Talk-Polywell.org

This is exciting! FWIW, I agree with Kurt — this seems an appropriate level of funding for the near term. With that, plus the recent Navy contract, they should be able to answer some of those fundamental questions that are making the results "nuanced."

Sure, we'd all love to see a Manhattan Project to push polywells to the market place in five years or less, but given the history of fusion machines in general, and with most fusion researchers pushing tokamaks, that's just not going to happen. $2M in the capable hands of Dr. Nebel and his team will produce more answers, and hopefully, those will spur further funding at a higher level, until we have this nut cracked.

What a great example it would be, if they pulled it off on a trail of breadcrumbs like this. No mammoth billion dollar budgets

What a great example it would be, if they pulled it off on a trail of breadcrumbs like this.

A great example indeed, but of what?

Maybe the lesson here is that .gov knows how to blow billions on projects that are doomed, and yet hundreds of "expert" scientists insists it is the way to go, while some small outfit, that could have got the money from a well-heeled philanthropist, comes up trumps .... and all the while majority of .gov experts insist it would never work. (oh, they'll all say it was obvious after the facts come in).

Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.

In the bigger scheme, if Polywell works out then it may pull the tokomakers butts out of the flames, since all the public (and politicians) will know is that the "scientists" finally got fusion working after promising it for 5 decades. Problem solved, no need to mention the massive misdirection of resources along the way ....

Answering the question Any love for Polywell from Obama? Probably not because, over on Slashdot the article "Energy Secretary Chu Endorses Clean Coal" is being discussed.

The Slashdot crowd as usual pull the article apart. Hence the "Shovels are Ready" for more pork barreling, because "Clean Coal is an Oxymoron statement if I ever saw one.

The full article comes from the WJ "Energy Secretary Backs Clean-Coal Investments".

Regards
Polygirl

A great example of how to do it right in these circumstances by the EMC2 crew. Regardless of whether govt or the public would learn better.. Skepticism of which is another story.

I'm beginning to wonder if the polywell is like a $250 million elephant in the room for the decision makers. If they commit the big bucks and it doesn't work they get blamed, so they keep funding at a low level year after year. But it adds up just to big bucks over time, about $50 million over the last 20 years, and it becomes a self reinforcing cycle. Design, diagnostic testing, data collection and computer simulation are limited by budget constraints, and no big budget without the data you need the big budget to deliver.
Furthermore, every time a new administration comes in it takes them a year to review the previous administrations research funding and make up their minds what to do with it. This means another year gone, back to square one.
Hopefully the shovel ready funding will be enough to exhaust all the potential diagnostic testing in the next year or two, all positive. If it takes longer and runs into another presidential election campaign, it will end up at square one again.

choff wrote:I'm beginning to wonder if the polywell is like a $250 million elephant in the room for the decision makers. If they commit the big bucks and it doesn't work they get blamed, so they keep funding at a low level year after year. But it adds up just to big bucks over time, about $50 million over the last 20 years, ...

According to This document, the total is less that $30M, even including the two recent additions. It WOULD have been $50M but one contract had it's $ cut by $20M.

Thanks for the correction. Still, I hold they would be a lot farther ahead if they had the big budget in the first place.

choff wrote:Thanks for the correction. Still, I hold they would be a lot farther ahead if they had the big budget in the first place.

Ya know, I was thinking the exact opposite. They seemed to make their best progress in times of financial stress. They spent 10s of millions on WBs 1-5 but it wasn't till then that they had their epiphony. WB6 was built on a shoe-string.

True, at this point, I kind of wish they had that $30M back to spend again...

$ 30 million over 20 years only averages out to ~ $1.5 million per year. Operating costs probably ate up a fourth of that(saleries, lease, bills, etc. ?). A shortend time frame would have allowed more intense testing and developement. Weather the understanding would also have been acellerated will never be known. Alternatevely, higher budgets may have put the program on the radar screen and it might have been killed. Bussard admitted concern for this in his Google talk.


Dan Tibbets

D Tibbets wrote:$ 30 million over 20 years only averages out to ~ $1.5 million per year. Operating costs probably ate up a fourth of that(saleries, lease, bills, etc. ?). A shortend time frame would have allowed more intense testing and developement.

To a small degree, I agree with you, but in this case I suspect more money would have meant more physicists, etc, which would have kept the "operating costs" the same or higher. Remember, at that stage of research, most "product" is thought and understanding, NOT hardware.

Now that a good thesis exists, money can be profitably spent on bigger-badder experiments rather than thought and understanding. Now, bigger money means more engineering and better-badder machines. Now, that kind of money might actually be productive.

Just think, If DrB were to have spent $200M on a full size WB5, the whole thing would probably have died an ignomineous death. I am kind of glad that th $ were reduced back then.

Give EMC2 that savings NOW! That perhaps should be our rallying cry. We find out who removed that $20M and praise his foresight, and ask that his wisdom be validated with the PROFITABLE use of that $20M now. Hmmm??

Give EMC2 that savings NOW! That perhaps should be our rallying cry. We find out who removed that $20M and praise his foresight, and ask that his wisdom be validated with the PROFITABLE use of that $20M now. Hmmm??

That's way to logical. Maybe the Vulcans would consider that but we're stuck with American politics, not a Mr. Spock in the lot.