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Posted on 10/15/2014 5:42:41 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Hm, Lockheed Martin vs. someone who goes by an alias.
Who to believe, who to believe.
I don’t doubt that Lockheed can do it, or at least make serious progress towards making it happen.
I simply doubt that they will.
Can you imagine the tremendous pressure coming from the White House at this very moment to kill this? From oil companies, Coal? Socialists?
Socialist will be damned if people will have access to endless low cost energy. You think they hate the Tea Party, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been working on “magnetic bottle” fusion for forty years. IIRC, the power requirements for the containment are enormous.
Malthusian cloaked misanthropes like Ehrlich are likely less worried about cheap energy now that Ebola (thanks CDC) seems to be on track to depopulate in the billions. Megalomaniacs like their comforts too.
Many people call it “LockMart”.
Within a decade.
Right on schedule.
Fusion is always about 10 years away.
I'm a software guy, not an engineer, so I don't know the details of any of these attempts to get hydrogen atoms so close together that they can fuse. But here's an interesting fact from inside our own sun that I do know: even the gravity of the sun is not capable of bringing hydrogen atoms (bare protons in that intense heat) close enough to fuse together. And a good thing, too. If that gravitational force was enough to do it, the sun would burn all its fuel much more quickly than it is doing right now.
The only way there is any fusion going on in the sun right now, is the occasional instance of quantum tunneling that allows the rare two protons to get close enough for fusion to happen. Of course, quantum tunneling is there in our devices, too, if we get any of them to work. I'm not saying this to "prove" fusion reactors can't happen. I'm just saying the electromagnetic repulsion of protons to one another is so great that the gravity of the sun doesn't overcome it and that without quantum tunneling there would be no fusion there at all.
Just an interesting fact to ponder while reading of predictions, year after year, decade after decade, that commercial fusion reactors are "about 10 years away".
Not with that enemy islamist still around.
I’m just saying the electromagnetic repulsion of protons to one another is so great that the gravity of the sun doesn’t overcome it...
So, is it possible that at the heart of each star is a
small black hole, or the start of black hole?
Big enough to provoke fusion through QT?
Just wondering.
I liked the reference to “fit on the back of a truck”.
That’s a little ways from “Mr. Fusion”...
Plus, whole industries would be born.
Not to mention that whole industries would be born.
Did I post that whole industries would be born? No? Well: Whole industries would be born.
I once went to LLNL for a job interview. The guy told me that the start-up power for the magnetic bottle experiments was IIRC 900MW. Before I post a number that big, I gave it a few minutes looking around for it (no joy) and in the process ran across a discussion of some of the problems they’d encountered describing “micro turbulence” as a barrier to sustaining a reaction. I was left with the thought about how the reality of simple ideas and principles seems always fantastically complex. Muse for the day.
I want the near-invisible car behind it.
Yup. Commercial fusion reactors are just 10 years away, and have been for half a century.
Yeah I am not sure what the deal is with that. Speculating as a promo ad shot the idea might be since the model is the plug in hybrid version that it will begin to make other conventional vehicles disappear at some point in the future.
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