Talk-Polywell.org

The American Society of Naval Engineers held a symposium on "Engineering the Total Ship" on July 14 and 15. The session titled “Technology for the Future Navy” was moderated by Dr. John Pazik, Director, Ship Systems and Engineering Division, Office of Naval Research. I was not in attendance at the meeting, but a colleague in his meeting report and follow-up discussions with me indicated that Dr. Pazik made several favorable references to Polywell Fusion to the point where my colleague immediately did a google search to find out more. Although I don’t know specifically what Dr. Pazik said and I don’t know who was in attendance at this session, I believe it is significant that he would mention it in this forum. The meeting was attended by about 130 naval engineers and analysts including nine admirals constituting the leadership of the Navy’s engineering establishment. Ron O’Rourke, a very influential naval analyst for the Congressional Research Service was also in attendance. I do not know if Dr. Pazik’s comments reflected any preliminary results of the ongoing ONR funded research at EMC2. However, I don’t think Dr. Pazik would jeopardize his professional reputation or ONR’s before such an influential audience if he did not believe Pollywell Fusion had genuine technical potential. More information on the symposium is available at:
http://www.navalengineers.org/events/in ... genda.aspx

That is some HOT circumstantial evidence.

It's also a possible reason for the FOIA denial. If Polywell is showing promise, they don't want to jeopardize things with premature release of information.

This is interesting. No real meat, but that it was mentioned in such a forum by someone high up in the Navy research and development hierarchy would tend to counter arguments that continued funding is driven by a desire to avoid admitting foolish prior funding (sending good money after bad just to avoid that you made a mistake).
If it makes some scientists nervous/ curious enough to investigate the area it could be useful as it could open up the research to more minds. It could also induce more retrenchment , obstruction, turf wars, etc.

Dan Tibbets

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To error is human... and I'm very human.

In a recent conversation I had with a legislative aid to Senator Feinstein. He told me how the Secretary of Energy had asked the Navy about the latest nuclear power plants that they were researching. To which the Navy responded that their research nuclear powers would be 100 times more expensive and would not be commercially viable.

I wonder if the Polywell was included in that list.

If they are giving the Naval Engineering Community a heads up I'd say Polywell shows promise.

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Did anyone think to ask for the minutes of the panel discussion that took place? Normally these are recorded and sold later to the participants of the conference.

I actually found a guy that twitted about attending the conference.
I do not have any twitter account, and his posting is now unreacheable unless you have a twitter account, maybe someone that has one can contact him and ask if has more info to share or can check his old tweets :

Here is the guy:
http://twitter.com/JOCHUM

There are various ways to be positive about something. Polywell may be on time (prob quite rare for navy research projects, hence noteworthy), on budget (..!..), may have been the only navy project to attract stimulus funding...&c.. all would make 'good' comments.

As far as I understand it, the current actual terms of the project is to build something that can then serve to validate plasma parameters. Probably quite easy to get right, in its own right, a bit like stitching together a set of Emperor's clothes. But what really counts is putting those on and exposing the outcome to the public gaze.

So the fact that this gets 'coverage' without any specifics suggests only that there is so little to comment on at the moment, both by the navy and here, that one might as well flap lyrical about a project which is progressive in intent, and has sky-high objectives worth singing about...

....Incidentally, hasn't Rick's 18 mth schedule come and gone yet??.....

Twelve months would have been in May of this year. That would make 18 months in November. Two years would be May of 2011.

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Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

The navy engineering community has been in this all along.
With out talking to someone that was at the conference yet, I would say that the discussion was something like, "and we are progressing on the polywell fusion project, we are expecting concrete results for review with in the year. If polywell goes as the researchers project, it will support our total ship design initiatives nicely. Supporting future endeavors like all electric drive, future main battery and point defense systems like rail gun (which is also progressing nicely) and FEL systems."

I think this may be open to the public:

http://www.navalengineers.org/events/in ... stems.aspx

A Workshop will be held at Florida State University Center for Advanced Power Systems in Tallahassee, FL on 15 October to explore new technologies in power and energy that can be applied to both military and civilian systems. Bringing together representatives from government, industry and academia, the Workshop will feature panel discussions of ongoing and planned initiatives in areas that include naval power systems, alternative energy systems and micro-grids.

and here's a presentation about how the Navy views power needs on its ships.

http://ewh.ieee.org/conf/ests09/ESTS-20 ... Doerry.pdf

Nothing, obviously, about Polywell here yet.

I think the fat lady sings sometime between summer of next year and '12. Until then, I would just sit back and wait (no matter how frustrating and impatient that my be).

This is about distribution, IPS is the big thing these days. Generation is another animal. It is encouraging however they are looking at MVDC as well. 6KV, interesting part of the IPS future plan.


PS: ZEDS is ZONAL ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Very, very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

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n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...