Responsive to the issue of public funding of science (and advanced
technology):
We all know I'm a bit of a Luddite by most measures. By coincidence I
was listening (with one ear) to Bill Nye (da Science Guy) give his
popular hip-hip-hooray for the latest DOE announcement as I read your
post here. He nailed *ME* with the perfect alternative descriptor to
NIMBY (not in my back yard) with BANANA (build absolutely nothing
anywhere anything).
I believe it is inevitable that under our current self-conception (all
humanity,not just US or the Western Nations) it is virtually impossible
to imagine us doing anything but driving technology forward (roughly) as
fast as possible, as if to outrun the consequences of our previous
actions (and out-compete our competitors with similar levels of
capability). Singularity much? Evolutionary Biology coined the Red Queen
Hypothesis <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis> to
describe the latter but I think of it more as (also) a corollary to the
prisoner's *dilemma*.
This Medium article
<https://medium.com/thinking-is-hard/a-prisoners-dilemma-cheat-sheet-4d85fe289d87#:~:text=When%20you're%20playing%20against,also%20defending%20against%20Always%20Defectors.>
is a nice pop-sci summary of Prisoner's Dilemma strategies, covering
*especially* multiplayer games which I think our various tech/arms races
are implicitly. The conclusion of the article, author Benson makes the
astute obvservation:
/The most interesting thing is that cooperation//has//evolved, even
if it feels impossibly complicated and always on the verge of
tipping over into fake cooperation (mimicry) and probing (extortion)./
And as always, when discussing iterated prisoner's dilemma, Nick, et
al's MOTH <https://backspaces.net/28/moth-my-way-or-the-highway/> must
be referenced.
On 12/13/22 12:04 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I thought director Budil made a good case for the unique value of
public funding of science and advanced technology. Rockets are
understood, Musk and others can build them. Decades of investment to
do something like this is, it is just different. And they were not
timid about mentioning the defense side. Concurrent with the test of
a U.S. hypersonic too.
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/12/12/air-force-conducts-first-operational-launch-of-arrw-hypersonic-missile/
On Dec 13, 2022, at 10:16 AM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
Great synopsis... thanks.
I'm fascinated at how long we've been "on the cusp" of "lighting up"
a micro-star in the laboratory.
My first awareness was in the early 70s when a Radio Engineer I
worked with had just come from the early MFE Livermore efforts to my
tiny hometown AM RAdio station... He described what they were up to
as I was taking my first physics course (Junior in HS)... and
thinking about the implications both for science (as little I knew
it) and society (cheap/ubiquitous energy). Working at LANL for 3
decades (starting with the high energy Proton Storage Ring) put me
close to lots of this as an "educated layman".
I can't say "nothing's changed" but it is mind boggling how long one
can "hang on the cusp" of something. Or how quickly we can go from
burning coal to make steam to drive mechanical devices to replace
animal and human (and water and wind) labor to lighting up tiny stars
for the same purpose.
- Steve
"some days just drag on, but the years they just fly by"
Awesome. Thanks. I'm still trying to catch up with the QC Wormhole
kerfuffle. Who knew Quanta was so click baity?
What is "DT"?
On 12/13/22 09:02, Marcus Daniels wrote:
In case no one wanted to get up at 7:00am to watch DOE
administrators talk:
1. Controlling the laser in space and time was important for
maintaining symmetry. Timing precision of 25e-12 secs and laser
spatial precision of 5e-12 meter were needed. This was thought to
be the main explanation for the achievement.
2. 8% more power on the laser this time
3. x-ray tomography is used to find flaws in the capsules.
Developing software to do the counting.
4. They have ongoing efforts to study the fabrication systems and
their components (done in Germany) to find idiosyncrasies of each.
5. Laser technology improvements since NIF was built which are 20%
more efficient.
6. Target cost is from labor, and it takes 7 months each
7. 4% of DT is burned in a shot
8. Machine learning ties together radiation hydrodynamics and
experimental data. (It sounded preliminary.)
9. The (successful) capsule had more defects than previous
experiments. However, previous experiments did show benefits from
capsule quality.
10. 15% of experiments are indirect drive of this kind, 15% of
experiments are other approaches to ignition. The rest are weapons
and materials characterization.
11. Anomalous laser directional control were problems in the summer
runs. Fixed that.
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