Talk-Polywell.org

Yeah, one has to make sure to never mention the word nuclear and polywell in one sentence, or presentation. I dont know about government officials in the US, but in Austria the ones making the decision would never get the difference between fission an fusion. Dont even mention anything about Orion a...

In any case, NERVA could be much improved uppon with todays tech, I am sure. The problem for me has always been more a political one than a technical one. With a polywell based propulsion system, the political implications would be a matter of the past as well and door to space will finally open rea...

Yeah, why be shy about it anyway?
Even Carl Sagan was a proponent of it.

I am still not sure whether you actually agree or disagree with me

I do know what the thrust to weight ratio is, but I do not quite know where you get your information Duane. According to Astronautix at least one of the various configurations that were designed and or tested had a Thrust to Weight ratio of 7.46. http://www.astronautix.com/engines/nerva.htm Further ...

Duane I am not entirely sure what you are referring to. Do you mean the higher weight of NERVA rocket engines? They do weight more, but they do have a higher ISP as well. Less fuel means lower system weight. I do not know what you mean with ugly. Most of the proposed rockets are big though thats tru...

Maybe they meant "start construction of " with build?

Hey, I mean I am for anything that helps, I am just sceptical as to how much it really does help. One problem is that you can not control when the wind blows. No wind, no power. You can not store the power from when the wind was blowing heavily either. So it does not seem like a very stable thing. W...

Torulf, thanks for the reply. Do you have a link? I am kinda interested in the "convert radiation into electricity" technology. I mean there is plenty of places with all kinds of radiation (that is sometimes unwanted), so I am wondering how this stuff works and whether it could not be used for deali...

Hehe, yes, I found that a little premature as well. I think that proposal was born during the first euphoria of their recent achievement. Sure the euphoria was deserved, the proposal is a tad over the top though

Welcome John!
New here too, good to see more people joining!

There is only one pub in graz that I know that was named after an american politician. It is called Obama! Does not really matter much, but is to funny to not mention. I dont think anyone would call his pub G.W. Bush, or even Clinton here. In case of calling it Bush, it might get him more trouble th...

Guess it is always very hard for us europeans (even those that have been to the US often like me) to realize how incredibly big the US is and how much open land there naturally is too. Austria has a 3 times higher population density than the US and then most of our country is covered by high mountai...

65% is not net power and I will go and call the guy up if I have to, because I am very, very sure that they achieved net power for a very, very short time. That was the sensation about it back then, I am very sure that I am not wrong here. I think I will call my friend up now and ask him for confirm...

I dont care about the birds and I dont know about how problematic it is to use farmland arround a windfarm (I guess you can, but I never bothered to check that). But, you do need to deforrest land for them if you run out of farmland to put them on (not every farmer will want to lease his land to win...

...that this board got very quiet during the (future) vice presidential debate... So who on this board was watching it? I am not asking for your political opinion here. I am just curious who was watching, since me as an Austrian (though married to a wonderful woman from the US) was actually staying ...