If a CFR can replace a piston engine, we could see a revival of propeller-driven passenger aircraft.

In the case of fusion, you would get much more energy per weight than any chemical reaction. So yes, you would need water or any source of hydrogen, but the energy that you would get from fusing a few hydrogen nuclei is immensely larger than combustion. I don't know precisely the numbers, but as an example, a hydrogen bomb has very little weight of hydrogen and a huge energy yield.

Could be fantastic.....if it isn't just a come on to get a government grant to study it further.....I'm putting my money on it being a come on so the Lockheed can suck on the government teat.

Polywell - JohnyGalt supports Polywell!

I'm all for it. Let's start drilling on the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, the West Coast, Alaska and frack everywhere. We can use it all up in about 500-700 years.

Thank you. I was questioning the comment at the top, "Ok.....The propulsion for "engines" requires superexpansion of a "fuel". In the case of fusion power, water. An aircraft could not carry the mass required." I don't get the "water" part. Would water be necessary to provide a source of fuel?

No, the product of fusion (of hydrogen that is ) is helium nuclei, also called alpha particles. Hydrogen nuclei, that is protons, can come from anywhere, but the most common source is water. If the hydrogen fusion ever works, there would essentially be no pollution, because helium is chemically innert and it is so light that gravity can't keep it and diffuses out of the atmosphere.

This is old news.
Exciting, yes, I've been waiting breathlessly for updates, but the initial announcement came out in Feb 2013.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article...

My understanding is that 'fusion' is not a problem; getting fusion such that 'energy output' is greater than 'energy input' is the problem. I was puzzled by two things about these press releases: they did not give any data on how much more power the system produced than it needed to power itself, and the fact that Lockheed is distancing itself from the project. You would think that if Lockheed thought that this would work it would say, "MWHAHAHAHahaha" and then "airplanes? they are our secondary product now". Instead they seem to be saying that they will provide workspace but the developer has to find his own funding through investors.

Jan

The only way such an aircraft could stay aloft for that long, is by running a water-vapor electrolyzer and constantly feeding a steady stream of hydrogen to the aircraft's jet engines. Even then the energy budget just wouldn't be there.

Now on the other hand, a CFR could conceivably replace a piston engine. And a CFR could definitely replace the Auxiliary Power Units most jet aircraft, and especially jet transports, carry. A modern APU is a miniature jet engine that provides no propulsion to speak of, but delivers electricity to power the aircraft's systems when the main engines are shut down. You have to start that engine before you can start any of the othere.

The big application of a CFR would be totally decentralized power generation. A property owner in an industrial district could clean up by supplying cheap, local power to his neighbors. An office park could run on a single one of those things. And imagine a vast apartment complex running on one.

bigger than atomic -- daughter products make you
sound like the chipmunks, not a zombie. -- j

I was privileged to visit the 196-laser facility at
Livermore, and to see the charts showing local
maxima when the fusion burst was being tracked;;;
since the skunk works built the sr-71, I wouldn't
put it past them to do exactly this. we need fusion
to tame some of the dictators on this planet. -- j

It's Back To The Future part 3.
If humanity can stop fighting with itself, this breakthrough can signal the end of the need for utility power and the need for conflict except by those who want another kind of power.

Oops, barwick11 did, it looks like.

Did you see this one?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/19175...

Rossi's device has not been verified by non-biased 3rd party. Plus even if works it has not been shown how to scale it up.

A friend of mine, went galt, who is a genius scientific guy (PhD, M.D. Stanford) seems to think it has a shot. He wonders about the materials when scaled up.

Interesting. I wonder if LM is using any of Marko Rodin's work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhBymLCR...

Is not water the byproduct of the fusion, not the fuel for it? They could fly over fires and dump the water, or water areas of draught from the by-product. I remember back in early 60's when I worked at Rocketdyne's Field Lab in the Santa Susana Mountains overlooking the San Fernando Valley. We had a Sodium Reactor up there for research. Not knowing much about this stuff, the whole facility and surrounding area got contaminated. I wonder if you can see it glow from space? I wonder what effect it might have had on how I feel today?

I haven't heard anything about fusion power for so long I've been wondering if it was a dead dream.

Hardware in the background of the video looks suspiciously like Bob Bussard's Polywell Inertial Electrostatic Confinement fusion device. I always hoped someone would give the IEC concept more attention. IEC was first conceived by the brilliant mind of Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of the Cathode Ray tube television. Bussard added magnetic confinement to create the Polywell that promised to plug the leaks, so we'll see if Lockheed can take that idea to the breakeven point.

I mentioned this almost a year ago I think. Same story with Andrea Rossi's work. Very promising. But LM's stuff says it still has some key breakthroughs required. Rossi's work has been third party verified multiple times, and he's still fighting our friends in the patent offices that say it's impossible.

This is wonderful! I can't wait!

Time will tell whether it's John Galt or Pons and Fleischmann.

Hello fivedollargold,
I know... I hope it actually comes to fruition. I also worry some existing big energy lobby may get in the way. Imagine how long they could keep this tied up with the help of some corrupt politicians.
Regards,
O.A.