[ExI] State of California supporting Bussard fusion research?

[giovanni santost]

Thanks Eugen,
  I agree with you we have to put more effort in solar energy research, right now is very inefficient but if we could harvest the available solar energy we would have solved the energy problem (even just a small percentage of the solar energy reaching the Earth would meet our energy needs for many years to come).
  Fusion, though, needs to be investigated because it could be also an awesome way to produce energy in relative clean way and very useful (looking ahead, that as transhumanists we tend to do) for space travel, for example. They pay offs are some enormous that is worthwhile to invest large amounts of money to achieve what would be considered a milestone in human history.
  I 'm open to the fact that one single bright mind can outshine many people in a very large science collaboration. I work in a large science collaboration (more than 300 people) and I can tell you, that it is more and more impossible for one single person to make significant progress single-handedly. There are so many details, some many tasks in a project like that that is necessary to join forces. People claiming that they can do it better than all of the people working in the large collaboration often they are delusional and arrogant.
  But this is a generalization and Bussard could be different...
  I didn't look at the details of his fusion process but I'm sure he did his homework but I'm also sure there is a valid reason why the majority of scientists in the field are involved in ITER instead of Bussard's fusion program.
    

Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

  On Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 09:09:39PM -0700, giovanni santost wrote:

> I'm Giovanni, I have just joined the list, very interesting
> conversations....

Welcome, Giovanni.

> Well, even if I'm a physicist, I'm not an expert in nuclear fusion (my
> field is gravitational waves) but ITER mentioned in the article
> reference in Neil's email is the international effort (and really the
> only game in town) to achieve controlled nuclear fusion, and there are
> good reasons why it costs billions instead of millions... Bussard is
> legit but he seems cut off from the fusion community somehow (he has
> his own private scientific firm). He is not a crackpot but maybe he is
> a loose cannon or something....

He looks like a maverick. He might succeed, then he might not.
He certainly has no trouble raising private money for his latest
project. Unlike tokamak or inertial confinement his stuff is cheap.

> but controlled nuclear fusion would be really nice so good luck to
> him....(and Schwarzenegger).

If you had 50 megabucks to burn, would you rather spend it on
renewables, or on fusion (which has absorbed many gigabucks,
and has not even produced a break-even)?

For all practical purposes solar is free fusion power, and
wireless to boot. All you need is cheap enough antennas.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org
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