I first heard about Farnsworth style Fusors in 1988. Someone asked to make a presentation to the program I was working which was developing a single stage to orbit airplane. In his presentation, we were asked to recommend to our government customer that his group get funding to continue development of their fusion device as a power source for single stage to orbit vehicles.
We didn't have the expertise to make such a recommendation and so did not, but if it worked, there was no doubt their devices would have made single stage to orbit much easier. I've lost my notes from the briefing so can't give a name or details, but, as I remember, the group was in New Mexico and a part of the Eaton Corp, strange as that sounds. (Eaton made truck brakes at the time amongst other things.)
The man who made the presentation did not mention Farnsworth or Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, but he did have a design for about a 2 to 3 ft diameter sphere weighing a couple of hundred pounds that was supposed to fuse hydrogen and Lithium and produce several megawatts of energy by direct fusion to electrical power conversion with no radiation hazard. Sound familiar?
He said there was a special trick on the inside that he would not discuss, but said that it was all based on solid physics. He did not seem to be a nut.
I wondered for many years if his "trick" had anything behind it, and our world might radically change at any time, or if it was just a blind alley with respect to fusion energy production. I still don't know the answer to this question, but was very glad to finally see the "Analog" article by Tom Lignon that revealed what I assume were the basic elements of the "trick" I had heard about several years before. Tom suggested I have a look at the Farnsworth discussion board. Many thanks to all you contributors; I have really enjoyed reading the postings.
It would be great to talk to the several megawatt sphere guy again, I could ask way better questions now than I could then.
My interest in the discussion board is to move myself a little farther along the path to answering the above question about Fusors being a blind alley or not. I am not building anything, but bought a big stack of old physics books and am spending spare time working on understanding Fusor physics with the goal of developing simple analysis methods.
Mark Sloan
Created on Tuesday, January 23, 2001 9:15 PM EDT by Mark L Sloan