Talk-Polywell.org

I've been keeping my eye out looking for price drops in solar as the new thin-film technologies come on-line, and my latest query went answered :) http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm Aten solar panels, which are thin film, are selling at $3/watt, a good 30% below crystalline PV's avg. p...

Regard flow batteries, is there enough vanadium in the world to chemically store, TWh's of energy? Vanadium is a pretty common element (22nd most abundant on Earth); and its recovery is mostly a bi-product of mining iron. It runs $2 to $4/lb in the form of Vanadium Pentoxide, the most common natura...

The latest issue of Discover Magazine had an interesting article on recent developments of Vanadium Redox Batteries, so I looked a bit more into it. Here's a link to their web page: http://www.vrb.unsw.edu.au/ Or Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery It's a pretty neat solution t...

I don't see the space elevator happening any time soon - it's another forever-50-years-in-the-future (TM) project. The materials and engineering scale is so massive, even if they can be overcome - cost will forever remain an issue. What I want to see is a giant catenary structure for a launch-pad. C...

scareduck wrote:"Hydrinos" are a crock, and these guys are con artists.

Yeah, but "Hydrino" is such a cool name, it has to be real!

Unlike "Wiffle Ball" and "Polywell". Jeez, who thought those up? Hire a marketer! Toys and something that sounds like cheap synthetic clothing?

If a cheap scaling test is all you're after, why not make the device 15% bigger and go for your first double? Why not make it smaller? It'd be quicker and cheaper than the current WB-7 device, and it would achieve the same objective; assuming that a smaller device would still give distinctly measur...

Trains don't work very well in the U.S. Just too much area, not enough people. Trains work quite well for freight transport. If a BFR is 12 ft or less in diameter, I can see converting a diesel/electric freight engine to have 3 or 4 BFR's lined up on top, hooked right into the electric engine. Woul...

Seeing a BFR powered Cole parked, even for a short time, at the same place it was hit before would be great. I wonder what kind of message that would be sending? The ship survived and it's back. Oh yeah, it doesn't need fossil fuel anymore. And oh by the way, these power units are about to be every...

The problem with maglev trains are that the "rails" are very expensive. Now if BFRs reduce the cost of aluminum that might change the equation. Then there is the problem of getting energy to the train. Liquid fuels are probably the way to go for a long time to come. If you want to get the train spe...

I ran across this article where a team has created a method of converting radiation directly into electricity, similar to thermoelectric materials. They claim it can produce up to 20 times more electric power from radioactive decay than current thermoelectric materials, but there's no real baseline ...

I'd like to run calculations and see what would happen if Mercury were slammed into Venus. If it were fast enough, at the right angle, would a permanent moon be created similar to Earth's? Would enough angular momentum be transferred to give Venus an earth-like rotation on its axis? Would enough at...

"When they do use power, it's green power," she said, adding that 33 solar panels also supply about 4 percent of the household's power needs. 33 panels only provide 4%? That's gotta be an investment of over $50,000, and it should be providing at least 750kwh/month. According to that rough guess, he...

Tho yes, economics apply even in post-scarcity societies. It will be an interesting alteration to human psychology. We're wired to see physical objects as being of value. I have to wonder how that tendency twists when it is no longer true. If energy and resources are essentially removed from the ec...

Reinventing plants seems very stupid. People like to be in control - and who knows how long it would take with biological processes? I imagine there'd be a push to mechanically balance atmospheric CO2 levels to pre-1900 levels, if it's feasible, regardless of how stupid it is to do so. I don't have...

Heh, heh, heh, heh. Ooooo, I really want this to work. Too bad what I want has so little bearing on reality. If it works, reality will change :) The original poster asked about the effects on climate change. He asked the wrong question: Do you think BFRs could/would do more sooner to curb man-made ...