Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
Yes we do need to do exhaustive testing anyway. However, should we have waited for the last 200 years before we started selling woodstoves since they still had room for improvement? 1st generation cold fusion is still probably a lot cheaper, cleaner, and safer than any other energy source, so even if 1st generation cold fusion is worthless in 5 years due to improvements, it would still make more sense economically to sell 1st generation anyway. We have become a society full of pansies. There are millions of people dying every day from hunger. There are millions of people in desperate poverty. I don't think they care if it is 100% safe or not if it can provide them with cheap energy. I do agree that this needs a full scale approach as soon as possible, and I completely disagree with Rossi's and Defkalion's approach. But, sometimes a little inefficiency is good. If cold fusion is shown to work in the mainsteam, there is no question there will be virtually unlimited resources poured into it. On Mar 17, 2012, at 9:04 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Jarold McWilliams oldja...@hotmail.com wrote: I agree that it needs to be relatively safe if you are going to sell it, but you don't need a theory to prove it is safe. I expect a theory would improve both safety and performance, and help lower costs. If he really has a device that can produce power at commercial levels, I don't want to see time wasted on explaining the theory of how the reaction works before he can sell it. The time would not be wasted. We need to exhaustive testing anyway. The efforts should be made by thousands of people in parallel so that they do not take much time. This will speed up the introduction of the technology in a wide range of applications. In the end, it is faster and cheaper to do intense RD first, rather than after you introduce the product. Just as some others have said, we used fire for thousands of years before understanding how it worked. That is an interesting comparison. Let's look a little closer. In the last 30 years, woodstoves have improved in safety, efficiency and pollution control. They were invented by Franklin, but they are still being improved. Even though fire is our oldest technology, every form of combustion technology is still being improved, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions. Every dollar is well spent, since the improvements save fuel and improve safety. Gas-fired house furnaces are much safer, quieter and better than they were in the 1980s. Some do not even need a chimney; you can exhaust the gas around 10 feet off the ground safely, since it has no CO in it. Internal combustion engines are the most widely used technology on earth, but they are still being improved. These improvement could not be made without deep knowledge of combustion, chemistry, materials and related subjects. In the past, people put up with unsafe products to an extent we would find unthinkable today. Until the 1870s, steam engine boilers often exploded. This was easily prevented. The ASME and the Congress put in place regulations and inspections, and the accident rate fell overnight. Up until the 1960s, automobiles had dozens of egregious safety problems. Many were fixed at no cost, or in ways that actually saved money in construction and materials. For example the 1950s style fins and other protrusions were eliminated. Those fins used to gore people in accidents. They served no purpose other than decoration. Dashboards and steering wheels were made of hard material. Padding them cost nothing. Seat belts were installed. They are by far the most effective way of reducing injury and death in accidents. From the 1920s until around 1970, cars killed roughly 1.2 million people. (I think that is the number, but it could be higher.) Far more than all of wars in U.S. history. A large fraction of those deaths could have been eliminated with common-sense measures such as padded dashboards and seatbelts. The death rate per mile has plummeted since the 1960s. The actual absolute number of people killed in many states has fallen to levels not seen since the 1920s. My point is, we are not living in 1870, or 1960. People will not put up with innovative new technology that is half-baked and dangerous. We have to do all of the RD anyway. It makes more sense to spend the money and do the work before the product is introduced. That will save thousands of lives and billions of dollars that would be wasted on third-rate, short-lived technology. We can learn from history. We do not have to kill and maim people and waste money the way our ancestors did. We can set a higher standard. Our society is much wealthier and better educated. We have computers. We have thousands of capable engineers and scientists in laboratories equipped with instruments that seem miraculous by the standards of
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
