How do I answer this diplomatically?
NDA.
Recovery.Gov Project Tracker
What did they say they wanted? 10KV at 40amps or somesuch? To busy to look it up...
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
Ok, I looked it up real quick, it was 10KV at 100amps.
To do 1MW in a garage at an office park, yup, that sounds like a battery/cap bank to me. It is also most definitely pulsed. They will not be drawing that through the shop pecker head as a continuous pull.
To do 1MW in a garage at an office park, yup, that sounds like a battery/cap bank to me. It is also most definitely pulsed. They will not be drawing that through the shop pecker head as a continuous pull.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
Really? I cant remember the last time that happened with the exception of a few idealistic and philantropic billionares like Musk, Bezos, Allen the private sector is as risk averse as it comes. If there are no patents to be had, they are pretty much completely uninterested in investing in something like fusion or space flight and even then, they are not really waiting in line. As I have pointed out, Slough has not gotten any funding yet and he is darn close!If the payoff is big enough and the end is in sight the private sector is willing to take some very big risks.
General Fusion has gotten a Series B round of VC funding.
http://www.generalfusion.com/downloads/ ... ries_b.pdf
http://www.generalfusion.com/downloads/ ... ries_b.pdf
Unfortunately this becomes more and more true. Most large companies are heavily regulated, and they do not have to take risks because the market entry barriers are too high for any viable competition to endanger their profits. Why risk if life is good as is, income is steady and there are no threats to their well being?Skipjack wrote:Really? I cant remember the last time that happened with the exception of a few idealistic and philantropic billionares like Musk, Bezos, Allen the private sector is as risk averse as it comes. If there are no patents to be had, they are pretty much completely uninterested in investing in something like fusion or space flight and even then, they are not really waiting in line. As I have pointed out, Slough has not gotten any funding yet and he is darn close!If the payoff is big enough and the end is in sight the private sector is willing to take some very big risks.
When you decouple big money from big regulation you get Musk, Allen & Bezos. It is also not a coincidence they all come from the IT business, which is too young to be heavily regulated. It affects the way people think.
You get innovative ideas from people who are not accustomed to thinking that there are insurmountable barriers to every unorthodox concept. Today's big businesses start looking more and more like government institutions.
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CaptainBeowulf
- Posts: 498
- Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am
You explained why many large companies eventually fail.
Take Kodak, which we've discussed in a few posts elsewhere on this forum. They seemed to have the film processing/camera market nailed down. Then, digital cameras came along. They didn't have the foresight to spend their large revenues on developing a competitive line of digital cameras and cornering the new market, so now they're bankrupt. Only a fool would ever convince himself that the barriers to entry are too high for his company to be threatened, but then again, think about some of the CEOs who've been in the news...
Blockbuster is another one. It had a pretty good corner on videotape/DVD/Bluray rentals and sales in much of the U.S. and Canada, but its lunch was eaten by companies like Netflix as well, of course, downloading piracy.
But, this is in the nature of the organizational aspect of human behavior. The larger an organization gets, the more difficult it gets to manage, so it comes up with all sorts of rules, regulations and SOPs in order to keep functioning. These stifle innovation and cause hidebound bureaucrats, rather than innovators, to rise to the top.
The flip side are that there are always innovators who figure out how to put together new technologies or even some old ones to do some more effective. In overly stratified societies like feudal (medieval) Europe, feudal (shogunate) Japan, or the post-Caliphate middle east they get stifled. So long as the West remains reasonably capitalist we'll get more Musks, Bezos, and Allens.
Also, some big companies like IBM figure out that they're on the downward slope, divest themselves of unneeded branches for a decent profit, and successfully refocus a smaller, more efficient organization on the core business.
I don't think this is new. Huge shipbuilding firms in Britain, big railroad companies and telegraph companies in America, they all had heydeys in the 19th and early 20th centuries and then got replaced by new innovative businesses that have become today's lumbering behemoths.
Don't sound so discouraged PBelter, innovation is happening and eventually all those topheavy institutions gets knocked over, even if some of them manage to hold on for a few decades past their due date.
Take Kodak, which we've discussed in a few posts elsewhere on this forum. They seemed to have the film processing/camera market nailed down. Then, digital cameras came along. They didn't have the foresight to spend their large revenues on developing a competitive line of digital cameras and cornering the new market, so now they're bankrupt. Only a fool would ever convince himself that the barriers to entry are too high for his company to be threatened, but then again, think about some of the CEOs who've been in the news...
Blockbuster is another one. It had a pretty good corner on videotape/DVD/Bluray rentals and sales in much of the U.S. and Canada, but its lunch was eaten by companies like Netflix as well, of course, downloading piracy.
But, this is in the nature of the organizational aspect of human behavior. The larger an organization gets, the more difficult it gets to manage, so it comes up with all sorts of rules, regulations and SOPs in order to keep functioning. These stifle innovation and cause hidebound bureaucrats, rather than innovators, to rise to the top.
