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Skunk Works' Compact Fusion Reactor Patents Issued

It was just announced that Lockheed-Martin Company had been granted patents on their new fusion reactor design. I saw an article on page B1 of the 14 November 2014 issue of The Wall Street Journal reporting this.

I looked it up. There are four patents, all by Thomas John McGuire, published on 9 October 2014. Go to Google Patents to get copies.

I have not yet read these patents, and so have no comments as yet. But the long-sought details must be in these patents.

Strictly speaking, these patents are not granted yet, they are published. They will be granted only if after a year (or so) of public exposure, nobody is able to show prior art. Given that LMCO has a big legal department, I'd be surprised if anybody were able to do this.

Joe Gwinn

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Joe Gwinn
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Not that I could see. The patents seem to be written as if the magnetic fie lds being set up are static, and there's no suggestion that they are to be changed on the fly to actively suppress instabilities in the plasma. There was a lot of verbiage about computer control of the magnetic fields, so the y may be covering the means to exert such control without actually admittin g that they plan to exert it.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

Which could be an attempt to keep their control method secret. But then should they be granted a patent on the overall fusion reactor design?

"The application contains a description of how to make and use the invention that must provide sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art (i.e., the relevant area of technology) to make and use the invention."

If the plasma control is key to making this thing work, it doesn't appear that the description would contain the necessary detail.

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com 
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The only difference in the game of love over the last few thousand years 
is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds.
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Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Patents are different than scientific papers. With a patent, the less you say, the greater the scope (and thus value) of the patent.

And the more patents one can bring to bear, the greater the protection.

Judging by the first paragraph [0001], there are many more patents in the pipeline. The last one talks of direct extraction of energy, probably by varying the magnetic containment fields. The next to last one talks of heating the plasma by varying the field.

From earlier descriptions, it seemed that the stability was inherent in the arrangement of the static magnetic fields, being arranged such that increased plasma pressure compressed the fields, versus stretching them.

Without inherent stability, heating and power extraction by variation of the field would be difficult to do without causing plasma leakage.

In any event, if I understand their strategy, there will be a scientific paper or two after all the patents in the pipeline have been published (thereby establishing legal priority).

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joe Gwinn

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