Also note that the fusion part was only an amendment to a much larger bill that contains a lot more other things that may be tougher to get past the GOP controlled senate....

Well, before we all get our hopes up. It needs to get past Mitch McConnel and the Senate first.

Looks like it passed:
"The Lamb-Trajan fusion amendment was included in the Energy Innovation Act HR4447, which passed about an hour ago."
Still has to go through the Senate, from what I understand.