Good News - Fusion Project Funded

This report was not entirely correct. The contract has been extended for a year without funding.

Please write your Government:

House of Representatives
The Senate
The President

and sign this on line petition and send it to your friends to get Dr. Bussard's work funded.

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Further update:

Bussard Reactor Funded.

I have inside info that is very reliable and multiply confirmed that validates the above story. I am not at liberty to say more.

06 Oct '007 2138z

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Mark of Ask Mark reports that because of Dr Bussard's winning the Outstanding Technology of the Year Award for 2006 and his widely reported Google talk the US Navy has decided to fund the final year of the his contract. (I contacted my Congress critter with no obvious result. However, maybe others had better results.)

That may be enough to get WB-7 and WB-8 funded. I hope his results from his new experiments will not be embargoed.

So far I have been unable to confirm this report. However, I have corresponded with Mark and from his e-mails he seems to be an OK guy.

Update: 19 April 2007 1200z

I found confirmation at Speculations 10 April 2007 post. There is no permalink for the post so I'm going to reproduce it here:

Greetings, future-watchers .... got some really interesting news about five minutes ago, straight from the man himself. Dr. Robert Bussard, of whom you may have heard, says that because of the publicity around his November 9th talk at Google and his International Academy of Science Outstanding Technology of the Year Award, the Navy has sent him a contract extension to continue his fusion research. It's two orders of magnitude below the $200 million Dr. Bussard says he needs to produce a full-scale 100mw system, but it's a start. If you're interested in helping out, see emc2fusion.org for more.

More details may be found in The Advent of Clean Nuclear Fusion: Superperformance Space Power and Propulsion, Dr. Bussard's contribution to the 57th International Astronautical Congress.

Come discuss this and other technology developments in The Expert Is In!

Update: 13 Oct 007 2007z

Dr. Bussard has died. However, the work continues. Two scientists from Los Alamos joined the project in August before the Dr. died. One of them was a long time friend of the Drs. As I said above, we need to keep the pressure on the political critters to make sure if the research results are positive that the project gets the funds needed to make the Bussard Reactor a reality in the shortest time possible.

Update: 14 Jan 008 1525z

Good news. The experimenters have achieved WB-7 First Plasma. Results are consistent with WB-6 results - so far. Further experiments are underway.


Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers