Talk-Polywell.org

Dr. Bussard always figured Polywell fusion would be phased in as the existing power plants reached end of life, rather than all at once. If supply can keep up with demand on new plants, I might expect "end of life" would be accelerated by the owners of the old plant, but the smart money will replace...

It is being funded by the Navy, but I'm pretty sure ORN is not the group within the Navy supporting it. One day maybe I can tell the whole story. There are hints of in in another thread, where somebody dug up a rant I was goaded into on Fusor.net regarding the "Todd Rider Mess". http://www.talk-poly...

The difference in this case is that Dr. Bussard spent a couple of decades trying filaments, got one to burn brightly just a bit, and now Dr. Nebel and company are trying to re-create Dr. Bussard's last filament, with a few refinements, so that it can be properly proved to work. But essentially they ...

Dr. Nebel, you've touched on one of Dr. Bussard's favorite critiques of large tokamaks, but you left out a detail. That detail is the 5 meter thick blanket of molten lithium snuggled just inside the magnets, distributed to that larger footprint. We'll neglect the radioactive materials from the neutr...

jmc, The abilitity to remove the repeller plates is good because if (most likely when) you discover they are screwing the thing up, you will wish to do so. There is nothing difficult about this. Install CF vacuum ports on all the corners and faces, the largest diameter you can fit, and have a good s...

<<What about the repeller plates? Were they in deep ports? WB5 looked fairly boxy from the outside. >> I really don't know how it was put together, except to say it had physical modifications to allow tricks of that sort. PXL-1 had fairly plain corners except for the pump port and one port opposite ...

I think for now the fusion effort should concentrate on magrid designs such as WB7. There is an incorrect statement above. WB5 was the only one of the WB series to be a closed box machine. I would have named it PXL-2. Since WB means wiffleball, and Dr. Bussard expected wiffleballs could form in eith...

(Also posted at NASASpaceFlight.com) Last night I listened to the Feb 12 broadcast of "The Space Show". The guest, Bruce Pittman, was talking about alternative fusion projects, p-B11 fusion, etc. Dr. Bussard came up pretty quickly, as did some article that appeared recently in _Analog_. I wish I'd b...

Doc and Dolly owned (she may still have) an aging Masserati 4-door, and don't think I didn't offer to install PXL-1 in it for them! The whole nutty mess had too many parallels to a certain trilogy of movies. I never thought PXL-1 was the right approach to make fusion, but I hoped, and still hope, it...

Regarding the amount of circulating current, let me tell you about an event with PXL-1. This was a closed-box machine (magnets outside) of the same general form as HEPS and WB-5, but built to run for 30-sec or so at a time. It had some fascinating behavior, and I was never quite completely sure why ...

If you look at the photos of the interior of the vacuum chamber used with WB6, when we received it, the interior was mirror-bright electropolished (per my specification). 'Twas a true thing of beauty. WB4 was probably the device that turned it all purple and blotchy. Sputter coating is going to happ...

Yup, that's "Dog and Pony II", my demo machine that I also used to prove out the performance of the EMC2 neutron detectors. I'll probably be taking it to Balticon in a few months, and do the ISDC talk again. "Dog and Pony I" never made neutrons and only lasted a couple of weeks. I built it out of a ...

The Hirsch design worked neatly though. If they had not used the overly complicated multipactor design, there would have no need for tomfoolery. The neutron source I used to check out the function of the EMC2 counters was my own personal Hirsch machine I built to take to demonstrations. Worked like ...

Tony, I have no idea if or when the results will be published. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much Dr. Nebel has been willing to talk to the press, though. Maybe the veil is not so tight this time around. So I guess my answer is, I certainly hope so! Duck -- the very one! And I sure want th...

It is interesting that this started out in response to the"peak oil" problem, because Dr. Hirsch, the same fellow who worked with Farnsworth on the fusor, is one of the primary people sounding the cry. I believe Dr. Hirsch will pull together the peer review team for any WB7 results! I also believe D...