Polywell fusion

[Charles Gray]

Read about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

and

http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php

There seem to be promising signs,and this would be one of the big game changers if it ever comes to pass.

 

[mz]

Well, it's one of those less-of-a-scam energy projects. Though Bussard had a history of optimism - the Riggatron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riggatron

It's still useful to check it out - if it works, then that's great! That checking seems to be mostly engineering in a mostly known territory.

For producing lots of energy from little fuel in the future, there are more conventional advanced fission alternatives that have already been demonstrated decades ago that should be researched right now.

 

[Charles Gray]

The thing that annoys me is that they're naming 200 mil as the cost for the full up version test version, which shoudl prove or disprove the concept. The results on teh smaller scale designs are promising, and this is the sort of thing that heck, give it a shot. We spend more money on big macs then this and the return if it works would be, quite literally unimaginable.

 

[Nik]

The analogy I saw about Polywell scaling was akin to the early days of steam engines. Then, having a piston fit a cylinder 'with barely space to slip a penny' was considered state-of-art. Trick was to have a sufficiently big cylinder that its 'square vs cube' factors balanced and the system 'broke even' despite large leakage losses. Same with prototype Polywell designs-- They need to be much bigger to reach break-even...

I hope the power-law scaling works out as, among other implications, such as combined heat & power generation, a working Polywell would revolutionise space flight and open the solar system...