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

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Helius
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Post by Helius »

rcain wrote: a mathematcian friend of mine once claimed that the (compound) 'knotting' behaviour of a simple rubber band when you wind it up and wind it up, remained (as of a few years ago at least) one of the great remaining unsolved chalenges of mathematical modelling.
Pretty clearly the most minor peculiarities in the rubber band and subsequent forces will lead to widely divergent results in the shape of the knot. Butterfly. Chaos. Why wouldn't this also be true for Learner's magnetic lines too?

rcain
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Post by rcain »

Helius wrote:
rcain wrote: a mathematcian friend of mine once claimed that the (compound) 'knotting' behaviour of a simple rubber band when you wind it up and wind it up, remained (as of a few years ago at least) one of the great remaining unsolved chalenges of mathematical modelling.
Pretty clearly the most minor peculiarities in the rubber band and subsequent forces will lead to widely divergent results in the shape of the knot. Butterfly. Chaos. Why wouldn't this also be true for Learner's magnetic lines too?
i think perhaps it is.

however, even given the irregularities/variances, similar regular patterns do still emerge at certain scales. so possible questions arise 'to what extent does his idea rely on a perfect, tidy knot/kink', alternatively 'what measure of 'irregularity/uncertainty' can be tolerated' and how much mitigated?

i cant believe that general 'repeatability' is an issue at this stage, so he must have some handle on it.

Aeronaut
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Post by Aeronaut »

rcain wrote:
Helius wrote:
rcain wrote: a mathematcian friend of mine once claimed that the (compound) 'knotting' behaviour of a simple rubber band when you wind it up and wind it up, remained (as of a few years ago at least) one of the great remaining unsolved chalenges of mathematical modelling.
Pretty clearly the most minor peculiarities in the rubber band and subsequent forces will lead to widely divergent results in the shape of the knot. Butterfly. Chaos. Why wouldn't this also be true for Learner's magnetic lines too?
i think perhaps it is.

however, even given the irregularities/variances, similar regular patterns do still emerge at certain scales. so possible questions arise 'to what extent does his idea rely on a perfect, tidy knot/kink', alternatively 'what measure of 'irregularity/uncertainty' can be tolerated' and how much mitigated?

i cant believe that general 'repeatability' is an issue at this stage, so he must have some handle on it.
Yes, energizing the AMC Angular Momentum Coil increased neutron yield tenfold and stabilized it. Also, as the vacuum chamber's mounting flanges and the HV plates are becoming magnetized, the AMC's control shots are also producing more neutron yield than in the early shots.

The question of how much theoretical knowledge is required comes down to how much is required to make it work either this year or next, at least in my mind, since my main interest is building support for the manufacturing supply, training, and regulatory chains.

This is something like telling Henry Ford that he shouldn't go into the auto business when there were hundreds of competitors, and then telling him there was no future in building them for the masses.

The alleged experts told Sam Walton that WalMart wouldn't work.

But, since I'm a Navy vet, and the Navy's buying the electromagnets, let's take a trip back to Langly's test program vs the Wright Brothers'. Langly had more than enough capital if he'd gotten the theory down before insisting that he needed lots of horsepower- or a catapult launch.

The Wright Brothers got their gliders to work before adding the drive train. Removing all hidden assumptions usually results in an elegant design with shorter ROIs when you go to sell these machines in the business world.
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

This is something like telling Henry Ford that he shouldn't go into the auto business when there were hundreds of competitors, and then telling him there was no future in building them for the masses.
So far there is not one fusion plant delivering power to the grid. Or anywhere else.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Aeronaut
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Post by Aeronaut »

MSimon wrote:
This is something like telling Henry Ford that he shouldn't go into the auto business when there were hundreds of competitors, and then telling him there was no future in building them for the masses.
So far there is not one fusion plant delivering power to the grid. Or anywhere else.
Quite right. Today.

Henry Ford's last promotion/raise to Superintendant of Detroit Edison was designed to get him to give up his folly of tinkering with cars in his garage. He quit the sure thing.

I just got back from scanning and poking into some of T-P's design forums's threads. 2 pages down, 3 to go. So far I've invested several hours over the last week attempting to find a system level sketch that gives an idea of what an operational WB might look like installed- or at least the major components. Does a doc like this exist?
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Aeronaut wrote:
MSimon wrote:
This is something like telling Henry Ford that he shouldn't go into the auto business when there were hundreds of competitors, and then telling him there was no future in building them for the masses.
So far there is not one fusion plant delivering power to the grid. Or anywhere else.
Quite right. Today.

Henry Ford's last promotion/raise to Superintendant of Detroit Edison was designed to get him to give up his folly of tinkering with cars in his garage. He quit the sure thing.