Jarold McWilliams oldja...@hotmail.com wrote: I agree that it needs to be relatively safe if you are going to sell it, but you don't need a theory to prove it is safe. I expect a theory would improve both safety and performance, and help lower costs. If he really has a device that can produce power at commercial levels, I don't want to see time wasted on explaining the theory of how the reaction works before he can sell it. The time would not be wasted. We need to exhaustive testing anyway. The efforts should be made by thousands of people in parallel so that they do not take much time. This will speed up the introduction of the technology in a wide range of applications. In the end, it is faster and cheaper to do intense RD first, rather than after you introduce the product. Just as some others have said, we used fire for thousands of years before understanding how it worked. That is an interesting comparison. Let's look a little closer. In the last 30 years, woodstoves have improved in safety, efficiency and pollution control. They were invented by Franklin, but they are still being improved. Even though fire is our oldest technology, every form of combustion technology is still being improved, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions. Every dollar is well spent, since the improvements save fuel and improve safety. Gas-fired house furnaces are much safer, quieter and better than they were in the 1980s. Some do not even need a chimney; you can exhaust the gas around 10 feet off the ground safely, since it has no CO in it. Internal combustion engines are the most widely used technology on earth, but they are still being improved. These improvement could not be made without deep knowledge of combustion, chemistry, materials and related subjects. In the past, people put up with unsafe products to an extent we would find unthinkable today. Until the 1870s, steam engine boilers often exploded. This was easily prevented. The ASME and the Congress put in place regulations and inspections, and the accident rate fell overnight. Up until the 1960s, automobiles had dozens of egregious safety problems. Many were fixed at no cost, or in ways that actually saved money in construction and materials. For example the 1950s style fins and other protrusions were eliminated. Those fins used to gore people in accidents. They served no purpose other than decoration. Dashboards and steering wheels were made of hard material. Padding them cost nothing. Seat belts were installed. They are by far the most effective way of reducing injury and death in accidents. From the 1920s until around 1970, cars killed roughly 1.2 million people. (I think that is the number, but it could be higher.) Far more than all of wars in U.S. history. A large fraction of those deaths could have been eliminated with common-sense measures such as padded dashboards and seatbelts. The death rate per mile has plummeted since the 1960s. The actual absolute number of people killed in many states has fallen to levels not seen since the 1920s. My point is, we are not living in 1870, or 1960. People will not put up with innovative new technology that is half-baked and dangerous. We have to do all of the RD anyway. It makes more sense to spend the money and do the work *before* the product is introduced. That will save thousands of lives and billions of dollars that would be wasted on third-rate, short-lived technology. We can learn from history. We do not have to kill and maim people and waste money the way our ancestors did. We can set a higher standard. Our society is much wealthier and better educated. We have computers. We have thousands of capable engineers and scientists in laboratories equipped with instruments that seem miraculous by the standards of the 1970s. Why not take advantage of this marvelous stuff to do the job right? Why not use the best people, the best instruments, and the best capabilities of the 21st century? This is the most important breakthrough in the history of technology. It is worth trillions of dollars. In my opinion Rossi's problem is not that he is too ambitious. He is not thinking too big, except in the scale of the 1 MW reactor. He is thinking much too small! He is doing things on a garage-scale start-up manufacturing venture. As someone here remarked, it is as if he has developed a better formula for windshield washing fluid, and he stocking a small warehouse in Florida with cartons of the stuff. What we need is a venture on the scale of the Normandy Invasion. We could have that -- easily -- if Rossi or Defkalion would only act in their own best interests, and reveal the technology in a way that will ensure their own future profits, instead of farting around with penny-ante ventures. - Jed
[Vo]:March 22, 23
Does anybody think anything will happen with the LENR colloquium at CERN on the 22nd or George Miley's presentation on the 23rd of March? I really don't know what happens at these type of events. Is cold fusion going to finally be pushed into the mainstream?
