Flight Rates

> 2. In
> addition to concerns about enriching nations which support terrorism,
> we're also increasingly concerned about greenhouse gas emissions.
> SPS is the only potential replacement for fossil fuels which doesn't
> have an attendant waste disposal problem.

Not the only one -- if Bussard's recently revealed approach to
proton-Boron fusion can be made to work, then this would produce
abundant energy with no radioactivity (the only outputs are helium and
electricity).

This is unlike the tokamak approach to fusion, which does indeed
produce radioactive wastes (though ones with a much shorter half-life
than the waste from typical fission reactors).

I've long been a skeptic of fusion, and I'm still a skeptic about the
tokamak approach. But I'm cautiously optimistic about Bussard's new
approach (see references below). We shouldn't despair about this,
either -- if this form of fusion works, it can be used to produce
rocket engines thousands of times more powerful and efficient than
anything we have today, and would so dramatically reduce launch costs
and in-space transit times that I suspect the solar system would open
up to us almost overnight.

Keep your eye on this technology -- it's still unknown who is going to
pick it up and run with it, and how. But I think someone will. The
next step is to wait for the technical paper Bussard is preparing,
which will lay down all the theory and experimental results. Then I
imagine we'll see other groups (such as the U. of Wisconson folks)
attempting to reproduce his results. And if his results are confirmed,
somebody will step in and aggressively pursue it -- and I bet it will
be a company, rather than the government, that will be first to the
punch. Of course all this is speculation, but that's my guess.

Best,
- Joe

Video of Bussard's talk at Google:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid96321846673788606

Transcript of Bussard talk at Google:
http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/Should%20Google%20Go%20Nuclear.pdf

>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
Joe Strout -- joe@...