PRACTICAL fusion device by Princeton physicist suppressed

[DHamilton]

I'd like to comment more on this, but don't have the time right now.

According to a very bright, Princeton educated physicist Robert Bussard, who has successfully created fusion in small, magnetically confined polyhedral devices, all of the physics problems have been solved, and all that is required to solve are engineering problems.

Bussard has now passed on... bright??.. no.. not really .. he didn't understand how fusion works any more than tens of thousands of other physicists do who have really never done it with convincing data...and his data wasn't convincing. He was able to talk fast but his wired together metal rings only made it seem that he had come completely unglued in his old age. Pretty soon it will be $4.00 or more a gallon and then people will become desperate enough that they will finally realize that ITER and all previous attempts at fusion were based upon some incredibly bad physics ... When the world is ready to listen then I'll be here to show you how to build a fusion reactor...

It isn't that hard... you first have to unify electromagnetism and gravity... (smile)... sure I'll show you... if you really want to learn...

DHamilton

 

[davefoc]

According to a very bright, Princeton educated physicist Robert Bussard, who has successfully created fusion in small, magnetically confined polyhedral devices, all of the physics problems have been solved, and all that is required to solve are engineering problems.

Bussard has now passed on... bright??.. no.. not really .. he didn't understand how fusion works any more than tens of thousands of other physicists do who have really never done it with convincing data...and his data wasn't convincing. He was able to talk fast but his wired together metal rings only made it seem that he had come completely unglued in his old age. Pretty soon it will be $4.00 or more a gallon and then people will become desperate enough that they will finally realize that ITER and all previous attempts at fusion were based upon some incredibly bad physics ... When the world is ready to listen then I'll be here to show you how to build a fusion reactor...

It isn't that hard... you first have to unify electromagnetism and gravity... (smile)... sure I'll show you... if you really want to learn...

DHamilton

My apologies DHamilton, but I can't figure out what you meant by your post. I wasn't sure what was sarcastic, what was a quote and what was serious.

 

[INRM]

Why do they want to suppress Bussard's research?

If the Chinese or some other country build a nuclear propulsion system they'll not only be able to leave us United States in the dust, they'll be able to dominate space.

The US is actually seeking to do this too and it has me worried, but the Chinese are even worse. They're an openly totalitarian regime with no regard for human rights (as our government is becoming too).


INRM
Should I disappear you know who to blame

 

[davefoc]

Yet another thread that I can't tell who's being sarcastic and who isn't.

I hate to be so lame, but perhaps if people could help me out with a smiley or two I could figure out what people mean.

My understanding so far:
1. Bussard seems to have been a really smart guy who believed strongly that he was on to something.

2. Some of Bussard's assumptions about how much better stuff would get in the next generation of IEC's seemed like they might be over optimistic to even an uninformed individual like myself.

3. Metamars has quoted extensively from an email by Todd Rider (who seems to know what he is talking about) where Rider claims for numerous reasons that sound plausible to me (although I am not knowledgeable enough to judge the quality of Rider's arguments) that IEC is hugely unlikely to be a successful approach for fusion reactors.

4. DHamilton seems to be making a humorous summary of Bussard's approach which suggests that he believes Todd Rider and doesn't believe Bussard.

5. INRM, for some reason, seem to have completely discounted Rider's comments and suspects that the US is missing a great opportunity and the Chinese will take advantage to use Bussard's ideas to dominate space.

My guess right now was Dhamilton's post was sarcastic and INRM's post was serious.

 

[Cuddles]

Sometimes writing to 'famous people' pays off

Reply from "Rider, Todd" <[email protected]> :

Thanks for that.

So bascially what he says is that Bussard's ideas are hopelesly impractical and may not work at all, and he brings up many of the same objections I have about various assumptions and simplifications. Tokamaks and other popular ideas are also currently impractical, but are limited more by the engineering rather than the physics. He also reinforces my point that far from suppressing new ideas, physicists would love to see something like this work, the only problem being that it actually doesn't.

 

[metamars]

Research on the Bussard device lives on.

Emc2 Fusion's Richard Nebel can't say yet whether his team's garage-shop plasma experiment will lead to cheap, abundant fusion power. But he can say that after months of tweaking, the WB-7 device "runs like a top" - and he's hoping to get definitive answers about a technology that has tantalized grass-roots fusion fans for years.

With $1.8 million in backing from the U.S. Navy, Nebel and a handful of other researchers have been following up on studies conducted by the late physicist Robert Bussard before his death last October - studies that Bussard said promised a breakthrough in fusion energy.

Nebel, who is on leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory, picked up Bussard's mantle at Emc2 Fusion Development Corp. in Santa Fe, N.M., and is trying to duplicate the results that were reported from the last machine Bussard built.

 

[Viper Daimao]

Research on the Bussard device lives on.

I think it's great that they've got a working design putting out data in so little time. Any experts here, is polywell looking like the more promising fusion tech over tokamak? or is tokamak still the safe bet while polywell is still the longshot that might pay off but probably wont?