from the is-this-the-best-way-to-fund-science? dept.
The bulk of fusion research has so far been channeled towards plasma containment and a stabilization method. This is the approach used by the ITER tokamak reactor, the cost of which could exceed 13.7 billion (10^9) USD before it's online in the year 2027 if no further delays occurs. Researchers at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) Fusion, in a project partially financed by NASA-JPL, are working in a different direction. They plan on using focus fusion, which focuses the plasma in a very small volume to produce fusion and an ion beam which could then be harnessed to produce electricity. It is small enough to fit in a shipping container and can double as a rocket engine. It would cost 50 million USD to produce the working 5 MW prototype. To reach the next hurdle and demonstrate feasibility, LPP Fusion has started an Indiegogo campaign to raise 200 000 USD and so far 53 860 USD has been raised.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by coolgopher on Friday May 23 2014, @02:57AM
I read this over on slash the other day, and the comments there were highly critical there, pointing out that if this was a workable approach they should have no problem attracting "normal" funding....
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @03:02AM
Unfortunately all the "normal" funding has already been earmarked for the purpose of killing Muslims with drones.
(Score: 1) by Solaarius on Friday May 23 2014, @03:18AM
"Normal" as in commercial - not government - financing. $50M in venture capital would be trivial to raise if this tech was legit.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Oligonicella on Friday May 23 2014, @04:33AM
Good gods, can't you dumbasses leave that on the shelf for a single friggin' article?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @07:03PM
No and it even gets modded "Insightful" which it very definitely is not.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by yellowantphil on Friday May 23 2014, @03:31AM
Besides, even if the plan were legitimate, the owners would have the potential to make a fortune. The crowd funders, meanwhile, can choose from a number of rewards including a "personal shout out." Oculus VR [soylentnews.org] recently cashed out and as far as I know, paid the crowd funders nothing. That is probably the deal they signed up for, but why should people donate so much money to a company that hopes to make a fortune off of their donation, without any potential for profits later?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Friday May 23 2014, @10:29AM
They're going to make a lot of money for sure, what I care about is the potential of having a clean "renewable" source of energy besides oil. It'll take a long time, probably won't happen while I'm alive, but my grand kids and maybe even my kids will benefit. I haven't donated yet, but I might after I hear the pitch. I realize this isn't for me it's for the advancement of science and FOR THE FUTURE!!!
FUTURE!!!
future!!!
(is there an echo in here)
Why shouldn't science be crowd funded?
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @04:57PM
Then don't support this. While fusion reactors a la ITER and friends are cleaner than many energy sources, they still produce toxic and radioactive waste. The only plan to deal with that is, according to their documents, to "store it onsite".
(Score: 1) by pogostix on Friday May 23 2014, @03:18AM
Click here for the one weird trick that will make cold fusion work and end all the wars in the world.
I'd be happy to eat my words in 2020, but it feels like a slick con... I'm not even saying that they're going to take the money and run... just that their claims are really phony and inflated sounding.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Friday May 23 2014, @03:23AM
Was this weird trick discovered by a local mom?
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday May 23 2014, @03:58PM
and do PHD's and/or the electric company hate her?
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @03:27AM
I wouldn't be surprised if every one of their claims turn out to be true and the prototype becomes funded and viable. The scientific response should become clear very fast given the timeline. Add this to your long list of promising and hyped up energy technologies.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday May 23 2014, @04:44AM
Does anyone really believe that big oil, gas, and coal will allow any kind of fusion power to be let loose? If for some reason a commercially viable means of producing electric power by fusion by 2020, those special interests will bribe members of Congress, state legislatures, and appointed bureaucrats to regulate it into non-viability.
Of course, there will always be a need for oil. Oil is great for making plastics and polymers and some people, myself included, prefer to cook with gas instead of electric stoves. And, of course, an electric-powered motorcycle would simply not be fun to ride without that rumble created by a Harley or the whine of a Japanese crotch rocket. But the fossil fuel interests make their money from transportation and electric generation fuels and they will not stand for those profits to be lost.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @07:10AM
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday May 23 2014, @09:03AM
> those special interests will bribe members of Congress, state legislatures, and appointed bureaucrats to regulate it into non-viability.
Meh. Bribing politicians is so 20th Century. These days it's all about image management. All you have to do is make up a lie about fusion power being dirty/ unsafe/ uncool/ uneconomical/ unamerican and loudly shout it again and again until everyone believes it. Let the gullible masses do your work for you.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday May 23 2014, @03:30PM
Well, it's more 19th century, a time when it was much more flagrant. It's one of those things that make me wish that Mark Twain was still alive. His wit would put John Stewart and Steven Colbert to shame.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @05:06PM
Hopefully there will not always be a need for oil, unless you mean whale oil to power our lamps, in which case I agree, current trends show no decline in the need for whale oil!
