[ExI] Lockheed skunkworks announcement about fusion

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 1:15 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Lockheed skunkworks announcement about fusion

 

On Thursday, October 16, 2014 11:57 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:



….  Could you do so on our behalf, please?





No sir.  If he has what the article says, we don’t want to
distract that man for one minute, not one second.  He holds
the future of humanity in his hand.


I can understand your reluctance, but it borders on the absurd…Regards,Dan

 

 

 

Before I do any asking, we can do some BOTECs to give us a vague feel for what is going on here.  Let us assume that a miracle has occurred and the conversion efficiency of fusion products suddenly jumped from struggling to break even (for the past half century) to a mind-boggling 50%.  If we take the third law of thermodynamics as a LAW rather than a friendly suggestion, then one of the derivatives is the Steffan-Boltzmann’s equation, (some squiggly furrin letters) times sigma (5.67e-8) T^4 = 100E6 W/m (Tom said it was 100 megawatts in a package that will fit in a truck.)  So make some reasonable assumptions on what kind of truck he meant, but I am getting surface areas all in the less than 100 square meters range, so T^4 is still going up there in the E15-ish range before I even need to reach for an envelope to C the BO.  This part can be done in our heads.  Where is all that heat going?  If radiation, we are up well over 1000Kelvin, which in a truck sized package would be… bad.  If that heat is being carried off by convection, we would need a cyclone.   Helicopter blades going full throttle kinds of breeze to carry away the heat.

 

Come on, me lads!  We are Extropians!  We know how to do BOTECs, so let’s DO them, por favor, rather than asking questions of someone who might have done something great.  Get out the old thermodynamics textbooks, blow off the dust, review that chapter on how engines or any energy conversion device must follow the third law and its consequences, and estimate a waste heat production and rejection model or equation, post it here and explain your reasoning. 

 

It feels to me like this is a good couple orders of magnitude off base, or more than that really.  But I haven’t sold my company stock yet.  If I can convince myself that these numbers have any basis in reality, then I will ask Tom what’s with this invention.  Right now I don’t have that feeling.  Something is waaaay wrong.

 

spike

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