Found this during google search on Polywell Fusion

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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Aero
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Re: Mail Routing.

Post by Aero »

Helius wrote:C'mon. China lake is the location of the provisioning/procurement offices, and maybe only the mail routing at that.
Check out Classicpenny's post on page 2 of this thread, he gives a link to China Lake information:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... a-lake.htm
Quoting from that page,
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, the high desert home of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, is where the Navy and Marine Corps have developed or tested nearly every significant airborne weapon system in the past five decades.
And quoting further,
China Lake carries out the complete weapon-development process--from basic and applied research through prototype hardware fabrication, test and evaluation, documentation, and Fleet and production support.
I think its safe to say that there is a lot of applicable capability at China Lake.
Aero

cuddihy
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Post by cuddihy »

not to pick on you Aero, but your post encapsulates a lot of what others are saying. Let me just give a little perspective from the government contracting side:
Aero wrote:I am still thinking that this is more than stand around and wait money. The two new contracts don't say, "At Ease!" they say:
"Attention to this detail!"

Research of Electrostatic "Wiffle Ball" Fusion Device. The contractor is to specifically investigate the required instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies.
the fact is thanks to the 5000+ pages of the federal aquisition regulations all contracts or mods to contracts over a couple grand are let via a "contracting officer", basically a uber-cautious, well versed beaurocrat. So the person who actually writes the contracts to fedbizops usually knows only minimal technical knowledge, only what the techs tell them. for a small keep-alive or extension, the contracting office usually asks for any kind of do-outs or things that would be done if they had more time. nobody really puts too much effort into it and nobody's going to really care about the results because it's a keep alive. I'd bet the contracting office puts more work into their cell phone contract renewel. so don't read much into what you see on fedbizops unless it's clear.

Now, Simon, a question for you and Dr. Mike. Dr. Nebel said this was keep alive research, but could it be construed as orders to "Give me a WB-100 design." That is, what size magnets, power supplies and so forth are required to maintain a 140 KVe potential well at 10^16 plasma density. And don't anyone copy my numbers because I have no idea how deep the well or the needed density. That's the question for Dr. Mike and Simon. And my comment is that the Navy certainly does not need a description of WB-7.
Tom.Cuddihy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faith is the foundation of reason.

Helius
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Procurement, not location.

Post by Helius »

True. They also do a lot of procurement for other parts of the country too. I wonder what percent they procure ends up at China Lake? The location of the procurement offices doesn't mean that's where it's going.

I'm only saying that we shouldn't read too much into the Procurement docs posted on the Internet. I doubt it will end up at China Lake under any cirucmstance. I think, under success, there'd be much more resources there in NM; It might end up back at Los Alamos, or maybe Livermore CA. There is just more useful resources there.

Or heck: Something else might happen. This is just too much fun to follow! :)

icarus
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Post by icarus »

Okay, as fun as it is to speculate, we've gone from full throttle, well-funded expansion to an overly-wordy procurement notice from a Navvy post office box in China Lake. Sounds like run-of-the-mill, debacle government project.

Getting back to the facts of the matter at hand; so can we yet confirm if Bussard probably generated neutrons before he died?

Aero
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Post by Aero »

cuddihy wrote: I'd bet the contracting office puts more work into their cell phone contract renewal. so don't read much into what you see on fedbizops unless it's clear.
icarus wrote:Okay, as fun as it is to speculate, we've gone from full throttle, well-funded expansion to an overly-wordy procurement notice from a Navvy post office box in China Lake. Sounds like run-of-the-mill, debacle government project.

Getting back to the facts of the matter at hand; so can we yet confirm if Bussard probably generated neutrons before he died?
TallDave wrote:Roger/John,

It looks to me like

-- 1 contract from Sep for general Polywell research
-- 1 contract for ion guns
-- 1 contract for "instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies"

It's interesting that these are all funded through separate solicitations. Does this tell us anything about the scale of the projects?

Perhaps someone with Navy contract experience can elucidate.
I partly agree that we don't want to read to much into this 'Keep Alive" funding beyond the necessity to provide funds to keep the team together in case the decision is to have the team do more significant research. It goes almost without saying that if the team disbands, there will be a huge delay and great expense in reforming a suitable group to continue the work.

That said, I too have been involved in keep alive funding efforts, but on the vendor's end of things. I strongly suspect that the items outlined in the presolicitation are considered long lead, or essential components, in case a solicitation is forthcoming. Therefore, I'll bet the Dr. Nebel and team are working on building and testing ion injection guns, probably using WB-7 because when you have a contract to deliver a product, you deliver the product if you can. Pure research gives you some latitude because no one knows how to make the product so its a bit harder to hold your feet to the fire, but in my estimation, the direction for an ion injection gun is clear.