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
Jarold McWilliams oldja...@hotmail.com wrote: Does anybody think anything will happen with the LENR colloquium at CERN on the 22nd or George Miley's presentation on the 23rd of March? I really don't know what happens at these type of events. Is cold fusion going to finally be pushed into the mainstream? No way. One academic colloquium will never accomplish that. Academic conferences attract no mass media attention. Conferences are fine. They serve their purpose, which is to inform scientists. But the only way cold fusion will ever be pushed into the mainstream will be with commercial production of cold fusion devices. I hope that Defkalion or someone else brings that about. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
From Jed, ... Conferences are fine. They serve their purpose, which is to inform scientists. But the only way cold fusion will ever be pushed into the mainstream will be with commercial production of cold fusion devices. I hope that Defkalion or someone else brings that about. I infer from what was conspicuously left out of your response is that Rossi, in your view, is at present to be placed in the buyer beware category. Perhaps a kinder more gentler term would be: not vetted. I would be curious to know what you current take on Rossi is these days. Care to speculate? I could be wrong, but at present my own impression of Rossi is that he is not a scammer. I suspect he actually does have a valid eCat technology for which he is trying very hard to develop and subsequently market. I simply have my doubts (or concerns) as to how reliable, in commercial terms, Rossi's current technology is. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: I infer from what was conspicuously left out of your response is that Rossi, in your view, is at present to be placed in the buyer beware category. As I said in the past, I would not want to buy anything from him. Not even a nail clipper. Not because I think he is a crook. I know him pretty well. I have done business with him, and I know several other people who have. He is very difficult to deal with! He is mercurial, as I say. That's an old fashioned word meaning: Adjective:(of a person) Subject to sudden or unpredictable changes. I would be curious to know what you current take on Rossi is these days. Care to speculate? I wouldn't want to speculate about Rossi. He is the most unpredictable person I know. You never know what he will come up with. Or say, or do. He does things that make no sense to me, such as building a 1 MW reactor. That was an astounding accomplishment. Astounding technically, and astounding because it was so utterly pointless. But who knows . . . maybe he actually sold the thing for a barrel of money. I guess that would be the point. I could be wrong, but at present my own impression of Rossi is that he is not a scammer. I do not know of any evidence for a scam. No one has suggested a method you could use to fake most of these tests, especially the heat after death one in October. As I have often said, Rossi seems like the world's most inept confidence man. He inspires no confidence in anyone I know. As I said with regard to the NASA visit (described by Krivit) he might have inspired a little less confidence if he had met them at the door naked waving a shotgun. I suspect he actually does have a valid eCat technology for which he is trying very hard to develop and subsequently market. It looks valid to me, as does Defkalion's version. I think he is trying very hard to market it, but I think his methods are screwy. It is almost as if he is trying to fail. Like the business plan in The Producers. I simply have my doubts (or concerns) as to how reliable, in commercial terms, Rossi's current technology is. I would not want to live within 10 kilometers of a working 1 MW reactor. This is a nuclear reaction of unknown etiology, for goodness sake! A plan to sell thousands of these machines without first testing them exhaustively in major laboratories world-wide seems like lunacy to me. I can't imagine any government would allow it. I sure wouldn't, if I were a government official. Especially in the post-Fukushima world. Going around telling people: this is not a nuclear reaction -- the way Rossi is doing -- will not actually solve the problem. That does not ensure safety. Saying does not make it so. One serious accident could land Rossi or Defkalion in a world of trouble. It could hold back commercial production for years. There have been several unexplained serious accidents. See: http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=187#PhotosAccidents How on earth can they be sure it cannot happen to them? Do they understand the physics of cold fusion? No one does, as far as I know. I would not risk it if I were them. I would place devices in ten-thousand labs worldwide, and have those labs run up millions of hours of use. I would want to see every major scientist agree on theory, and -- more important -- every engineer agree the thing is safe. Do that before you sell a single reactor. I don't see how else you can do business in the 21st century. The public demands safety. The public *deserves* safety. We spend billions ensuring safety in new products such as the Prius or the Boeing Dreamliner airplane. It is worth every penny. Why should anyone take any risks when a little money up front can eliminate them? The cost per unit will be trivial. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
Von: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 22:19 Freitag, 16.März 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23 As I said in the past, I would not want to buy anything from him. Not even a nail clipper. Not because I think he is a crook. I know him pretty well. I have done business with him, and I know several other people who have. He is very difficult to deal with! He is mercurial, as I say. That's an old fashioned word meaning: This sounds reasonable to me. Rossi reminds me very much of Karl May, who is unknown in the English world. he pretended to ha´ve traveled Arabia and the Wild West, and being a hero (Kara Ben Nemsi , Old Shatterhand). It took decades to deconstruct his phantasies, which he, at times seemend to believe himself. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May#Delinquency Now for the hard part. I'm quite convinced that LENR is real and a good COP can be achieved. Which is a bet on my sanity and good judgement. But on the other hand, academia is blinded by self-interest and dogma. So there is no easy way out. Maybe there is some backroom-activity at NASA annd MIT or where ever . My suggestion, as said, is to make this an open-source-activity, and not rely on academia. If positive, this would be a major blow on established scientific rituals (eg incestuous peer-reviewing.) The evidence is somehow scattered, but nevertheless there is one. Eg Brian Ahern's patent application oct 2011, which has some strange aspects (eg electronics), but anyway. http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Amplification-energetic-reactions/WO2011123338A1.pdf Proof of principle from multiple (open) sources should be possible, which any lab with a minimal amount of resorces should be able to reproduce. Then academia should take over and develop a theory,. The first step should NOT be to produce a homeheating or whatever device, but to demonstrate a repeatable small-scale effect. Thinking big is is not the issue for this first step. Ahern, like many others, chose a setup which is more confusing than clarifying, not to talk about any secret sausage-approach, which would be equivalent to going back to the voodoo-era, where I do not exactly feel comfortable with.
