NewSpace 2010: Polywell and Vasimr

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Well, how much vacuum is enough vacuum is TBD. For the design Bruce and I are working, we're only using 50V so the subject of ion wind is not really an issue. We're using very large currents so mag coupling is more an issue.

Personally, I think showing no change in thrust from ambient to E-3T should be enough to show there's no wind in the case of any HV thrusters.

BTW Paul, Jim does have a turbo-pump. He's just never had a need to put it into the system. That's a LOT of work as I'm sure you'll agree. First, we need to see thrust. . .
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

paulmarch wrote:Sadly it's not "crazy past understanding" why Jim and all the other M-E experimenters have to endure the curse of dealing with the details of the M-E implementations, for it still boils down to a matter of the required resource people having a belief or faith in Jim’s new M-E paradigm, or not.
Paul,

Jim's work is not in the same category as Dr. Johan Prinz's work. Dr. Prinz wants to tell everyone that their physics is wrong. He's going to have a lot of trouble with that, but we have to hope the truth will eventually win out.

Dr. Woodward is not telling anyone that their physics is wrong. He's telling them it's incomplete (which they already knew.) Accepting Jim's physics is not at odds with the status quo. The real trouble with Jim's physics is there are so few qualified field theorists who can survey and understand his work.

Jim's work is not in the Kuhnian sense "revolutionary" since it does not say the current paradigm is wrong. It is however the basis for what we can call "disruptive technology."

I think Jim's task is easier than Johan's.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

paulmarch
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Post by paulmarch »

MSimon wrote:Paul,

I'm sure you know this: if the budget allows go for the turbo-pump. If you have H2 and He worries a small pump in series with the main pump will help.

Think of the turbo-pump as insurance for the rest of your set-up.

The turbo pump goes in series with the backing pump as the max back pressure they can handle is around 1E-2.
MSimon:

Good point and thinking about it of course I should have said one needs to mount the turbo-pump in series, not in parallel, with the roughing pump. I'm afraid that the details on the 2008 QVF/MHD experiment are getting a tad fuzzy now for me, but that series connection is the way that Sonny White and I had Sonny's QVF/MHD test article's roughing and turbo-pump setup. However that is where I learned that outgassing from copper vaccum chamber walls can be a real killer in regards to getting rid of a glow discharge in a resonant cavity once it's initiated at low pressures. Dam Pashen curve! And the fact that it takes driving the vacuum pressure below 1.0e-6 Torr to kill a glow discharge once it's started was learned from Vince Teofilo at L-M. Too bad we could never get the vacuum level in our copper test article below ~5.0e-5 Torr for that killed our chance at driving the resonant cavity up to the required peak voltages needed to see the QVF effect being sought. A 1/4 wave resonant cavity with a glow discharge going on in it acts just like a very good ~100V tube based voltage regualtor like the old OC3s...
Paul March
Friendswood, TX

paulmarch
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Post by paulmarch »

GIThruster wrote:Well, how much vacuum is enough vacuum is TBD. For the design Bruce and I are working, we're only using 50V so the subject of ion wind is not really an issue. We're using very large currents so mag coupling is more an issue.

Personally, I think showing no change in thrust from ambient to E-3T should be enough to show there's no wind in the case of any HV thrusters.

BTW Paul, Jim does have a turbo-pump. He's just never had a need to put it into the system. That's a LOT of work as I'm sure you'll agree. First, we need to see thrust. . .
Ron:

I thought Jim said he had an oil diffusion pump waiting in the wings...

Best
Paul March
Friendswood, TX

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Thanks for that. I haven't heard mention of the OC3 for decades. One of my favorite tubes. So pretty in operation esp when the current was changing at a visible rate.

Of course if that is not what you want....
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

TallDave wrote:
I have never seen anything that made me think elevators can possibly be economically viable
Hmm? Economics is actually the main argument for SE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics

The NIAC study by Edwards was pretty optimistic.

Launch loops are an interesting variant I hadn't run across before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
Launch loops were discussed in Analog Magazine (Hellooo Tom) about 20 to 40 years ago. My memory is hazy. Let me see if Google can refresh it: Dec 1983 Analog. 27 years roughly.

