Dr Bussard's research

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
oups.com

The paper also talks about huge performance gains in space propulsion.
Its not clear whether these are from an improved power source,
powering an ion/plasma engine, or is there some way of letting the
particles escape through an aperture, as VASIMR.

Even if the suggested 1000 fold improvement in ISP turns out being a
wussy 100 fold, or even 10 fold ISP improvement would certainly knock my
socks off.

It simply takes a reliable source of energy in order to force those ions
out a given rocket butt. What say we force the likes of
Ra--LRn--Rn222 as our primary interplanetary or interstellar form of
achieving the utmost ion exit density at .5c velocity, and thus achieve
the most net thrust per joule of applied energy.
-
Brad Guth







--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:

Sounds great. Where can we see the working prototype of a generator that
produces more power than it consumes?

You can't, because that machine hasn't been built yet. There are
scaling effects; the efficiency goes up with machine size. The
break-even machine would be 10X larger than the prototypes already
built. Though even at that, we're talking a device a few meters across
-- way more practical (if it works) than the giant tokamaks proposed by
the big-fusion crowd.

The amount of funding needed to build the break-even prototype, at this
point, is significantly less than the amount already being spent on
magnetic confinement fusion. I do not believe Dr. Bussard is a con man
or an idiot. I think this may be one of those cases where we've
invested so much money into one particular approach, that to
simultaneously fund an alternative approach would cause too many
important people to lose face. So we ignore it, and hope it goes away.

(Space solar power is a similar case, where for a small fraction of the
fusion budget, we might have made a lot more progress towards real power
production.)

It'll be very interesting to see what comes of this. He's talking about
on the order of $200M to develop the prototype power plant. That's a
sufficiently small amount of money that if the U.S. government doesn't
step up, lots of other players might, including both regular investors
and other countries (*).

Best,
- Joe

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

In article ,
Joe Strout wrote:

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

More than it would do for the guys supplying the fuel (11B
fusion is mentioned and annual world production of 11B is about 80
times what we'd need to power everything).

--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

In article ,
(James Nicoll) wrote:

In article ,
Joe Strout wrote:

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

More than it would do for the guys supplying the fuel (11B
fusion is mentioned and annual world production of 11B is about 80
times what we'd need to power everything).

Yeah -- bummer for the guys hoping for a big global demand for deuterium
to drive lunar development, though. (The B11 fuses with plain old H.)

On the other hand, if this technology is even half as good as claimed,
it really will reduce the cost to orbit by orders of magnitude, in which
case I don't think any new markets are needed.

Best,
- Joe

On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:28:06 +0000 (UTC), "Brad Guth"
wrote:

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
oups.com

1st Law: When things look too good to be true, they're probably not
true.

2nd Law: Every good law has its exceptions.

I agree, it's looking damn good, and if nothing else it's healthy push
upon others, into forcing whatever fusion alternatives before it's too
late. Therefore, it's a positive win-win for humanity and for the
salvation of our badly failing environment.

How spendy is He4?

If it gives humanity the power to get off this rock and go and explore
deep space which is where we belong I'm all for it.

Joe Strout wrote:

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:


Sounds great. Where can we see the working prototype of a generator that
produces more power than it consumes?


You can't, because that machine hasn't been built yet. There are
scaling effects; the efficiency goes up with machine size. The
break-even machine would be 10X larger than the prototypes already
built. Though even at that, we're talking a device a few meters across
-- way more practical (if it works) than the giant tokamaks proposed by
the big-fusion crowd.

The amount of funding needed to build the break-even prototype, at this
point, is significantly less than the amount already being spent on
magnetic confinement fusion. I do not believe Dr. Bussard is a con man
or an idiot. I think this may be one of those cases where we've
invested so much money into one particular approach, that to
simultaneously fund an alternative approach would cause too many
important people to lose face. So we ignore it, and hope it goes away.

(Space solar power is a similar case, where for a small fraction of the
fusion budget, we might have made a lot more progress towards real power
production.)

