We have been seeing little detail-free teasers that Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works had come up with a new approach to hydrogen fusion.
The article came in the 15 October 2014 issue of Aviation Week, on page
The innovation is in how the hydrogen plasma is confined. Everything else is standard, as such things go in that field.
While the described approach seems plausible, we will soon know - the entire fusion community will scrub this with wire brushes.
Joe Gwinn
"Ten years away" usually translates to "impossible."
Or "More funding needed".
The implication seems to be that their advantage lies in a way of actively damping potential instabilities, but there's absolutely no detail.
Not when there's a working fusion reactor hanging overhead every day. "Impractical" or "impracticable" might have been better choices of adjective.
On Tue, 21 Oct 2014 22:59:05 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman Gave us:
goddamned line length idiot!
But hey, let's gear up and go to Mars! (before the Chinese do)
Pop me over to the Moon with one to power everything, and I'll be a space guinea pig for science, and they can see how long an old man can live in such a place.
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On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:48:02 -0700, Robert Baer Gave us:
Be a little better observer and note that the complete address got carriage returned and a portion of it is on the next line.
You getting Old? Bob's your uncle, Bob!
No. Fifty years away translates to "impossible" and fusion power plants is one of those elusive technologies that has always been 50 years away. A bit like that nuclear electricity "Too cheap to meter"...
If it is ten years away then lets see their lab prototype now. It will take about that long to engineer a robust power generating version from something that already works on a pilot plant scale. I don't care what size it is - lets see one working and then they can miniaturise it.
Superconducting magnets and high temperature plasmas in close proximity make for unforgiving failure modes as CERN will readily testify.
Skunk works have some real street credibility at delivering hitech bleeding edge projects like the U2 and SR71 unlike the LENR eCrap team.
It would be an amazing coup if they have been able to do it.
I will believe it when I see it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Anyone can pump out a press release.
reactor-details>
Or at least "I'll be gone, you'll be gone."
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Not to mention mega neutron fluxes, if you get that far.
We did a little work for them on the U2 Dragon Lady project. They were great to work with.
Is "always 10 years away" sooner than "always 50 years away"?
I'm surprised that the Skunk Works would play the popular gee-whiz press release game with something so speculative.
When are you going to learn to LOOK at a link? It is obvious that it was broken across two lines.
Probably by the leading period in the original message.
.
Indeed it would be an amazing coup, as would be the success of the University of Washington's effort:
"The (UW) researchers have successfully tested the prototype?s ability to sustain a plasma efficiently", whatever that means; Lockheed Martin only claims to have confined a "magnetized ion gas", so we seem to be looking mostly at efforts to solicit for continued funding.
These projects are at least better than the 'inertial confinement' nuclear fusion weapon model verification testing, which somehow gets away with pretending to be energy research. (But somehow no one cares that it only met 1% of it's phony fusion energy goals.)
I don't think the neutron fluxes are too terrible from controlled fusion. And the neutrino fluxes although large are harmless.
D2 + H1 -> He3 + 5.5Mev Li6 + H1 -> He3 + He4 + 4.0Mev Li7 + H1 -> 2He4 + 17.3Mev
There will always be some neutrons from side reactions but the fusion core reactions that go the most easily are fairly clean - you will get a serious gamma ray flux though which somehow needs to be thermalised down to a temperature that can generate high pressure steam.
I don't think there is much call for a MW class gamma ray generator.
Perhaps they are strapped for cash?
snip
I can do that with a NE-2.
Lockheed is now crowdfunding?
Apparently! Don't knock crowd funding though.
The odd one for exotic products has come good. eg this archaic Petzval lens recreated
Not really to my taste but it still has its fans.
I am seriously tempted by the lot offering a FLIR addon for a digital phone (but suspect I'll give in and just get a real one instead).
Ha, I've got you beat! I have a piece of old rackmount hardware that uses magnetically biased gas discharge tubes for noise generation (6D4 triodes, actually -- a pair, I think to invert one and mix them to minimize autocorrelations). Supposedly good for a few 100kHz BW and 3-4 sigma.
Tim
Well, how about my microwave oven! Ha!
I put an NE2 into my microwave oven, to see how fast the magnetron starts up. It was impressive.
If it's that gassy, it needs to be replaced! Oooh!
;-)
Tim
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