Skunkworks breakthrough

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Message 1587271 - Posted: 15 Oct 2014, 18:39:36 UTC

No it's not an item about planes.

Lockheed Martin Claims Breakthrough on Fusion Energy

Oct 15 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.
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Message 1587485 - Posted: 15 Oct 2014, 23:33:26 UTC - in response to Message 1587271.  

No it's not an item about planes.

Lockheed Martin Claims Breakthrough on Fusion Energy

Oct 15 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.


Hmmm... that IS interesting! Thanks Winterknight :)
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Message 1587490 - Posted: 15 Oct 2014, 23:40:55 UTC

Well, if anyone can do it they are the team I would put my money on.
Bob DeWoody

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Message 1587676 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 7:42:39 UTC

The only fusion Lockheed-Martin can do is that of the runaway with its F35 engine for short takeoff. I hope the jumpjet carriers of Great Britain and Italy have been duly reinforced.
Tullio
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Message 1587694 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 8:12:45 UTC - in response to Message 1587676.  

The only fusion Lockheed-Martin can do is that of the runaway with its F35 engine for short takeoff. I hope the jumpjet carriers of Great Britain and Italy have been duly reinforced.
Tullio

I didn't read anything in the article about fusion propulsion. And to quote the OP:

No it's not an item about planes.

Did you even bother reading it?

Member of the People Encouraging Niceness In Society club.

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Message 1587767 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 12:04:13 UTC

I get the feeling that Tullio has a very low opinion of the work being done by the engineers and scientists under the employ of Lockheed/Martin in their quest for a working fusion reactor. I have heard similar claims from other research organizations and they have all failed to produce useful energy from their devices. One can only hope that L/M is truly on to something.
Bob DeWoody

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Message 1587768 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 12:13:47 UTC - in response to Message 1587767.  
Last modified: 16 Oct 2014, 12:30:39 UTC

I have read in theregister.co.uk the opinion of prof. Edward Morse of the UC Berkeley School of Nuclear Engineering and he is very skeptical too. Anyway, let them try. Time will tell.
Tullio
Here is prof. Morse:
Morse
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Message 1587808 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 14:41:15 UTC - in response to Message 1587767.  
Last modified: 16 Oct 2014, 14:43:52 UTC

I get the feeling that Tullio has a very low opinion of the work being done by the engineers and scientists under the employ of Lockheed/Martin in their quest for a working fusion reactor.


Tullio is skeptical and rightly so. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Let's see a dozen independent analyses confirm that this device produces more energy via nuclear fusion than it consumes, and then we can break out the champagne and thank Lockheed Martin's scientists and engineers for saving humanity's future.

Until then, as you noted, it's yet another in a long line of failed attempts.
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Message 1587847 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 16:30:14 UTC
Last modified: 16 Oct 2014, 16:33:09 UTC

I liked this bit...

Lockheed sees the project as part of a comprehensive approach to solving global energy and climate change problems.

Compact nuclear fusion would produce far less waste than coal-powered plants since it would use deuterium-tritium fuel, which can generate nearly 10 million times more energy than the same amount of fossil fuels, the company said.

:)

I wondered about this bit - given our dodgy history as a species at extracting things we want from our environment - and where we'll be sniffing about for these ones...

Ultra-dense deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, is found in the earth's oceans, and tritium is made from natural lithium deposits.

:/

And this bit made me wrinkle my nose in distaste...

McGuire said the company had several patents pending for the work and was looking for partners in academia, industry and among government laboratories to advance the work.

:(

...even though I concede that patents and intellectual property rights may be a necessary evil (in the sense of recouping costs and getting a return on investments) ... they've become a blockade to further research in the past...

As for this bit! I REALLY didn't like... It should have led the article... It's the overriding reason for the research - not the cosy one they started with...

A small reactor could power a U.S. Navy warship, and eliminate the need for other fuel sources that pose logistical challenges.


*duplicity ooze alert* :[

And I can't comment on the science - my armchair hasn't seen a lab in years...

@Chris's BTW: didn't expect to feel much - then felt sad :( and extremely disapproving :[
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Message 1587854 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 16:44:32 UTC

Cold Fusion, the remake?
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Message 1587877 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 17:18:37 UTC - in response to Message 1587854.  
Last modified: 16 Oct 2014, 17:20:31 UTC

No, this is hot fusion. It looks very much like a Z-pinch (Perhapsatron) which was developed by the US Department of Energy and then abandoned. But Lockheed-Martin is looking for investors (venture capital) which may be the reason behind this announce. Fueion research experts are now in St. Petersburg for a congress. Why wasn't it announced there?
Tullio
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Message 1588040 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 0:03:51 UTC - in response to Message 1587877.  
Last modified: 17 Oct 2014, 0:04:14 UTC

... developed by the US Department of Energy and then abandoned. But Lockheed-Martin ... (venture capital) ... Fusion research experts are now in St. Petersburg for a congress. Why wasn't it announced there?

Tullio,

This is yet another of a similar series of announcements this year from the 'secretive' 'Skunkworks'...