What is not so clear is what is meant by
"instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies"
I am sure that the contracting officer did not pull those words out of a book. He got them from the Naval Project Manager, and there is a kernal of meaning. I am asking, "What might the deliverable be?" The word, "Instrumentation" indicates to me that it is hardware but I have no idea what. There will be a deliverable however, there must be something in order to protect the Navy personnel involved with the purchase, they cannot simply give money away.

OF course what we all hope is that these two or three presolicitations will be folded into the next solicitation for one to five years of effort and hardware construction. In that case, these presolicitations will have turned out to be "Keep Alive" money as has been argued. However, if there is no follow on, then Dr. Nebel will want to have made the best use of these funds in order to have something more to go to the venture capital market with.
I still wonder what is the nature of the instrumentation. And unless we look at this closely, this thread is "dead in the water" IMO and we're back to knowing nothing and waiting with nothing to speculate about. I'd much rather speculate (within reason) than wring my hands waiting for news.
Aero

Art Carlson
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Post by Art Carlson »

Aero wrote:What is not so clear is what is meant by
"instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies"
I am sure that the contracting officer did not pull those words out of a book. He got them from the Naval Project Manager, and there is a kernal of meaning. I am asking, "What might the deliverable be?" The word, "Instrumentation" indicates to me that it is hardware but I have no idea what. There will be a deliverable however, there must be something in order to protect the Navy personnel involved with the purchase, they cannot simply give money away.
The full phrase is "The contractor is to specifically investigate the required instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies." My reading is that this is a design study. The lack of diagnostic information on the density and "temperature" (and possible deviations from a Maxwellian) was identified as a crucial issue if you want to draw any robust conclusions. "We'll give you a bit of money to figure out how you would solve that problem, and then we'll decide if the cost of your proposal is low enough that it is worth actually building it to get more definite answers."

Aero
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Post by Aero »

Thanks Dr. Carlson, that makes sense to me.
To paraphrase: The presolititation objective points out a current weakness and asks for a report (paper deliverable) indicating how this weakness is to be resolved.

And we already knew that the lack of a proper ion injection gun was a weakness of the current experimental rig, (ie. WB-6).

A question: How difficult are these problems? What is the path to their solution?
Aero

bobshipp
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Post by bobshipp »

Let me take it one step further. If the distribution is Maxwellian then there is little chance for net power and if using Boron no chance. If it is not Maxwellian then there is still a reasonable chance for net power. It may turn out that the only way to establish that it is not Maxwellian is to build a net power device.

StevePoling
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Instruments and Instrumentation

Post by StevePoling »

The wording "instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies" caught my eye, too.

I probably read too much into it, but I was reminded of the Aristotelian notion of an "instrumental cause." To wit, the chisel is the instrument applied to marble to carve a statue. Perhaps the contract is to make those intruments like chisels that can munge plasma densities, etc. into a form conducive to nuclear fusion. This seems cool.

But I think unlikely. This is not what engineers generally have in mind when they say, "instrumentation." Instruments tell you what's going on, like a thermometer or a tachometer. If I'm going to tune an engine, I'll need things like a tach to adjust my carburetor just so. The collection of such things used in this task is termed instrumentation.

Sorry, this is a physics forum, not an semantics forum.

Professor Science
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Post by Professor Science »

bobshipp wrote:Let me take it one step further. If the distribution is Maxwellian then there is little chance for net power and if using Boron no chance. If it is not Maxwellian then there is still a reasonable chance for net power. It may turn out that the only way to establish that it is not Maxwellian is to build a net power device.
Nah, i'd wager EM radiation wavelength would partially depend on charge temperature. that'd be a indirect and probably cheap-ish way to take temperature.
The pursuit of knowledge is in the best of interest of all mankind.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Art Carlson wrote:The full phrase is "The contractor is to specifically investigate the required instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities and spatially resolved particle energies." My reading is that this is a design study. The lack of diagnostic information on the density and "temperature" (and possible deviations from a Maxwellian) was identified as a crucial issue if you want to draw any robust conclusions. "We'll give you a bit of money to figure out how you would solve that problem, and then we'll decide if the cost of your proposal is low enough that it is worth actually building it to get more definite answers."
This can be read either of two ways, and I am not sure which they mean.
They may just want the instrumentation to detect the plasma densities and particle energies as a function of position. On the other hand thay may want a design of instrumentation needed to CREATE spatial resolution; e.i., "..required instrumentation to achieve spatially resolved plasma densities".
The first seems to imply the review board has questions they want answered. They second could imply they want pieces of a more significant design.
Thoughts?

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