PRACTICAL fusion device by Princeton physicist suppressed

[R.Mackey]

Not on their first flight, they didn't. Instead they researched an area of reliable, steady winds. Much simpler, much better than having to build their own apparatus.

The Wright Brothers are a sterling example of good engineers. The basic principles of flight, motors, materials, everything was all ready, partially excepting control -- all that was needed was a team who could educate themselves and put it all together. They did, they did it first, and they did it with their own money.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Not on their first flight, they didn't. Instead they researched an area of reliable, steady winds. Much simpler, much better than having to build their own apparatus.

Ah I have not seen enough pictures from that day to be sure and their launch rail in the pictures I did see must have confused me.

 

[R.Mackey]

Wikipedia states that the Wrights first used a catapult system on September 7, 1904, after moving their operations near Dayton Ohio.

Nothing wrong with refinement after the initial proof-of-concept. More good engineering.

 

[shadron]

still, even that doesnt provide a lot of actual thrust, just high velocity, so 1g still seems unlikely

What does velocity have to do with it? It's all about force/thrust, mass and acceleration. There are limits on velocity, but not on acceleration.

m1a1 = m2a2 Yes, m2 isn't very high for an ion engine, so getting a1 up to 1g might be hard, with today's technology. But it's a scaling problem, up against no real physical limits. Also, thrust (ma) is additive, so adding more engines increases it and therefore a1 perfectly linearly.

Perhaps 1g won't be attainable without leaps in technology; then we have to do with .1g, or .05g, perhaps, until the engineering comes through. Everything takes that much longer, but will still get there. Say we want a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, about 4.4 light years away. 1g will accelerate an object up to c/2 in about 173 days (straight Newton, no Lorentz transform), so here we have our transit times from 0 to c/2, transit, and then back, ignoring, again, relativistic effects:

a t
1g 10 years
.1g 17 years
.05g 26 years
.01g 100 years

 

[metamars]

Um, you were the one who gave me the specs, pal. Don't complain about me if they don't work. Your question was very clear, and I answered it.

I'm not complaining. I'm simply pointing out that there's a lot more possibilities than a 100 MW one. I should think, since you are into spacecraft, that would make you happy.

If you now think you can generate 50 GW with a reasonably sized device, that's fine -- but now you've got a waste heat problem. There's no free lunch.

Well, the waste heat problem will have to get in line with a bunch of others. And the people who will have to solve it will be people like you. I wasn't arguing for Bussard's device being a slam dunk (though I hope it turns out to be successful), and Bussard himself said that the proper way to go is to build further models, and then have competent individuals evaluate the results. Nobody in their right mind is going to commission a bunch of power plants based on the current state of his research, nor are they going to seriously design any spacecraft based on same.

However, Bussard obviously wanted development to proceed to at least the point when a review panel would pass judgement. In that, I concur completely, and the only thing that would make me change my mind is evidence that Bussard either was a con artist and fudged data, or that he was just plain mistaken.

Your behavior is hard to fathom sometimes

You're not the only one, trust me.

, e.g. your insistence above that I should have thrown out your question

On the contrary, I'm glad you answered the question, as posed. Obviously, your answer was the most substantive, even if you made an order of magnitude error. Thank-you (again).

However, in all manner of problem solving jobs, such as physics or engineering, you don't stop as soon as you hit a roadblock. If I was your boss and had asked you to do a quick evaluation based on the 100 MW figure I gleaned from Bussard's paper (which I still haven't read through), I would be happy. I wouldn't be happy, though, if you said "well, that's that!" - not if you knew about the 5th power dependence, anyway.

I'm not your boss, and you can do whatever you want to do wrt what I post here.

P.P.S.: I work at JPL. I don't speak for JPL, Caltech, NASA, or any other agency. I only speak for myself. And speaking for myself, there is no freaking suppression or coverup. Get real.

Van Flandern also worked at JPL. When he wrote

No JPL scientist would be willing to participate in the survey you propose, and anyone who did would quickly find him/herself unemployed. JPL does not even want such topics discussed in any serious public venue, and any scientist or media person who did so would be ridiculed and his organization boycotted. I worked as an independent contractor at the lab in 1971, and saw how quickly the ax can fall on people inside or outside the lab who do not tow the company line. Remember, JPL is not part of NASA and is not government. It is a private, independent lab owned and operated for profit by Caltech. JPL is an independent contractor that runs the robotic space program for NASA.