I just got back from scanning and poking into some of T-P's design forums's threads. 2 pages down, 3 to go. So far I've invested several hours over the last week attempting to find a system level sketch that gives an idea of what an operational WB might look like installed- or at least the major components. Does a doc like this exist?
Mostly it is just words.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Aeronaut
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Post by Aeronaut »

I found the sketches showing the electron and ion guns, along with the alpha collectors. Nothing so far like a PDF or powerpoint illustrating the machine's operation.

The only thing I can see at this point is steady state for centralized energy production, especially selling to European Combined Heat and Power companies that can effectively use all of that waste heat.

Contrast that with an end-user market focus in terms of education and capital cost.

Assuming both technologies prove out in the next year or few, I'm betting that the decentralized model dominates fusion within 20 years.

This also assumes the Navy can only protect the exact form of "their" idea with security clearances.
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icarus
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Post by icarus »

So far I've invested several hours over the last week attempting to find a system level sketch that gives an idea of what an operational WB might look like installed- or at least the major components. Does a doc like this exist?
Mostly it is just words.

Quite correct, words, no numbers let alone drawings. There is no experimental data ... it is one step removed from cartoon engineering, call it somewhere between sci-fi and fairy-tale engineering.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

This also assumes the Navy can only protect the exact form of "their" idea with security clearances.
Doubtful. The best estimate is that once the technology is announced the Navy will have at best a 4 year head start.

Think of France say. Suppose they decided to put in $500 million over 4 years to rush the project along. No sweat. China. No sweat. Russia. The same. In fact it can probably be done with little pain by any country with a government tax flow of above $10 bn a year.

As a very rough estimate: at minimum 40 countries with a GDP above $200 bn a year.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Aeronaut
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Post by Aeronaut »

Mostly it is just words.
Quite correct, words, no numbers let alone drawings. There is no experimental data ... it is one step removed from cartoon engineering, call it somewhere between sci-fi and fairy-tale engineering.
Cartoon engineering was good enough for the Idaho National Lab and Iter. It's good enough for Babcock & Wilcox to sell Net Gen modular fission plants and for Hyperion to sell their $70M unproven machines.

"We Are Not Alone..." :wink:

I believe that if you really want to sell the PolyWell, you're going to need at least a high level and possibly some intermediate level images and details.
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KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Aeronaut wrote: I believe that if you really want to sell the PolyWell, you're going to need at least a high level and possibly some intermediate level images and details.
So donate to EMC2 FDC, that is what they want to do with the money.

Aero
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Post by Aero »

I believe that if you really want to sell the PolyWell, you're going to need at least a high level and possibly some intermediate level images and details.
That's a good point IMO. I've seen nothing but a few depictions of the magnetic fields, and some glowing discharge from WB-6 and WB-7. And of course the few images on the EMC2 web site. (Forgot, we've also seen some depictions of the cooling channels and structure of the magnets.)

Who can draw a cut-away graphic depicting a full up commercial direct conversion machine? Or maybe just one segment? Something that shows both the simplicity and the complexity of the machine would include at least the Magrid and it's cooling system, electron and ion guns, power supplies, a cut-away of the vacuum chamber and the conversion rig leading to the outside electrical grid. What else?

My drawing tool of choice is Excel, so I'm not going to do it, but I challenge anyone to give it a shot.

EMC2 may not need such a graphic but I'll bet FAMULUS could make good use of it later on down the road.
Aero

icarus
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Post by icarus »

so I'm not going to do it, but I challenge anyone to give it a shot.
Me too, I challenge anybody ... but it would be a pointless exercise. Without having some indications (data) on how the thing behaves the design possibilities change radically. E.g. Simon's detailed designs for magnet cooling/shielding based on particle fluxes emitting uniformly radially were thrown into the bin completely when it was found out that many product emissions could actually follow field lines out the cusps based on field strengths .... the variables are many and unknown mostly.

At this point we have six ring magnets of an unknown size, larger than 1 metre diameter, arranged on the faces of a cube inside a vacuum chamber .... hey what else do you want, we 'only' want measly US200 million?

Some guys got hundreds of billions (10e11) dollars when they threatened to blow up the worlds economy if they didn't get it.

Aero
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Post by Aero »

Me too, I challenge anybody ... but it would be a pointless exercise.
Not at all. Leave it at the conceptual level, some of it will be close enough and some of it will need modification, but in general fixing a graphic is easier than starting over, and for marketing it need not show the inner workings anyway.
Aero

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Some nice stuff here:

viewtopic.php?p=5321#5321

Here is one:

Image
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

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