Step 1: Let's stop talking about press reports. The primary
references are pretty sketchy to begin with. Then, after they
get masticated by reporters who are (shall we say) not rocket
scientists, what's left is somewhere between nothing and
worse-than-nothing.
Step 2: Track down the most recent primary reference. This
takes about 10 seconds of googling.
That's a problem, because it's just a bunch of vaporware. It's
like seeing a big sign in the store window:
HUGE SALE!!! ALL PRICES up to SIXTY PERCENT OFF!!!!!
Do they really think I'm not going to notice the "up to" part?
And 60% off relative to what? It's insulting. Do they think
I'm not going to look at the actual prices? It would insult
the intelligence of a cabbage.
I read the press release and watched the 4-minute video, expecting
to find not a single fact that was verifiable and non-trivial (i.e.
falsifiable in the sense of Popper). In the spirit of damning with
faint praise, I found one assertion that is almost certainly true:
compared to fission, fusion would create substantially less of a
weapons-proliferation problem. OTOH that is not news to anybody,
and certainly not unique to Lockheed's effort.
Neither the press release nor the video linked to -- or even hinted
at -- any scholarly publications that would provide verifiable
details.
It goes into slightly more detail, but still it is mostly proposals,
pablum, and platitudes.
It predicts a working prototype at the beginning of 2017. Contrast
that with this week's press release, which predicts a prototype
"five years from now". The fact that the schedule has slipped at
least a year and a half in the last year and a half does not inspire
confidence.
If it wasn't news back then, why is it news now? The fact that
reporters didn't bother to mention the earlier announcement is
further evidence, as if any were needed, of their laziness and
lack of credibility. See step (1) above.
Step 4: Think about the physics.
It's odd that they don't mention where the tritium is supposed to
come from. No, there is not enough tritium in seawater to to run
a global energy system. You can make tritium with a reactor, but
then you need a whole bunch of graphite, neutron multipliers, and
lithium. I suppose you could omit this stage from the alleged
Mr. Fusion-powered aircraft, if you had enough terrestrial reactors
to make tritium, but even then you would need a bunch of on-board
shielding.
I wonder if McGuire's thesis work on /electrostatic/ confinement
is relevant to anything.
And by the way, the claims of "zero radioactive waste" are baloney.
There is /relatively/ less waste compared to a fission reactor, and
vastly less in the way of proliferation-prone transuranic elements,
but definitely not zero. And since long-term disposal of radioactive
waste is AFAICT an unsolved problem, this has to be carried on the
business plan as a "jeopardy" i.e. a potential infinite-cost item.
===================
My opinion:
On Madison Avenue, there is a saying: The sizzle sells the steak.
The advertising industry has a well-earned bad reputation, but even
so, there is "some" role for PR. It would be a mistake to insist
on all steak and no sizzle. But here we have just the opposite ...
all sizzle and no steak, which is not good either. One has to ask,
Where's the beef?
At reputable institutions, there are rules that forbid this kind of
meatless press release. If you have done something, talk about what
you have actually done. That earns you the right to spend a couple
of minutes at the end speculating about what comes next.
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On 10/17/2014 07:33 AM, Diego Saravia wrote: