Talk-Polywell.org

What would you ask?

rjaypeters wrote:What would you ask?

Does the bloody thing work, or not?

I guess that question, more or less, sums up everything we need to know.

How about: How well does confinement work? What scaling relationships have you found? What have the additional diagnostics shown? Found any truly unexpected results? Any show-stoppers?

Does annealing exist in polywells?

Are polywells only going to be useful for niche applications like high isp thrust, or will they be useful large scale power generators? Which fuels will they be able to use and for which applications?

When will your technical results be revealed for open peer review?

Can you explain the confusion between the Navy forbidding your response to a FOIA request and EMC2 claiming protection of commercial advantage?

What commercial relationships are you planning? Will EMC2 be leading the way forward or are you personally going back to what you did before?

Who is your favorite poster on Talk-Polywell.org?

EDIT: Did you really hire happyjack27 to simulate polywells?

Is there a "core"? Have you measured its depth? What is the depth?

Are there zones of ion and electron behavior in the core? What are the characteristics of these zones? How well do the core zones correspond with your predictions?

How is the polywell simulation effort proceeding? Do the results of these simulations match well with experimental results?

I have one and only one that is in my brain since I came to know the Polywell.

Does the Wiffleball form?

... given all the above:

'does the system scale properly to commercial energy production regimes? - vis. Brem, thermalisation, core structure resilience, structural (eg. magrid) /containment resilience'.

pretty much all the questions Nebel set out to demonstrate in the first place i suppose.

also, of course '... what happens next?'

Giorgio wrote:I have one and only one that is in my brain since I came to know the Polywell.

Does the Wiffleball form?

I think they answered that one as a yes. They have moved on to scaling...

Is WB-8.1 still in the cards?

That depends on the WB8 scaling results. Good enough equals $$ for PB&J testing on 8.1

Why did Dr. Nebel leave EMC2 for Tibbar? Apparently he is still doing physics; so health issues are most likely not a factor. a) Was there a conflict of personalities within EMC2? b) Or did Dr. Nebel come to believe that the Polywell was no longer as promising? c) Or did he become frustrated with the Navy's disinclination to adequately fund development of the WB-100?

Given Rick's earlier remarks on the subject, I am inclined to vote for answer "c" above. But I would really like to know the facts.

Can anybody shed any light on this?

classicpenny wrote:Why did Dr. Nebel leave EMC2 for Tibbar?
Can anybody shed any light on this?

Tibbar spelled backwards is rabbit. Maybe he was looking for a faster program.

rjaypeters wrote:What would you ask?

I forget the details, but Bussard told the story of the last test he did before his funding ran out, and he had an insight which led to him changing something, and presto! Much less of the input energy was lost! IT VILL VORK! (mad scientist voice, with no offense to Bussard's memory).

But the test wrecked the machine. So basically his story was: I finally figured it out, and what a shame my funding ran out at that moment.

The current round -- correction, round*s* -- of Navy funding are what followed.

So... did Bussard figure it out? Polywell is (hopefully) not just about experiments, but fulfilling predictions.

CBK

PS - I assume the Navy's interest in Polywell is principally as an electricity source for the planned (or hoped for) all electric Navy. That true?

The "Aha!" moment was realizing that the magrid coil cases should be rounded, and slightly separated, to reduce the electron losses.

The Navy's interest in Polywell is (at the least) for integrated, compact, high power density electrical sources for propulsion, weapons (railguns, lasers, AESA-as-weapon), aircraft launch (EMALS), etc., in tune with the drive towards a "more electric" fleet, as well as for shore-based power.