Polywell Visions: Politics

If polywell fusion is developed, in what ways will the world change for better or worse? Discuss.

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kunkmiester
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Post by kunkmiester »

Classifying and keeping nuclear weapons a secret was supposed to keep a five year or so lead on the technology after WWII. England and the US wanted to keep the edge over the USSR, but look what happened: with espionage and technical competence, they had the bomb in much less time. In the meantime, for what it's worth, Stalin was quite peeved with them for not sharing. Probably a pretty good idea anyway, but it didn't' help talks.

There are dozens of signs of a polywell navy that the Navy can't hide, and a technical edge can't be guaranteed. Not sharing the tech would also, as mentioned, make us look bad. So, the best bet would be to announce it, and play it for all it's worth.

I recall Simon mentioning using old MRI machine coils to make a machine. If you can get MgB wire, and buy a liquid nitrogen generator and vacuum pump of sufficient capacity on Ebay, you can probably make a polywell, assuming it works. If the rumors fly fast enough, which they probably would be, half the amateurs on the planet would be trying to cobble one together, to say nothing of the other nations.
Evil is evil, no matter how small

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

kunkmiester wrote: I recall Simon mentioning using old MRI machine coils to make a machine. If you can get MgB wire, and buy a liquid nitrogen generator and vacuum pump of sufficient capacity on Ebay, you can probably make a polywell, assuming it works. If the rumors fly fast enough, which they probably would be, half the amateurs on the planet would be trying to cobble one together, to say nothing of the other nations.
Sorry, IIRC, MgB requires much lower temperatures than LN can provide. Needs LH or LHe.

Aero
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Post by Aero »

KitemanSA wrote:
kunkmiester wrote: I recall Simon mentioning using old MRI machine coils to make a machine. If you can get MgB wire, and buy a liquid nitrogen generator and vacuum pump of sufficient capacity on Ebay, you can probably make a polywell, assuming it works. If the rumors fly fast enough, which they probably would be, half the amateurs on the planet would be trying to cobble one together, to say nothing of the other nations.
Sorry, IIRC, MgB requires much lower temperatures than LN can provide. Needs LH or LHe.
Whatever it takes, if you buy a used MRI machine, it should come with the refrigeration system required for the coils. And you don't need a gas generator, just rent an insulated tank from AirGas, and have them fill it as required.
Aero

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

Om a more sane note, COMFORT or MERCY would be a good choice for a Polywell Retrofit. The engineering space(s) is gigantohuganormous.

We are getting good mileage out of them these past few years running HA and HADR missions.

ltgbrown
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Post by ltgbrown »

We are getting good mileage out of them these past few years running HA and HADR missions.
It is this exact reason that I think polywell powered blimps doing HA and HADR (not going into combat zones and getting shot down) would be a perfect application of polywell. A ship off the coast or in a harbor is one thing, an aircraft carrier sized airship sitting in a field next to your village dispensing humanitarian relief with a huge light up flag on the side is another. Those against us can say that the only reason the MERCY and COMFORT were built was to take care of our war monging soldiers and sailors. (Which is essentially true.) It would be a much more difficult argument to make for airships designed from the ground up to do HA / HADR. They (many more than 2 please) would be a powerful symbol of American technology but they would be an even more powerful symbol of what we stand for. As was mentioned, we are the first nation state in human history that rebuilds its enemies.
Famous last words, "Hey, watch this!"

bcolias
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What if we encouraged hostile countries to develop Polywell?

Post by bcolias »

Why keep secret Polywell technology from countries hostile to the US? It seems to me that Polywell funding and research is a bit anemic. If a country such as North Korea decided to develop Polywell for bragging rights, we'd have a lot of political pressure in this country to fully fund Polywell.

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