Talk-Polywell.org

I'm not sure where you are going. The topic is the stored energy in a superconducting magnet and the consequences of a sudden release of this energy. Enjoy:Yes, here is described poloidal coils of ITER. But toroidal coils are desined similarly and probability of damage is not excluded. I don't see ...

I couldn't find the Battleship explosion I mentioned, so it cannot be confirmed. Alternately, a small quench in an MRI machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R7KsfosV-o And an apparent submarine steam explosion (sort of). The effects are surprising, especially when the resultant tidal wave reaches...

To Dan and Stoney3K That’s true Forces in ITER are very big But this means nothing. We are talking about the system increasing its temperature on about 20 deg even in case of the worst scenario. Think again. The SC magnets need to be kept at a few Kelvin (-270C) to keep them superconducting. Moreov...

I disagree about water steam and helium steam dangers. One will cook you and the other will freeze you. The explosive overpressure may be similar, and the shrapnel danger would be similar. What is important is the scale of the contained pressure and the volume. The LHC was a small accident which as...

One thing I do think is interesting food for thought is the amount of energy strored in the entire faclilty. For security concerns. Let's imagine a worst-case scenario: A Polywell facility with direct-conversion electronics and related substations, vacuum pumps, and cooling, and a rogue terrorist gr...

But I agree that it is good to point out that this isn't a device for converting supplied electrical power into local mechanical power. Technically this is true but I still think you're missing an important aspect of what makes M-E Thrusters so attractive. They don't draw just electrical power, the...

Is your conclusion then that the M-E engine's efficiency doesn't determine whether an M-E flywheel generator is possible, but only its practicality (i.e. how hard it would be to build)? Yes. Assuming Lorentz invariance applies to these thrusters and their thrust efficiency, at any thrust efficiency...

The energy goes into reducing the force of gravity, just like in a hovering rocket... I don't know of any form of energy which corresponds to the 'force' of gravity. Gravity itself is entirely passive, and something statically pushing against it (such as a pair of feet on a floor) is not a form of ...

They are, however, equal in the situation of an ideal mover/thruster (M/E or otherwise). This is trivially obvious: have your "ideal mover" apply vertical thrust less than the force of gravity to something held down by gravity -- it won't move. You are expending energy but not doing work. OK, then ...

They are not the same thing, nor do they need to be equal. Forces can always be applied and do as little as zero work; that does NOT mean no energy is required to apply the force. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_%28physics%29 They are, however, equal in the situation of an ideal mover/thruster (M...

The whole pressure differential analog is only true for an ideal M/E thruster, with zero losses. Okay... that kinda sorta makes sense, but you should realize an ideal M/E thruster (i.e. one that can generate thrust at arbitrarily high energy efficiency) is far more valuable as an energy generator, ...

Yet we live on a practical planet, and if that rocket doesn't budge an inch on its first seconds when the engines are started, but does expend a lot of energy, it's only because it needs to move its reaction mass (water, for an LH2/LO2 rocket) against a pile of air underneath. Nope, rockets work in...

Thrust on nothing requires no energy, Thrust on nothing is just... nothing. A nothing cannot experience thrust. neither does thrust on a non-moving object So, if we fire a rocket at insufficient thrust to move it off the launch pad, no energy is consumed? It is quite possible to expend energy, exer...

"For example, if you have an airship that uses M/E thrusters to counteract its weight and stay afloat at a constant altitude, it would, in theory, require no power to stay put because the change in potential energy (as a result of changing altitude) is zero." This is so stupid a statement I won't b...

Thrust by itself does not mean power. Why not? You can always turn one into the other. Hence by itself . Thrust on nothing requires no energy, neither does thrust on a non-moving object or an object that has no chance of going anywhere (e.g. my feet on the floor or that object parked against the wa...