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Hacker News Meetups?

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Re: Hacker News Meetups?

#21

Post by souprock »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #15

Anything near Cape Canaveral? I'd be interested.

I doubt the whole concept is sustainable. FWIW though, I'm just a bit south of you, in Indialantic.

Noting your interests: I had a fusion researcher in my family, Ray Dandl. According to his brother, Ray got the first "stable" plasma going. That was probably prior to 1985, in San Diego. He had also been a minor (?) participant in the Manhattan project. Another relative did calibration/testing/burn-in for gyrotrons that the Japanese used for heating plasma for fusion.

I just do low-level software.

Re: Hacker News Meetups?

#25

Post by ThirdFoundation »

joecot wrote: post #19
ThirdFoundation wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the information, thanks! Maybe we'll get enough Philly people here responding that we can slap something together. I've been a longtime lurker on the /r/philadelphia sub and have thought many times about going to one of the meetups. I think I may need to stop by one of them.

There's a meetup at Cooperage in center city every Thursday. If you decide to go one day, shoot me a reddit message (same username) and I'll try to swing by. As far as organizing, there's an /r/philadelphia discord, and we could probably persuade them to make a channel about HN meetups. Or Discord servers are easy enough to make yourself. EDIT: I've just made a HN Philly Discord. Feel free to jump on to talk meetups.…

Will do, thanks. I'm hoping I can find time to pop by Cooperage in the next month or so. I'll definitely shoot a message over when I do.

I'll check out the Discord server today.

Thanks!

Re: Hacker News Meetups?

#26

Post by FiatLuxDave »

souprock wrote: post #21
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #15

Anything near Cape Canaveral? I'd be interested.

I doubt the whole concept is sustainable. FWIW though, I'm just a bit south of you, in Indialantic. Noting your interests: I had a fusion researcher in my family, Ray Dandl. According to his brother, Ray got the first "stable" plasma going. That was probably prior to 1985, in San Diego. He had also been a minor (?) participant in the Manhattan project. Another relative did calibration/testing/burn-in for gyrotrons th…

Thanks for replying!

I didn't recognize the name of Ray Dandl, so I did a little research. Apparently he was the mind behind the Elmo Bumpy Torus, a device half-way between mirror designs and a tokamak. I recall reading about it many years ago. He also seems to have had a hand in early microwave plasma heating (not sure if that is in conjunction with your other relative).

While looking around, I ran across an interesting book, "Fun in Fusion Research", by John Sheffield. It contains a bunch of interesting anecdotes, including ones about Mr. Dandl. I thought I might mention it to you in case you enjoy it.

Re: Hacker News Meetups?

#27

Post by souprock »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #26
souprock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the whole concept is sustainable. FWIW though, I'm just a bit south of you, in Indialantic. Noting your interests: I had a fusion researcher in my family, Ray Dandl. According to his brother, Ray got the first "stable" plasma going. That was probably prior to 1985, in San Diego. He had also been a minor (?) participant in the Manhattan project. Another relative did calibration/testing/burn-in for gyrotrons th…

Thanks for replying! I didn't recognize the name of Ray Dandl, so I did a little research. Apparently he was the mind behind the Elmo Bumpy Torus, a device half-way between mirror designs and a tokamak. I recall reading about it many years ago. He also seems to have had a hand in early microwave plasma heating (not sure if that is in conjunction with your other relative). While looking around, I ran across an interes…

Well that puts a name to the mysterious device Ray showed me. Thanks. I recall it being larger, in a cube-shaped 2-story room. According to his sister, Ray was really held back by his lack of a PhD. He had an IQ of 180.

I wonder why nobody seems to have tried electronically cycling the field direction (alternating perpendicular fields) faster than the particles can get out the end of the magnetic mirror.

That other relative, Pat Cahalan, did work for Varian, now called CPI. That was the supplier of the gyrotrons. He also was held back by limited education. The gyrotrons are pretty insane, with diamond windows about 2" in diameter that cost a $million. Megawatts of RF shoot out in one direction, while a powerful beam of X-rays shoots out in another direction. I've heard of them reaching 60 MW, and evidently they go over half a THz.

I'm told that it's a bad day when you shatter the gyrotron window, causing air to be sucked into the hot vacuum tube. It's also a bad day when you are inside the walk-in power supply and a capacitor blows.

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