It seems to me that loops were the most viable of anything I have looked at.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

MSimon wrote: Launch loops were discussed in Analog Magazine (Hellooo Tom) about 20 to 40 years ago. My memory is hazy. Let me see if Google can refresh it: Dec 1983 Analog. 27 years roughly.

It seems to me that loops were the most viable of anything I have looked at.
Hypersonic Skyhook, also in Analog, and HASTOL, a Rotovator varient with much more work in it. Check out http://www.tethers.com/ .

Add a KITE launch system at the bottom end and you don't have to develop M14 hypersonic aircraft either.

LEO Launch system:

Code: Select all

Boost Phase....Technology
M0...-..M6.....KITE Launcher
M6+..-..M16....Black Colt varient
M16..-..LEO....Hypersonic Skyhook.


TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

I'd never heard of launch loops before yesterday. It's certainly an interesting concept that doesn't require exotic materials. And we have a lot of experience building maglev trains now. I'll have to learn more.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...

Enginerd
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Post by Enginerd »

MSimon wrote:Launch loops were discussed in Analog Magazine (Hellooo Tom) about 20 to 40 years ago. My memory is hazy. Let me see if Google can refresh it: Dec 1983 Analog. 27 years roughly.

It seems to me that loops were the most viable of anything I have looked at.
I still like the elegant simplicity of a mass driver several hundred kilometers long, gently sloping up to the top of a tall a mountain....

AcesHigh
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Post by AcesHigh »

GI, lets consider for a minute that ME-Thrusters wont really exist in the future. That future research will point out to some calculation errors, whatever.

what would you then consider as the best way for humanity to conquer space in the next 20-30 years? Something like Skylon?

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

AcesHigh wrote:GI, lets consider for a minute that ME-Thrusters wont really exist in the future. That future research will point out to some calculation errors, whatever.

what would you then consider as the best way for humanity to conquer space in the next 20-30 years? Something like Skylon?
I like Skylon but I'm convinced there is indeed a propellantless solution.

IMHO, it's worth clinging to the "Golden Age" ideal. I don't see another path for that than to have propellantless craft. It's the only path that removes enough infrastructure and lowers costs so much that we can talk about everyone getting off planet when they like.

Do I think a solution like this exists just because it's the one I'd choose? No. Just to be honest about this difficult subject--I believe the solution exists because it's the only way to make sense of the evidence in our skies.

I had never looked at the evidence for ET before about 4 years ago, at the behest of some US Intel friends. One in particular was a senior officer for CIA for a decade, and he challenged me to look at the evidence and judge it using the skills learned in studying philosophy. I took up the challenge and a few months later I was just unable to doubt what people say is true.

It's true we salvaged a downed spacecraft at Roswell in 1947. It's true there were hundreds of people forced into keeping quiet, and that much of that was removed some years ago. Their affidavits are on file. The stories connect well enough to show something real happened. I have no opinions about recovered bodies because the evidence there is much more sketchy.

Fact is though, we have sighted these things in the sky for many years. Some sightings go back thousands of years. Some sightings are so beyond question, that I guess I've become a believer. Some sightings provide vast technical information, like the RB-47 incident in 1957:

http://www.ufocasebook.com/rb47.html

That data is the track of an M-E powered craft. Others who are better suited can explain this in some detail if they wish.

I think whoever is in those craft is quiet for a reason and they allow themselves to be seen for important reasons too.

Long story short, it was after I was convinced that negative inertia, propellantless propulsion, warp drives and traversable wormholes where the best way to go, that I even considered the UFO evidence. That evidence says there are folks visiting who already have this kind of technology, so obviously, it is not unobtainable.

IMHO.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

paulmarch wrote:
GIThruster wrote:Well, how much vacuum is enough vacuum is TBD. For the design Bruce and I are working, we're only using 50V so the subject of ion wind is not really an issue. We're using very large currents so mag coupling is more an issue.

Personally, I think showing no change in thrust from ambient to E-3T should be enough to show there's no wind in the case of any HV thrusters.

