James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote:
> The cost was not in the cathode -- it was in getting the electrochemistry > and the diagnostics right. > You do have to be good at electrochemistry. A lot of the early electrochemistry was like tuning a piano with a sledgehammer. > The diagnostics can be absurdly expensive if you're trying to detect > marginal signals . . . > You mean the calorimetry. McKubre's calorimeter is expensive. Others are not so much. It would be better if we could boost the signal. That is what I have in mind with "50 cathodes." I think the big expense is having to run 92 diagnostic tests over a year's time just to find 4 good cathodes. That could be automated to reduce the cost. Probably, Violante knows how to make 4 cathodes much less time with less money than it took Storms to winnow out 4 from a large batch. > -- but we know that the reason people are tantalized by the phenomenon is > not the marginal signals. This has been true from that first laboratory > accident that burned a hole in the table back in the mid 80s. So we > shouldn't be bothering with the enormous costs of diagnostics. > I am not bothered by the cost. The problem is, there is no money. If someone threw $100 million at it, it would be well worth the money. Most researchers cannot even get $10,000. Heck, they cannot even get permission to hold a meeting in an empty classroom. > We should, instead, be focusing on the economics of getting the > electrochemistry right so that the loading threshold is reliably reached. > I think the problem is materials rather than electrochemistry -- except, as I said, you do have to be an electrochemist. Or you have to have one in charge of the actual experiment. > What is the economic bottleneck on getting the electrochemistry right? > The bottleneck is a complete lack of funding. Zero dollars. Any proposal for funding made to academic science establishments is immediately shot down. There is not the slightest chance the DoE or any university will fund any cold fusion experiment, not even for $1,000. Unless the venture capitalists fund the work, as they have for Rossi, there will be no research. - Jed
