Talk-Polywell.org

I am still hopeful that, if its potential for addressing global warming and the lack of any significant nuclear waste can be moved somehow into the national consciousness, it can move out from the shadow of disappointment from the decades of fusion promises unfulfilled. I wrote to the President a c...

bennmann wrote:The Sydney experiment and your opinion? So many people forget that one.

Link?

I confess I don't know that one.

I think the fact that the Navy wants the electron injection issues resolved at the current scale instead of depending on the expectation that scaling will resolve it, suggests that they are not motivated by the huge global potential of a successful device, but only their own provincial interests Po...

I am fascinated by the idea beryllium is transparent to x-rays (at some frequencies, anyway). For dense plasma focus that might give an incentive to use beryllium in the electrodes. Wouldn't a beryllium Polywell also behave differently than one made of the usual materials? The Polywell doesn't use ...

Nice summary, Rc! i suspect they will need to crack the problem with stealth and smart thinking/innovation rather than 'brute force' (keV's?). Which is another way of saying tweaks and "baby-steps" won't work -- something more fundamental may be needed. I am fascinated by the idea beryllium is trans...

GIThruster wrote: The Poly is not going to be a commercial item in less than 5 years so private investors are not going to be interested.

That's probably true.

But didn't you have different expectations 4 years ago? Rightly or wrongly I did.

- Charles

I'm very pro-fusion, and very pro-spending in speculative science. I wish NASA would bring back (and more seriously fund) it's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/ Losses go down as size goes up. So I take it you are arguing in favor of building a full size machin...

Baby steps are called for here Harrumph! Bussard in his Googletalk is quite smug -- all those successful fusion devices out there (meaning stars) "and not one of them is torroidal." Very funny, but Bussard gave the impression he'd DONE it -- figured out how to make a practical fusion machine, jumpi...

The most current FY 2012 update states, "The Navy is funding EMC2 an additional $5.3 million over next 2 years to work on the problem of pumping electrons into the Polywell. Big new pulsed power supply to support the electron guns (100+A, 10kV)...." https://www.facebook.com/groups/10194280667/ I'm n...

Just to add.... The history of Big Innovations or Technology Jumps do not favor the large. They favor the small and nimble. That's an over-generalization. Some projects need only a genius, and others need brute money. Fusion hungers for both. The phrase "Manhattan-Project" (as a metaphor for speedi...

Apologies if this already was noticed -- the news is a month old. "Paul Koloc, 75, an engineering physicist who had promoted and patented new technologies as a source of fusion energy for electricity and the powering of spacecraft, died Feb. 17 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring." [Washington P...

In almost all instances here in the States, NDA's are written to be in force in perpetuity, meaning there never comes a time where they are no longer in force. Actually, several of the NDAs that I have signed did have an expiration date. True, trade secrets (unlike, say, patents) potentially last f...

Rossi has a history of making wild claims (his "thermoelectric generator") that turn out not true. And he's done jail time (even though he was later acquitted). Rossi's record begs suspicion. To me, the only question is why Rossi's snake oil comedy show got as far as it did. Possibly those who under...

I stumbled upon a website (www.fpgeneration.com), which describes a mutli-pole ion source version of an IEC polywell. The guy, Alex Klein, has previously worked with Dr. Bussard. Can anyone here comment on Alex Klein's MIX approach to polywell fusion and how it compares with Dr. Bussard's approach?...

Both Focus Fusion and Polywell fusion systems are small-- in comparison to big generators. But that's very much "In comparison." So is it possible that we may one day get them down to car engine in size, or is that bumping up against solid physics (as opposed to engineering) barriers? I don't have ...