Rossi Focadi Paper

3 pages of it anyhow

Rossi Focardi Paper

Evening wrap 5/20

17 posts today, that's got to be a record. There's 13 posts to a page, so this morning's posts aren't even on the front page anymore. Another great day. Thanks for coming by.

Environmentally sensitive ass kickers

Honeywell Green Jet Fuel™ Powers U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Demonstration

First Air Demonstration Team to Use Alternative Fuels Will Fly Using Honeywell Green Jet Fuel Made from Camelina

DES PLAINES, Ill., May 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — UOP LLC, a Honeywell (NYSE:HON) company, announced today that Honeywell Green Jet Fuel™ will power two Air Force F-16 aircraft as part of a Thunderbirds demonstration at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

The bio fuel is mixed with conventional fuel on a 50-50 basis. Maybe they can mix the fuel made from natural gas from shale, which is mentioned here.

Energy catalyzer, Andrea Rossi, gets U.S. partner

Andrea Rossi, the energy catalyzer inventor, has reached an agreement with a new company in the United States. The agreement builds on several years of contacts with people linked to the U.S. Department of Energy.

It looks good, but I am waiting for October.

Additional story here.  It's about a patent being granted in Italy for this device.

China gets it, where's our leadership?

China shows a world lead in clean nuclear energy

Earlier this year the Chinese Academy of Science announced plans to finance the development of a programme to develop Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactors (TFMSR). This is the first of four “strategic leader in science and technology projects” that the Chinese Academy of Science will be supporting. 

Tom Olson on Space Show 5/20/11

Tom Olson today.

ISDC ongoing in Huntsville.

Space Investment Summit prior to ISDC. Will give update on ISDC. Gives an intro and welcome.

Investment Summit:
All day event. Panel discussion of space investment. Keys to success, planning. Overcame a lot of hurdles to get this one done. Needed to get some new sponsors. Went back to educational roots. Want to get it back to what it was. State of commercial space. Theme this year public private partnerships to make things happen. Recommends look at archives.


Keys to entrepreneurial success? Some of this on archive in the next few days.
Bullet points? Integrated types of services.
John in Baltimore: Anyone connected dots to economic situation today? Good question he said. Said a few words and moved on.

Comment: Intellectual bubble. Deflates and go back to real world.

Make money now and scale to space eventually- the way to go.

Every good thing takes longer and costs more than you expect.

Discussion of somebody didn't catch name. In propulsion, it is said. Makes rocket thingies. Doesn't bring hype.

ISDC: what stands out so far? Business track- speaker Bolen and Richard Garret. Tag team. Too many things getting built. Spacex: don't want a resusable Dragon- wants a new one every time. Elon will recycle it anyway, he says.

Hearing that someone proposing new rules for human rating. Still up for public discussion. Could strange the baby in the crib. Don't know what it does for crew safety, he says. FAA could jump in too. Make work for bureaucrats.

Lost the signal. Maybe it is my computer.

Got it back.

Going forward for ISDC. Bigelow speaking tonite.

How to use ISS to go beyond LEO travel. Living in space. Enough "churches" here, he says. ( my comment: I just wrote about that this morning)

One guy who should be on show. Greg Allson. Dr. Space knows him. Project Incubator workshop. Turning ideas into doable projects.

Zubrin on Sunday at ISDC. Breakthrough science and technology. Remembering von Braun rocket team.

spacefrontier.org to send business plans top 5 finalists get to present- that's it for Olson

rest of show will be open line

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Inflation will rise abnormally because of seasonal variations.  You can think of it what you want.  When you see high prices at the pump and they say "no inflation", I think somebody is lying.

The human factor in research

Not too long ago, I did a number of posts on the subject of Rossi Focardi fusion research.  Then, yesterday, I came across the energy from Thorium proposition.  Both are attempting to do the same thing: generate energy from the atom.  The difference between the two is that one is fusion while the other is fission.  The similarities are that both had a lot of promise at one point, but seemed to fall by the wayside and recently rediscovered.

There has been a great deal of fear about nuclear energy.  Not to mention the worry about the wastes.  This did not concern me as much as others may have been because of what I read in Dixy Lee Ray's book  Trashing the Planet.  I suspect that a lot of the fear has to do with a lack of understanding which is exacerbated by the way that mishaps get reported in the news.  Hence, the Three Mile Island incident effectively shuts down the nuclear industry here.  A few years later, Chernobyl reinforced that fear.  Now Fukishima just adds to the climate of fear of things nuclear- these things just don't seem safe.  Now, Germany abandons nuclear power.  All of this is an overreaction.  Sadly, it may be unavoidable.  People will fear something they don't understand.   What to do?

The star crossed history of fission has been the impetus for fusion research.  But fusion is much harder.  After all these decades, we still don't have a fusion reactor which is net energy.  But people are looking and looking hard.  As for me, I've been looking closely at the energy issue for several years now.  I came across Dr. Bussard's Polywell concept.  It was one of the first things I wrote about on this blog.  Lately, two other concepts have caught my attention- Focus Fusion and Rossi Focardi's "cold fusion".   My own experience studying these ideas has brought something else to my attention- the human factor.  People fall in love with their ideas.  It is entirely human, but it is also hazardous in its own way.  It may blind us to other paths that we may take.  That's because to fall in love means the exclusion of all other choices.

To fear and to love are all too human.  But it is also possible to learn and keep an open mind.  Unfortunately, when emotions take over, the mind tends to close down.  Reason and logic go overboard and big mistakes can be made.  The reaction to this may draw the reaction- who do you think you are, Spock?  Yeah, maybe you weren't thinking that at all, and the Spock reference turns you off.  I've described times when I got turned off by something only to reconsider.  Sometimes to reconsider can be helpful.  Jumping to conclusions can't be good.  But it is easy to fall into that trap.  I try to avoid that as well as avoiding "drinking the Kool Aid."  I wrote about this Kool Aid stuff on this blog too.  I won't be drinking anybody's Kool Aid.  I'm keeping an open mind.

