Norman Rostaker?

kurt9 · Post by **kurt9** » Mon May 05, 2008 9:06 pm

Does anyone know anything about Norman Rostaker's group? I believe this is called Tri-Alpha and that they are set-up in the Foothills area of SoCal. Any new info about them?

Tom Ligon · Post by **Tom Ligon** » Mon May 05, 2008 9:46 pm

I know they're funded by Paul Allen. If I recall correctly, Rostaker has gone head to head with the p-B11 nay-sayers, and has cited Dr. Bussard's mathematical approach. Evidently they're on the same page as EMC2 in at least certain respects.

Tri-Alpha was more willing to argue that aspect of the theory, but so far I have not heard much about their actual approach. I know it is a legacy of the old Maglich Migma, but that does not necessarily mean it has much in common with that approach.

Dr. Bussard gave a lot of details on the physical hardware, but was sketchy on the math and avoided direct rebuttal to Drs. Rider and Nevins. However, both Bussard and Rostaker apparently use the bounce-averaged Fokker–Planck model, and have a comparable understanding of ways to avoid bremsstrahlung.

rnebel · Post by **rnebel** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:07 pm

Rostaker's work is a follow-on to the electron/ion ring work that was started at Cornell. It dates back at least to the early 70s and probably the 60s. It falls in the field-reversed configuration (FRC) category.

scareduck · Post by **scareduck** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:25 pm

I believe MSimon has said elsewhere that they're not anywhere close to having hardware prototypes built. Supposedly they're working on numerical modeling at this point.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:49 pm

scareduck wrote:I believe MSimon has said elsewhere that they're not anywhere close to having hardware prototypes built. Supposedly they're working on numerical modeling at this point.

That is correct. Their approach is to do numerical modeling followed by experiments.

kurt9 · Post by **kurt9** » Tue May 06, 2008 3:44 am

I read recently that Tri-Alpha was recently financed to the tune of $40 million. This suggests that they will be doing some hardware experimentation in the near future. My understanding is that the financiers are not just Paul Allen, but include Venrock Associates (they funded Apple in the late 70's) and Goldman Sachs, among others.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Tue May 06, 2008 4:11 pm

$40M from a Paul Allen VC fund

http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/0 ... on-in.html

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9721240-7.html

CBFR patent

http://www.google.com/patents?id=eG0TAA ... n+rostoker

Feasibility argument with Nevins and Carlson

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5375/307a

Talk-Polywell.org

Norman Rostaker?

Norman Rostaker?

Numerical modeling...