Lockheed Martin - New Fusion Reactor design

Well, to be fair, I wouldn't call the Skunkworks a "johnny come lately" outfit... they do have gobs and gobs of money and incredibly talented people after all.

I say we withhold judgement until the papers are published and the results are in.

 

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I have to say, I highly question the validity of the Gizmodo claim, especially when the LM scientist says this,

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html

...does not mention any of the above claims by Gizmodo...

 

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Well I don't see LoLockheed going into the utility business anytime soon. So government would have no say in product pricing.

For this to be commercially viable, it must provide value to a customer base. That value might be cost or environmental or utility.

Consumers can buy electricity at whatever price they choose. Some people voluntarily pay more for electricity, investing in solar and wind. Then there are energy users like the US military were utility trumps cost. So the correct answer is value. The product, like all viable products must offer some value.

 

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As with any potentially Innovative Idea, and the scientific methodology, that makes perfect sense.

 

What? No, I can't. I can not even choose the utility company providing my electricity. If I want to change to another provider, I either have to build my own plant or move. Locally, a few years back, the media made a big deal of a local that spent $40,000 to install a solar system on his house. They repeatedly mentioned his meter ran backwards during the Summer (meter running backwards means he is selling electricity back to the utility BUT not at market price). They glossed over his system providing less than 25% of his needs during the Winter. $40,000 is about 33 years worth of electrical bills for me.

I'll wait until they have an actual fusion power plant running before I become all giddy.

 

I guess you missed the part about paying more. There is no law mandating you purchase electricity from your utility company. You can make your own, buy it from a utility, go without. And most utility regulators are accountable to elected officials.

The law regulates your utility company but not you.

 

Thanks for the link. One of the changing pictures there shows an Aircraft Carrier and notes it would be one of the first application.
That is exactly why the US navy via APL/JHU paid my generous salary for a decade more than 60 years ago. The Navy did not expect our small group (four of us with physics Ph.D.s) to solve the "Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion, CTF, problem as it was known back then. They often used staff at APL to help them oversee commercial contracts. (No Navy officer wants to get stuck in a DC desk job, but we were well paid and most stayed at APL for about 20 or more years - I retired after getting my "30 year pin." One employee, a first hire, got his 50 year pin!)

We and certainly the navy thought the CTF problem would be easy. Just heat a D/T plasma in a strong "magnetic bottle." Little did we know the many instabilities the plasma had available to it to escape thru the bottle's "walls." After a decade they and we knew a few of them and they realized it would be some years yet before they needed our group with "hands-on" hot plasma experience to over see (keep honest) the contractor building the power plant for the next aircraft carrier, so they said: "Thanks, but the money ends next month."

I especially like this text from the link:
"Skunk Works approach to compact fusion is a high beta concept. This concept uses a high fraction of the magnetic field pressure, or all of its potential."
That was exactly our idea, 60+ years ago, unfortunately in all machines yet tried, the higher the plasma pressure is relative to the magnetic field pressure, the greater is the number of instabilities with great than unity feed-back loop gain.

If LM has found a way to stabilize ALL instabilities at high beta, that really is a great advance, but I will believe it when it is done, not dreamed about.

 

Skunk Work's Revolutionary Technology division

none more to be said , other than not surprised really

 

Er -- before they shrink the fusion reactor, it would be great it they made it work! People seem to have forgotten that part...

 

It is a big if , but Lockheed wouldn't be investing in it if they didn't think it is viable.

 

That's not necessarily true. The whole purpose of the Skunk Works is to cheaply research high-risk (low odds of success) projects.

 

So you think Skunk Works invests its resources in a willy-nilly fashion?

The purpose of Skunk Works isn't to waste taxpayer dollars, but to develop new technologies. They are rational educated folks, they wouldn't be in technologies that aren't viable.

 

We regularly do high risk research projects. Our CTO has stated that if one out of ten of those high-risk projects pans out he will consider the investment worth it. So they might well follow a similar paradigm and invest in projects that they merely think _might_ be viable.

 

The point is, at the time investment decisions are made companies, like Lockheed, believe the projects are viable. Now, further research may reveal otherwise. Contrary to popular belief in this thread, companies just don't throw money down the rat hole just for the he'll if it. If Lockheed is investing in this project, they feel it has potential. Contrary to popular opinion again, corporate executives have to explain their use of stockholder money to investors.

Investors don't knowingly invest in projects that are not believed to be viable. Government does, because government is not driven by profit.

 

I didn't say "willy-nilly", I said "high risk". There is a big difference. High risk projects often have very big potential pay-offs and since they don't put a lot of money into them, they consider the potential for overall loss to be relatively low. NASA does some of this too, which is why they've had some pretty ugly but inexpensive failures like anti-gravity and the EM Drive.

Near as I can tell, they aren't using taxpayer money on this project.

Those two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Look, I'm a big fan, but when doing high-risk/high-reward research, you are prepared for the possibility that most of what you research doesn't pan-out. You don't know if something is viable or not until you research it.

Yeah, they really do.

Yes: potential to be viable. Not already proven viable.

Stockholders know what they are getting into when they invest their money in companies like Lockheed.

Soon after the Skunk Works designed the F-117, they designed stealth ships, stealth cruise missiles and stealth submarines, none of which came to fruition and all of which were money losers for Lockheed. They started the projects at-risk because the potential payoff was big.

 

LOL, OK as long as you stay away from my money will be fine.

AT the time decisions are made the projects are believed to viable. As stated over and over again, the investment may fail. Welcome to business.

And there is this phenomenon called time. We don't have a time machine that allows us to travel back in time so we change how we invested.

 

Not sure what you're talking about there, but ok, sure -- I'll stay away from your money.

So you are saying you think this will be viable because Lockheed thinks that the odds are better than 50% that not only will this work, but it will be viable? Well, gee, given even odds, I could have made a lot of money betting Lockheed wouldn't make stealth navy ships, stealth cruise missiles and stealth submarines (beyond prototypes/tech demonstrators). An even-odds bet against every project the Skunk Works has ever attempted would have been a huge winner for me!

Yeah, I'd take an even odds bet against the Lockheed fusion reactor. Heck, I'd take 10:1!

The problem here is that you don't seem to understand high-risk/high-reward investing. For example, venture capitalists can lose money most of the time because a handful of the gains are really, really big gains.
http://jtangovc.com/venture-capital-and-its-33-success-rate/

 

Dude, I have 2 degrees in finance. I have had a successful career in business.

Risk return is the core of finance. What you don't understand is risk isn't relevant to this discussion.

When I make investments I do the risk reward analysis. And when I decide to invest, I believe the investment is viable, else I wouldn't invest. I understand the risks. I know some of my investment s Will match or exceed my expectations and some will disappoint. But that doesn't change the fact that when I invest I believe the investment will be successful.

If an investment doesn't work out, I try to learn from it and move on. But neither I or Lockheed or any other successful business invests friviously or knowingly invests in projects which are not viable.

 

Uh... the stealth navy ship is in production, if I'm not mistaken... with the USS Zumwalt

 

The Exchemist's comment has been the most cogent, and I quote it here to remind everyone that L&M has done nothing much more than talk about its 'fusion breakthrough'. This skunk is quite stinky really.

I also just saw that the exchemist is back at in post eighteen. Some of you have made valid points, but exchemist is the man!