Talk-Polywell.org

This may be the right forum... ?

http://news.ufl.edu/2008/06/11/flying-saucer/

This was big a while ago, and I reference it not because I like the design, (I don't. A spinning airframe, the control issues, remote communication from inside a plasma cloud... It's messy.) ...but because his method of creating/controlling plasma would be easily adaptable to more basic layouts.

Tubes. Give me thrust in one direction. It's all I need. It would seem far easier to have the large surface area by placing either a single spiral, or concentric ring electrodes in a tube.

Also, at much lower energy, it would also seem to offer a wonderful way of reducing friction on the wetted surface of the aircraft.

Also...

This might be a strange thing to say, but why do we consider pB&j to be "fusion"?

Isn't it really a fission reaction with a proton instead of a neutron? I mean to say, we are operating at fusion levels of energy, but we are reducing a large atom into smaller ones. That really is fission.

This fact has been noted before, but when you get right down to it, the energy almost totally comes from the proton fusing into the B11. From there on out it is just the hyper-excited C12 shedding particles to handle the energy generated. Thus, fusion. (Note: hyper-excited is MY term, not used in the physics community as far as I know!)

To be precise the "p" in pB11 stands for "protium", i.e. Hydrogen, so is a fusion, not a fission.

I know it's splitting hairs. But it just amused me.

I think I need a new sense on humor.

I'll check Ebay.