Dr. Robert W. Bussard passed away on October 7, 2007, but I believe one or more of his colleagues are continuing his research with funding from the US Navy. He received his PhD in physics from Princeton University. Please see a lecture he gave at Google last year: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
It seems to me that this is one of the most promising approaches to viable thermonuclear (fusion) reactors. I still don't understand why more funding (beyond the limited funding from the US Navy) has not found its way to the corporation he created, EMC2 FUSION DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (http://www.emc2fusion.org/). One explanation can be found at http://www.emc2fusion.org/2007-3-5%20DefenseNews.pdf.
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2 comments:
The reason for a lack of funding is simple.
First verify the results (which the current experiment will do) then get more money.
Seems reasonable to me.
I should state up front that Mr. Simon knows much more about this topic than I do, even as we disagree about some of the politics.
Still, with all due respect to him, there are two major points which are not reasonable:
1. The lack of more significant government funding when Dr. Bussard asked for it several times, even as our government was wasting in Iraq thousands of times the amount of money he asked for.
2. The time lost developing this major alternative to imported Middle Eastern oil.
It seems to me that DOE vested interests in the magnetic confinement box design might be too embarassed to see the Bussard Fusion Reactor succeed.
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