Is the ABSENCE of news, news?
Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 2:33 am
There’s been enough time, people. The Polywell is not a difficult concept. Either we do not yet have a viable commercial Polywell because it can’t possibly work; or we do not yet have a viable commercial Polywell because a decisively large and influential group of business interests do not want it to work. Honestly, I have no idea which reason is operating here. I do not want it to be either reason; but there has definitely been enough time.
Robert Bussard, inventor of the first functioning Polywell, was ready to spend several hundred million dollars building a full-scale 100 megawatt Polywell back in 2006; but “they” had already cut off his funding in 2005. He made a fuss, and (along with Tom Ligon) got the attention of a lot of people. But then Dr. Bussard died. And at some point, Tom Ligon was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Navy started funding the Polywell again in 2007 –but with only a few million dollars, far far short of the required amount.
In 2008, a good friend of mine, who happens to have been a contract negotiator for the Navy, was having dinner with a friend of his who happened to be a staff judge-advocate in the Navy, with a law degree and a degree in nuclear engineering. My friend told the lawyer-engineer about the Polywell, and about the web site that I had up back then. Within 18 hours my website was completely GONE with no warning whatsoever – off the internet. When I called my server (Apple) about it, they told me that they had removed my website because I had “exceeded my data download allocation for the month.” In order for that to have happened, people would have had to download hundreds of thousands of copies of my Polywell book, which was available for download on the website, and certainly not a book for which there is any discernable demand that I have been able to see.
A year or two later, I built another –different- Polywell website. Shortly after I went on line, I received a phone call from a person who claimed to represent EMC2. He asked me not to advocate the contacting of Congressmen in support of the Polywell, because too many Congressmen and media people were harassing the Chief of the Office of Naval Research; he also asked me to remove the pictures of Dr Park and Dr Nebel from my website, and remove the San Diego EMC2 address. I complied with all of his requests.
Rick Nebel, Dr Bussard’s replacement was ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a full-scale 100 megawatt Polywell back in late 2009; but then he resigned in Fall 2010 for reasons that have never been adequately explained. (The Navy was continuing to dribble out a few million dollars a year – still pathetically short of the amount required.) Nebel hasn’t said a public word about the Polywell since. And neither has anyone else.
About 4 years ago Dr Steven Chu –Secretary of the Department of Energy- said he was aware of the Polywell. Yet, to my knowledge, the Department of Energy has never so much as acknowledged the existence of the Navy’s Polywell program.
Indeed we haven’t heard a single authoritative word about the Polywell for many years now.
Business interests are not terribly concerned about ITER or NIF (which cost many many hundreds of millions of dollars) because they are both long-term research endeavors with little promise of commercial viability for at least 30 years.
Business interests are not terribly concerned about wind or solar or tidal or geothermal because none of them constitute a serious threat to big coal, big oil, or big natural gas. Business interests understand the true magnitude of the world’s rate of fossil fuel consumption, and they know that NONE of these “green” sources of energy will put so much as a dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuel.
Business interests ARE terribly concerned about the potential of popular belief in global warming to place a VERY significant dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuel. They are so concerned about it that they have successfully convinced many congressmen and many media people to neuter any serious attempts to address global warming issues.
I once thought the Polywell was one of the very few ways that our planet might be able to seriously address global warming. Could it be that these same business interests see the Polywell in the same way, and could this be the reason that the Polywell is going nowhere?
Could it be that Business interests are not terribly concerned about the pathetic state of Polywell funding because that is EXACTLY what they want?
Just asking….
Robert Bussard, inventor of the first functioning Polywell, was ready to spend several hundred million dollars building a full-scale 100 megawatt Polywell back in 2006; but “they” had already cut off his funding in 2005. He made a fuss, and (along with Tom Ligon) got the attention of a lot of people. But then Dr. Bussard died. And at some point, Tom Ligon was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Navy started funding the Polywell again in 2007 –but with only a few million dollars, far far short of the required amount.
In 2008, a good friend of mine, who happens to have been a contract negotiator for the Navy, was having dinner with a friend of his who happened to be a staff judge-advocate in the Navy, with a law degree and a degree in nuclear engineering. My friend told the lawyer-engineer about the Polywell, and about the web site that I had up back then. Within 18 hours my website was completely GONE with no warning whatsoever – off the internet. When I called my server (Apple) about it, they told me that they had removed my website because I had “exceeded my data download allocation for the month.” In order for that to have happened, people would have had to download hundreds of thousands of copies of my Polywell book, which was available for download on the website, and certainly not a book for which there is any discernable demand that I have been able to see.
A year or two later, I built another –different- Polywell website. Shortly after I went on line, I received a phone call from a person who claimed to represent EMC2. He asked me not to advocate the contacting of Congressmen in support of the Polywell, because too many Congressmen and media people were harassing the Chief of the Office of Naval Research; he also asked me to remove the pictures of Dr Park and Dr Nebel from my website, and remove the San Diego EMC2 address. I complied with all of his requests.
Rick Nebel, Dr Bussard’s replacement was ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a full-scale 100 megawatt Polywell back in late 2009; but then he resigned in Fall 2010 for reasons that have never been adequately explained. (The Navy was continuing to dribble out a few million dollars a year – still pathetically short of the amount required.) Nebel hasn’t said a public word about the Polywell since. And neither has anyone else.
About 4 years ago Dr Steven Chu –Secretary of the Department of Energy- said he was aware of the Polywell. Yet, to my knowledge, the Department of Energy has never so much as acknowledged the existence of the Navy’s Polywell program.
Indeed we haven’t heard a single authoritative word about the Polywell for many years now.
Business interests are not terribly concerned about ITER or NIF (which cost many many hundreds of millions of dollars) because they are both long-term research endeavors with little promise of commercial viability for at least 30 years.
Business interests are not terribly concerned about wind or solar or tidal or geothermal because none of them constitute a serious threat to big coal, big oil, or big natural gas. Business interests understand the true magnitude of the world’s rate of fossil fuel consumption, and they know that NONE of these “green” sources of energy will put so much as a dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuel.
Business interests ARE terribly concerned about the potential of popular belief in global warming to place a VERY significant dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuel. They are so concerned about it that they have successfully convinced many congressmen and many media people to neuter any serious attempts to address global warming issues.
I once thought the Polywell was one of the very few ways that our planet might be able to seriously address global warming. Could it be that these same business interests see the Polywell in the same way, and could this be the reason that the Polywell is going nowhere?
Could it be that Business interests are not terribly concerned about the pathetic state of Polywell funding because that is EXACTLY what they want?
Just asking….