How did a thread about nuclear fusion drift into being about patents for medicines? I guess this ebola situation is creeping into all of our thoughts.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

How did a thread about nuclear fusion drift into being about patents for medicines? I guess this ebola situation is creeping into all of our thoughts.

Well the reality is you gotta pay for it or it is all moot.

---

How did a thread about nuclear fusion drift into being about patents for medicines? I guess this ebola situation is creeping into all of our thoughts.

Well the reality is you gotta pay for it or it is all moot.

It became about why capital is invested.

---

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.

well, their YF22/F22 wasn't the finest product on the face of the Earth...
nor is the YF35...

but we never know...might be something better, like F16 or C130? ;)

---

non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Another view of the original story.

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

Another view of the original story.

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

That sounds like a revisit to old ideas that were superseded by the present day tokomak designs such as JET and ITER. Fantastic if they can leverage modern day materials and control to get their more compact format to work with today's tech.

Always good to have another team in the race!

Keep search in
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Thanx, good read Martin

---

I've read that ITER is going to have a new boss, with more power to organize things. He is a Frenchman, of course. It seems that every State taking part in the building was going its own way, without a clear direction, caring mostly to get contracts to its industries. We shall see.
Tullio

---

I've read that ITER is going to have a new boss, with more power to organize things. He is a Frenchman, of course. It seems that every State taking part in the building was going its own way, without a clear direction, caring mostly to get contracts to its industries. We shall see.
Tullio

But can he stop it from hemorrhaging like the cut artery that it's been?

Cheers.

I have your same doubt.But let's wait and see. Big science has big problems.
Tullio

---

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...

If any self-proclaimed amateur scientist trying to do hot fusion experiment at home and created a portable fusion reactor...he is going to infringement of Skunkworks's compact fusion patents?...Yes?...No?

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...

If any self-proclaimed amateur scientist trying to do hot fusion experiment at home and created a portable fusion reactor...he is going to infringement of Skunkworks's compact fusion patents?...Yes?...No?

The US has no personal use, other places do. So in the USA yes you are infringing, in Europe not. If it can be classed as research then it's non-infringing everywhere.

I think it is as likely that I will discover a way to make FTL travel work as it is for a basement scientist to develop a working fusion reactor.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Nice reactor...25kg for 1y on 100MW...
Hm! What can we power with that? 2000+ ion-drives with total thrust of 1kN? Hm...interesting!
;)

I've read that ITER is going to have a new boss, with more power to organize things. He is a Frenchman, of course. It seems that every State taking part in the building was going its own way, without a clear direction, caring mostly to get contracts to its industries. We shall see.
Tullio

Good...now, they'll never get it DONE!
Or it will be as good as their cars...rubbish!
:/

---

non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Thats's a little unfair to France maybe! Their cars are odd, we had the iconic DS19 then the silly 2CV. But that is off topic.

Iconic DS19, yes it was...but it almost never worked properly! ;)

---

non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

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.

Look similar to the Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF-B) project that was canceled by the Reagan administration Department of Energy during 1986.
So, Lockheed Martin is going to re-start the mirror fusion?

Story of MFTF-B:
In all it took nine years to build MFTF-B machine at a cost of US$372 million. On 21st February, 1986 staff and guests gathered for the official dedication ceremony. The Secretary of Energy, John Herrington, had traveled over from Washington along with other DoE staff and he commended the Livermore team for their work. But it was not the joyous occasion everyone had been expecting.
The political climate in the mid 1980s was very different from a decade earlier. Ronald Reagan had come into the White house in 1981 and had aggressively cut public spending. The high oil prices and frantic search for alternative energy sources of the 1970s were now just a memory. To the Reagan-era DoE, funding a second type of fusion reactor just to provide competition for tokamaks was an expensive luxury. So the day after congratulating Livermore on its achievement, DoE shut the doors on MFTF-B without ever having turned it on. A few years later it was dismantled for scrap and to this day the scientists, engineers and technicians who spent years working on the machine do not know if it would have worked. (from the book "A Piece of the Sun" by Daniel Clery)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility

Looks like Hogwash to me.