Polywell Fusion Research funding increased

[Mindblast]

Appearently Polywell Fusion Research has gotten another Navy contract over almost $8Mil for the next 1 1/2 years. Seeing that funding of this research was around $1-2Mil per year in the past it seems their experiments are going to a somewhat larger scale now. Maybe they are on to something ?

Energy Matter Conversion Corp., (EMC2)*, Santa Fe, N.M., is being awarded a $7,855,504 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for research, analysis, development, and testing in support of the Plan Plasma Fusion (Polywell) Project. Efforts under this Recovery Act award will validate the basic physics of the plasma fusion (polywell) concept, as well as provide the Navy with data for potential applications of polywell fusion. Work will be performed in Santa Fe, N.M., and is expected to be completed in April 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to FAR 6.302-1. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, Calif., is the contracting activity (N68936-09-C-0125).

Source:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2009/09/dod-contracts_4116.htm

 

[Urwumpe]

And the congress complains about 3 billion more for NASA...

 

[dougkeenan]

That's great!

 

[Tommy]

Looks like funding for WB 8.1, maybe research on WB 9, which some people think will be the intermediate stage (the stage Bussard didn't think was needed) which will be intended to be large enough to exceed unity. Nevel thinks they can have a production powerplant as soon as 2020.

 

[Mindblast]

Looks like there is even an option for another $4.5Mil: https://www.fbo.gov/index?id=dd2b08efdc1d6a409d2c4b06c1c50507

So it seems the $8Mil is for WB8.0 and another $4.5Mil is available for WB8.1 if the 8.0 results are satisfying. Interesting times ahead. I think Dr. Nebel said that we will know if the design works in the next 1-2 years which would correspond to the contract end of April 2011. I guess one of the main outcomes of these experiments will be the experimental validation of the predicted scaling law.