TR-3A Black Manta- here's what I know!

a reply to: Barnalby

Just imagine what, say a bomber, could do with enough power to light a small city. It wouldn't even power the engines. They'd never have to worry about choosing systems to run again. They could shed a lot of weight by dropping the generators off the engines, along with the supporting equipment.

Reading some of the chit chat, I miss the days of when I bounced from base to base 15 plus years ago.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Hmmm. I wonder if that aircraft, say a bomber, will have a MUCH longer range than originally advertised? An aircraft, say a bomber, the AF will eventually want to install high powered DEW on?

a reply to: Sammamishman

You could have a B-1 that could navigate AND deice at the same time.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Wouldn't that be nice to de-ice in a B-1.

a reply to: Sammamishman

They can deice now, if they don't mind getting lost.

a reply to: Zaphod58

a nice loud Halloween is in order for sure.

I think that if i were to be making a platform with a fusion reactor or a few of them to power DEW or railgun type weapons and give it a rocket engine to get to LEO and you have indefinite loiter and attack platform. now add various stealth features and EW and keep it right at the edge of space with at a certain angle and i don't think anyone would see it....

orrr

same thing minus the weapons and put people in it and you have a orbital lab/spy station

a reply to: penroc3

Well first you need a fusion reactor!

a reply to: MystikMushroom

yeah, but then again you could just use a unmanned un-shielded reactor fission platform. better hope it doesn't crash

I can lead you to water....

It's right in front of you too.

a reply to: Zaphod58

and im thirsty too..... oh well i guess some things are better left unsaid....or unconfirmed

a reply to: Zaphod58

I'd rather be temporarily without nav for a bit to keep from dying in a crash due to iced wings!

Just have some dude pull out his smartphone with GPS LOL. Or a map and compass. I'm sure you could make a sextant from some pens, rubber bands and tape!

a reply to: penroc3

www.gizmag.com...

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Once they're on route they can deice. It's during climb out that they can't. And if you go through a thunderstorm, things like the edges of your intakes ice, which later goes through your engine causing a mess.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I have to be skeptical...we've been promised fusion since the 70's. My jaded and cynical brain thinks this is more for getting investors than anything.

a reply to: Barnalby

That's super interesting, hadn't heard anything about this EMC2 project. I'm guessing since it went dark, there might not be a great deal of literature out there on it. Going to do some digging, anyways. Cheers!

a reply to: Revolvacron

The fact that it's so easy to build a Farnsworth fusor in your basement and get real fusion products should tell you everything you need to know about the viability of electrostatic confinement. Try building even a 1960s or 70s Tokamak or stellerator with a couple grand and basic tools/power supplies.

The magnetic confinement in the Polywell as well as LM's design is just the icing on the plasma confinement cake. If you're so inclined, you can even build a basic tabletop Polywell demonstration reactor fairly easily. You'll be nowhere near break-even, but it's still doable.

Fusion is much, much closer to reality than most people realize. Just don't expect any breakthroughs to come from ITER or the NIF. It's all about the small players with the truly innovative ideas about how to confine an aneutronic plasma mass.

a reply to: Barnalby

Okay, assuming we're close -- would we even be allowed to have fusion power? The potential fallount/impact on the global energy markets would be staggering. If an entire suburban city could power itself from a generator the size of a pick up truck for decades without the need for fuel, oil companies and energy suppliers would freak out.

I mean we're talking paradigm shifting stuff here, powerful people no longer having the stranglehold they do.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I always say that.

Free energy isn't free.

Not everyone has the cash on hand to install a home based power system that can cost up to $50K depending on where you live.

And yes. I did say $50K. Especially in places like Florida where you have to have equipment that will pass hurricane building codes.

So the people who will be jumping on Fusion Power will be utilities that will then sell the power from the reactors to homes.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

The same could have been argued for fission a half century ago. There are always drawbacks, no matter how good some things look on paper. In some ways, it'd be no more disruptive than distributed solar and Tesla's home battery technology.

The drawbacks I can see are:

1: Cost. No matter how promising these technologies are, at the end of the day you're still talking about an extremely high-precision piece of high-energy physics apparatus. The reactors themselves will likely cost enough to make them unrealistic for all but the wealthiest of nations and communities.

2: Fuel, these things still consume fuel, and they'll consume relatively large amounts of fuels that we currently have zero infrastructure for producing. If I'm a big oil company, I have a long lead time to develop heavy water/lithium harvesting technologies.

3: Public opinion. In the 1950s, nobody could have imagined that the immense promise of fission power would lead to nothing but a brief wave of 1st-generation reactor construction followed by a huge Luddite backlash that would make it all but impossible to build new reactors after 1970 or so.

We had world-disrupting reactor technologies 40 years ago in the CANDU and AGR reactor designs, which were relatively inexpensive to build and fuel while being all but impervious to meltdowns, and nothing came of that promise. We have them today in distributed wind/solar with home batteries, and I'm still doubtful that anything will come of it.

Economic realities and the court of public opinion can quash good ideas with a brutal efficiency that the oil companies, coal companies, etc can only dream of.