2011 DOD alternative energy research budget

[ladajo]

I am not aware that anyone has said they moved to China Lake.
As far as I know China Lake Air Weapons only manages the money.

[rjaypeters]

Okay, now I'm a little worried.

[D Tibbets]

I am not aware that anyone has said they moved to China Lake.
As far as I know China Lake Air Weapons only manages the money.

They apparently moved , I don't know whether it was next door or several states away. I don't know where I got the idea that they moved onto the China Lake site. Mention of relocation of personel at least suggests that it might not have been a move to only next door.

From the site:


http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/Re ... =Contracts

"on budget, on schedule for new lab test facility. Primary focus has been construction, procurement and relocation of personnel and chamber. "

Dan Tibbets

[ladajo]

And yes, that is the fundamental question. They did move, but how far and to where?
I believe that they had to move because of space and power requirements. But I can offer no direct evidence to the forum.

[jsbiff]

I believe that they had to move because of space and power requirements. But I can offer no direct evidence to the forum.

I guess as they scale up to larger test reactors, they need more input power to startup and maintain the reaction?

Would these early prototypes, I assume, be designed in such a way that *even if* they produce net power, they never use any of the power produced to maintain the fusion (because, while you are getting the thing working, you want a known-reliable source of power while you debug the design) , always drawing power from the grid (or an on-site gas/diesel generator or some such) for operation?

Is there any reason why later models (like the proposed WB-D, or the first commercial reactors), once they had used power from another source to 'ignite' the reactor, so to speak, couldn't use the power they produce to maintain the reaction?

Edit: I just followed that recovery.gov link. It seems to me that the reporting info in recovery.gov is kind of lacking. What I mean is, one of the purposes of the site is to allow people to do data analysis of what broad economic impact each contract provides to the economy. Well, for the EMC^2 contract, they report 6.0 jobs and funds awarded of about $7.8M.

I doubt each of those 6 people is being payed $1.3M, which means, to be a good economic analysis tool, it would be useful to see how the money is being spent in terms of what other suppliers/service providers they are paying money out to, and how many jobs that money is supporting at those suppliers/providers.

I think you could probably do that without giving away any valuable secrets about the technology the contract is working on. I mean, just saying that $500k was spent with "Some Construction Co." for construction services, and $1.3M was spent with "Some Refining Co." for 'materials', wouldn't give away much (although, I suppose in some cases, it might tell you what material was being used, by knowing what supplier was payed for it).

[ladajo]

Bussard and Nebel had(have) ideas that with a net power machine there may be a mechanism to assist in electron well self-generation, thus possibly eliminating or significantly reducing the power input.

[D Tibbets]

Yes, I beleive the 2008 patent application mentions that as the positive fusion ions leave (especially alpha particles with a 2+ charge) the electrons left behind could provide all the electron current needed, and even be a potential problem that would have to be managed. I assume this applied to gas puffer systems, not ion gun systems. I'm not sure how the electron temperature would fit in this scenario.

Also, I don't think this would have applied to startup energy needed. But,if startup was very fast, the input startup power would only be needed for a brief amount of time before output power was recycled from a direct conversion system (P-B11). this would reduce the capacitor or flywheel capacity needed. A modest diesel generator could charge up the system.

Dan Tibbets

[KitemanSA]

Edit: I just followed that recovery.gov link. ... Well, for the EMC^2 contract, they report 6.0 jobs and funds awarded of about $7.8M.

I doubt each of those 6 people is being payed $1.3M, which means, to be a good economic analysis tool, it would be useful to see how the money is being spent in terms of what other suppliers/service providers they are paying money out to, and how many jobs that money is supporting at those suppliers/providers.

I think you could probably do that without giving away any valuable secrets about the technology the contract is working on. I mean, just saying that $500k was spent with "Some Construction Co." for construction services, and $1.3M was spent with "Some Refining Co." for 'materials', wouldn't give away much (although, I suppose in some cases, it might tell you what material was being used, by knowing what supplier was payed for it).

Oh good, speculation about where the money went. I love these flights of fancy! Here is mine.

Given:
Total $ for the WB7 series two year effort ~1.8M + .3M = $2.1M. This bought the WB7, some instrumentation, and paid salaries and overhead for ~10 people. It wasn't clear whether they used ANY of the WB6 support equipment so I will assume not.
Salaries and overhead:

Code: Select all

2 Senior Scientists ~150k/an = 600k
1 Senior Engineer   ~100k/an = 200k
3 Lab Technicians   ~ 60k/an = 360k
4 Office Staff      ~ 30k/an = 240k
                              =====
                             ~1400k

Which leaves ~ $700k for equipment including the WB7, the chamber, instruments and power supplies.

Therefore:
For the WB 8 they got 6 new people, my recolletion was they were all high end people but I'll assume 5,1.

Code: Select all

 4 Senior Scientists   ~170k/an = 1360k
 2 Software Engineers ~ 140k/an =  560k
 2 Senior Engineer     ~115k/an =  460k
 3 Lab Technicians     ~ 70k/an =  420k
 5 Office Staff        ~ 35k/an =  350k
==                                =====
16                               ~3120k

Which leaves ~ $4.7M for equipment 8 times the mass of the WB7.
Simply scaling the dollars/mass suggests that the equipment should be about $700k * 8 = $5.6M. But the cost is only about $4.7M so they are getting a great deal on the equipment! Well... they are probably reusing SOME of the equipment but certainly not 0.9M of it since it was only 700k to begin with. Maybe they saved some overhead rate with the move!

[D Tibbets]

Enlightening numbers, but I think the WB7 contract was for ~ one year. They received some additional 'staying alive money' before the new contract was granted. So their WB7 equipment budget may have been more. Of course you also have to consider rent, utilities, etc.
If the previous Navy funded research was ~ 20 million over ~ 15 years, after salaries, and other expenses, they were truly on a shoestring budget for any equipment acquisition, maintainance, conversion, or upgrades.

Dan Tibbets

[KitemanSA]

Enlightening numbers, but I think the WB7 contract was for ~ one year. They received some additional 'staying alive money' before the new contract was granted. So their WB7 equipment budget may have been more. Of course you also have to consider rent, utilities, etc.
If the previous Navy funded research was ~ 20 million over ~ 15 years, after salaries, and other expenses, they were truly on a shoestring budget for any equipment acquisition, maintainance, conversion, or upgrades.

Dan Tibbets

True, but R&D money usually lasts for two years so can be carried over a bit so I assumed it was stretched until about December with a bit of help. And the "staying alive" money (which I take to be included in the the 300k) only had to last about another 8 months until WB8 funds appeared. But all told, WB 7 and 7.1 funding lasted about two years.

As for rent, etc., I included that into the "overhead" portion of the personnel costs.

I stand by... well, a bit to the side of, my original estimates!

[jsbiff]

Oh good, speculation about where the money went. I love these flights of fancy! Here is mine.

I'd like to say in my defense, that I was neither speculating, nor requesting speculations. I was commenting on the lack of any kind of really useful information in the recovery.gov database for it to be used for it's 'official' stated purpose - analysis of the economic benefits of the Recovery Act.

Lacking detailed information about how the awarded money got spent, means you can't really track the economic impact very well (I don't think - maybe economists have some models that can estimate economic impact without knowing any details whatsoever, I dunno).

I suppose, maybe, they can say, at least in general terms, that the average of every $1000 awarded, it creates or retains X jobs on average, without knowing exactly how it was spent. Not sure how they could figure that out, though, without knowing the specific details for at least a representative sample of the contracts?

BTW, Kiteman - I'm curious, what makes you think they did not have any software engineers before, and do now? Is that based on some knowledge from another source, which you happen to be aware of? I suppose software engineers are important in just about any modern engineering/scientific effort, but why wouldn't they have had a software engineer before now, but do now? How'd they get by without any (custom) software before, but need it now?

I suppose sometimes in the early stages of a project, you can 'get by' with cobbling together a makeshift software system from, e.g. 'off-the-shelf' products that you put together with duct-tape and expletives (err, I mean, shell scripts and PERL, yeah, that's it - PERL code usually does look like expletives. . .), but maybe they reached the point where some well-designed custom software was really needed to move forward any more? (I realize you're just speculating, but curious why you speculate that they hired a couple software engineers?)

[Betruger]

New hires - Wasn't that mentioned in some of the last contracts found on the net? Sometime last year?

[ladajo]

Yup, and at recovery.gov as well. There were also the hiring adverts that surfaced about the specific positions looking to be filled.

[KitemanSA]

Oh good, speculation about where the money went. I love these flights of fancy! Here is mine.

I'd like to say in my defense, that I was neither speculating, nor requesting speculations. I was commenting on the lack of any kind of really useful information in the recovery.gov database for it to be used for it's 'official' stated purpose - analysis of the economic benefits of the Recovery Act.

I am sorry if I seemed to be attacking you or your post, that was not my intent. I had no desire to make you feel as though you needed defense. And I agree with the rather lacking state of affairs wrt the RA web site.

BTW, Kiteman - I'm curious, what makes you think they did not have any software engineers before, and do now? Is that based on some knowledge from another source, which you happen to be aware of? I suppose software engineers are important in just about any modern engineering/scientific effort, but why wouldn't they have had a software engineer before now, but do now? How'd they get by without any (custom) software before, but need it now?

It was my understanding that the 1.8+.3 funding was pretty well focused on replicating and test WB6. I know from various papers that EMC2 did in fact write software but I believe that was all pre-Google.

I suppose sometimes in the early stages of a project, you can 'get by' with cobbling together a makeshift software system from, e.g. 'off-the-shelf' products that you put together with duct-tape and expletives (err, I mean, shell scripts and PERL, yeah, that's it - PERL code usually does look like expletives. . .), but maybe they reached the point where some well-designed custom software was really needed to move forward any more? (I realize you're just speculating, but curious why you speculate that they hired a couple software engineers?)

3.1.4 Within 30 days of build and test of WB8, the contractor shall provide a predictive model of WB behavior including data points for detailed 2D/3D profile measurements of plasma density, ion energy and WB magnetic field structure during follow-on tests to validate the scientific basis for a Polywell fusion power reactor, and guide further research. The contractor shall coordinate with the Government for a program review meeting at the contractor’s facilities to be held no later than 40 days after the testing of the WB8 and shall provide the detailed predictive model and data points at this program review meeting.

I took this to indicate a significant improvement on the prior software was forthcoming. Just a guess. But I seem to remember something that Dr.N. said in one of his recent statements that made me think my assumption was good. I can't point to it now.

[ladajo]

That was one maybe two of the hires. Theorectical to Modeling. I'll have to find it again.