(emphasis mine)

I don't think he was exaggerating or lying. I have no desire to quibble over whether or not his statement is well characterized by the word "suppression" or not. To me, that word works just fine. If it doesn't work for you, also fine.

We may have trouble communicating, however....

 

[R.Mackey]

However, Bussard obviously wanted development to proceed to at least the point when a review panel would pass judgement. In that, I concur completely, and the only thing that would make me change my mind is evidence that Bussard either was a con artist and fudged data, or that he was just plain mistaken.

It's not ready for that kind of review yet. A working prototype would be good. As for preliminary review, Dr. Bussard was funded for 40 years, and apparently his successors are still funded, so he's got the approval of the right people. Lots of ideas don't pan out, many of which work but aren't practical, others work but the world just isn't ready yet.

For example, non-technical people ask me all the time, "why don't I have a flying car yet?" The technology is there, has been there forever. There's autogyros, there was the AMC Matador in The Man with the Golden Gun, any number of startups exist today -- but no flying cars. It has nothing to do with technology, but instead other factors. Like people can barely drive; can you imagine them trying to fly?? Air traffic control? The FAA going totally berzerk? It's just not that simple.

Or supersonic airliners. It's been done. The Concorde was one of the best aerospace designs of all time, and it bravely struggled along for decades, losing money on every flight before an inevitable accident consigned it to the dumpster of history. Flying at Mach 2 just isn't that important. Everyone is happy to fly at 0.85 Mach for a tenth the price. The hurdle isn't technology in this case, it's cost.

Long-term, I see Bussard's ideas as significant to civilian power generation. Maybe. Spaceflight, an even bigger maybe. Short-term, it's not ready for evaluation.

On the contrary, I'm glad you answered the question, as posed. Obviously, your answer was the most substantive, even if you made an order of magnitude error. Thank-you (again).

You're welcome. I had browser problems (there was a rash of them yesterday!) and lost the entire message, had to retype. In the retype I misread my notes. But I left it in there anyway, as an easter egg for anyone who wants to follow along. It's a simple error, the concepts are all correct.

However, in all manner of problem solving jobs, such as physics or engineering, you don't stop as soon as you hit a roadblock. If I was your boss and had asked you to do a quick evaluation based on the 100 MW figure I gleaned from Bussard's paper (which I still haven't read through), I would be happy. I wouldn't be happy, though, if you said "well, that's that!" - not if you knew about the 5th power dependence, anyway.

Ah, but I didn't.

I've actually done technology evaluation for spaceflight professionally. What one does is to create "gates," i.e. goals for developing technology that qualify it for additional research funding. Having spent all of, oh, half an hour researching it (I would do much more on the job), my "gates" are as follows:

• This technology is best suited for a Discovery-class mission, but to be useful here, it must be scaled to 1000 kg total loaded mass. Anything larger is infeasible with current-era launch vehicles.
• This technology is valuable but less suited for a Flagship-class mission, e.g. JIMO, but must be scaled to 20,000 kg maximum. Anything larger is infeasible with next-generation launch vehicles (viz. Ares V).
• This technology may be valuable as a launch technology, but only if power output can be increased by at least two orders of magnitude. This does not fit any current space architecture and is at least two generations off. There may be a fit in ground-based laser launch architectures, also two generations off.

Those are my minimum performance metric targets. It doesn't appear to be close to any of them at present. It might be someday, but I can't fund that.

That's the way it's done.

Van Flandern also worked at JPL. When he wrote

I don't think he was exaggerating or lying. I have no desire to quibble over whether or not his statement is well characterized by the word "suppression" or not. To me, that word works just fine. If it doesn't work for you, also fine.

I don't know who Van Flandern is, but that's a bunch of crap. I can fill out any "survey" I want, and I doubt you can even tell me what the supposed "company line" is. So long as I do not pretend to speak for them, so long as I do not use company resources such as computers or letterhead, I can say just about whatever I want. This is pretty universal in the working world.

