Nuclear fusion anyone?

[EdFred]

Lack of energy drives all conflict. Keeping this technology to ourselves ensures a continued human history of violence and butchery.

And that's why we leave the conflict overseas and keep our noses out of it.

The rest of the world will still have their oil, natural gas, and coal.

Plus, all of our troops will be at home. Plenty of defense.

 

[Henning]

And that's why we leave the conflict overseas and keep our noses out of it.

The rest of the world will still have their oil, natural gas, and coal.

Plus, all of our troops will be at home. Plenty of defense.

How do you think the ocean will protect us? Why not share?

 

[EdFred]

A quarter of the world wants us to leave them alone, and the rest of the world hates us. So that's what we will do, leave them alone, and keep to ourselves.

Plus, with the defense one could build with this technology, SDI would look like a fly swatter.

 

[Henning]

A quarter of the world wants us to leave them alone, and the rest of the world hates us. So that's what we will do, leave them alone, and keep to ourselves.

Plus, with the defense one could build with this technology, SDI would look like a fly swatter.

And we will die for it.

 

[EdFred]

Only if a bunch of pansies were in charge. Plus, they want us dead anyway. Why would I give anyone something they would immediately turn around and use on us?

 

[wsuffa]

LMT trading > $4 lower daily so the market doesn't really see a big upside. Unless the news isn't out far enough yet.

A more technical brief: http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

Still a lot of applied physics to go.

The whole market sux and has further to fall.

 

[zaitcev]

Byproduct of deuterium/tritium fusion is stable, non-radioactive He4, so as a bonus, birthday balloons will be cheaper.

What about all the neutrons stuck in the blanket? Surely the blanket material is going to accumulate unstable isotopes. The good thing is, for most lighter nucleii, the half-life is rather short. But still... It's not entirely benign -- just better than a typical fission reactor.

What I am most concerned about in all this is tritium that they need. It's extremely rare on Earth. So rare that specifying it as fuel amounts for cheating, in my opinion. Tritium tokamaks could be built tomorrow, too. I just don't see where they are going to find the fuel. Mining the Moon, maybe?

 

[wsuffa]

Who gets to be Doc Brown, and who gets to be Marty McFly?

 

[Dav8or]

I guess I'm more of a pessimist than you guys. I read this announcement apparently more like Wall Street does, a plea for much needed investment capital. Looking for partners to perfect the most important discovery since electricity and it'll only take ten years... riiiight. Seriously, if you had cracked the nut on something this important, likely you would find the money and do it yourself.

I think they figured with their stock slumping, they either had do something like this, or convince the American people that we need to invade Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the Ukraine right now! Given the overall anti war mood of the country right now, this was easier. The sad thing is, if this is all true, they will likely either build the reactors in China or simply sell it to the Chinese. I can't remember the last time America kept cutting edge technology to itself for longer than a year or two.

Anyhow, I sincerely hope I am wrong in my pessimism. I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not holding my breath or buying stock any time soon. Fusion power has been 40 years off for about 60 years now. You could likely generate more power than all the Fusion power produced to date, by burning all the reports about fusion power breakthroughs.

 

[Henning]

Only if a bunch of pansies were in charge. Plus, they want us dead anyway. Why would I give anyone something they would immediately turn around and use on us?

No sir. I say let the military have it to run as a competitive market energy, hydrogen and all. Let the nation see what it's best and brightest can do for it if you don't kill them off just after you invest a bunch of money into educating them. Let the Military Industrial Complex finally pay the dividends on the trillions of dollars of debt we've amassed. There is no one on Earth who has more motivation to avoid war than the US soldier. Let them finally do the right thing; it's the only chance we have as a species. It will earn us the karmic right to grow off this planet. It is the step we need to take, and it is a good one.

 

[olasek]

There were too many false promises about fusion that fizzled out, wake me up when this thing is for real.

 

[Henning]

I guess I'm more of a pessimist than you guys. I read this announcement apparently more like Wall Street does, a plea for much needed investment capital. Looking for partners to perfect the most important discovery since electricity and it'll only take ten years... riiiight. Seriously, if you had cracked the nut on something this important, likely you would find the money and do it yourself.

I think they figured with their stock slumping, they either had do something like this, or convince the American people that we need to invade Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the Ukraine right now! Given the overall anti war mood of the country right now, this was easier. The sad thing is, if this is all true, they will likely either build the reactors in China or simply sell it to the Chinese. I can't remember the last time America kept cutting edge technology to itself for longer than a year or two.

Anyhow, I sincerely hope I am wrong in my pessimism. I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not holding my breath or buying stock any time soon. Fusion power has been 40 years off for about 60 years now. You could likely generate more power than all the Fusion power produced to date, by burning all the reports about fusion power breakthroughs.