The flip side are that there are always innovators who figure out how to put together new technologies or even some old ones to do some more effective. In overly stratified societies like feudal (medieval) Europe, feudal (shogunate) Japan, or the post-Caliphate middle east they get stifled. So long as the West remains reasonably capitalist we'll get more Musks, Bezos, and Allens.
Also, some big companies like IBM figure out that they're on the downward slope, divest themselves of unneeded branches for a decent profit, and successfully refocus a smaller, more efficient organization on the core business.
I don't think this is new. Huge shipbuilding firms in Britain, big railroad companies and telegraph companies in America, they all had heydeys in the 19th and early 20th centuries and then got replaced by new innovative businesses that have become today's lumbering behemoths.
Don't sound so discouraged PBelter, innovation is happening and eventually all those topheavy institutions gets knocked over, even if some of them manage to hold on for a few decades past their due date.
Here are a couple of blog posts on the topic big companies versus innovative startups.
http://steveblank.com/2010/06/07/when-b ... t-know-it/
http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-th ... t-is-sopa/
http://steveblank.com/2010/06/07/when-b ... t-know-it/
http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-th ... t-is-sopa/
"To solve these anomalies, the additional effort will require the incumbent contractor to further their studies by employing independently powered electron gun arrays operating at up to 10 kilovolt (kV) to inject high energy electrons onto the Plasma Wiffleball 8 core and control the WB formation process."krenshala wrote:Would having the e-guns on their own power source(s) make it easier to tweak their settings without messing with the B-field?
As I take it, this extra work is targeting WB-8 start up tuning not "steady state operation."
Best regards
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.
Um... in my opinion, those companies deserved the public execution. I dont know what you guys mean by big business have a harder time with innovations, they dont; business that know what's up do it, they dont let the fact that they can swim in pools of money stop them from becoming better and more productive.
Look at Apple, Microsoft, Id Software, Google, Facebook, Nintendo, etc, etc. When the internet became a big thing, Blockbuster, instead of saying, "hey, we need to change, adapt, get better." They were like, "hey, lets lobby and try to stop internet server based media distributions from taking our rice bowls." They deserved to have gotten murdered by Netflix. Nintendo realized that running the same race as Sony and Microsoft in the console war wasnt going to work, so it got smarter, Wii happened.
A pretty funny example is ramen noodles; I think most of you will think of it as some disgusting noodles plus salt; this image has been in the States for how long? At least for 10 to 15 years now right? You look at some of the instant noodle products from Asia, where companies actually give a darn about making a half decent product, and you get really amazing instant noodles (i know right? oxymoron). See the only reason ramen noodles stays in business in the States is because of no competition, they offer the same level of horrible products, and people buy them cus it's cheap and there's not much other competition. What about the Asian instant noodles? Well... most Americans dont know about their existence, their paradigm is set with regards to how and what instant noodles should taste like, and import barriers, lololol.
Look at facebook, myspace was so darn established, then facebook came along and did everything better. Both are low cost start up type of business that runs on ads, etc, etc. You cant argue that myspace was choked up by the fact that it's big, so it has a harder time changing and whatnot. It wasnt like facebook was small and came with some amazing innovations, it just came and did everything a little bit better.
Personally, this whole idea about big business having a harder time... I'm not saying it's not true, but it's most definitely not completely true.
Look at Apple, Microsoft, Id Software, Google, Facebook, Nintendo, etc, etc. When the internet became a big thing, Blockbuster, instead of saying, "hey, we need to change, adapt, get better." They were like, "hey, lets lobby and try to stop internet server based media distributions from taking our rice bowls." They deserved to have gotten murdered by Netflix. Nintendo realized that running the same race as Sony and Microsoft in the console war wasnt going to work, so it got smarter, Wii happened.
A pretty funny example is ramen noodles; I think most of you will think of it as some disgusting noodles plus salt; this image has been in the States for how long? At least for 10 to 15 years now right? You look at some of the instant noodle products from Asia, where companies actually give a darn about making a half decent product, and you get really amazing instant noodles (i know right? oxymoron). See the only reason ramen noodles stays in business in the States is because of no competition, they offer the same level of horrible products, and people buy them cus it's cheap and there's not much other competition. What about the Asian instant noodles? Well... most Americans dont know about their existence, their paradigm is set with regards to how and what instant noodles should taste like, and import barriers, lololol.
Look at facebook, myspace was so darn established, then facebook came along and did everything better. Both are low cost start up type of business that runs on ads, etc, etc. You cant argue that myspace was choked up by the fact that it's big, so it has a harder time changing and whatnot. It wasnt like facebook was small and came with some amazing innovations, it just came and did everything a little bit better.
Personally, this whole idea about big business having a harder time... I'm not saying it's not true, but it's most definitely not completely true.
Throwing my life away for this whole Fusion mess.