JPL is not operated "for profit" by Caltech. This is a lie. JPL is an Federally Funded Research and Development Center, or FFRDC, and Caltech is a non-profit organization. There is a special contract there called the JPL Prime Contract, and the relationship is complicated -- I invite you to look it up yourself, as I have no comment on business activities.

I'm at a loss to guess what "topics" he's even talking about. We used to have a guy who paraded around at the main gate with a sign saying "Tell the Truth About the Face On Mars." Van Flandern isn't him, is he?

In case you couldn't tell, this post made on my own time with my own materials; all opinions mine alone; this post contains no technology and no schematics, instructions, or technical information of any kind; I do not speak for Caltech, JPL, NASA, the FAA, the CIA, the NRA, the NHRA, or MUFON; consult with physician before beginning any diet plan or medication.

 

[Lynx2174]

Well, even if the OP is wrong and we ain't going to Mars in 2 days using that type of fusion, at least he has imagination and a good grasp of the subject
Imagination takes "if this, then this" and turns it into "what if this instead, then what?"
I say scientific advancement is a function of curiousity, so imagine away dude ( offer subject to peer review)

[Morbo]FUSION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY[/Morbo]

 

[Cardelitre]

^^
(- -)
//^\\

​

Is this a bored Cthulhu smiley? Nice, I'll use it sometimes... ^^

 

[Cuddles]

not if you knew about the 5th power dependence, anyway.

But, as I pointed out in my last post, this is exactly the problem. The 7th and 5th power scalings are unjustified assumptions that Bussard made, and the vast majority of people in the field don't agree. And these are not the only assumptions he made. For example, the last reactor he made only operated in very short pulses, but Bussard assumed that the conditions were representative of the steady state, again with no evidence. Bussards calculations for energy losses from bremsstrahlung also disagree with calculations by others, and mean the difference between having a large energy gain or never being able to break even. Bussard also wanted to use Boron and protons as fuel. He was not alone in this, but shared the problem with all other reactors using this approach that none of them have actually tried using Boron, they all just extrapolate from experiments on other fuels.

The problem with the polywell approach isn't that it is nonsense. It's a very interesting idea based on solid theory and building on previous results. The problem with it is that Bussard's claims are severely exaggerated, and often seem to have very little to do with actual reality. This seems to have led to it being regarded as a magic breakthrough being suppressed by the establishment by some, and a nonsense crackpot theory by others. The truth is that it's just one approach to fusion among many, and it's not most advanced one.

 

[ponderingturtle]

What does velocity have to do with it? It's all about force/thrust, mass and acceleration. There are limits on velocity, but not on acceleration.

m1a1 = m2a2 Yes, m2 isn't very high for an ion engine, so getting a1 up to 1g might be hard, with today's technology. But it's a scaling problem, up against no real physical limits. Also, thrust (ma) is additive, so adding more engines increases it and therefore a1 perfectly linearly.

The fundamental issue is that the more effecient a rocket is in terms of say fuel effeciency, the less effecient it is in terms of power needed.

A 1g Ion engion would require vast ammount of electical power.

 

[BenBurch]

Of course, the Polywell is based on the work of Farnsworth and Hirsch, and eliminates the achilles heel of their machine; The fact that if you create significant fusion you destroy the anode that makes the electrostatic confinement field.

There are other odd fusion ideas that MIGHT yield results some day. This isn't the only one by a long stretch.

There is Cold Fusion... Yes, I know, nothing to show for it yet, but there are anomalous results that several reputable groups have reported, and maybe there is some process there we don't understand.

There is ball-lightning plasma-contained fusion. A guy named Paul M, Koloc has been working on that for 30+ years now. He makes little really hot self-contained plasma balls, but nothing usable at all yet.

There is sonofusion; the idea that the light created by sonoluminescence is actually caused by fusion of hydrogen in the water.

There is inertial confinement; But that is nowhere close to break-even, and it is not clear how you could make such a think cycle quickly enough to make usable energy given the effect of heat on the precision optics needed to make anything happen at all.

Magnetic Mirror technology; Didn't work when they tried it, but maybe there is something we missed?

