Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
They do? It's a spinning thing. Wouldn't that lend itself to AC much easier than to DC? Just transmit the spin to a magnet and presto! AC electricity.



This is addressing me, but I think I've been quite clear that I don't expect the Skunk Works reactor to come to anything, merely that before we call it dead we at least give them the period they requested. So, am I to take it that this is agreeing with me? Or are you declaring that because every previous attempt failed, we should automatically declare every future attempt must also necessarily fail?

Grey Wolf
While spinning is good for producing AC, it will almost always produce AC at a frequency at some ratio of the rate the generator is spinning (I suppose that if you really wanted to, you could manage to have a generator on a motor with a difference built in, in practice you will much more likely see a generator (probably producing AC, just not 60Hz or specific voltages) feeding a power supply system that converts AC to DC and back to AC. Expect at least 80% efficiency, but not much more than 90% in each conversion.

I'm not claiming that every attempt will fail (although nearly all such research turns out to be a dead end), just that I was pretty sure we had at least proof of concepts for fission (that didn't have all the issues with the Markowitz article) and they don't seem to go anywhere. Of course, they don't have the pizzaz of fusion. You might get enough investments throwing the fusion word around. Although why Lockheed Martin would need investment to build a "Mr. Fusion" is beyond me.