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There are plenty of true believers working in fusion energy. Enough to support big projects like ITER. But consider this analogous situation. I was working in
by leephillips 5y ago
There are plenty of true believers working in fusion energy. Enough to support big projects like ITER.
But consider this analogous situation. I was working in a government physics lab when Star Wars (excuse me—SDI) was still a program that you could get money from for all kinds of projects. Nobody—I mean nobody—actually doing research believed in the program. That we would actually build a Star Wars defense shield to make Ronald Reagan proud. But they happily sent off grant proposals and were glad to accept money to work on various things. You can spin lots of pet projects so it sounds like they are all about missile defense. But the algorithms I worked on, during my brief involvement, would have been more useful for game design.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoOut of curiosity, are you familiar with Project Excalibur at all? I’m curious how the simultaneous-targeting of dozens of reentry vehicles from a single fission-explosion-powered sea-urchin multi-laser was supposed to work. Going by leaked and declassified material I’ve seen the concept was too far developed for it to have been laughed-out of the room, so what’s the story? …or any other juicy bits you got for us?
- leephillips 5y agoDoesn’t ring a bell, but I’m not an expert in Star Wars stuff. I don’t know if this qualifies as juicy, but let me just point out, as a general strategy, that if your boss puts you on a project that you don‘t want to work on, and you are in a position to ensure that the project will lose its funding by failing to meet its milestones...well, you can‘t work on a project that doesn’t exist.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> you can‘t work on a project that doesn’t exist. You've lost me :S
- Dav3xor 5y agoIt's still around, they just changed the name. And it's still a boondoggle.