BTW Paul, Jim does have a turbo-pump. He's just never had a need to put it into the system. That's a LOT of work as I'm sure you'll agree. First, we need to see thrust. . .
Ron:

I thought Jim said he had an oil diffusion pump waiting in the wings...

Best
Paul, that sounds like the kind of mistake I'd make. . . :-)

Could be you're right.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

paulmarch
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Post by paulmarch »

Ron & Crew:

I'm reposting the below commentary on the issue of calling G/I thruster devices "propellantless" propulsion that I posted earlier today for John Fornaro in the Advanced Concepts section of NSF. I think it bears repeating here and if you or anyone else has any thoughts on this naming issue, have at.

From John:

"Woodward again: "As to the allegation in the press release of the extraction of momentum from the vacuum by application of an alleged Machian effect, no such claim has ever been made. The possible propulsive use of Machian mass fluctuations has nothing whatsoever to do with vacuum effects, either classical or quantum mechanical. Neither does it constitute a fuel-less “rocket”. What?

Isn't that what this thread is about? Propellantless propulsion? I'm perfectly happy with understanding the Mach effect, even if there are no practical applications. I thought that the simplest explanation of Paul March's work was that he proposes to convert electrical energy directly into the forward momentum of a given mass, which would be an excellent application, no?"

From me:

"Now here we go into semantics. When Jim says an M-E thruster is not a "fuel-less" thruster, I believe he is referring to two different issues. The first is the fact that all M-E based devices have to have some minimum amount of propellant or reaction mass to accelerate and decelerate in a cyclic manner, else wise there is no M-E mass fluctuation signal to be acted on by the externally applied force rectification force. In other words an M-E thruster is best described as a recycled-mass thruster instead of a propellantless thruster.

The second issue is that all M-E devices require an input of local energy that is needed to accelerate and decelerate the M-E reaction-mass and make up all dissipative energy sinks like friction, etc. Jim W. takes the conservative view that ALL the kinetic energy gain produced by an M-E thruster has to be supplied by the local power supply in the vehicle in question. However, Andrew Palfreyman and my self’s analysis of this energy balance issue shows that there may be an additional external energy source being tapped by the M-E thrusters, and we think it may be the average kinetic energy of the atoms/molecules that make up the 13.7 billion light-year radius causally connected universe. Sonny White on the other hand thinks this external energy source being tapped by these gravinertial (G/I) devices may be the Dark (negative) vacuum energy field that astronomers uncovered over ten years ago now. We won’t know for sure which approach is more realistic until we make M-E thruster that have thrust levels measured in Newtons instead of milli-Newtons.

That's all for now, (I've got to get back to my day job.), but if we can make these G/I based drives actually work as the M-E and/or QVF theories say they could work, then cheap access to space and fast interstellar travel for the masses will finally become possible. To me that goal is more than enough incentive to keep me banging my head against the M-E wall in hope of grabbing this G/I golden ring. Why? Because rockets just won't cut it!"
Paul March
Friendswood, TX

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Paul, I get the reason behind saying M-E thrusters are "recycled propellant" rather than "propellantless"; I just don't use the former term because most people aren't familiar with it and the latter is close enough.

I think the real issue in Jim's comment is that he absolutely does not want any vacuum physics baggage dumped on the M-E topic. Who can blame him? He's been plain enough over the years in saying why he thinks all ZPF theory is wrong, and in all the years he's never gotten an answer back from any ZPF proponents. Given this, he really has been very reserved when people try to connect the physics.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

AcesHigh
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Post by AcesHigh »

@GIThruster:

sorry pal, I dont see any evidence that ETs have visited us in the past. You probably know that all allegations of paintings (medieval, ancient or pre-historic) showing aliens or craft are probably very well debunked. I guess you have other evidence besides paintings?

also, I will believe faster that the aliens are in fact humans from the far future (or not so far future, considering we already are close to mastering genetic engineering) than aliens... I mean... grays look just like human fetuses!! I seriously doubt we will find so easily aliens that look so much like us, considering we are the result of billions of years of evolution and some quite random chances...

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