It'll be very interesting to see what comes of this. He's talking about
on the order of $200M to develop the prototype power plant. That's a
sufficiently small amount of money that if the U.S. government doesn't
step up, lots of other players might, including both regular investors
and other countries (*).

Best,
- Joe

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

Having skimmed the conference paper at the link posted by Alex, I'd
certainly like to see the thing properly peer reviewed (the physics is
beyond me), with a view to deciding whether funding should be provided
for a prototype power plant. The amount of money involved is indeed
trivial compared with the benefits if the thing actually works as
advertised.

Sylvia.

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:08:12 +1100, in a place far, far away, Sylvia
Else made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

Having skimmed the conference paper at the link posted by Alex, I'd
certainly like to see the thing properly peer reviewed (the physics is
beyond me), with a view to deciding whether funding should be provided
for a prototype power plant.

If physics is beyond you, why are you so convinced that the route to
orbit is breathing air? Or are you only referring to nuclear physics?

On 26 Feb, 22:08, Sylvia Else wrote:
Joe Strout wrote:
In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:

Sounds great. Where can we see the working prototype of a generator that
produces more power than it consumes?

You can't, because that machine hasn't been built yet. There are
scaling effects; the efficiency goes up with machine size. The
break-even machine would be 10X larger than the prototypes already
built. Though even at that, we're talking a device a few meters across
-- way more practical (if it works) than the giant tokamaks proposed by
the big-fusion crowd.

The amount of funding needed to build the break-even prototype, at this
point, is significantly less than the amount already being spent on
magnetic confinement fusion. I do not believe Dr. Bussard is a con man
or an idiot. I think this may be one of those cases where we've
invested so much money into one particular approach, that to
simultaneously fund an alternative approach would cause too many
important people to lose face. So we ignore it, and hope it goes away.

(Space solar power is a similar case, where for a small fraction of the
fusion budget, we might have made a lot more progress towards real power
production.)

It'll be very interesting to see what comes of this. He's talking about
on the order of $200M to develop the prototype power plant. That's a
sufficiently small amount of money that if the U.S. government doesn't
step up, lots of other players might, including both regular investors
and other countries (*).

Best,
- Joe

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

Having skimmed the conference paper at the link posted by Alex, I'd
certainly like to see the thing properly peer reviewed (the physics is
beyond me), with a view to deciding whether funding should be provided
for a prototype power plant. The amount of money involved is indeed
trivial compared with the benefits if the thing actually works as
advertised.

Given Bussard's reputation, the US Government really should look at
this very closely. If not, as Joe said, regular investors should be
crawling over the guy.

Perhaps the British Government could look at putting this in Culham,
Oxford, to give something to do for all the JET scientists who don't
want to move to France and learn Japanese.

On 26 Feb, 22:11, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:08:12 +1100, in a place far, far away, Sylvia
Else made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

Having skimmed the conference paper at the link posted by Alex, I'd
certainly like to see the thing properly peer reviewed (the physics is
beyond me), with a view to deciding whether funding should be provided
for a prototype power plant.

If physics is beyond you, why are you so convinced that the route to
orbit is breathing air? Or are you only referring to nuclear physics?

Every astronaut who has ever gone into orbit did so breathing air, or
a variant of air.

On 26 Feb 2007 15:12:37 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Alex
Terrell" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

On 26 Feb, 22:11, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:08:12 +1100, in a place far, far away, Sylvia
Else made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(*) Hey Henry, what would it do for Canada's economy for the next
several decades to hold the international patents on practical fusion
reactors?

Having skimmed the conference paper at the link posted by Alex, I'd
certainly like to see the thing properly peer reviewed (the physics is
beyond me), with a view to deciding whether funding should be provided
for a prototype power plant.

If physics is beyond you, why are you so convinced that the route to
orbit is breathing air? Or are you only referring to nuclear physics?

Every astronaut who has ever gone into orbit did so breathing air, or
a variant of air.

Which has nothing to do with how they managed to get to orbit.
Billions of people breathed air prior to the astronauts, but they
never even got into the upper atmosphere, let alone space.