Talk-Polywell.org

I'm of the opinion that Rossi is an empiricist, who doesn't really grasp quantum mechanics.

From what I've explored, the key seems to be saturation of the area with neutrinos from beta decay, allowing the temporary conversion of protons to neutrons, long enough to impact nuclei before decaying. It is debatable whether this is feasible; the lifetime of these neutrinos in the material would ...

Wiz, Thank you for your support, but please not that way. Play nice please? Dan, for some reason, seems to be generally reasonable about all issues... except this one. He seems most willing to cook the books to get the answer he seems fixated on. Oh well. Sorry. I could work this sort of mass defec...

You didn't read very far. It drops to less than 2 kg/kW for power levels over 3 MW, and approaches 1 kg/kW at 10 MW. 500 MW is way outside the studied range... Also, that's for a fission plant. A p-¹¹B Polywell with direct conversion has a number of advantages in terms of power-to-weight ratio. Act...

What they really mean is "long term free fall" - because they can't imagine a powered flight to Mars.

Note that there are errors in this post. See my next post for a more reasoned and fact supported analysis. Let me try some algebra. Binding energy/ nucleon chart gives values from ~ 0- 8.9 MeV on the low side of Ni62 and ~ 8.9 MeV to ~ 6 MeV on the high side (these numbers are approximations). Moro...

ladajo wrote:I think this one is far enough along the been funded for deployment path, that to chop it now would make them look too stupid.

Since when has anyone in government looked smart?

I always thought the worst President was Hitler. Or maybe Napolean. Oh, you mean U.S.... Herbert Hoover. He bungled the recession of '29 so badly he caused black Tuesday and then bungled his response to that to cause the great depression. Barack Obama is trying really hard to match Hoover, though. I...

Governments, to the extent that they try to foster innovation, invariably distort the market to the detriment of true advance. Witness the "fusion energy" programs and the misdirection of nuclear power, the ruination of drug advances in medicine, or the dismal record of every DARPA project ever. Inc...

Let's see... * Social security taxes are treated by the government as any other tax, and put into the general coffers * The proceeds from taxes let the government make all payments to interest, social security and other retirements, and the military salaries. They would also cover medicaid. But the ...

KitemanSA wrote:

WizWom wrote: So, 3000 kg/MW using fission, ...

Source?

Um... the PDF of the paper from NASA??

(1,000,000 lb)(500 We/lbf) = 0.5 GWe to hover in VTOL mode. Coincidentally, this is the total output of a coal-fired power plant I used to live near. One coal plant for hover. Ten coal plants for orbit. Which is why this will only work with fusion, or something better. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...

It seems to me, though, that is you can find nuclei with excited states below their neutron or proton separation energy that you can turn a rather random energy source into a laser of the appropriate wavelength. Of course the absorption of photons by nuclei is a lot less common than that of absorpti...

well, no, not Gamma-ray. 162 nm UV; Thorium 229 has a nuclear excited state at just 7 kev. There are a few other atoms with a first excited state this low, too.

The trick is exciting a nuclei with that LITTLE energy. In this case, you can use a more random photon source.

The Pauli Exclusion principle allows Bosons to be in the same energy state; but, because of the high energies required to overcome the coulomb barrier and allow the strong force to bind the nucleons together, your thermal randomness keeps the bosons from being in the same energy state anyway. Deuter...