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
On 16 March 2012 21:56, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Jarold McWilliams oldja...@hotmail.com wrote: Does anybody think anything will happen with the LENR colloquium at CERN on the 22nd or George Miley's presentation on the 23rd of March? I really don't know what happens at these type of events. Is cold fusion going to finally be pushed into the mainstream? No way. One academic colloquium will never accomplish that. Academic conferences attract no mass media attention. Conferences are fine. They serve their purpose, which is to inform scientists. But the only way cold fusion will ever be pushed into the mainstream will be with commercial production of cold fusion devices. I hope that Defkalion or someone else brings that about. that is plain ridiculous nonsense! Mainstream media is just just crying for big science news, because they are selling a lot. For example there was yesterday two stories in Finnish largest newspaper, where they studied the sexual behavior of male fruit flies and that Icarus team reported the null result of speeding neutrinos. If someone is to present adequate and replicable proof of few hundred milliwatts excess heat would be by far the most popular story in all news servers and it would attract thousands of Facebook shares. If Miley and Celani can present their findings in scientific terms, that would of course break the news barrier globally. –Jouni
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
As time goes on and the evidence mounts, I am almost certain that Rossi’s secret customer is the US Navy. Today throughout the military industrial complex, it is standard practice to cover the secret systems that the military is developing to deny counter force advantage to potential enemies. With the acceptance of the Rossi reactor for naval development, spy craft is now pressed to advantage in all its varied and potent forms both known and clandestine to protect the Rossi technology. One of the tricks that the military uses is misdirection by covering actual systems development with the ridiculous. Recall from the recent past how the United States Air Force protected the F-117 Stealth Fighter and B-2 Stealth Bomber technologies with a cunning decade’s long campaign of disinformation and obfuscation: Spy and stealth planes--many with bizarre, bat-shaped wings, others with triangular silhouettes that inspirer otherworldly designs in the minds of the general public--have long been cultivated by the military: the defense intelligence agency and the CIA. UFO sightings and lore and their official denials, feed rumors that the government isn't telling us about alien ships. The CIA estimates that over half of the UFOs reported from the '50s through the '60s were U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. At the time, the Air Force misled the public and the media to protect these Cold War programs; even today it's possible the government's responses to current sightings of classified craft--whether manned or remotely operated--are equally evasive. The result is an ongoing source of UFO reports and conspiracy theories. The armadas of secret Earth-built Air Force craft that have likely have lit up 911 switchboards over the years remain largely unknown in the minds and lives of the general public. Cold fusion is the ideal framework for a similar campaign of disinformation as a cover for advance Ni-H powered weapons systems. In like manner, Rossi’s eccentric behavior feed into the kooky public perception that undercuts cold fusion. Rossi who I believe to be a high functioning autistic with limited and otherwise distorted social skills is an ideal pawn to discredit and illegitimatize systems development of the Rossi reactor by the Navy. The Navy will give Rossi all the rope he can take in his public behavior in an effort to poison the E-Cat story as a cover for what the Navy is actually doing. The Navy will feed Rossi’s fantasies and delusions with lies about building automated plants producing millions of E-Cat units, while secretly perfecting the core of his genius into a potent weapons system. Over time, Rossi will quietly fade from the scene as the Navy continues to undercut and delegitimize Rossi’s commercial reactor development; while the US government paints anyone that believes that cold fusion is real as a kook in Rossi’s mold, not only to protect defense secrets but to maintain the economic continuity of the fossil fuel economy that has served the US so well from disruptive turbulence. In a few decades, when the oil is much depleted and the natural gas from US shale deposits are petered out, cold fusion will emerge from the shadows of the skunk-works defense labs to continue the hegemony of the US and its oil producing allies. For all of us who own substantial holdings of oil and gas stocks, this is good news…the best. We can anticipate continued lucrative distributions of dividends into the indeterminate future with no prospect of disruptions or diminishment. From a political perspective, the president of the US who faces the uncertainty of election from the triviality of rising gas prices would be out of his mind to turn the world of energy on its head by revealing Rossi’s world shaking energy breakthrough. On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 