Yep, and I'll give them what I can. I have no problem investing in a company I think is going in the right direction, and as far as trusting someone besides me to give me a result for my investment money, I trust Skunk Works to get it done.

We are a technically brilliant species, there is nothing we are not capable of, we just have to have faith in doing the right thing and do it. We just have to choose to. I hope that in the end we choose to, because that timeline is pretty cool.

 

[docmirror]

I read this announcement apparently more like Wall Street does, a plea for much needed investment capital. Looking for partners to perfect the most important discovery since electricity and it'll only take ten years... riiiight. Seriously, if you had cracked the nut on something this important, likely you would find the money and do it yourself.

Yup. LM isn't in the business of giving away secrets to let anyone else in on the profits. If they had the key to the kingdom, or even the path to the door to the key to the kingdom there is NO way they would be publishing it.

The guy who cracks the fusion nut will be wealthy beyond measure, and LM isn't about to let anyone else in on the spoils.

Call me when you produce more power than you put in. I'll be right here waiting.

 

[nauga]

It's been "10 years away" for government researchers and university drones.

It was *25 years ago* in Utah

I'm holding out for a decent peer review or some validated/verified results.

Nauga,
gone fission

 

[steingar]

Yup. LM isn't in the business of giving away secrets to let anyone else in on the profits. If they had the key to the kingdom, or even the path to the door to the key to the kingdom there is NO way they would be publishing it.

The guy who cracks the fusion nut will be wealthy beyond measure, and LM isn't about to let anyone else in on the spoils.

Call me when you produce more power than you put in. I'll be right here waiting.

Been done this year.

 

[EdFred]

Stock slumping? It's doubled in the past couple years and up almost 50% in the past year. I would love to own a bunch of slumping stocks like that.

 

[Fredbob711]

Stock slumping? It's doubled in the past couple years and up almost 50% in the past year. I would love to own a bunch of slumping stocks like that.

It's nice when you have a massive defense contract that's too big to fail because the whole thing was built around international cooperation and those partner countries have already given you money for their shiney new planes and you know the Pentagon is going to pick up any cost overruns because they can't afford to be embarrassed by a program failure at this stage in the game.... isn't it?

Seriously though, I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I don't think they'd be willing to share this with another corporate partner, but if the government and/or military wants to give them some money to continue the research they wouldn't turn it down.

That optimism is tempered by a general lack of faith in corporate America ever doing the right thing for any reason other than profit. And I honestly have a hard time understanding how they could make a profit off this long term. Would you be the only ones who could operate the reactors? Would you dare build planned obsolescence into something that could potentially be so volatile?

All that being said, I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[JeffDG]

 

[N801BH]

100 MW on the back of a truck...holy ****!

And how are they gonna cool this ......

 

[Henning]

And how are they gonna cool this ......

Read their thing (or watch the video above) they aren't, they are containing the heat and directing it out through a turbine replacing the combustion chamber on Coal and Gas plants with a heat exchanger.

 

[MAKG1]

Let's put it this way….

There seems to be a nearly universal scientific consensus that this "design" is half done. Cooling being one of the obvious problems.

It's sounding quite a lot like 1983 in Utah. "Amazing" press releases with nothing to verify, no paper trail (yet), no evidence that anything exists in reality. The only exception I'm seeing is that there is no claim of a super-secret scientific paper that no one is being allowed to read.

I'll believe it when I can see it. Perpetual motion machines come and go on a regular basis. And this one doesn't seem to have anything in it that wasn't considered 20 years ago.

Henning, almost all power plants and all engines work by directing heat through a turbine or piston. Even conventional nuclear power plants. The hard part is, how do you contain the heat? Containment failures tend to be really messy. And with all the neutrons this thing is going to make, even more so.

 

[docmirror]

Been done this year.

No - actually they haven't. The specifics are pretty complex, but if you read that boilerplate crap that ITER sent out, you should be bridge shopping in the Bronx.

No one is even close to unity, including ITER/Tokamak.

 

[denverpilot]

Yep, and I'll give them what I can. I have no problem investing in a company I think is going in the right direction, and as far as trusting someone besides me to give me a result for my investment money, I trust Skunk Works to get it done.



We are a technically brilliant species, there is nothing we are not capable of, we just have to have faith in doing the right thing and do it. We just have to choose to. I hope that in the end we choose to, because that timeline is pretty cool.

You realize you're talking about today's LockMart, who brought you the brilliant failure of the F-35. Not Kelly Johnson's crew who are mostly dead or retired.

