Slashdot Mirror
Inside Piston-Powered Nuclear Fusion Company General Fusion
quax writes "Slashdot first reported on the Canadian start-up company that is attempting piston powered nuclear fusion back in 2009. This new blog post takes a look at where they are now, and gives some additional behind the scene info. For instance, a massive experimental rig for magnetized target fusion in the US is currently underutilized, because ITER's increasing costs absorb all the public fusion research funding. Because this Shiva Star device is located in an Air Force base, security restrictions prevent any meaningful cooperation with a non-U.S. companies. Even if U.S. researchers would love to rent this out to advance the science of magnetized target fusion, restrictions make this is a no go."
It is my layman's barely informed opinion that this scheme has the highest chance at success in the next 10 years at achieving practical electrical output from nuclear fusion reactions.
Mostly random stuff.
Because this Shiva Star device is located in an Air Force base, security restrictions prevent any meaningful cooperation with a non-U.S. companies.
We have a problem with Canadians because of security restrictions? WTF - NORAD is a joint US-Canadian operation. The 2nd in command is always Canadian. If that's not giving Canadians access to important military operations (specifically USAF no less) then I don't know what is.
MIT Prof Peter Hagelstein, one of the rare true believers in battery-type cold fusion is teaching his cold fusion seminar again. Just about everyone else in academia does not believe him. Peter has done brilliant work in other subjects such as Xray lasers, so MIT tolerates him.
As someone who has worked for a UK defense company - ITAR is more of a problem for the US than it's allies. The US has a nightmare contracting out work to european companies that have a technology/experience they need. You should see the time and money they waste, it is extraordinary.
ITER is an initiative 45% funded by the EU and 9% funded by the US, that Americans repeatedly complain about sucking away all of America's money, even though it was America's idea to build it in the first place, America gets an equal share of the knowledge gained and America only has to pay one 11th of the cost, despite having the largest economy out of the participants.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
but in the Zemeckis causality, a genius inventor with no regard for preserving the natural timeline traveled back to 1885, and then abandoned a highly sophisticated laboratory capable of refrigeration and probably other disruptive technologies. In other words, the 2015 we saw in Back to the Future, was heavily augmented by timeline disrupting technology injections in both 1885 and 1955... and 1985 for that matter. Chances are, most of that stuff could not be invented as early in our timeline, because in the BTTF timeline, doc brown and others saw the various technologies in action, years before they were duplicated/invented.
In my opinion this same phenomenon explains perfectly why the JJAbrams Star Trek is perfectly justified in having more advanced ships and transporters than the Roddenberry continuity. 8 minutes of sensor scans of a ship 129 more years advanced than anything ever witnessed would change the course of technology forever.