My suspicions are similarly suspicious for such grand claims with nothing of substance to believe...


All a game of funding?...

Whatever happened to Thorium??


Keep searchin,
Martin
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Message 1588049 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 0:22:03 UTC - in response to Message 1588040.  
Last modified: 17 Oct 2014, 0:26:21 UTC


This is yet another of a similar series of announcements this year from the 'secretive' 'Skunkworks'...

My suspicions are similarly suspicious for such grand claims with nothing of substance to believe...


All a game of funding?...


And there is this similarly dubious recent release which contained this absolute doozy:

Researchers ... say they have detected significant numbers of neutrons—byproducts of fusion reactions—coming from the experiment. This, they say, demonstrates the viability of their approach and marks progress toward the ultimate goal of producing more energy than the fusion device takes in.


Any bright middle-schooler can tell you this is utter twaddle... hundred-dollar tabletop Farnsworth fusors (including home-made) do fusion and produce neutrons, and have for seventy(?) years, and none of them have even approached an order of magnitude of closeness to breaking even. And theoretically, they couldn't no matter how they are designed.
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Message 1588076 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 1:31:26 UTC - in response to Message 1588040.  

Hi Martin. Thorium was investigated in Italy many years ago and then abandoned. Recently Carlo Rubbia proposed an energy amplifier by which a particle accelerator would bombard a Thorium target and start a fission reaction All this seems too complex. Last year Italy got 26% of its electricity from renewable sources (Sun, wind and hydroelectric power). This seems to me more reasonable.
Tullio
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Message 1588125 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 4:07:49 UTC - in response to Message 1587877.  

No, this is hot fusion. It looks very much like a Z-pinch (Perhapsatron) which was developed by the US Department of Energy and then abandoned. But Lockheed-Martin is looking for investors (venture capital) which may be the reason behind this announce. Fueion research experts are now in St. Petersburg for a congress. Why wasn't it announced there?
Tullio

Did not mean the method, but the big press conference and then no one being able to reproduce the results.
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Message 1588134 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 4:38:17 UTC

The only hope I see for this process is that Lockheed/Martin does not usually back or sponsor losing ideas.

We are going to laugh and ridicule every new fusion concept right up to the one that works.
Bob DeWoody

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Message 1588209 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 8:58:38 UTC - in response to Message 1588134.  
Last modified: 17 Oct 2014, 9:02:47 UTC

We are going to laugh and ridicule every new fusion concept right up to the one that works.


The laughter is an earnest requirement; ideally it should be loud enough that it is heard by bamboozled politicians about to throw more money their way.

I'm all for fusion research, but when groups start making the kinds of pronouncements I quoted, it sounds as though they are fleecing a public desperate for an alternative energy source to preserve its future. Or perhaps they just need a better press agent. :^p
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Message 1588288 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 13:25:47 UTC - in response to Message 1587847.  


And this bit made me wrinkle my nose in distaste...

McGuire said the company had several patents pending for the work and was looking for partners in academia, industry and among government laboratories to advance the work.


...even though I concede that patents and intellectual property rights may be a necessary evil (in the sense of recouping costs and getting a return on investments) ... they've become a blockade to further research in the past...


You have it backwards. Patents are a necessary good. Lockheed is a private company. If the technology does not work, they don't make money. It is not by accident that a country with a strong patent system is developing this, while the others just complain (whether it works or not).
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Message 1588480 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 20:55:49 UTC - in response to Message 1588288.  

You have it backwards. Patents are a necessary good. Lockheed is a private company. If the technology does not work, they don't make money. It is not by accident that a country with a strong patent system is developing this, while the others just complain (whether it works or not).


*attempt to enter thread nose first*

*fail*

Erm... *place pet grieves about certain pharmaceutical and chemical company patents on floor outside door*

*step gracefully forward to concede a point* *trip over pet grieves* *emphatically plant nose firmly into opposite wall*

Aah.... :) Erm... Hi Jim1348 :) You don't mind if I call you Jim do you? :) Fair comment... and I like what you did there :) long time since I've seen "necessary" and "good" put together. Refreshing :)
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Message 1588508 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 22:06:40 UTC - in response to Message 1588480.  

You have it backwards. Patents are a necessary good. Lockheed is a private company. If the technology does not work, they don't make money. It is not by accident that a country with a strong patent system is developing this, while the others just complain (whether it works or not).


*attempt to enter thread nose first*

*fail*

Erm... *place pet grieves about certain pharmaceutical and chemical company patents on floor outside door*

*step gracefully forward to concede a point* *trip over pet grieves* *emphatically plant nose firmly into opposite wall*

Aah.... :) Erm... Hi Jim1348 :) You don't mind if I call you Jim do you? :) Fair comment... and I like what you did there :) long time since I've seen "necessary" and "good" put together. Refreshing :)

They are necessary and good, but that does not mean the current structure of patents is the most optimal. I'm thinking that a patent for a treatment should be a shorter term than a patent for a cure which should be shorter than a patent for a vaccine. This to encourage more R&D dollars be spent towards making sure people don't get sick rather than making money off continuing treatments.
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