Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Put it this way: If an amateur could do a cold fusion experiment in
his spare time, and produce a meaningful or even persuasive result,
that would be a remarkably easy experiment. . . .
Well, then, we know where we can sell the kit! Jed, I know it's
difficult, I get it. But, I suspect, it isn't as difficult as you
think, it is only difficult when you are one person with no
experience and you try to set it up yourself.
Actually, I do have experience doing cold fusion experiments, albeit
mainly ones that did not work. But I was reporting what the
researchers say, not what I say. They say it is difficult and it does
not work most of the time, for unknown reasons. There are some
experiments that work very often, or all of the time, such as
Iwamura's, but these are extremely demanding. That is why they work.
The people doing them have established elaborate and time consuming
procedures that must be followed. (You can see from their equipment
that the experiment is not portable.)
Have any of these people who had such a hard time had a kit to buy
that had been designed *and tested* by people with the necessary experience?
I do now know anyone capable of designing or testing such a kit. The
experiment you are thinking of making into a commodity (as it were)
was taught to others in the Galileo project. The results were mixed.
I do not know the details but I did not get a sense that it reached
the point that you could put something in a box, ship it, and have
the recipient do a meaningful experiment. As far as I know, the
replications were done by people who got hands on training. Steve
Krivit would know.
If you can accomplish this, and reduce the art to science, you should
do a more practical experiment such as Arata. I will then call some
of these venture capitalists who have been hounding me and we'll get
you tons of money.
Do you really think that building a cold fusion demonstration, say a
simple codep cell, is as difficult as building an automobile?
Sure. It is roughly as difficult as building an automobile in 1908,
just before the Model T went on sale. As I said, building an
automobile was a do it yourself project, like building a
microcomputer in 1975. Sears sold instruction books and you could get
a lot of the parts off the shelf. Skilled mechanics and blacksmiths
built their own engines, in a couple of months, but I think you could
buy ready-made engines. Anyway, it took a great deal of skill. I have
a book describing how Charley Taylor built the first airplane engine
in 1903, written by a guy I met who replicated the engine using
period tools, for a museum. It sounds about as difficult as doing a
cold fusion experiment. The engine worked a lot better than most cold
fusion experiments, so in that sense it was easier.
In the 1920s, Model-T Fords were shipped as unassembled kits, to
dealers. That's the step you want to leapfrog to. If you can do it,
more power to you, but you need not bother selling kits to amateurs.
Make an Arata kit that works and I can sell dozens for $1,000 each to
governments and universities. Heck if the materials are expensive you
could make it $10,000 each, or $20,000. They wouldn't care. Heck, I'd
buy one in minute for $10,000.
With all our highly developed technology, mass producing
automobiles, they cost more now then they did years ago, much more.
I'd say they cost more in real dollars, actually.
Yes, but they cost much less when you factor in the longevity of the
machine, the cost of maintenance and repair, and the cost of bodily
injury from accidents. Modern automobiles are far safer. One reason
is they are designed to absorb the energy from the accident, self
destruct and protect the passengers. Modern cars are far more complex
than the Model Ts shipped as kits. But I digress . . .
Do you think a cold fusion demonstration cell, engineered to be mass
produced, is going to cost more than $10,000? Come on, Jed, this is
getting ridiculous.
Well it might cost you several million to design it. It is impossible
to say. My grandfather designed many kits for the arts and crafts
business and it was harder than you might think. It is not clear to
me how reliable you want it. I have no experience doing the co-dep
experiments and I do not know much about the Galileo project so I
cannot judge, but it sure does not sound easy or reliable. To make an
Arata experiment kit that anyone can demonstrate, I suppose it would
cost a few million bucks R&D. Maybe $10 million . . . Assuming that
experiment works in the first place and you can find a vendor or
persuade Santoku to produce the material in quantity. (I don't know
why they wouldn't; just pay them.)
If it costs $1 million and you sell 100 kits then the R&D would cost
$10,000 each. It would be less trouble to find 10 customers willing
to pay $100,000 each. You realize, I hope, that such a gadget is
worth billions and billions of dollars, as is, even at 1 W output.
Anyone can replicate Volta's experiments today by going to the
drugstore, buying a small battery and lighting a small bulb with a
few wires. 99.999% of the work is done for you by the Eveready Battery company.
My point, actually.
So, all you need is a time machine or a suitcase full of money and
you can leapfrog the present difficulties and Bob's your Uncle! From
Volta to Eveready in one fell swoop.
I find the CR-39 results ambiguous, to say the least.
They are results, and they are cheap to get . . .
Let's see you get them first. Then you can tell us how much it costs.
If you pay yourself $5 an hour and it takes you as long as it took
Fisher, it will not be cheap.
I've said that Arata-type demonstrations are a possibility. But if
they aren't donating the material, and especially if they are
profiting from it, it could be too expensive.
You need to forget this "expensive" stuff. Cost is irrelevant. If you
can do what you describe, and make a kit of any sort that
demonstrates an effect unambiguously enough for an ordinary person to
understand, then you will have something worth a fortune.
There is no point in suggesting that people do experiments that they
cannot afford. Jed, you should get your imagination checked, it's broken.
Why bother selling to people who can't afford it?!? That's nuts. Sell
to people who are loaded with money and who really, really want your
product. Every major industrial corporation in the U.S., Japan and
Europe tunes into LENR-CANR from time to time. Within a few months
they will download thousands of copies of the NSF/EPRI proceedings,
for example. They control trillions of dollars in capital. If you can
convince them this kit you are describing exists they will pay any
amount of money for it.
Money is not the limiting factor. Credibility is. The resistance to
new ideas, and the fear of making a fool of oneself is. Believability
is, and that particular barrier was greatly reduced thanks to CBS "60
Minutes." With the kind of kit you describe, these barriers would be
easily overcome.
It is as if you think you can make a machine that turns lead into
gold, but you are fretting that people will not have enough money to buy it.
It may be that you can pull this off. I cannot judge. I have seen
many people claim they can do this in the past. They have all failed,
but that does not mean you will fail. Go ahead and try, and more
power to you. I suggest you visit experiments.
- Jed
