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 R&D 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 R&D 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
