Talk-Polywell.org

Have the experimental results testing Bussard's model been published in peer-reviewed journals that appear in science citation index? If so, did those experimental results match the predictions of Bussard's model within error tolerances that aren't so wide as to render the results virtually worthle...

The electrons are fast where the ions are slow, and vice versa, which is one reason why the plasma doesn't neutralize. Dubious too. I'm not explaining how it works. I don't know how it works, or if it works. I'm explaining how it's supposed to work. (Okay, it's not much of an explanation, but I don...

The Brillouin limit doesn't apply to the total electron density; only to the net electron density ( and even that's dubious ). Ion and electron counts in a fully-formed wiffleball are supposed to be roughly equal; the potential well is created by a slight excess of electrons. The electrons are fast ...

Well, somehow I doubt the 1964 data for a Government-Mil project is still valid in 2013 for a commercial company employing an IT-like standards in management, development and testing, led mostly by a single person's will, which person is not much less than an Engineering/Management prodigy with a p...

I thought he'd already observed reproducible thrusts well in excess of photon rocket performance... He's not losing kilowatts into his test articles, is he?

I'm afraid your post comes across to me as a compound reading comprehension fail. Not counting the fact that you apparently didn't read past the first sentence of my post.

Another similar space venture is still using fuel-inefficient surplus Russian rocket engines built in the 1960's that cost more to run and maintain over time. No, he's definitely talking about Orbital's Antares and "AJ-26", unless there's another new venture using '60s-vintage Russian eng...

The problem is that NASA keeps getting jerked around by a fickle government and hobbled by dysfunctional management. Fastrac was roughly the same era as SLI, and for roughly the same reasons. SLI was part of a sustained (and repeatedly frustrated) effort by NASA to lower the cost of launch to orbit ...

The size of the whole rocket and its manufacturing, transportation, and launch infrastructure are proportional the mass of propellant required, which is proportional to exp(1/efficiency). The costs associated with the hardware and infrastructure tend to correlate fairly well with their size. It's on...

fuel-inefficient surplus Russian rocket engines

[*facepalm*]

Re: lightcone - the speed of light is the same in all frames, and relativistic foreshortening is symmetric (and small). I don't see a mechanism there, though as I said I'm not an expert on relativity... Wait a second - the speed of a photon is frame-independent, but its momentum is not. Perhaps red...

The sequestration budget amounts are being compared with the President's 2013 Budget Request, which doubles Commercial Crew and cuts SLS/Orion. Of course it looks uneven. And SLS/Orion does take an additional hit in the ground infrastructure department, which will hurt. The year-over-year cut to CC ...

This is (probably) a thermal reactor. Bremsstrahlung suppression tends to be difficult or impossible in a thermal plasma. Focus Fusion is hoping for quantum magnetic suppression, but even they have to use layers of lead foil as photovoltaic panels. On the other hand, the Skunk Works presentation did...

I don't believe it has, if I recall correctly. The experiment is apparently fairly difficult to set up that way, considering the power supply and instrumentation and so on. Vacuum, yes, and with the thruster in a Faraday cage, but not totally self-contained. The equipment is supposed to be well shie...

I wish people would stop quoting that grossly misleading thought-stopper. Why should the standard of evidence be different for claims people don't find "extraordinary"? Evidence is evidence. It's not like Woodward is challenging well-established physics here; he's simply exploring a neglec...