 

[kyleb]

If I was in charge, I would keep this tech for us, and tell the rest of the world we are no longer going to get involved in anything. All military bases overseas closed, everyone comes home, no more being world police or babysitting. With energy costs then bottoming out, the costs of everything will drop, and the dollar gets stronger.

Our NIMBY's and other assorted anti-progress types will do their darndest to trainwreck the whole thing.

 

[docmirror]

You realize you're talking about today's LockMart, who brought you the brilliant failure of the F-35. Not Kelly Johnson's crew who are mostly dead or retired.

Another very cogent comment. LM used to be run by engineers and scientists and the MBAs did the grunt work in the office. Now - it's pretty much reversed.

 

[Henning]

You realize you're talking about today's LockMart, who brought you the brilliant failure of the F-35. Not Kelly Johnson's crew who are mostly dead or retired.

Yes it is, I know some of the people employed there, they still hire the best there are. The difference in programs here is they are not working for conflicting design objectives from their client, this is an internal project and they intend to suceed. As for heat control, I figure they are going to use the plasma as an insulator.

 

[N801BH]

Yes it is, I know some of the people employed there, they still hire the best there are. The difference in programs here is they are not working for conflicting design objectives from their client, this is an internal project and they intend to suceed. As for heat control, I figure they are going to use the plasma as an insulator.

Hmmmm'

Ask the crew of Columbia on how well plasma is a good insulator...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

 

[Henning]

Hmmmm'

Ask the crew of Columbia on how well plasma is a good insulator...

It works both ways, plasma is hot compared to space or room temp, compared to 1,500,000,000° it's cold. Had the ceramic tiles on Columbia not been damaged, it would not have burned up.

 

[zaitcev]

And with all the neutrons this thing is going to make, even more so.

Neutrons from fusion are no different from neutrons from fission, so you can safely ignore this handwaving. The only question is their density and the energy.

 

[zaitcev]

As for heat control, I figure they are going to use the plasma as an insulator.

Using plasma would be an interesting idea in some other, more conventional design, but in CFR the coils are inside the neutron blanket, not outside of it. Therefore, the escaping neutrons are free to impart the heat into coils. Remember that their kinetic energy is actually the transfer mechanism for the whole power of the reactor. Therefore, your coils are going to collect the amount of power that is proportional basically to the area of their shade. What they might be looking at is some soft of solid neutron deflector, but it's conspicuously absent from the released drawing.

My bet is, they'll have to invert the thing inside-out eventually. Of course doing that robs the CFR of its "compactness", but hey...

Another question I do not see answered much is what they are going to do about the leakage of plasma at the necks of the bottle? Tokamaks and their derivatives are shaped that way for a good reason: it's a heck on a stick to make the field gradient that would prevent the escape.

 

[JimNtexas]

When I was an engineering student in the early 70s the University of Texas shipped a Tokamak to Russia on a C-5 as part of a joint research project. I remember that got me excited that Fusion power was only ten or twenty years away.

Sadly, fusion power has remained decades away ever since.

If this latest project was run by anything other than a Skunk Works project I wouldn't give it a second thought, but this is The Skunk Works!

They have a record of doing impossible things in remarkably short periods of time.

Here's a cool video:

http://youtu.be/UlYClniDFkM

And a poem at Pope Hat.

 

[docmirror]

When I was an engineering student in the early 70s the University of Texas shipped a Tokamak to Russia on a C-5 as part of a joint research project. I remember that got me excited that Fusion power was only ten or twenty years away.

Sadly, fusion power has remained decades away ever since.

If this latest project was run by anything other than a Skunk Works project I wouldn't give it a second thought, but this is The Skunk Works!

They have a record of doing impossible things in remarkably short periods of time.

Here's a cool video:

http://youtu.be/UlYClniDFkM

And a poem at Pope Hat.

I worked for General Atomic back in the early 80s as a division of Gulf. We were fed the same tired cliche's back then; 'it's only a decade or two away'. It's always a decade away. Don't get me wrong, I'm a real believer in the theory that a mans reach should exceed his grasp. I'm all for someone in the private sector working on this for the profit motive.

But - as this PC video points out, they are all about the BS 'world vision' ideals, and 'enhance global security'... GMAFB. The fact that this video exists from a group that calls itself the Skunk Works speaks volumes. That - and in the vid they have a cute little wispy girl turning all the tools, like she could run the milling machine that build literally everything in that room. Another GMAFB moment. Oh, and the street is likewise underwhelmed. LMT is trading up about 1%. Yawn....

