Currently, the most promising path toward electrostatic fusion runs through Santa Fe, N.M., where a team at EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. is currently trying to validate Bussard's results. The team's leader, Richard Nebel, told me this week that it's still too early to gauge how promising the Bussard fusion device could be.
"We're getting high-power plasma," he said. "We don't have answers ... [but] we're far enough along that we know we're going to get answers."
Who knows? Maybe the dark horse in this race will pull off a surprise or two yet.
Edited to make clear that the text was a quote.
Last edited by MSimon on Sat May 03, 2008 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Gerald Kulcinski seems to be a genuinely good guy. I actually first saw him on a special called mining the "mining the moon", where he set up a pretty impressive IEC chamber at the University of Wisconsin. Im suprised we havent heard more from him considering the leaked Bussard Tech Paper was hosted on their server.
He is a massive proponent of Anuetronic Helium 3 reactions He3 + He3 → He4+ 2p + 12.86 MeV which is understandable considering thats all the low power density IEC machines could hope to handle.
It just seems a sad state of affairs when someone as seniour as Kulcinski, who is advising NASA on fusion still thinks mining the moon is viable option, when sitting on his server are the juicy details of a machine with incredible power density and the ability to run off Aneutronic Fuels commonly found on Earth
I suppose that this is the point where I need to make a comment. As for the WB-7, the plasma is pretty much there (i.e. where it needs to be). The plasma diagnostics aren’t. They have been built and their components have been tested. They need to be installed and tested on the machine. Obviously, we had to get reasonable plasmas before we can use the diagnostics. As I told Alan Boyle, we don’t have answers yet so I can’t speculate as to how well this machine will perform.
We anticipate that we will be getting a lot of data over the next few months. Consequently, it would good to let you know what to expect from us in terms of information:
1. We can’t release data. The DOD has to determine what it wants to release. Eventually this will all come out, but they are our customer and this is their call. We are free to discuss anything which has been released (such as the WB-6) but they will control the new data. I’m willing to discuss where we are and what we are learning, but I can’t give you a lot of numbers.
2. Don’t expect us to be making a lot of pronouncements to the press like the cold fusion people did. We will have a very high level review panel that will be looking at our results, and we don’t want to prejudge their conclusions.
That being said, so far we are pleased with what we are seeing. The hardware works and we haven’t had any nasty surprises. It appears that we have a lot more control over the discharges than they did in the WB-6.
"We can’t release data. The DOD has to determine what it wants to release."
... i was afarid of that, but perhaps statements such as
"encouraging results" could mean something along the lines of "we`ve duplicated WB6 results",
"very encouraging results" would mean something like "we`ve exeeded WB6 results by a shitload", or so to speak.
...and perhaps something like "we`ve decided to further investigate the polywell system" could actually mean "we`re building the kick-ass 1.5 meter, 100Megawatt polywell reactor"..
zbarlici wrote:
"encouraging results" could mean something along the lines of "we`ve duplicated WB6 results",
Reminds me of the Manhattan Project; when Fermi got the first atomic reactor working, the code-phrase was, "The Italian navigator has landed in the New World."
Hahah, you guys sound like my friend at school who wanted her teacher to go around the rules and tell her whether she'd made the team for next year!
I'm really just thrilled to know that this is being tested; when I first came across the Polywell discussion on nasaspaceflight.com, it sounded like a long shot, maybe even a scam. Remember the whole fiasco with the fake article about Schwarzenegger getting CA to fund the work? That Dr. Nebel and the rest of the team have gotten a machine this far along is awesome!
Dr. Nebel, if you are at liberty to answer, what gas (H, He, D, etc) are you using to make the plasma, and how's the control of the gas working out? Controlling the gas release seemed to have been a big issue with Dr. Bussard's work.
Don’t expect us to be making a lot of pronouncements to the press like the cold fusion people did. We will have a very high level review panel that will be looking at our results
Solo wrote:I'm really just thrilled to know that this is being tested; when I first came across the Polywell discussion on nasaspaceflight.com, it sounded like a long shot, maybe even a scam. Remember the whole fiasco with the fake article about Schwarzenegger getting CA to fund the work? That Dr. Nebel and the rest of the team have gotten a machine this far along is awesome!
I was promoting that scam until I found out it was a hoax. Then I had to retrace my steps and apologize to everyone.
I have not deleted my posts on them either - just updated them.
Just to remind me.
And yes. We have come a ways.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Simon - that is science. We promote what we understand to be true; until we know better. Then we say so, leave a public record so others don't make the same mistake; and move on.
Science is not about being right; it's about being honest. In this way we have gotten far closer to being right than humanity has ever been before.
I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to embarrass you, I was just commenting that from my perspective, when I first looked at the Polywell reactor, it looked like just one more wild 'free energy'-type idea that flourishes on the internet. As we all know, most real, honest science doesn't hit the internet like that; it just stays in the academic world, and doesn't develop a cult following on a forum like this!
I'm curious about who did all the work that got this work funded again?
I understand that people are interested in our results, particularly on this website. I‘ll keep you informed. This is typical of DOD contracts, and the rationale behind it is pretty simple. They don’t want contractors making public statements that aren’t correct, or haven’t been looked at. That sort of thing can turn into a huge embarrassment.
The perfect example of that was the cold fusion mess. That was funded out of Advanced Energy Projects at the DOE. The Utah people got paranoid and went public before their work was adequately reviewed. Advanced Energy Projects no longer exists at the DOE. We’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to have a credible, independent review, and we won’t prejudge what they have to say.
There also seems to be some expectation that the results are going to come out either “Woo-Hoo!” or “This thing stinks”. It would surprise me if we get either of those answers. It will probably be more nuanced than that. Among other things, we are going to have time domain information. That wasn’t available on the WB-6. There will probably be some surprises in there. In plasma physics, theory very seldom predicts things accurately ahead of time. It’s usually an explanation that comes after an observation. Elms in tokamaks are an example of this. Right now we don’t know these answers (so please don’t read more into this statement than is here).
Finally, I have worked on fusion projects for 30 years and one of the things I have learned is not to get too excited when things are going well and don’t get too discouraged when they don’t. In the course of this project we will likely see both of those extremes. If you get too excited then it is easy to fool yourself into thinking that you have something that you don’t really have. That’s deadly. If things look really bad, then usually that is a result of an execution error rather than bad physics. Often times those problems are fixable. Expect that this device will evolve.
