WB-8 article

[ladajo]

Well, I for one maintain a critical point of view, and also have faith that they are doing their best to keep the science honest.

My money says that the "government" has lurkers and posters here to keep the forum off balance. God forbid we actually come together as a force...

[Aero]

The unstated assumption underlying choff's statement is that polywell has already proven itself viable to those in the know.

"Those in the know" does not include me, nor do I think it includes anyone else here on Talk-Polywell.

Even if you consider that assumption my argument does not change, on the contrary it becomes more solid.

If Polywell has been proven functional than splitting the team and the resources makes little sense.

Please explain how that follows.
I think it is the general consensus of T-P that if proven viable, resources would flood into the Polywell fusion effort, more than compensating for splitting the resources due to multiple efforts. We would never hear about resources devoted to Black projects. As for splitting the team, once proven viable, the expertise for second, third and more projects would not require the same skill set that the first effort required because the follow-on efforts would be targeted to scaling up and "minor" tweaks to the machines, not to discovery in physics and fusion. And again, we would not hear about team members hired by Black projects.

[KitemanSA]

IMHO, having read a bit of Dr. B., I think there is still a reasonable amount of small scale work that MUST be done before hare-ing off to work on large scale units. It makes no sense to me that Dr. N. would be working on large scale stuff until the needed small scale work is complete.

What I do also think is that some of that small scale work could easily be done by dedicated amateurs. Any interest?

[Giorgio]

Please explain how that follows.
I think it is the general consensus of T-P that if proven viable, resources would flood into the Polywell fusion effort, more than compensating for splitting the resources due to multiple efforts. We would never hear about resources devoted to Black projects. As for splitting the team, once proven viable, the expertise for second, third and more projects would not require the same skill set that the first effort required because the follow-on efforts would be targeted to scaling up and "minor" tweaks to the machines, not to discovery in physics and fusion. And again, we would not hear about team members hired by Black projects.

This is a completely new technology with a degree of complexity that is on the edge of our (human) technical ability.
Thinking that you can go to a full scale reactor from a "proof of concept" reactor is really too much.
Splitting the people of the only team that will succeed in this proof of concept is also foolish for the same reasons.

[Aero]

Please explain how that follows.
I think it is the general consensus of T-P that if proven viable, resources would flood into the Polywell fusion effort, more than compensating for splitting the resources due to multiple efforts. We would never hear about resources devoted to Black projects. As for splitting the team, once proven viable, the expertise for second, third and more projects would not require the same skill set that the first effort required because the follow-on efforts would be targeted to scaling up and "minor" tweaks to the machines, not to discovery in physics and fusion. And again, we would not hear about team members hired by Black projects.

This is a completely new technology with a degree of complexity that is on the edge of our (human) technical ability.
Thinking that you can go to a full scale reactor from a "proof of concept" reactor is really too much.
Splitting the people of the only team that will succeed in this proof of concept is also foolish for the same reasons.

Well, if you say so. Very simply, we are not using the same interpretation of the phrase "proven viable." You interpret it to be hanging onto viability with your fingernails, while I interpret it to be something like, "Once you build the right machine with the right parameters, it looks pretty simple."

[D Tibbets]

Perhaps, the engineering concerns will be challenging, but the physics, while convoluted, is simple compared to a Tokamak. The Tokamak is a closed system with a macroscopically unstable plasma. It is an ignition machine where the fusion products (at least the charged particles) are retained. Removing them is a separate challenge. Generating tritium is another challenge.
The Polywell (based on claims) is a stable plasma, is not an ignition machine, the fusion products naturally leave the reaction space, knobs to control voltage, current, B-field are all straight forward. Then, the differential in size of projected machines makes for faster building and testing cycles. It would also more easily lend itself to a parallel development tract. Size and associated costs is a major impediment to development. Most of the JET Tokamak work was done 15 years ago, but because of the scale, cost, and bureaucracy/ politics ITER has not yet started assembly (discounting site preperation).

Dan Tibbets

[choff]

Another way to look at it, after WB7, I believe I recall Rick said they would like to be working on the full scale version, but were doing wb8 to satisfy a few critics. Maybe wb8 is a parallel civilian experiment/cover while they've been doing a full scale black box operation ever since.

[Giorgio]

Well, if you say so. Very simply, we are not using the same interpretation of the phrase "proven viable." You interpret it to be hanging onto viability with your fingernails, while I interpret it to be something like, "Once you build the right machine with the right parameters, it looks pretty simple."

True, I interpret it in a more conservative way, and given the projected parameters for WB8 i doubt it will be useful for anything more than a validation of the very basic physics laws governing the polywell.
While I hope to be proven wrong at the end, I am not holding my breath for any amazing result in the final report.

[ladajo]

The amazing thing will be if it proves scaling per Bussard or scaling per Joel Rogers.

[Giorgio]

Exactly. Everything turns around that point. If it does not scale as Bussard imagined a whole lot of other issues will have to be considered, even if the plasma containment and fusion is proven.

[IntLibber]

Exactly. Everything turns around that point. If it does not scale as Bussard imagined a whole lot of other issues will have to be considered, even if the plasma containment and fusion is proven.

The big thing that WB8 will debunk are the absurd thermalization claims of Ryder, which unfortunately did a lot of damage to the growing reputation of the technology, which was obviously his intent.

[Giorgio]

Exactly. Everything turns around that point. If it does not scale as Bussard imagined a whole lot of other issues will have to be considered, even if the plasma containment and fusion is proven.

The big thing that WB8 will debunk are the absurd thermalization claims of Ryder, which unfortunately did a lot of damage to the growing reputation of the technology, which was obviously his intent.

Also in my opinion Ryder paper was biased by a negative attitude of the author toward the Polywell technology.
Unfortunately I am not yet fully convinced that his thermalization claims are totally wrong.

Proving Ryder claims wrong and proving scaling laws will definitely bring Polywell into mainstream research. On the other side, not disproving his claims will probably sink the idea once for all.

[MSimon]

Another way to look at it, after WB7, I believe I recall Rick said they would like to be working on the full scale version, but were doing wb8 to satisfy a few critics. Maybe wb8 is a parallel civilian experiment/cover while they've been doing a full scale black box operation ever since.

That line of thinking has possibilities.

[D Tibbets]

The amazing thing will be if it proves scaling per Bussard or scaling per Joel Rogers.

I believe their scaling was the same. The difference is that Rogers used what I consider to be very pessimistic B field strengths.

Dan Tibbets

[ladajo]

Dan,
Joel came in at 3 verses Bussard's 5 on this past year's PIC runs. He does admit he is still working the simulation piece, but all in all, he has improved his modeling from the previous year.

From the Abstract: "Simulations of Polywell fueled by internal ion guns were done for two different scale-mode
sizes. These showed Bussard's[3] theoretical 5th power scaling law for Q with R was too
optimistic. Without doubt, simulations point to a scaling exponent less than 5, implying a larger
value for break-even radius than predicted by Bussard[3]."


I do not know if Joel has it right, in fact odds are he does not. That is the nature of science. Just as much as Bussard probably did not get it fully on the mark either. As you know, that is why we do experiments.

In any event, we will all know more or less, soon enough.