Talk-Polywell.org

Why does it have to be 400 sf?

Well, experimental machines are always more complicated than the serial produced ones (just for all of the diagnostics alone). Look at the evolution of the SpaceX Raptor engine! They will get a lot simpler and cheaper to build over time.

Well, Grok can only go by the information that is publicly available. And even that is not always complete.

Also, for Helion a lot of the money went into building the machines that build the machines. They have entire manufacturing lines already (and are expanding).

I seriously doubt that Helion's power plants, once mass produced, will cost that much. Otherwise, they would never reach a reasonable ROI at 1 cent/kWh.

In time for Christmas, here is some new information, I got through the grape wine: Polaris's capacitor bank is now at 80 MJ. Trenta did indeed proof energy recovery of both fusion and input energy. However, it was not returned to the capacitor bank, but instead went into resistors. Still hoping for ...

I like comparing the neutral beam injection with filling a leaky bucket with a firehose while carrying it to the fire.

It is unclear to me that anyone has the perfect **commercial** Fusion generator approach. Helion, for instance, has the best back end solution as their machine directly converts fusion power to electric power. Yet, they need Gigawatt pulses of electric power to run their pulse machine. TAE does not...

I am not sure what to think of this. It has been clear for a while that TAE has had trouble raising more money after decades and 1.3 billion spent. In the near term, this may be a good thing for them. I hope that the funds they receive will be enough for them to upgrade Norm. It also may be a sign t...

If this table is correct then TAE might be aiming to use Norm for a "net energy gain" milestone next year. I for one am skeptical of the validity of the article. It is still talking about Copernicus. It is possible that TAE might be upgrading Norm for those milestones next year, though and that the ...

From all I have heard, they are still carefully ramping up power to the compression magnets and doing tests with "simulators" at the same time. They are deliberately careful with ramping up to "15 Tesla". Think about one of those pulsed magnets failing catastrophically! It is not "pretty". So, they ...

Much of the show was background information. My notes from latter part of the interview: 1:41 With FRC, one can recover the input energy at 90 or 95%, and the fusion energy at 80% that's funny, 80% was actually my BOE/WAG a year or so ago... don't think they've given out a number before I have said...

Reviving this thread. Anyone here who still refuses to believe that drones and unmanned fighters are the future of warfare? Looking at the war in Ukraine, there are barely any manned planes anywhere near front lines, let alone in enemy territory. This trend will continue. Here is the latest company ...

Yeah, those are pretty much confirmation of things that we had already known or had at least concluded from the information available.
Still great to have all of that in one place and directly from David Kirtley himself. So, thanks for the summary.

The energy input into each magnet has to be in a specific sequence that needs to be timed precisely. Also keep in mind that after each pulse there is a period of time where the machine is vented completely before the next pulse. Anyway, neither flywheels nor two machines in tandem can really do that...