[ExI] State of California supporting Bussard fusion research?

[Eugen Leitl]

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 <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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