John Slough gets NIAC PhaseII award!

[Skipjack]

The liners are magnetically driven.
Here is a paper with more detail on how it works:
http://msnwllc.com/Papers/FDR_JPC_2012.pdf

[mvanwink5]

Skipjack, I thought the earlier .pdf poster you provided the link to was helpful for understanding how the foil liners were positioned and compressed. Thanks for the links. Looks promising to me especially with the experimental work they have to date. Amazing what these guys do with a small fraction of ITER budgets.

[Skipjack]

Yeah, the guys at MSNW are really good. I wished they had more funding.

[mvanwink5]

Maybe they will beat Musk to Mars...Exciting times.

[Skipjack]

Maybe they will beat Musk to Mars...Exciting times.

No, they wont do their own mars mission. They do the theoretical research and leave the practical application to others. Musk might license the technology though and use it for his mars shuttles...

[mvanwink5]

Musk would use it only after it was fully developed by government funded research, then hire the people who did the work. My bet is someone else will use it first, there are others...

[Skipjack]

Musk would use it only after it was fully developed by government funded research

Why would you think that?

[mvanwink5]

Skipjack,
Yes, you are right, he is a smart risk taker and his ventures have been both smart and risky. On the other hand, he is politically connected, an honest to goodness witches brew. I stand by my assessment that he would not develop fusion power with his own (unsubsidized) money as he thinks he can get to Mars chemically, conventionally. Further, he seems to have put (again heavily subsidized) money into solar projects, which would seem to me wholly inadequate for even earth, while polywell shoestring, science projects along.

I can't stand the subsidized business model America has sunk to, can you tell?

[GIThruster]

I think people are ignoring what it would take to develop this system. This is a multi-billion dollar project and unlike TRITON needs to be accompanied by an additional power reactor. I'd love for someone here to do a comparison to TRITON but my guess is, the only significant advantage here is that with no fission products, it would have far less nutcase objections. Regardless of this, a fully functioning system like this requires as much or more investment than does SLS, and we can't get there from here. First we'd need someone to CANCEL SLS and our government is too full of opportunists and cowards for that.

[Skipjack]

I think people are ignoring what it would take to develop this system. This is a multi-billion dollar project and unlike TRITON needs to be accompanied by an additional power reactor. I'd love for someone here to do a comparison to TRITON but my guess is, the only significant advantage here is that with no fission products, it would have far less nutcase objections. Regardless of this, a fully functioning system like this requires as much or more investment than does SLS, and we can't get there from here. First we'd need someone to CANCEL SLS and our government is too full of opportunists and cowards for that.

No, the solar panels are enough to power it. You do not need an extra reactor. Sloughs fusion driven rocket will have a lower thrust, but a much higher Isp. The thrust is still high enough to make it out of earths gravity field without the need to circle through the Van Allen belts like Solar Electric vehicles would. I dont think that there is any other system available in the near term that would allow a mars trip as short as 90 days (and maybe even as little as 30 days, if they can get the gain high enough).

Skipjack,
Yes, you are right, he is a smart risk taker and his ventures have been both smart and risky. On the other hand, he is politically connected, an honest to goodness witches brew. I stand by my assessment that he would not develop fusion power with his own (unsubsidized) money as he thinks he can get to Mars chemically, conventionally. Further, he seems to have put (again heavily subsidized) money into solar projects, which would seem to me wholly inadequate for even earth, while polywell shoestring, science projects along.
I can't stand the subsidized business model America has sunk to, can you tell?

Wrong!
Solar City is actually not building solar cells, but is a service business based on the installation and financing of them. From what I know they are not benefiting much from government subsidies for alternative energy. Musk has talked about nuclear thermal engines for mars transportation in the past. The problem is that they are almost impossible to develop and aquire for non government entities. The fusion driven rocket is simpler, cheaper and better. I would be suprised if Musk did not look into it for the long term. He is planning to colonize mars after all.

[mvanwink5]

Skipjack,
from wikipedia:

SolarStrong project
SolarStrong is SolarCity's five-year plan to build more than $1 billion in solar photovoltaic projects for privatized military housing communities across the United States, announced in late 2011.[26] SolarCity plans to work with the country's leading privatized military housing developers to install, own and operate rooftop solar installations and provide solar electricity at a lower cost than utility power. SolarStrong is ultimately expected to create up to 300 megawatts of solar generation capacity that could provide power to as many as 120,000 military housing units, which would make it the largest residential photovoltaic project in American history if completed. In November 2011, SolarCity and Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced that they have agreed to terms on initial debt financing for SolarStrong.

