Fundraising, from a marketing persons point of view.

[culthero]

GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS!

No I won't type the rest of my post in caps, however I will lay this out as detailed as possible.

Let me preface, I'm not a physicist, I'm not even a college graduate. I as what would many consider, an ignorant man.

However I've been a fan, lets say a loose fan of Fusion for the last 5 years.

I watched Dr. Bussards presentation on google video quite literally 5 months ago, and was flabbergasted. 200 million dollars is a drop in the bucket considering the possible benefits of fusion. What I have noticed, and continue to observe is the unfortunate discombobulation of information, progress, and funding.

Here is where your uneducated man comes in.


Fusion power needs a champion, and that champion does not merely need definition by the constraints of 1 person. It needs the internet.


Case Study #1 - Barack Obama :

Hey, I'm Barack Obama - I hire the lead developer of Facebook, oh hai I'm rich. Oh hai I'm the opponent fighting John McCain, not Hillary Clinton (democratic rockstar)


Long story short,

Fusion needs a public educational campaign. It needs a website. It's needs to seem like Virgin Galactic. It needs to appear to be inevitable to humanity.

Everyone who is a member of this board understands that Fusion is the future as do I - however googling fusion provides very few outlets for people to participate or accrue information.



Why not a ridiculously well done well researched website that is maintained consistently by those who care about the future of energy on this planet?

By trade I am a PHP programmer and graphic designer. However my aspirations is to have fusion power to relieve global warming, spur space development and exploration, and I fervently believe that a public campaign to educate and motivate regular internet users to the next generation of energy is necessary.






Who thinks a badass fusion website coupled with direct marketing appeals to investors and venture capitalists would be the key to bringing Bussard reactors to the masses, much less the cosmos?

[tonybarry]

Hello culthero,

Welcome to Talk-Polywell.

You are correct when you say a public campaign is needed to spur development of Dr. Bussard's polywell. We have a small one operating in the "blog-o-sphere", due in large part to MSimon's and Tom Ligon's tireless efforts.

Any thing you can do to raise polywell awareness is a good thing. However, to differentiate it from the cranks, such a site needs some editorial and scientific rigor. You may wish to gather a reference crew to help with the scientific issues.

One thing we are all waiting on is Dr. Nebel's results from WB-7. While he is constrained by DoD policies on what he can and cannot say, in this post he has indicated that WB-7 clones might well be able to be distributed widely to appropriate universities and researchers.

Since no scholarly institution will buy a million dollar device without some indication that it's doing what is claimed, there will have to be some well-substantiated claims available for us to examine.

This link lists all posts by Dr. Nebel on Talk-Polywell, and you may choose to make it a permanent bookmark. To my knowledge he does not post elsewhere. Currently he has posted here 34 times. I leave it to your discretion not to bug Dr. Nebel with requests for information; he will advise us when he can, as he can. I personally am grateful that he keeps us in the loop to the extent that he does. Dr. Bussard operated under a total information sharing embargo for much of his development of the polywell.

You may wish to inspect Joe Strout's Polywell page for further information and links.

Regards,
Tony Barry

[Keegan]

You are correct when you say a public campaign is needed to spur development of Dr. Bussard's polywell. We have a small one operating in the "blog-o-sphere", due in large part to MSimon's and Tom Ligon's tireless efforts.

Nicely said Tony. You are right culthero. Public Education is going to play a Big part in developing the polywell on the road to net power.

A few points tho.

We still dont have all the answers. We know alot, but if i was to launch a campaign tomorrow it would contain alot of assumptions. POPS for example could increase fusion power by orders of magnitudes, but how do we know it 100% compatible with polywell ? If we get things wrong, people can take shots at our credibility, eroding the solid work of EMC2.

Current Machines are many magnitudes away from net power. Probably best to wait till we get within a few before we can confidently run around screaming wolf. We can thank the incredibly steep power scaling laws for alot of our troubles.

Its Nuclear Fusion, Man. Nuclear Fusion aint easy Man. Its going to take some thought to break this up in to byte size chunks that people can understand. Bussard did an excellent job, and perhaps his lifes work was communicating the inner workings of the machine into a form people could hope to understand (the google talk) Im in Avionics. I work with alot of switched on liscenced avionics guys who have a fair amount of training in, Electrics, RF, metalurgy, pressurisation. It often takes such a small thing like an Alpha particle to leave them utterly confused. Which is why a "ground up" explanation of the machine is essential. Yet time consuming to produce and for people to watch. Not only are people lacking the knowledge, they are lacking the time.

