Tests Results Show 'Artficial Sun' Is Reliable

Originally posted by bum_phantom
okay, every scientific breakthrough the military and governments will find applications of warfare. FACT.

Well I'm glad you agree with that. But a lot of the uses would not be thought of being used in warfare if we had not as a species created the idea our ownselves. Science is to advance us not to degrade and bring us further back.

However there are always the productive uses for scientific breakthroughs as there will always be destructive applications.

Perhaps in the wrong hands, we cannot use the term always. An antibiotic for a disease to me does not have destructive applications

For instance:
On the same deductional lines we shouldnt have figured out how to fly and create aircraft. Why?
Because aircraft are then made to drop payloads of explosives on faraway lands reducing cities to rubble and ending many lives.

Originally they (airfcraft) were used to travel, until we added the idea of war and weaponary to the mechanism in Question thus we started dropping payloads of bombs.

To me it just seems like alot a of scare mongering, and in general the fear of the unknown which is encoded into the nature of man.

That is mans nature, fear. Yet we did invent the atomic bomb correct? And we have used it, correct? So with the evolving technology this can be done again and at most likely a greater extent.

maybe we should use the evolved abilty to rise above and not be controlled by our atavistic traits. Maybe then we can progress as a species.

Maybe, no we should.

[edit on 19-1-2007 by antmax21]

okay antmax21. say we throw the idea of fusion as a power source and a means of space propulsion etc on the pretence that we could "destroy the world".

What would you suggest in its stead as an equivilent power source?
as it stands from my point of view fusion is the most feasible method to generate that much power with the minimum amount of problem regarding availability of base resources and produced wastes.

So what if the atomic age was born of war? we may have come close a couple of times to nuclear war, but thankfully due to at least some common sense on the part of man(or at least the powers that be with the finger on the big red button) we havent obliterated ourselfs in nuclear fire.

Is it so wrong to put what was learned under the pretence of hostility to some good, to make some kind of amdends for the "misuse" of technology we have displayed in the past?

However you do have a point with

That is mans nature, fear. Yet we did invent the atomic bomb correct? And we have used it, correct? So with the evolving technology this can be done again and at most likely a greater extent.

regarding future discoveries and technology, this nature of fear inherent in man in all odds would cause the same mistakes as has been made in the past. That is a huge problem with the development of humankind. The only true solution is to hope that generations forth can shake this irrational fear of each other and come up with a common goal.

Though i fear that in itself is a 'candy floss' dream.

phantom.

At the end of the day, every major human achievement has been as a result of warfare.

End of story as far as that is concerned.

But please refer back to my previous post with regards to Fusion...

I concur stumason this thread is supposed to be about a physics descussion not a philosophical/psycological debate.

So what are you feeling of the iter/tokamac design for fusion?

phantom.

Originally posted by antmax21
I'm sorry but I do not remember any type of weapons saving any lives....Weapons are meant to be used to kill. Do not use Philosophy.

is common sense a philosophy? ?

how many self defense situations require firing a round, let alone an aimed shot? weapons exist, if you don't like them don't use them, but insisting on bogus moral standards which will only affect decent people while criminals will be laughing their behinds off at this kind of, err, conduct, imho, shows an extreme degree of naivity or worse.

suggested article: www.2asisters.org...


what this has got to do with fusion power? easy, we already have 10k nukes ready to incinerate vast portions of the earth, why not reap the benefits for a change? imho, the main issue is using a destructive approach of fusion, derived from the H bomb, for controlled reactions, which may or may not work, but it's no doubt going to be difficult. there certainly are better and cheaper ways to accomplish the same goal, see f-ex.

Farnsworth's Fusor

thats more like it. Though never completed due to funding the farnsworth fusor also went to prove a more enclosed system like a cube or a sphere is alot closer to the viable solution of fusion.


Shame the DOE and the Iter project cant recognize this.

I used to think that the plasma or whatever it is created in fusion kinda filled the machine like water or a gas.. never realised it kinda made a ball.... in which case.. hell yeah - a spehere would be the logical choice for container shape. good luck to this guy, it would be great if he can get the funding..

as for making weapons.. wrong hands.. etc. hey! a paper cut can kill a man too... so paper in the wrong hands can kill someone... should we go back in time and kill the inventor of paper?? or even the stone tablet before that? I mean.. a stone tablet would most certainly knock you out if we dropped it on your head.

Originally posted by bum_phantom
thats more like it. Though never completed due to funding the farnsworth fusor also went to prove a more enclosed system like a cube or a sphere is alot closer to the viable solution of fusion.

Shame the DOE and the Iter project cant recognize this.

Who are the morons running these and other projects?

Do these people have any scientific background...

Why do they continue to fund a failure for 50 years now?

In every other field huge advances but this is is still no further..

remember they used to promise fusion in 5 years time...then it became 10 years...nowis another 50 years...

and of course they have been drip feeding their obscure "advances" to the funding bodies who have lost any ability to see this is a huge failure...

Even if this ITER monstrosity worked COST would be $50 billion and the size 3 football pitches...

I dont think it will ever work as another physicist has said the magnetic field in a torus would always have small imperfections due absorption of energy by charge particles..

I think we should get funding stopped......

The famous physicist Robert W Bussard is the man presenting the should google go nuclear physics presentation....

Just Google Robert W Bussard.


H e is well respected and is responsible for the famous Bussard Ramscoop engine design.....among many other things....


He admits it was actually HE who got the USA interested the tokamak JUST SO they would be involved in fusion research but since then its become a self driving juggernaut even though its show zero results.

Yes, indeed. The guy in the video is Doc B, and he is THE plasma guy.

The machine he was working on was worked on as a group 'what if' project over a few years on a forum sort of like this one (albeit full of physics students). Everyone thought some sort of impasse would be found. None were. The math kept working out.

He built models. They fit the numbers expected. He got funding from NRL, then Naval Weapons. The bigger models and test rigs...worked just like the math said. NW classified it for a while, it was TS. The hope was that it could be used to power subs, the reactor produces just about 0 radiation and outputs electrical energy directly. No turbines, no waste heat, no big cooling towers, no radioactive waste. Navy pumped in about 12 million and struggled to keep funding it but the budget got slashed. When they couldn't fund it, they released the NDAs and declassified it so SOMEONE could work on it. There was a big stink inside Navy at one point about it not being picked up by DOE.

This is the real deal. You will see me skeptical about a lot of things, but if I had 200 million bucks I'd put the very last dollar on Bussard's reactor. So far there haven't been ANY stone-walls, no unsolvable issues, there needs to be a lot more development but this is as promising as it gets. Some of us in the contractor community were dancing a jig when he got funded a few years back. There is a lot of support for this project amongst the military technical community...if this was supplying all our energy needs we could fence off the Middle East and let them eat each other.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

....if I had 200 million bucks I'd put the very last dollar on Bussard's reactor. So far there haven't been ANY stone-walls, no unsolvable issues,.if this was supplying all our energy needs we could fence off the Middle East and let them eat each other.

I think we should try to set up an organisation or lobby group to oppose the ITER and more importantly promote the Bussard Design to various industries...not much point in talking to government as they are either braindead or totally entranced by the ITER which is going to "work in 50 years time every year!

The ITER is also going to have an environmental impact as well so mayb environmental groups could be drafted in...to oppose it...