Talk-Polywell.org

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https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity ... =1&au=&ck=

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Well, it does give some estimated dates. March, 2010 and March 2012 which I'm sure we will track religiously.

Mmmm, March 2010 is not too far away anymore. March 2012 is a bit longer though. Shouldnt we have had something in April 2011?

There are a few different "award dates" and "estimated delivery dates." Is anyone more familiar with deciphering this, on what may supercede another?

Linked from the page provided by MSimon, is the Justification & Approval https://www.neco.navy.mil/synopsis_file ... %20J&A.pdf where it says "Frabrication of wiffleball 8, test and report - delivery 18 months after award (delivery estimated 30 March 2010)

Is the "Award" mentioned there the same or different from the Recovery Award. ie Is the 30 March 2010 date above still valid? or is it 18 months from the Contract Award Date of September 11, 2009 ?

Also, have the WB8.1 dates been pushed out or brought forward?
https://www.neco.navy.mil/upload/N68936 ... R-0044.pdf says...

CLIN DELIVERY DATE QUANTITY SHIP TO ADDRESS UIC
0001 30-APR-2010 wiffleball 8 in accordance with Statement of Work
FOB: Destination
0002 30-APR-2011 data for 0001
0003 31-OCT-2011 plasma wiffleball 8.1
0004 31-OCT-2012 data for 0003

whereas the J&A above says estimated delivery of WB8.1 to be 30 March 2012.

Note the contract modification notice with no details of the modification.

It is totally not clear to me the meaning of all this. And the difference between March and April? Not significant time wise unless things are going a bit (much?) faster than expected.

Maybe the mfg. ques have shortened due to the economic decline.

Also, have the WB8.1 dates been pushed out or brought forward?

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Yeah that was what I meant too.
I mean we had April 2011 as a date. Now we have March 2010 and March 2012. Was it now postponed (usually more likely) or accelerated (maybe due to the additional funding?).
Confusion, confusion...
March 2010 would sure get me excited. April 2012 would make wait longer and I am impatient (I think I did mention that before).

Biggest advances I see from a distant observer's perspective is that it has gone from being titled "An Advanced Gaseous Electrostatic Energy" technology to "Wiffle Ball Plasma Fusion Device" .....

The brass know that it works and have stopped beating around the bush about what it is with euphemistic naming of contracts .... and the 10 million might actually help.

Pity we don't even know if WB7.1 was even fired up from the hard evidence provided.

My best guess from reading the pdf's is March next year for WB8 at the earliest, and then possibly March 2012 for WB 8.1. You have to expect conversion to PB11 will take a reasonable amount of time, one month would be incredibly fast, two years makes sense.

IIRC the original dates were April 2010 and April 2011.

The 2012 date IMO is for WB-9.

I do agree that what ever is going on the Navy is confident of at least interim results. i.e. 100 mW (.1 W) is probably a given. Still a long way from net power.

This is roughly equivalent to the start up range of a fission plant. i.e. initial cold criticality.

Does anyone know whether POPS figures at all within current Polywell plans?

Ive dug up some nice theoretical/analytic/modelling work done recently - i understand that the current state of POPS art is looking to achieve 20:1 compression ratios and favourable quasineutrality. Wouldnt this be a rational adjunct to the current Navy contract, most particulaly with Rick Nebel already involved? (perforce, if Pulsed operation also looks most feasible).

rcain wrote:Does anyone know whether POPS figures at all within current Polywell plans?

Ive dug up some nice theoretical/analytic/modelling work done recently - i understand that the current state of POPS art is looking to achieve 20:1 compression ratios and favourable quasineutrality. Wouldnt this be a rational adjunct to the current Navy contract, most particulaly with Rick Nebel already involved? (perforce, if Pulsed operation also looks most feasible).

There is no doubt that when appropriate POPS will be applied to Polywell. If you look at the original POPS experiments they were based on a fusor type device. I'm sure POPS is one of the reasons Doc B. chose Rick to carry on.

I thought POPS had already seen 10^4 compression.

TallDave wrote:I thought POPS had already seen 10^4 compression.

That is theoretical.

Experimental results are in the 6X to 7X range.

POPS gets really useful in larger machines where the frequencies are in the 100KHz range. This helps because you can then tailor the wave very well to match requirements for rates of change vs radius. A problem Rick noted in his POPS papers. i.e. a sine wave may not be optimum.

A suitable arbitrary function generator coupled with a linear amplifier (Class AB) would be just what the Doctor ordered. However in large machines the power reqmt. runs in the 100s of KW. Which means vacuum tubes with 50 KV on the plates. Heh.

OTOH a suitable tuned circuit in the DC feed to the grids would make POPS "self" powered. I had some thoughts on that in my article LC POPS at IEC Fusion Tech.

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2008/02/lc-pops.html

If low compression factors are enough LC POPS would be ideal in terms of additional eqpt and power losses.

Let me add that gain goes as the square of compression. And POPS turns your machine into a pulsed machine. With a frequency equal to the POPS frequency.

Rick estimated that compression numbers on the order of 200X were required to make a POPS only machine work. That would be a gain of around 40,000.

Oh, right, that 10^4 was from a simulation.

A power gain of 40,000 would sure make things easier. Even two orders of magnitude gives us a lot more room for error.

OTOH, I wonder how it's going to affect annealing and the WB effect. Too bad we don't have a WB-POPS going yet.

Hey, I wonder if WB-7 is free...