Ya Gotta Be A Little Bit Crazy

[MSimon]

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http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... dison.html

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This is a bit I did on Edison. It talks about strategies for innovation. Based on a Control Engineering article which I highly recommend.

[Munchausen]

Have you ever heard of TRIZ "Теория решения изобретательских задач” (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch) meaning "The theory of solving inventor's problems"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ

[MSimon]

Always with the dialectic.

Comrade, " We need 40,000 psi material and this is only 30,000 psi. What shall be done to resolve the contradiction?"

The American way: "What is the ultimate strength we can get? With what? OK Lets make some."

[StevePoling]

Always with the dialectic.

Comrade, " We need 40,000 psi material and this is only 30,000 psi. What shall be done to resolve the contradiction?"

The American way: "What is the ultimate strength we can get? With what? OK Lets make some."

Does this mean you're going to whip up some 100% transparent grid material to put in a fusor?

The American way does have problems when someone specs a part made out of pure unobtainium. A smart Soviet designer could take crap materials and use them in a design that negated their crap-ness. As you say it is a dialectic, between what's available and our smarts to put it to work, versus changing what's available to make new designs viable.

My snarky comment raised a question in my mind: The Farnsworth fusor can't achieve net power output b/c the charged grid has a transparency of better than 90%, but not 100%. Dr. Bussard proposed creating a virtual grid out of an electron cloud. What is ITS transparency? Let's calculate the transparency of the electron cloud to compare that with a charged metal grid. Now consider a thought experiment wherein we build a Farnsworth fusor with a grid of unobtainium whose transparency happens to equal that of the electron cloud. Would this gedanken fusor work? If not, then the guys talking about brem losses are right.

[MSimon]

Does this mean you're going to whip up some 100% transparent grid material to put in a fusor?

Do you have a material in mind? I'll whip some up.

[StevePoling]

sure, make the grid out of pure unobtainium. i'm sure you'll find some around somewhere...

[MSimon]

sure, make the grid out of pure unobtainium. i'm sure you'll find some around somewhere...

I generally avoid using that in my designs. Unless I know where to get some.

BTW the Sovs/Russians were very good at making crap do useful things.

They were never too good at breakthrough technologies. Or high quality anything. If you want to hit your target get a Black Stick. You will need to maintain it. If you want to spray bullets in the general direction get an AK. Very little maintenance required.

The Sov thinking gets you incremental improvements. The old stuff declines in value gracefully. The American way gets you jumps. The old stuff is now a pile of junk.

Part of it is economic systems. Governments don't want their stuff turning to crap overnight. Company A has no such compunction about Company B.

[Helius]

My snarky comment raised a question in my mind: The Farnsworth fusor can't achieve net power output b/c the charged grid has a transparency of better than 90%, but not 100%. Dr. Bussard proposed creating a virtual grid out of an electron cloud. What is ITS transparency? Let's calculate the transparency of the electron cloud to compare that with a charged metal grid. Now consider a thought experiment wherein we build a Farnsworth fusor with a grid of unobtainium whose transparency happens to equal that of the electron cloud. Would this gedanken fusor work? If not, then the guys talking about brem losses are right.

I like the experiment. The material will be the same (or perhaps an isotope of) the very same unobtainium that we as children dropped toward the Earth's gravitational center in such a way that we could catch it again, in our own youthful gedanken experiments.

I think brem will still be a problem. When was it ever not a problem? This year is about forming the whiffle ball, Next year, Brem. Then what?

[cuddihy]

My snarky comment raised a question in my mind: The Farnsworth fusor can't achieve net power output b/c the charged grid has a transparency of better than 90%, but not 100%.

sort of. Fusors can't achieve net power for reasons that may be simply, but only imprecisely boiled down to, "excess loss of ions into the charged grid." theoretically, if you could keep the plasma going at high enough density, and make the grid out of unobtanium that didn't melt due to ion collision, you could easily obtain net power with 90% or even 80% transparency.

Dr. Bussard proposed creating a virtual grid out of an electron cloud. What is ITS transparency? Let's calculate the transparency of the electron cloud to compare that with a charged metal grid.

Transparency of an electron cloud in the sense you used it above would be the same as "electron-ion collisionality" often discussed in terms of losses the Polywell will experience or the arguments about sustaining a mono-energetic velocity distribution.

Now consider a thought experiment wherein we build a Farnsworth fusor with a grid of unobtainium whose transparency happens to equal that of the electron cloud. Would this gedanken fusor work? If not, then the guys talking about brem losses are right.

Hmm..

[djolds1]

BTW the Sovs/Russians were very good at making crap do useful things.

They were never too good at breakthrough technologies. Or high quality anything. If you want to hit your target get a Black Stick. You will need to maintain it. If you want to spray bullets in the general direction get an AK. Very little maintenance required.

I'd say the opposite. The Russians are very good at breakthrough concepts and designs, but poor at quality construction thereof.

The tokamak. Revolutionary concept that looked very good, even tho it didn't play out.

The Shkval supercavitating rocket torpedo.

Computer architectures that got 1980s performances using 1960s components.

The passive cavity resonator surveillance device.

Production quality sucks a big posterior, however. But that appears to be improving somewhat under the reign of Czar Vladimir of the Putin Dynasty.

The Sov thinking gets you incremental improvements. The old stuff declines in value gracefully. The American way gets you jumps. The old stuff is now a pile of junk.

That was the American concept up until the Manhattan Project. The attempt to make gold plated quantum leaps with each refinement is a serious weakness in post-WW2 American technical philosophy IMO.

Part of it is economic systems. Governments don't want their stuff turning to crap overnight. Company A has no such compunction about Company B.

Aesthetically and practically I prefer the Sov/Russian "KISS+" design philosophy. Better LOTS of very robust & survivable 'good enough' product than too little of endlessly cute & varied gold plated uber-quality product. The uber quality approach didn't work so well for this obscure little Central European country last century.

Duane

[djolds1]

This year is about forming the whiffle ball, Next year, Brem. Then what?

Unflawed understanding and relationship between the sexes?

No, lets stay in the realm of the achievable. Faster Than Light drives?

Duane

[MSimon]

Computer architectures that got 1980s performances using 1960s components.

That is something I know a little about. They loved FORTH. Not just a language, but a whole operating system in 1K to 8K words of memory.

We will be coming back in that direction as the speed of light limits on processor speed get ever more constrictive. A processor that runs at 10 GHz is going to have to be very small.