5:19 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: I infer from what was conspicuously left out of your response is that Rossi, in your view, is at present to be placed in the buyer beware category. As I said in the past, I would not want to buy anything from him. Not even a nail clipper. Not because I think he is a crook. I know him pretty well. I have done business with him, and I know several other people who have. He is very difficult to deal with! He is mercurial, as I say. That's an old fashioned word meaning: Adjective: (of a person) Subject to sudden or unpredictable changes. I would be curious to know what you current take on Rossi is these days. Care to speculate? I wouldn't want to speculate about Rossi. He is the most unpredictable person I know. You never know what he will come up with. Or say, or do. He does things that make no sense to me, such as building a 1 MW reactor. That was an astounding accomplishment. Astounding technically, and astounding because it was so utterly pointless. But who knows . . . maybe he actually sold the thing for a barrel of money. I guess that
Re: [Vo]:March 22, 23
I agree that it needs to be relatively safe if you are going to sell it, but you don't need a theory to prove it is safe. If he really has a device that can produce power at commercial levels, I don't want to see time wasted on explaining the theory of how the reaction works before he can sell it. Just as some others have said, we used fire for thousands of years before understanding how it worked. On Mar 16, 2012, at 4:19 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: I infer from what was conspicuously left out of your response is that Rossi, in your view, is at present to be placed in the buyer beware category. As I said in the past, I would not want to buy anything from him. Not even a nail clipper. Not because I think he is a crook. I know him pretty well. I have done business with him, and I know several other people who have. He is very difficult to deal with! He is mercurial, as I say. That's an old fashioned word meaning: Adjective: (of a person) Subject to sudden or unpredictable changes. I would be curious to know what you current take on Rossi is these days. Care to speculate? I wouldn't want to speculate about Rossi. He is the most unpredictable person I know. You never know what he will come up with. Or say, or do. He does things that make no sense to me, such as building a 1 MW reactor. That was an astounding accomplishment. Astounding technically, and astounding because it was so utterly pointless. But who knows . . . maybe he actually sold the thing for a barrel of money. I guess that would be the point. I could be wrong, but at present my own impression of Rossi is that he is not a scammer. I do not know of any evidence for a scam. No one has suggested a method you could use to fake most of these tests, especially the heat after death one in October. As I have often said, Rossi seems like the world's most inept confidence man. He inspires no confidence in anyone I know. As I said with regard to the NASA visit (described by Krivit) he might have inspired a little less confidence if he had met them at the door naked waving a shotgun. I suspect he actually does have a valid eCat technology for which he is trying very hard to develop and subsequently market. It looks valid to me, as does Defkalion's version. I think he is trying very hard to market it, but I think his methods are screwy. It is almost as if he is trying to fail. Like the business plan in The Producers. I simply have my doubts (or concerns) as to how reliable, in commercial terms, Rossi's current technology is. I would not want to live within 10 kilometers of a working 1 MW reactor. This is a nuclear reaction of unknown etiology, for goodness sake! A plan to sell thousands of these machines without first testing them exhaustively in major laboratories world-wide seems like lunacy to me. I can't imagine any government would allow it. I sure wouldn't, if I were a government official. Especially in the post-Fukushima world. Going around telling people: this is not a nuclear reaction -- the way Rossi is doing -- will not actually solve the problem. That does not ensure safety. Saying does not make it so. One serious accident could land Rossi or Defkalion in a world of trouble. It could hold back commercial production for years. There have been several unexplained serious accidents. See: http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=187#PhotosAccidents How on earth can they be sure it cannot happen to them? Do they understand the physics of cold fusion? No one does, as far as I know. I would not risk it if I were them. I would place devices in ten-thousand labs worldwide, and have those labs run up millions of hours of use. I would want to see every major scientist agree on theory, and -- more important -- every engineer agree the thing is safe. Do that before you sell a single reactor. I don't see how else you can do business in the 21st century. The public demands safety. The public deserves safety. We spend billions ensuring safety in new products such as the Prius or the Boeing Dreamliner airplane. It is worth every penny. Why should anyone take any risks when a little money up front can eliminate them? The cost per unit will be trivial. - Jed
