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

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ladajo
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Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Post by ladajo »

Did you pull his whole profile? Cut/paste it over for those who do not have Linked-in accounts...

seedload
Posts: 1062
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:16 pm

Post by seedload »

...maybe he had a chance to test Rossi's free energy machine and after testing figured what's the point of polyeell anymore.

Seriously - if things were going well for a world changing technologh I can't imagine any reason anyone would leave. Not good.

D Tibbets
Posts: 2775
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:52 am

Post by D Tibbets »

As I said, wild speculation. He may have had a salary dispute, and took himself elsewhere. That he is apparently still a consultant, may be because EMC2 may wiish to 'consult' with him, or it may just be a handle that keeps him committed to the nondisclosure, and no competition clauses that he probably had in his contract.

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

chrismb
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Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:00 pm

Post by chrismb »

Early retirement due to cushy tax-payer-funded big salary hitting his target nest-egg figure?

Maui
Posts: 586
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2008 12:10 am
Location: Madison, WI

Post by Maui »

D Tibbets wrote:As I said, wild speculation. He may have had a salary dispute, and took himself elsewhere.
Dan Tibbets
This would only make sense if Polywell wasn't working out. If it was, I can't imagine he wouldn't work for free knowing the massive payout right around the corner.

Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

His profile on Linkedin is very, very rudimentary.
All it says is this:

Richard Nebel
Independent Research Professional
Location:
Santa Fe, New Mexico Area
Industry:
Research

I dont have a good feeling about this.
Dr Nebel was on a leave from Los Alamos in order to help figuring this Polywell thing out. I have always said that a good sign of Polywell not working out is when Nebel leaves EMC2. This has seemingly happened, now.
So you can guess what I am thinking: It did not work and he returned to his former position. Would love to be proven wrong, but I have little reason to think otherwise right now.

JohnP
Posts: 296
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:29 am
Location: Chicago

Post by JohnP »

If results came out negative, would that be easier to report to the public than positive news, which must be verified out the wazoo?

mvanwink5
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Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

Post by mvanwink5 »

The change to R. Nebel's involvement was before first plasma for WB-8, so I can't see anyway to make a technical deduction one way or another.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

mvanwink5
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Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

Post by mvanwink5 »

It may have been for tax reasons as California income tax is not pretty, he likely can do all his work from Santa Fe as an independent research contractor for EMC2. No sense camping outside area 51 fence.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

ladajo wrote:Sounds like you are slowly moving towards Chris's position of gravy train development...
:D
Nope. Totally different intent. His seems to assume that people are venal and all this is an attempt to bilk the taxpayer. I just think that things are nuanced but that the folks involved are trying to get to the right answer as cost effectively as possible.

Bussard on the other hand may have been a bit overly optimistic. He wanted to get to the final answer as quickly as possible, expecting it to be positive. I sympathize but would REALLY hate to see a $200M project turn out so much lower than hoped that folks were turned off to a viable system.

If I were to win the Powerball lottery, I might buy the demo. But that is just me!

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

Maui wrote:
D Tibbets wrote:As I said, wild speculation. He may have had a salary dispute, and took himself elsewhere.
Dan Tibbets
This would only make sense if Polywell wasn't working out. If it was, I can't imagine he wouldn't work for free knowing the massive payout right around the corner.
Remember, he was on loan from LANL or someplace like that. He may have been told to come back and work or come back and retire. And what is the first thing a government retiree does? He becomes a consultant.
Perhaps he is now a consultant at 1/2 again the money he HAD been making?
Last edited by KitemanSA on Fri Apr 29, 2011 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

chrismb
Posts: 3161
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:00 pm

Post by chrismb »

KitemanSA wrote:
ladajo wrote:Sounds like you are slowly moving towards Chris's position of gravy train development...
:D
Nope. Totally different intent. His seems to assume that people are venal and all this is an attempt to bilk the taxpayer. I just think that things are nuanced but that the folks involved are trying to get to the right answer as cost effectively as possible.
'Venal' is a bit strong -- [thinks on it for a moment..] hmm....

....well, anyway, I do not believe I have EVER seen someone try to complete a project as cost effectively as possible. What I'll agree I have seen is people draw up a cost effective project then deliever the project to that budget. But that is different to doing it as cost effectively as possible, because otherwise we'd see people handing back money to the funders of that project and saying "well, maybe we could've done a bit more, or to a better quality, but we thought we'd save you some money and so we didn't bother spending everything you signed off".

If anyone were to claim that latter statement as being the case for any project, let alone a tax-payer government project, I'd cry 'BS'!! You know as well as I do that if folks get the work done under budget, they'll use the rest up for some cherry-on-top extra, or extention, work - whether or not they declare it as such. And if they over-spend then it wasn't cost-effective. Period. Because the decision of cost-effectiveness was already considered, wrt the given budget, and those argument are no longer applicable.

...and in the long run, if you do agree that the last statement is a typical scenario, this is a bias of intent and effort consequent to the influence of money - which is largely the definition of 'venal'. Better to avoid taking anyone else's money, then 'venal' cannot even be an accusation.

Betruger
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Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 11:54 am

Post by Betruger »


KitemanSA
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

chrismb wrote: ...and in the long run, if you do agree that the last statement is a typical scenario, this is a bias of intent and effort consequent to the influence of money - which is largely the definition of 'venal'. Better to avoid taking anyone else's money, then 'venal' cannot even be an accusation.
Would you have been happier with the statement "as cost effectively as possible within the confines of the US government contracting paradigm"? I am fully aware that the government budgetting and contracting processes actually penalize folks for not spending the money. But that is not the fault of the contractor.

There are a LOT of SIMPLE things that could be done to improve the system, but then how would the Congress get their graft?

Emmet
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:31 am

Post by Emmet »

mvanwink5 wrote:The change to R. Nebel's involvement was before first plasma for WB-8, so I can't see anyway to make a technical deduction one way or another.
That's the most important point. If this is really true, and I just can hope so because I don't know you dear quote source, than it is indeed 100% impossible that his change of title/task/location has anything to do with the grade of success of the project.

In any case it would be interesting to know his (or anyones) shares in the company's ownership structure. That he doesn't go back to his old job as state employee and works instead as an independent consultor I would interprete cautiously optimistic because initially he was just on lend, keeping the safe job in the reserve which now he doesn't seem to need anymore.
stone-bronze-iron-carbon-boron

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