Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to I don't have the knowledge to evaluate his work

The physics is sound.
TB — (archived)

That's about as far as I can take it. This is the first I've seen of this particular effort, and I'm going to look into it if I can find some more technical stuff. So far, I haven't found a website for his outfit (haven't looked that hard yet,) but there was a movie online showing a presentation at Google. Haven't had time to watch that, either.

The Boron11-proton reaction is a holy grail of fusion since it produces almost zero neutrons. It is also a lot harder to initiate than simple deuterium-tritium. When I looked at it years ago, it was with deep-space high-thrust, high ISP propulsion in mind, and the concepts involved laser implosion.

Bussard is no idiot as a scientist. Don't know how good he is at engineering. I'm interested, but also reserving judgment. He has a very good reputation, but much of what he's writing now has the taint of the kind of things I hear from anti-gravity inventors, including the "I just need a bit more money to finish..."

I wonder if the kind of dot.com billionaires who are putting money into launch vehicles and electric cars have any cash left over for this...

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (59 posts)