I haven't fallen in love with any one way of solving the energy problem.  It may turn out that the best way will get overlooked when something else is found.  Such has been the case of fission.  Just looking at the way we generate electricity now may look foolish in the future in comparison to how it might be done better with Thorium reactors.  Thorium reactors are smaller, cheaper and safer.  That is not a mere theoretical possibility.  They have already been built.  They weren't commercialized because it was thought better to be able to make bombs.  Thorium is not useful for making bombs.

However, Rossi Focardi may be right around the corner.  This idea may get the lead on Thorium and it may be back to the sidelines for Thorium.  Frankly, it doesn't make any difference to me who wins.  I think we all win when we solve the energy problem.  If it gets solved by fission or fusion- who cares, as long as it works.

More about Thorium Energy

A couple more videos from the Energy from Thorium site. Perhaps the strategy here is to take this video, which is a whirlwind of information, and break it down into manageable pieces. Let's watch the first video:


LFTR in 16 minutes:



Update:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Hopefully, this picture will explain more quickly why thorium was not pursued as an energy source.

from video above

This is covered in the first minute and a half  (plus a lot of other facts which show thorium's attractiveness in this context.

Here are two more reasons why Thorium is better than Uranium

Here's the final piece I'm putting in here. The reason? If you can't see the advantage, I don't know what else to show you. Watch everything you can and learn about this. It's a big deal.

Morn. Summ. 5/20

A new record for blogger pageviews. Just 10 more and I would have had my first 100 pageview day. Woo hoo!

In case I didn't mention it already, this blog went over a thousand posts yesterday. I think it happened with that flurry of Thorium posts. I wanted to remember the 1000th post, but yesterday just flew by and it past before I realized it.

I like this Thorium idea. This is another one of those ideas that are slipping through the cracks. Not enough people are seeing the potential in this. In the video I just watched, there is the chance that you could get a PHD in nuclear engineering or physics, and never even know about this stuff. But that doesn't discredit it. No, no, no. It has simply been overlooked. Well, there are those who are trying to correct that, and eventually, I think this will make it to the light of day.

This will be another Thorium day.  Stay tuned.

Evening wrap 5/19

 

Today was all about Thorium.  It's not the first time that I've heard of it.  If you bombard the stuff with neutrons, it becomes Uranium 233.  From there, it can form the basis of a fuel cycle that will run a reactor and produce energy- relatively cleanly and safely.  There does appear to be some hazard of wastes, but this is much reduced over conventional designs.

Thorium exists in abundance and can power our civilization for thousands of years.  It can be found on the Moon and could power a colony there.  I took a few screen shots that I felt were interesting.

From Uranium 235 to Pu 238- and other isotopes

Or starting from Neptunium 227 to Plutonium 238- avoid isotopes

From Thorium 232 to Plutonium 238

Thorium Fuel Cycle

Interesting day.  As the header of this blogs, we have a solution.   It is just a matter of implementing them.  That's it for today.  Thanks for coming by.  See you tomorrow.

Let's Talk About An ACTUAL Energy Policy

Makes so much sense.  That's why it won't be done.

Thorium Reactor Question to President Obama

An open question to President Obama, Why aren't we pursuing this technology?

Rep. Joe Sestak's Message to the 1st Thorium Energy Alliance Conference

Former admiral won election in 2006. Served aboard nuclear aircraft carrier. Supports expanding nuclear capacity. Interested in thorium, obviously. Working on getting laws passed in support of this.

Energy Secretary Chu on Thorium Reactors

Today is Thorium day. Didn't start out that way, but that is what it is now.


I was amazed when he said "Soviet Union". This is a video that is less than a year old.

Aim High: Using Thorium Energy to Address Environmental Problems

Google talk. Once again, about using Thorium to produce energy.

Morn. Summ. 5/19

Good showing yesterday, relatively speaking.  

By the way, I just now came across this post.  It is basically what Chris Laird saw back in 2007 and it was this that convinced me that we were headed to a recession.  Interesting to read this again, but this is not the source of information that I read back then.  It is the New York Fed.

May you live in interesting times, indeed.

Wrap 5/18

Earlier today, while I was uploading my video, it came to my attention how small the audience is for it. There's less than 100,000 people interested in space. That is a shame, a real shame. If people can only see it the way I see it, the interest would be so much greater. But what can you do? The interest isn't there and it is hard to deal with that.

With that thought, I come to the end of another day. Here's a summary of what I wrote about today. It is more than yesterday, but yesterday I was working hard on something that nobody's interested in. This is one tough business. Anyway, thanks for coming by, and see you tomorrow.

Splitting water for renewable energy simpler than first thought

Splitting water for renewable energy simpler than first thought? Manganese-based catalyst shows promise

An international team, of scientists, led by a team at Monash University has found the key to the hydrogen economy could come from a very simple mineral, commonly seen as a black stain on rocks.

Not to rain on this parade, but I've seen zillions of stories like this over the years.  It shows promise, but it isn't here yet.

 

Uploading video

The first upload is complete. You can now see it on my People for Space Colonization page. There's a link to that page on the left sidebar.

Since the file is so large, it takes awhile for it to upload. Over an hour for the Facebook upload. I'm now doing it for YouTube. Once that is completed, I will embed a copy on this page. That way, the video can be seen on all my pages.

It's a good video if I say so myself. Worth a look. These are spectacular pics of a balloon rising up to 102,000 feet into the air. At that height, the curvature of the Earth is apparent as well as the edge of space is clearly seen. The sky is black, with the blue sky down below. Don't miss it!