Winter Man

You're quite right. Apparently the shots are supposed to be around 100kJ with a spark gap of about 10mm, although I think with the current anode design it varies. There's a way of working out the voltage and duration from that (I think you might need the pressure too), but I really can't be bothered with the effort for all it's worth. Running the machine at 200Hz they expect to get 25kJ surplus per shot, or 5MW from the little thing.

Millions of amps over a fraction of a second.

That's it in a nutshell. The lead/lithium mix is pretty good because the lead slows down the neutrons, then the lithium absorbs them and produces tritium for further reactions. The molten lead (now heated even more) goes through a heat exchanger to boil water and drive a turbine like every other 'conventional' plant.

http://www.generalfusion.com/ Another. Not billions, and not as 'preliminary' as ITER. Also, NIF was never supposed to be a power plant, it's a weapons research facility.

An ITER-style tokamak costs billions, sure. Pretty much every other method costs a hundredth of the amount. Wind turbines' carbon footprint may be negligible, but what about all the other pollutants caused by their production? The point is, you're only comparing tokamaks as the be-all and end-all of fusion. As soon as you add dense plasma focus, polywells or 'concussive' fusion (for want of a better term), every argument against them falls apart.

This is a thread about fusion, it assumes it will work. The scale argument doesn't take into account the fact that microgeneration with fossil fuels still goes on despite the cost. See: pretty much every vehicle. The incredible power density of fusion means it's automatically better suited to small, even portable applications. The sheer square meterage required for solar or wind pretty much disqualifies its use in densely populated countries like the UK, or Hong Kong.

You're missing the bit where there's any point if we have fusion power, this being a fusion thread. Wind, tidal and solar are incredibly resource-intensive and have to be centralised. Distributed grids are what we need.

What about the fact that it's also the 'best case' scenario for a giant solar plant? It's the only equatorial desert, the best place for a solar plant, but it's still economically nonviable.

Try to be so optimistic about solar after living above 60 degrees latitude. Also, who's this mystical 'they' who are going to invent and control fusion devices?

p-B11 is all very well and good, but it requires a much higher temperature to achieve. Several orders of magnitude higher than D-T, that is. I'm all for it, but the first to market will likely be the method of the future, which is looking to be General Fusion's steampunk piston driven machine (running on D-T). At least for a generation or two and only in large scale applications, that is.

Only problem with a reliable open source rocket is anyone with the proper tools could build it. North Korea, for example.

It'll be the Dream Chaser, probably.

Nah, that's an ongoing one. Not something that can be passed.

We're not dealing with people though, with human thought processes and emotions. We're dealing with creatures that have reached the point of utter domination over nature and would thus have a much wider perspective. They wouldn't be choosing to die on an individual level, they'd be recognising the futility in having descendants.

Because not believing in purpose isn't the same as wanting to die? Kind of a stupid question.

I think the greatest test will be advancing themselves to a point of ultra-intelligence and not realising their own irrelevance. From a purely logical standpoint, civilisation doesn't matter. Once a civilisation reaches that point, it would stagnate and eventually die off.

The orbits of the other moons in the system could quite easily account for that discrepancy.

You're best off going collapsible/inflatable for larger structures like that.

Stick it at the L2 of a planet further out than Earth. Never visible from here. The only catch is, anywhere you can hide something in the solar system is where the people after you are going to look. You'd need some kind of plot device allowing you to construct the colony without anyone's knowledge

The opening sequence to Killzone 2 had it about right.

That in mind, it doesn't have to combat gravity at all when you're asleep. It's quite possible the body can adapt just fine to that particular issue. But yeah, I agree with me too. Big test facility in orbit, people just going about their 'daily lives', as it were.

You'd be better off if you're that concerned just building a variable speed centrifuge in orbit. Stick a bunch of people in it and see what happens.

Something to keep in mind, you might want to port your barrel an inch or two in, give all that hot gas somewhere to escape. Don't want to have a CO2 tank (or anything else) blowing up on you when you melt the valves. Most rocket launchers are open tubes for this reason, the exhaust is completely vented out the back (also giving rise to the term 'recoil-less rifle').

Well if you're really set on it, ring contacts (like a DC motor) around the rocket with an embedded igniter. Stick a 9V in the grip and a microswitch behind the trigger, with a slide switch somewhere (with an LED) on the receiver acting as a safety.

Depends how many 9's you put after the decimal point.