Talk-Polywell.org

New article from EMC2 in Journal of Fusion Energy. Hopefully, this article provides some clarity for many on the actual progress and understanding these last years. A slow road, however one which is still travelled... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-026-00566-y I wonder, how large ...

I have been pondering the efficacy of going down from a six-sided to a four sided. Or, maybe a three sided. The primary loss mechanism is the point cusps, thus a reduction in their count seems logical. If you have a six sided machine, that is eight point corner cusps, and six ring center point cusp...

First, what is “fifty cents on the dollar electricity”?
Second, “never” is a long, long time. The petro-dollar is fraying at the edges already.

Has anyone investigated a hybrid polywell/tokamak machine? Picture a tokamak with a toroidal poly-grid inside such that the reaction volume is toroidal but the magnetic fields press inwards more strongly as the reaction volume gets denser and presses outward more strongly. (IIRC., that means the pol...

With He3 selling for $20,000/g and tritium for $30,000/g, I wonder if they can make a profit running on D-D without generating net electricity. At least until the markets for those gasses crash. The problem with saying that tritium is $30,000/g is that it may be because the production cost is very ...

baking wrote: ↑

Wed May 28, 2025 9:00 pm

I've not heard him called that before.

ladajo wrote: ↑

Wed May 28, 2025 3:04 pm

Flight 9 executed, arguably once again proving the axiom "Space is Hard".

Space is easy. ORBIT is hard. New Shepard vs New Glen.
Just quoting.

Why are they still using that siily design? They really need to make the unit a real cube-octohedron!

The issue with catching at the top is the fragility of the TSP tiles. And with the repositioned flaps, there are no centerline hard points that do not interrupt the fragile tiles. Landing on a compliant grid with damped springs at the corners (4 if square, 6 if hex…) avoids interaction between a mo...

The force on the ship skirt starts at a high level due to being fully loaded with propellent under 1g. It steps up by a factor of, what, three times (?) at liftoff (hardly “zero”) and climbs thru Max-Q. At landing, the force on the skirt starts at zero (ship hover at touchdown) and climbs to the em...

mvanwink5 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 07, 2024 3:22 pm

Tile survival whether on chopsticks or a pad (landing impact shockwave)

What part of NOT PAD are you not getting? Compliant grill.

Yes I was talking about the booster, but in general the issue is the same also for the ship even if more limited. Your point on the forces during acceleration is a good one, and for sure the design of the ship skirt is more strong than the booster. But one very important point is that the forces on...

Thrust force at launch is structurally distributed at an higher point than the skirt itself, but even if we want to consider the design of a skirt strong enough to handle a landing you will still need a section with shock absorbers to structurally isolate the landing skirt from the rest of the rock...

No legs per-se, just a bit of engineering on the skirt. It's hard, very hard. You need to have shock absorbers to prevent the pressure wave generated by the landing force to propagate through the rocket shell, else the reverberating wave will make a carnage of the internal connection in the best sc...

Thanks Kiteman My pleasure. But that did get me thinking. Yes, I know, a dangerous thing!!. What would happen if they slightly dropped and strengthened the base skirt and then landed on a water cooled, elevated grill? Take a larger barge, cut a hole through the center, top to bottom with side ports...