First, solar is a heavily subsidized business, so directly or indirectly his solar business is subsidized. Second, how easy is it to get a government contract of this magnitude without direct political pull? I know you understand the point, so I won't argue semantics. I have said he is a good business man, and in fact with or without the government subsidies (direct or indirect) I have no doubt he would do well.

I would like to believe he might at some smart point get involved with such a fusion propulsion project, though if he did I don't believe he would run it like the Navy is running polywell, on a shoestring, as a science project. He would be looking to get it up, running and making money/electric power.
Best regards

[Skipjack]

Skipjack,
from wikipedia:

SolarStrong project
SolarStrong is SolarCity's five-year plan to build more than $1 billion in solar photovoltaic projects for privatized military housing communities across the United States, announced in late 2011.[26] SolarCity plans to work with the country's leading privatized military housing developers to install, own and operate rooftop solar installations and provide solar electricity at a lower cost than utility power. SolarStrong is ultimately expected to create up to 300 megawatts of solar generation capacity that could provide power to as many as 120,000 military housing units, which would make it the largest residential photovoltaic project in American history if completed. In November 2011, SolarCity and Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced that they have agreed to terms on initial debt financing for SolarStrong.

First, solar is a heavily subsidized business, so directly or indirectly his solar business is subsidized. Second, how easy is it to get a government contract of this magnitude without direct political pull? I know you understand the point, so I won't argue semantics. I have said he is a good business man, and in fact with or without the government subsidies (direct or indirect) I have no doubt he would do well.

I would like to believe he might at some smart point get involved with such a fusion propulsion project, though if he did I don't believe he would run it like the Navy is running polywell, on a shoestring, as a science project. He would be looking to get it up, running and making money/electric power.
Best regards

I dont see him getting any subsidies in this text quote. He is a subcontractor for the military housing contractors. He does not produce solar cells, he installs them. There might be subsidies for that, but if there are, they are comparably small. He is less government subsidised than say a company like Lockheed, or ATK...
I dont know what Elon Musk will do. I do know that he wants to lower the cost per mars colonist to less than 500,000 USD. I do not see that happening with chemcial engines.

[303]

Theres an interview with Mr.Musk on TED in which he explains his solar energy business concept, the Tesla car company and what he is attempting to achieve with SpaceX.

He's much more interested, i think, in results that can be achieved with existing 'todays' technology, than investing in unproven 'future' technology such as fusion. After all, throwing money at a problem doesn't seem to have helped ITER achieve a whole lot.

I do know that he wants to lower the cost per mars colonist to less than 500,000 USD. I do not see that happening with chemcial engines

- But perhaps, as he explains in the ted talk, if one can reuse the space vehicles, the cost is automatically lowered as the majority of cost of space flight is the hardware, the chemical propellant is a fraction of that cost. It really is the re-usability of hardware that is key to SpaceX concept.

[Skipjack]

Theres an interview with Mr.Musk on TED in which he explains his solar energy business concept, the Tesla car company and what he is attempting to achieve with SpaceX.

He's much more interested, i think, in results that can be achieved with existing 'todays' technology, than investing in unproven 'future' technology such as fusion. After all, throwing money at a problem doesn't seem to have helped ITER achieve a whole lot.

I do know that he wants to lower the cost per mars colonist to less than 500,000 USD. I do not see that happening with chemcial engines

- But perhaps, as he explains in the ted talk, if one can reuse the space vehicles, the cost is automatically lowered as the majority of cost of space flight is the hardware, the chemical propellant is a fraction of that cost. It really is the re-usability of hardware that is key to SpaceX concept.

If John Slough gets his concept to work, then it would be "proven technology". I am all for reusable launch vehicles and SpaceX is doing them most amazing things there. That may help reduce the cost of bringing humans to orbit, but unless the trip times to mars get significantly reduced, you can not get the cost to mars below 500,000 USD. Sloughs engine is the only one available in the near term that could potentially reduce trip times that much.

[GIThruster]

Musk has talked about nuclear thermal engines for mars transportation in the past. The problem is that they are almost impossible to develop and aquire for non government entities. The fusion driven rocket is simpler, cheaper and better. I would be suprised if Musk did not look into it for the long term. He is planning to colonize mars after all.

I think you may be conflating a memory of Musk being asked after a TED talk about nuclear propulsion, to which he responded he was not familiar with any significant proposals but would look into it. If you're aware of any statements he's made publicly beyond this I'd love to see them. I agree, he is the sort to look into this and so invest himself, and from what I see of Slough's work this may indeed be cheaper to develop than TRITON, but there are very serious challenges. Have you seen for instance what the fule costs are for the FDR? For most systems fuel is not an significant driver of cost, but with this. . .I'm not so sure.