Gerrit Bruhaug

I remain forever sympathetic to Harold Agnews line about setting off a megatonner in the Pacific and making every political leader watch it in their skivvies to put the fear of nukes back in them.

Never underestimate how dumb it can get…

I’m much more concerned about where any fuel production would happen, since the previous site now has another job… If they yank the rug on that to make MOx again, everything will be delayed a generation or more.

Today is my first day as a staff scientist. After literal decades of school, I finally have a “real” job.

Also on a sort of conservative coded mindset, anyone find it nuts that they are offering vastly more money and benefits to immigration enforcement than what a typical soldier gets? Of course I guess your typical MAGA idiot would claim that ICE has an “equally dangerous job” or some such shit.

I just saw an add on broadcast TV to join ICE… Christ man, I never thought I would see adds for the modern day Gestapo on live TV but I suppose I should have expected it. Also $50K signing bonus plus more than scientist pay!? I see where all of our deficit spending is going now days.

Yeah I would love to get a book about it as well!

I picked up some light reading for the weekend. I'm excited to learn just how nuts those 50's/60's weapons scientists were!

I’m reminded of this great line.

Yeah unless Ted’s most special weapon comes back, we are not delivering anything to “war fighters”
and it’s silly to say so.

I would bet this is not very much and mixed with normal hydrogen. Probably just enough to be annoying and not enough to be worth separating and keeping.

The use of millirems is… confusing. Still, this sounds like a total nothing burger, especially since tritium diffuses so damn fast.

It’s extra wild since he owns an energy company and has invested in solar previously! Wright 100% should know why this talking point is dumb.

Ugh that sucks…

Sadly FLF is just about out of money and they wanted to go the more traditional pulse power flyer plate method anyways. It makes more sense for their applications and has been proven to 10s of km/sec at least. The DOD is out as well since missiles are more useful in every way.

Also those same deaccelerating issues you bring up pop up in charged particle beams as well! We have spent many years learning to avoid and/or use those affects.

I maintain that the biggest issue is that such EM guns aren’t all that useful and thus there is little interest and funding. At least on the scale needed to actually work though everything! Even the peak SDI budgets for this work was rather small compared to the other projects.

The SDI years were also right when we figured out the induction accelerators that I am referring to as comparable. I don’t doubt the issues in coil guns, but previous Soviet experiments achieved more than 1 km/sec.

Welp, the tariffs got me. I ordered some optics from France(literally the only supplier in the world for these parts) and they are now hundreds of dollars more expensive and massively delayed in customs. Are we winning yet Donnie?

Yup, same issue for any of these electrical guns, like rail guns. They are not trivial things to actually deploy and then the effectiveness vs cost starts to not look so good…

More importantly, it also requires a bunch of big, complex electrical equipment. It’s great to get a bullet up to really high speeds, but for military activities you have to consider what that mass could have bought you instead. Like say a bunch of missiles that are nearly as fast?

Eh you would do fine. I don’t think you ever shot yourself and lied about it, nor do I think you would campaign as poorly as some recent Dems have.

The same technique (capacitor driven inductive cells in a traveling wave configuration) accelerates particles beams to near c almost daily at LANL. I would bet good money the primary issue here is zero real interest (ie interest from funding agencies) in getting there.

I finally got to see the NIF today and just… wow. What a massive scientific cathedral! I also really like how they kept the target holders from the first burning plasma and ignited shots! Those are great pieces of history.

I have finally been in a truly autonomous car (Waymo)! It’s a very neat and seamless experience, although notably more expensive and less responsive than Uber/Lyft. The cars a nice though, and drive quite well.

I was lucky enough to be able to see the SLAC facility (LCLS-II and I) yesterday. These are honest to god x-ray lasers! I would argue that this is probably the most useful scientific facility this country has made yet.

I just had the most Bay Area experience ever. I went to a coffee shop where the coffee was made and served by a robot! The bot proceeded to spill everywhere and the coffee cost more than just going to Starbucks, so I think barista jobs remain safe.

It’s a really cool tour gift! They had boxes and boxes of these things which is both horrifying and amazing.

I even got to see the treatment line and was gifted a collimator! This piece of brass was machined in the shape of someone’s tumor so as to make sure the proton beam only hits cancerous tissue.

It’s always fun to get to see accelerators, especially such historic machines! This is using the steel from one of Lawerence’s original cyclotrons to make the Crocker cyclotron at Davis. It’s used for space radiation, isotope production, and eye cancer treatment.