
Nuclear reactor on Kickstarter - olalonde
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992078142/building-the-open-source-bussard-fusion-reactor
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locci
This is a presentation Bussard gave at Google in late 2006 shortly before
death. Quite a character.

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606#>

(and it's the first google talk video I watched, some quadrillion ticks ago)

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helwr
interesting. Here is the report he refers to: RW. Bussard, The Advent of Clean
Nuclear Fusion: Superperformance Space Power and Propulsion:
[http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/2006-9%20IAC%20Paper.p...](http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/2006-9%20IAC%20Paper.pdf)

also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283735>

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retube
I'm not sure I get this. Is this a joke? What's the goal here? What's the
business model? Have I missed some fundamental development in nuclear physics
that makes it possible to build a fusion reactor for $3,000. Is the $10bn
being spent on ITER redundant?

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arethuza
Given that similar research is funded by the US Navy I'd have guessed that
there is a pretty good chance that there is some chance this is a legitimate
approach:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell>

Even if there is a very small chance of this working it is a pretty small
amount of money compared to ITER - and I'd love to see a small project like
this actually come up with the goods.

[Edit: corrected my mistake where I assumed that this was the same lot of
researchers as the ones being funded by the US Navy]

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retube
Well poywell research maybe, but not _this_ particular project. Actually as
someone pointed out, this is dated 2010, and the guy has had to bin it due to
lack of funds. Although quite how far he imagined he'd get on $500 / month I'm
not sure.

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sylvinus
sadly, looks like that out of funds, he had to go back to a "normal" job:

<http://prometheusfusionperfection.com/2011/03/20/new-job/>

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olalonde
Oops, didn't notice this dated 2010.

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nickpinkston
By reading the Wiki on this, it seems like they're either on to something
interesting, or they're great con artists... Why does this concept seem so
simple?

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell>

~~~
InclinedPlane
Sometimes simple ideas aren't necessarily obvious. Think about the web, for
example, in many ways it was simpler rather than more sophisticated than
existing ideas about networked information. A perfect example is the
"concertainer" or Hesco bastion, which is basically a scaled up sand bag and
properly should have been invented and re-invented many times for the last
several millenia, yet it's a recent invention.

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SebMortelmans
I feel they offer an awful lot of weird gadgets for giving a certain amount of
money.