 

[Henning]

Just gotta have some faith in the vision. When the vision is right, the inspiration comes. When you work to the right goals, the impossible becomes reality. That is the nature of God's relationship with man, we have been given the ability and resources to achieve whatever we dream of, we just have to decide to do it.

 

[MAKG1]

Just gotta have some faith in the vision. When the vision is right, the inspiration comes. When you work to the right goals, the impossible becomes reality. That is the nature of God's relationship with man, we have been given the ability and resources to achieve whatever we dream of, we just have to decide to do it.

When the vision is right, the charlatans and foolhardy come much more often than inspiration. Occasionally, someone gets it right. It's not the norm. Quite the opposite.

Been around the patch too many times to buy it. When Skunk Works powers all of Palmdale from that big white box, I'll believe it. Not when they make a PR video about vapor.

There is a LONG history of people being wrong on things like this. The classics are transmutation of base metals to gold, astrology, and perpetual motion.

 

[docmirror]

When the vision is right, the charlatans and foolhardy come much more often than inspiration.

Been around the patch too many times to buy it. When Skunk Works powers all of Palmdale from that big white box, I'll believe it. Not when they make a PR video about vapor.

There is a LONG history of people being wrong on things like this. The classics are transmutation of base metals to gold, astrology, and perpetual motion.

But - but - but,,, they took the vid in front of a shiny new RPV? That really sells it - doncha think?

 

[airdale]

I find the announcement to be a little puzzling. If they really have something that can be built, it is even better than an alchemist's recipe for turning lead into gold. If I had that and I had the resources of LM, I would not be looking for partners. I would keep it for myself.

Am I missing something?

Re weapons, we have 100K years +/- of evolution that has rewarded greed and aggressiveness with increased participation in the gene pool. Sitting around for a few nights, even a few years, and singing Kumbayah is not going to change that. Weaponizing such a power source to create things like mobile high power lasers and rail guns is inevitable. I hope our guys are the first and most successful.

 

[Henning]

When the vision is right, the charlatans and foolhardy come much more often than inspiration.

Been around the patch too many times to buy it. When Skunk Works powers all of Palmdale from that big white box, I'll believe it. Not when they make a PR video about vapor.

There is a LONG history of people being wrong on things like this. The classics are transmutation of base metals to gold, astrology, and perpetual motion.

Without a doubt, PT Barnum is a prophet to the Wall Street sector. However, every now and then you have to take a gamble and have some faith that someone has vision. There is a chance that someone has finally decided to actually give doing the right thing a try and seeing if it pays off. There are enough people who believe in God, that it is inevitable that one of them would end up in a position to do the right thing and have faith in the unknown consequences. I do not expect to see Wall Street to have faith or imagination, they do not know what it takes to actually produce something, they only know how to be economic vampires, and they only bet on sure things. We have been paying the Military Industrial Complex to develop our technological ability for three quarters of a century almost. Huge quantities of our Gross National Product have been dedicated to them and they have have been a huge success at technological development. There is a realization that we came to during the Cold War, and that is that we really cannot survive under the past paradigms of curing problems through violence, our ability to destroy had become absolute. We now have a situation where we are not able to end conflict by fighting anymore. The technologies of war have been unproductive in desired result since the first uses of the atomic bomb. We just recently quit paying for a lot of high dollar platforms, both on order and on the drawing boards. People brought up Germany's mechanical unready status as a problem, well, the fact is the US isn't in a whole lot better shape. We have quit paying for these things, new super tech is not proving any more effective as old tech. With this companies like Lockheed Martin have a need to reach out to where they have not reached before. Like any Ponzi scheme, they need to expand market. Creating new industry, especially energy, has unlimited expansion potential, and Skunk Works has the resources to get it done.

 

[MAKG1]

Hey, if vision is all we need, why not build a Dyson sphere?

Lots of vision there. And the physics is at least understood (fusion is understood, containing plasma at extremely high charge density, not so much). Necessary resources? Well….

 

[Henning]

Hey, if vision is all we need, why not build a Dyson sphere?

Lots of vision there. And the physics is at least understood (fusion is understood, containing plasma at extremely high charge density, not so much). Necessary resources? Well….

Vision, inspiration, and action; all three are required. With only two, failure is assured. LM has the ability to produce all three, so I bet my money on them to do my part of providing them resource. Whether they fail me or not is irrelevant.

 

[MAKG1]

Vision, inspiration, and action; all three are required. With only two, failure is assured. LM has the ability to produce all three, so I bet my money on them.

You need a lot more than that. You forgot resources, intelligence and skill. Probably other things, too.

What do you think the difference between vision and inspiration is?

So, I'll rephrase my question. If LM has the ability to produce all you say they do, why doesn't LM build a Dyson sphere?