Mainstream of course is the Tokamak and the ITER project, and there we have a good chance of making it happen, but there are other similar concepts, the Spheromak, the Stellerator, and a few other minor concepts that might yet yield results.

None of these, except the Tokamak and Stellarator are advanced enough to spend real pilot plant money on, and the Stellarator is far enough behind the curve as yet that the Tokamak is where the money is.

I'm betting ITER works. And from there we need about ten times the money we spent on ITER making a prototype full-scale power plant. But once we do that, we can breathe a sigh of relief as this will absolutely be the answer to our energy needs.

HOWEVER, I do not expect we can deploy any significant number of these plants before 2050 or so, and so I believe we need to plan for ITER not working, and invest in about 10,000 conventional 500 MW PWR fission power plants. Even with fusion coming on line, these plants will still be economically viable to run to their design lifetimes; Fusion will NOT be cheap, especially at first.

 

[Crossbow]

I will believe this new power plant that 'metamars' is describing when I see it.

In the meantime, I seriously doubt that any such thing is possible.

 

[Darth Rotor]

There is Cold Fusion... Yes, I know, nothing to show for it yet, but there are anomalous results that several reputable groups have reported, and maybe there is some process there we don't understand.

There is ball-lightning plasma-contained fusion. A guy named Paul M, Koloc has been working on that for 30+ years now. He makes little really hot self-contained plasma balls, but nothing usable at all yet.

There is sonofusion; the idea that the light created by sonoluminescence is actually caused by fusion of hydrogen in the water.

There is inertial confinement; But that is nowhere close to break-even, and it is not clear how you could make such a think cycle quickly enough to make usable energy given the effect of heat on the precision optics needed to make anything happen at all.

Magnetic Mirror technology; Didn't work when they tried it, but maybe there is something we missed?

HOWEVER, I do not expect we can deploy any significant number of these plants before 2050 or so, and so I believe we need to plan for ITER not working, and invest in about 10,000 conventional 500 MW PWR fission power plants. Even with fusion coming on line, these plants will still be economically viable to run to their design lifetimes; Fusion will NOT be cheap, especially at first.

Neither was fission, when you look at what the front end cost was to get the first reactors up. (I'll include the Manhattan Project in that cost line )

Ben, was one of those fusion types you mentioned Lerner's Focus Fusion?

DR

 

[BenBurch]

Focus Fusion seems to be very similar to Paul M. Koloc's work if I understand what I am seeing there. Obviously some differences or the patent shouldn't have ben granted. I was unaware of it before now.

And yeah, the Manhattan Project was hellishly expensive, but Fusion is likely to be even moreso.

A nuclear reactor for all that it has to be carefully designed is just not a machine where all internal parts have to be made to or kept to extraordinarily high tolerances. I mean they need to be well made, but a scuff on a fuel pellet does not make it unusable. And they can actually be run with a very modest control system.

A Tokamak will fail just from a scratch or a tiny amount of dust, so they are notoriously hard to work on or to bring online. And they require expensive superconducting magnets and impressive process control electronics. But in the world of 2050, any energy that is not scarce fossil fuels will be embraced.

-Ben

 

[metamars]

The big problem is that the claim that the power scales with the 7th power of size appears to be completely unfounded, and is almost certainly based on ignoring some important points which would reduce the power gain with size.

In a subsequent post, you refer to the power vs. radius function, stated by Bussard, as an "assumption". I say baloney. As long as we're not quibbling about whether or not it's the 7.00 power dependence of 6.86 power dependence, the impression that I got is that these were sound theoretical calculations, based on accepted theory.

I could be completely wrong, but I wouldn't take some anonymous poster's word on a message board for it, any more than you should take Bussard's claim as gospel. The people who are qualified to evaluate these claims are physicists who have actually studied the matter.

Since the Polywell reactor never reached break-even and there is no reliable prediction of when it will, there is nothing to separate it from any other approach to fusion.

Bussard said otherwise (wrt predicting a reliable decision point; this doesn't mean he gave a specific date, but he did give a specific dollar figure, and you can extrapolate a reasonable guess for a time upper bound from that). Again, who is fit to determine whether he or you are correct? Answer: physicists who have studied the matter, and who have whatever other requisite background knowledge may be required.

