[extropy-chat] An Open Letter to the Scientific Community.

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Mon Jul 19 17:48:47 UTC 2004


--- Everitt Mickey <evmick at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I remember Occam's Law.   And dark matter, dark
> energy, variable expansion, multi-flavored nutrino's
> (etc. etc.) seem to be grasping at straws.

The problem there seems to be a lack of data.  We're
on Earth, and can observe from there.  While some of
the observations are really impressive (since a lot of
time has been spent on them), even data from a point
so close (on galactic terms) as Mars would be useful
to compare to.  And some of these theories really need
measurements from another star.

> But what I'm REALLY interested in is boron-hydrogen
> fusion....via Focus Fusion. 
> Focus Fusion Society <http://www.focusfusion.org/>

Aside from its limited availability (He3 is abundant
on the Moon, but not on Earth), one could make the
same arguments about helium-3-helium-3 fusion.

Although, I do have concerns about their determination
to use short-time-length processes.  Despite their
claims, very few large fusion research projects are
trying to achieve steady-state plasmas.  In fact, the
extremely short time scales in which most fusion has
occurred in the lab has itself been one of the
problems, in that it's generated signficant
uncertainties in the data.  (A second's worth of
readings generates much more data than a
microsecond's.)

> However...it appears to clash with the entrenched
> interests.  Tokamak rules right? 

Big fusion rules.  They're not the only small fusion
project; other attempts at desktop fusion (even using
the same fuels) have gotten similarly small funding.

I wonder if, someday, the same thing currently
happening with space access might happen with fusion?
The economics and technical causes appear to be
similar.



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