CharlesKramer wrote:Add 5 years:
-- Nebel gone from EMC2, Bussard dead
-- The claims made for Focus Fusion were at a minimum overly optimistic (never mind the practical problems to create a reliable many-times-a-minute pulse device for repeated and practical fusion)
-- TriAlpha's actual progress is as secretive (and possibly as non-existent) as ever -- except the rumors stopped.
"Computing a Winner, Fusion a Loser In US Science Budget"
See below.
I am as disappointed about this as anyone here. American stopped building its Superconducting Super Collider (which would have been bigger than CERN's large Hadron), shut Tevatron, and now Wisconsin's Synchrotron Radiation Center is shutting... Compare the price of a single B1 bomber which I think is over a billion... makes me dispair over our national priorities.
STILL.... is reduced government funding for fusion the reason it has failed? Or is the government waking up to the boondoggle of big promises and lousy results for more 60 years, during which it has spent MANY billions on fusion. Many it's priorities re: fusion compared with computing are justified. It may also have (misplaced) reduced anxiety about energy thanks to fracking.
20 years away and....
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/03 ... nce-budget
"President Barack Obama has released a $3.901 trillion budget request to Congress, including proposals for a host of federal research agencies. Science Magazine has the breakdown, including a big win for advanced computing, a big cut for fusion, and status quo for astronomy. 'In the proposed budget, advanced computing would see its funding soar 13.2% to $541 million. BES, the biggest DOE program, would get a boost of 5.5% to $1.807 billion. BER would get a 3% bump to $628 million, and nuclear physics would enjoy a 4.3% increase to $594 million. In contrast, the fusion program would take a 17.6% cut to $416 million—$88 million less than it's getting this year. Although far from final, the numbers suggest another big dip for a program that has enjoyed a roller coaster ride in recent years. In its proposed 2013 budget, DOE called for slashing spending on domestic fusion research to help pay for the increasing U.S. contribution to the international fusion experiment, ITER, in Cadarache, France.'" The Association of American Universities has issued a letter disapproving of the amount of research funding. The Planetary Society has broken down the proposed NASA budget.