Luckily we now posses some of the most amazing technology for distributing this information to the common man. We just need a few more answers and im confident some production will be happening soon.

-K

[culthero]

Alright then, lets toss out some powerful talking points about Fusion. Boiling it down to a society and life changer is a strong point.

1) Top 3 Uses for Fusion (power, rocketry,
2) How the worldwide economy shifts with plentiful inexpensive and clean source of energy
3) Where "are we" on the fusion timeline (From 0 to Commerical Fusion Power plants and space-craft)
4) What amount of funding is required, how should / could we spend it?
5) Where should the funding come from? Agreed, 100m is a drop in the bucket for federal budget standards, but is it possible to get a conglomeration of states together? Private sources?
6) How can we speak to all possible avenues of funding? What is the best message to send for local, city, state, and federal governments - venture capitalists, and average people.
7) Whats the viability? Is this really going to work?

Is it wrong for me to see this as something like fusion commercialized more influential then the Atomic bomb, the airplane, the combustion engine, penicillin, etc?

[MSimon]

Development by an alliance will slow things down. If it is going to be workable it has to be a separate entity. i.e. put up the money and get out of the way. What I could see is parallel development.

What is really required is some one to head the effort who has the power and authority to ram rod through difficulties. Like General Grove of the Manhattan Project.

Who would I like? Adm Jay Cohen formerly of ONR and now head of research and development for (don't laugh) Homeland Security.

He has 3 of the requirements down:

1. Intelligence
2. Drive
3. Willingness to break old rules and make new ones.

[Mike Holmes]

Does this site consitute a "Badass Website?": http://www.polywellnuclearfusion.com/Cl ... clear.html

If not, what does it need? Or does it fail to meet the purposes you have in general?

Mike

[drmike]

Nice site!! I checked out the "Nuclear Energy" tab, and it is very nicely laid out. It even uses "fission" and "fusion" correctly for pB11!

The power of the net is really in communications. That's a great way to start people in learning what is going on. The other important factor is time. I think it's better to go slow and make sure all the foundations are built up solid. Once all the data is proving things look good and several people can replicate it, then you can take off with evangelism.

Waiting for the timing to be right is the hard part.

[ravingdave]

Does this site consitute a "Badass Website?": http://www.polywellnuclearfusion.com/Cl ... clear.html

If not, what does it need? Or does it fail to meet the purposes you have in general?

Mike

I took a quick look and I saw what I believe are a couple of mistakes on the page "What is a polywell and how does it work?".

In the section of text at the bottom of the page it says

"Boron and Hydrogen are sprayed into the space just inside the Magrid as shown on the right. "

I am thinking that the term "sprayed" is misleading. I believe Dr. Bussard said something more along the lines of ions being allowed to fall towards the center. Apart from that, the diagram appears to show both reactants mixed together. I was always under the impression that they would be injected separetly, if for no other reason than to allow better control of the reactant mixture.

The text goes on further to say

"
High energy electrons strip the Boron and Hydrogen of all their electrons, making them into B5+ and H+ ions. "


I don't believe any "high energy electrons" are going to strip electrons from the atoms. I believe it would require a High Positive charge to accomplish this. A Positive High voltage source would suck the electrons right out of anything to which it is attached.


One other thing. I have seen a discussion concerning whether the reactants are injected from a cusp or through the center of one of the magnents. I do not know if this was ever determined one way or the other, but I think Tom Ligon indicated that they were injecting through the center of one of the magnets.



Not to be critical, but if a knowledgable skeptic sees mistakes in theory, their immediate reaction is likely to be derision and the assumption that they are looking at a "psuedoscience Kook" website.

I applaude the effort though !

David

[hanelyp]

I don't believe any "high energy electrons" are going to strip electrons from the atoms. I believe it would require a High Positive charge to accomplish this. A Positive High voltage source would suck the electrons right out of anything to which it is attached.

Consider the energies involved: Electron energy 10s of keV vs. ionization energy 10s of eV. The effect is something like hitting a puzzle cube with a bullet.

[classicpenny]

ravingdave wrote:

"Boron and Hydrogen are sprayed into the space just inside the Magrid as shown on the right. "
I am thinking that the term "sprayed" is misleading. I believe Dr. Bussard said something more along the lines of ions being allowed to fall towards the center. Apart from that, the diagram appears to show both reactants mixed together. I was always under the impression that they would be injected separetly, if for no other reason than to allow better control of the reactant mixture.

