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Bussard's fusion work - the "Polywell" looks VERY promising

So-called, due to the shape of the electron well, with the "holes" aligning with the cusps of the magnetic field, drawn tight by the interaction between the main field and that generated by the moving electrons.
040000222729.jpg
 
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Cheers Crispy they have an article in the Graun now as well.

That interview with Tom McGuire is interesting all round but one thing that particularly got my attention was when he said, to paraphrase that: '[Lockeheed] as a defence company need to be looking toward protecting the planet...' The subtext of this is of course falling profits in traditional 'defence'. One thing I have hoped for a very long time would be that defence contractors could be utilised for their unarguable scientific and technical expertise in ways such as this... Maybe finally this is a new business model emerging lol.

Incidentally what do you think of the Helion project that has a thread on talk.pollywell?
 
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Haven't looked into it in great detail. It's exciting to see all these fusion research programmes that aren't the dead-end tokamak, but there needs to be more funding!
 
MOAR

This basically proves the whiffleball effect is real, but with much more rigorous data collection and analysis this time. It was done with a very small device; the vacuum chamber was only 45cm wide. They've also been doing work with much bigger machines, but didn't have the funding for the big electron guns required to get them running properly.

More coverage: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...project-steps-out-shadows-looks-money-n130661

They're looking for $30m in funding. Peanuts.

How can you not love the look of this thing :D

140613-fusion_e2f17414adfd8b2af818653589f9e052.nbcnews-fp-1240-520.jpg

Who wants some plasma?
 
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kabbes said:
After about 9 minutes, there's a slide that rather sums up Lockheed's interests here. Military planes with unlimited range and energy weapons with unlimited magazines. As the chap says, it's a total disruption from a military perspective,
Click to expand...

They're also interested in the naval aspect - many ships are too small to have a fission reactor installed.
 
kabbes said:
After about 9 minutes, there's a slide that rather sums up Lockheed's interests here. Military planes with unlimited range and energy weapons with unlimited magazines. As the chap says, it's a total disruption from a military perspective,
Click to expand...
Yeah i should have added above that certainly the first bit of the vid is very much about Lockheed's interests as one of if not the premier arms contractor in the US. This much I at least understood. After that it gets very technical.
 
Quartz said:
They're also interested in the naval aspect - many ships are too small to have a fission reactor installed.
Click to expand...
A large part of the problem with nuclear reactors on civilian and military vehicles is the level of training required to maintain and manage them. I don't think we've any reason to believe that the Polywell reactor would be simpler in that respect.
 
Bluntly i can't see a plane based reactor being a serious possibility; i'm far from an expert but i suspect that at least some things will end up being irradiated and themselves radioactive. That means that people will get nervous about it flying over them. NOMBY will kill that aspect.

For use in warships, sure, nuclear reactors are used in several classes of ship at the moment. If you can do it cheaper, safer, denser, quieter, easier to maintain/run then it may supplant the fission systems, even if it doesn't do all of those things.
 
A question: AIUI when fully working, all these devices will require large amounts of power to start. How do you cold-start one without an external power source? How big a bank of batteries would you need?
 
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