The reason tokamaks are so popular is nothing to do with conspiracies, it is simply that they currently have by far the best record, and have done almost since they were invented.

Nobody has definitively answered the chicken or egg question (of course, it's ill-posed), and neither can anybody definitively make a statement such as you have. You completely ignored the difference in funding level, not to mention the years of research.

Although no reactor has actually reached the break-even point, the JT-60 reactor would have if it were equipped to use tritium rather than just deuterium. Tokamaks certainly have their share of problems, but at the moment they just seem to be the best bet. When it comes down to it though, there are plenty of different approaches which are all in the mainstream, including the Polywell, and no-one would be too surprised if any of them turned out to be the most successful.

Solving our energy problems is so important, I am all for funding all approaches, full tilt. It's not just a question of how much oil is left, but of what military action is required to have access to that oil, and the threat that poses to world peace. Just recently, Hugo Chavez threatened to cut off Venezuelan oil to the US...

BTW, I heard a talk by a guy form the Princeton Plasma Lab a few years ago. He claimed that the tokamak R&D is hitting milestones as a function of dollars pretty well. The reason it's taking so long is because of cuts to funding, going back to (I think) President Reagan's administration.

That's just swell, and I hope they keep hitting their milestones. That's still no excuse for putting all our eggs in one basket. $200 million or so for a Bussard full scale model is chicken scratch compared to what the Iraq fiasco has cost us. Let's not even talk about 1 million dead Iraqis and 3,000 + dead Americans.

 

[metamars]

The 7th and 5th power scalings are unjustified assumptions that Bussard made, and the vast majority of people in the field don't agree.

Do you have a source for this? And how is it that the "vast majority" of the people in the field don't agree? In order to have an opinion that matters, they need to also have studied Bussard's work.

Can you provide any evidence that the "vast majority" of physicists working on fusion energy have both studied Bussard's work, and then rendered this opinion?

 

[sol invictus]

It's irresponsible to post without reading the whole thread, but I'm going to do it anyway. Several facts which may be of interest:

1) the tokamak at the Princeton lab hit and passed the break-even point long ago. More energy comes out of it than goes into it - but only when it's on, obviously. Achieving break-even is NOT the problem - the problem is the plasma is unstable because tokamaks don't confine it very well (it's really hard to make a magnetic bottle). As a result the plasma drifts around inside, and after some relatively short time either they have to shut down, or it drifts too far, hits a wall, burns a hole, and makes a big mess. Repairing that is expensive and time-consuming. So it's an "engineering" problem, not a physics problem, but evidently a very hard one since it hasn't been solved in 40 years of trying.

2) as a result of massive cuts to physical science research in the latest federal budget, the US has pulled all funding for ITER, which is (or was) a next-generation tokamak being built in France. So much for US participation in fusion research.

 

[Olowkow]

"Bussard provided more details of his breakthrough and the circumstances surrounding the end of his Navy funding in a letter to the James Randi Educational Foundation internet forum on June 23.[6]"

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58665#27

One of the biggest obstacle (sic) is the world-wide tokamak lobby, which perpetuates the fraud that Hirsch, Trivelpiece and I foisted on the country in the 1970's when we started the big tokamak ball rolling.

First time I heard this. I sure hope money that could have gone to the supercollider was not just dumped into a black hole. Interesting letter. Sometimes it is not just difficult, but impossible to decide who is telling the truth in these esoteric or arcane scientific matters.

The project was defunded because of the Iraq war, he states. It has now been refunded according to an article cited in an earlier post.

 

[BeAChooser]

There are other odd fusion ideas that MIGHT yield results some day.

Don't forget Focus Fusion. http://focusfusion.org/log/index.php

 

[BeAChooser]

So it's an "engineering" problem, not a physics problem, but evidently a very hard one since it hasn't been solved in 40 years of trying.

What if the electric universe folks are right and one theoretically can't produce a stable enough situation in that configuration? Then it's not exactly an engineering problem. In fact, most engineering problems seem solvable if the theory is sound within a few years ... assuming the right materials are available. Could that be why after 40 years and countless billions they still don't have a solution?