Yes, I have recently become aware of how unfortunate this description is, and it yes, it definitely needs to be changed. I understand that the protons will most likely be injected into the reaction as ordinary hydrogen in the same manner as the deuterium; but I am a little hazy about how the boron is to be injected. I do remember some talk about “sputtering” it into the system, but that doesn’t sound very controlled to me. I also remember Dr. Nebel talking about the “NIF-type” pellets – but he seemed to think that would be cost prohibitive.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Does anyone know if the old “puff gas” system has been improved? Does anyone know what the latest thoughts are on boron injection?

David, thanks for your comments – such criticism is absolutely essential to making the website better.

Mike, thanks for drawing my attention to this thread, I had completely missed it!

[Grant Castillou]

Hi Culthero,

Just one thing about your website. As far as I know, pb11 fusion will
produce some neutrons through side reactions. Your website seems
adamant that there will be NO neutrons produced. Other than that,
the website looks very polished.

Grant

Edit: Sorry, I think I'm referring to Mike Holmes site.

[drmike]

@ravingdave - electron ionization is the primary method of stripping electrons off nuclei. The electron - electron cross section is huge because the wave functions are matched (it is a quantum phenomena). From a pure energy perspective it doesn't take much to rip an electron out of an orbit - as pointed out by hanelyp. So that part is correct.

But I don't think describing quantum mechanics at the atomic or nuclear level is useful for getting the idea across! If polywell fusion works, "gee-whiz" with a few errors to make things simple is perfectly ok. Anybody who wants to know more can get details up the gazoo when the go digging.

[Mike Holmes]

To be clear, the site belongs to "Classicpenny." I was just cross-linking threads and sites to bring the conversation together.

Classicpenny, do you have a name so we know who to credit with the hard work?

Mike

[classicpenny]

Mike, I promoted “Contact Info” in polywellnuclearfusion.com to a menu item (and demoted “search, site map, FAQ” to a link in the lower right corner. Do you think that will address your concern? (My “real name” is on the “Contact Info” page – but you can call me Bill Flint. I wish I had used Bill Flint for a user name on Talk-Polywell. I did see that Joe Strout suggested that we use our “real” names, but that was AFTER I had already registered as classicpenny – sigh – I did it only because I’ve been using that as a username ever since I’ve had an internet connection.)

Dave, I took out “sprayed” and substituted “injected” in polywellnuclearfusion.com. Also, there are now separate “injectors” for the hydrogen and the boron in the sketch; and I made the electron guns line up with the centers of the coils. I still want to know how we are planning to inject the boron.

Grant, I know about the neutron side reactions. That has been troubling me ever since I found out about them. I am assuming that the neutron production is pretty small, and I am guessing that we won’t know how small until we actually have a working p-B polywell. Am I right? This seems to be one of those “damned-no-matter-what-you-do” situations. Over the years, I have noticed that the totally anti-nuclear folks seem for the most part to be incapable of thinking in shades of gray. (For example, many of them seem to believe that something either produces radiation or it doesn’t - and if it does, it is totally absolutely BAD - never mind that ordinary granite produces radiation – never mind that you can’t ever quite escape it – radiation and nuclear are “bad” no matter what.) I guess I’ve been a little slow to admit to the limited neutron side reactions because I didn’t want to alarm these “black and white” thinkers.

Keegan, you said it very well:

We still don't have all the answers. We know a lot, but if I was to launch a campaign tomorrow it would contain a lot of assumptions. POPS for example could increase fusion power by orders of magnitudes, but how do we know it is 100% compatible with the polywell? If we get things wrong, people can take shots at our credibility, eroding the solid work of EMC2.

And another problem is deciding when to depart from “rigorous” and go with “comprehensible.” Making a website is very difficult because of these sorts of problems.

As should be evident from my website, I’m a “Ready, Fire, Aim” kind of guy. Yes, it gets me in trouble. A lot. (For example, I suspect that I’ve already acquired that "psuedoscience Kook" label in some quarters – ie my congressman and my senators. I’d like to think that maybe I get more done than I would if I obsessed over getting everything exactly right. But yes, an “official” EMC2 website probably cannot afford that kind of thinking; and I do wish –now- that I had exercised a little more restraint when I first contacted my congressman....By the way, how in the heck is it possible to tell a congressman everything he/she needs to know about the polywell in four bullet points?

[MSimon]

Cheap Energy
Lo Radiation
US has 1/3 of world's supply
Some work needs to be done