2 thoughts on “Super Nova Laser Etching Granite”

1. the comments in this article are so full of misdirection and foolishness I dont know where to start. first of all I should point out that ICF reactors operate in pulses. Depending on the exact design used these pulses may be anywhere from a few seconds apart to 100′s of times a second. if an ICF reactor has a problem then the simple action of the laser is switched off (yes, it is simply a matter of switching a switch, just like a lightbulb). fusion reactions only happen for nanoseconds after each laser pulse, so if the pulse stops the chain of reactions stops. dead.is there no radioactivity from a fusion reactor? No. there is intense radiation emitted when the reactor runs as well as the structure of the reactor is made radioactive over time. reactivity during operation is no big deal. it can be shielded. induced radioactivity is a much easier problem to deal with in a fusion reactor because there is a lot of design flexibility to use materials that will not provide any long term radiation concerns. and of course there will be no long term waste as in a conventional fission reactor.with regards to the tritium issue. all fusion reactions produce an excess of neutrons. that means by deffinition they can be self sufficent in terms of tritium via breeding from lithium IF tritium is used int he fuel cycle. I dont know why some posters are arguing otherwise but breeding does NOT require the consumption of a neutrons kinetic energy – what gets used to generate power and generating power does not consume a neutron keeping it from breeding tritium. any left over tritium that is not burned as fuel can be scaveneged from the vacuum vessel’s pump exhaust with a palladium membrane (as was previously done at the Nova laser)will NIF bring about any breakthroughs that allow us to make a power plant out of this technology in 5 or 10 years? no. NIF will hopefully demonstrate the engineering we will need to do to produce a pusion power plant, but right now the technology behind the lasers is not mature enough. todays technology can make a laser big enough to power NIF but it is so inefficent that there would be no net power production. furthermore the laser technology used in NIF can only be fired once every few hours to avoid overheating. this is technolgy that existed in the 60′s, just scaled up. Modern laser technology allows lasers of the sort used at NIF to run at many pulses per second, continuously non stop. total system efficency can be as high as 25% or more, vs 0.1% for the lasers used at NIF. these newer technolgy lasers however are MUCH more expensive. That said since newer technology lasers use many electronic components their cost and complexity has followed something of moore’s law in the last 15 years, dramatically reducing in cost and increasing in terms of performance. 10 or 20 years from now, especially with the establishment of large scale manufacturing the sort of lasers we use today can be scaled up in size to what is required for NIF or a power plant.the cost of fusion fuel targets is insignifigant. KMS Fusion, a private company that was researching ICF in the 80′s was making them for under 1$ a go in lab size quantitiy. I think one poster is confusing the cost of setting up a particular fusion experimental target shot with the cost of the larget it’s self. holoraum targets are more expensive than direct drive targets, but direct drive targets are nothing more than small plastic microballoons. finally global warming. this is a funny one. look at the total incident energy on the earth from the sun then look at the total worldwide demand for electricity. if there comes a time when we really need to worry about that we can just start painting everything white to increase the albeido of the earth. in short – YES there are problems with fusion, and there are many engineering difficulties to overcome, but it has the potential to generate clean, virtually limitless energy in the not too distant future.

2. I'd guess your AR would bring over $1000 today without the add ons.

   In the AR world "limited editions" probably dont bring a giant premium… the guns are too utilitarian and in demand for "collectors" to generate a alot of demand for some extra etched graphics.

   You do have some good quality add ons…….if you found someone who really liked your combo of sighting devices and aftermarked parts that rifle might bring $2000 plus or minus.