The more we learn about plastics the more we realize their toxic effects on us. BPa, BPs, the list goes on. The sooner we stop draping everything in oil the better. We did not evolve draped in oil so it seems the mounting empirical evidence showing it to demonstrably hurt us shouldn't be a big surprise to folks, yet it often seems to be.
(Score: 1) by lcklspckl on Friday May 23 2014, @05:17AM
Couldn't the interested parties really stand behind this and mortgage their houses if this were all that promising? I'm all for it, but haven't seen any physicists weigh in and it seems like just hype. Show us the passion, guys. The money to be made should be enough to offset the risk.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bill_mcgonigle on Friday May 23 2014, @06:03AM
You don't have to be wealthy to have a good idea and not everybody has large assets. But they should be attracting small investors, not T-shirt buyers, in my opinion. I'd be more interested in a pink sheet stock than a T-shirt if I thought this had potential. And I'm saying that as somebody who has bought pink sheet stocks in experimental energy companies before, for many of the same reasons they cite.
(Score: 1) by outlier on Friday May 23 2014, @01:58PM
Sure. Now suppose their current idea doesn't work out, but they devise a new approach based on what they learned from this attempt, as is typical for any original research / development effort. What do they do for funding then?
I have yet to see any physicist chime in to explain why this can't work and as you say the potential benefit vs. cost is high enough to justify the risk, so why can't a more typical funding source (university, NSF, or vc capital) foot the bill?
(Score: 5, Informative) by No.Limit on Friday May 23 2014, @09:49AM
Some may have misunderstood this. But they're not raising money to finance the end-product or production thereof.
They're raising money for research funding. As can be seen in their video, they finished the first two steps and need money to do further research to finish the last hurdle. ( http://vimeo.com/94122070#t=3m10s [vimeo.com] )
There are indicators that the research they've done so far is legitimate:s / [lawrencevi...hysics.com]
http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/peer-review
and apparently one of their papers was the most read in 2012 in the physics of plasma journal (in the video).
they've also had a google talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhKB-VxJWpg [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Friday May 23 2014, @12:36PM
I'd rather donate here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways [indiegogo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @11:23PM
Posting here as an anon coward, as I can't be bothered to create yet another account for yet another forum (you can find me on Twitter as @osnoww)
I'm curious as to why you prefer Solar Roadways over Focus Fusion?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @01:16PM
Boron and Hydrogen might be plentiful, but Helium is leaving the earth. We would effectively be sending Boron away. That doesn't quite sound unlimited. We do have free sunshine which is not technically unlimited, but whose source will not disappear for billions of years. And when the sun does finally cease being a life providing sun, it won't matter. What happens when we run out of Boron? What effect does the extraction of Boron have on the ocean and its wildlife?
Both technologies require the use of other resources for creation of the power generators. Solar Roadways is helping solve multiple issues using recycled materials. Is Focus Fusion doing this?
Does Focus Fusion have a prototype or two?
(Score: 1) by ezekielsays on Friday May 23 2014, @12:55PM
It's funny. After reading about this my thoughts were that maybe this was a legitimate company that was just trying something different with regards to fundraising..then I went on the Indiegogo site and watched their video - it was all emotional appeal and no science, slickly produced, and left me feeling more like this was a scam than before...
Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Vanderhoth on Friday May 23 2014, @01:17PM
Yeah, I had the same thought, but the video on the go-go site is really trying to appeal to a general, non-sciencey, audience. No.Limit (1965) posted a Google talk video [youtube.com] above, which was much more sciency and had a much better explanation of the process. Combined with the FAQ from the go-go site and it paints a very different picture. It's pretty clear after watching the Google talk video why he dumbed things down so much for the go-go video. Although there were still claims I didn't appreciate in the go-go video, "It will stop climate change" being the major one, and it did seem misleading. Until you get down to the FAQ the go-go video makes it sound like you're funding the actual project when actually "What we are raising is the money for a crucial and very expensive set of electrodes".
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by ezekielsays on Tuesday May 27 2014, @04:30PM
Thanks for that! I didn't have time (or motivation) to look into it more, but I'm glad you did. I appreciate the additional info.
Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday May 27 2014, @04:49PM
No problem, we don't all have hours of free time to research every possible investment/advancement on Earth. I appreciate a good summary of a topic, primary why I skip most articles and go straight to the comment section. I find I often get all the relevant information just from commentator and bias from authors, as well as alternative articles, is often called out pretty close to the the top. If everyone in the comment section is in agreement there's something fishy going on with the site/article.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @11:36PM
posting here as anon coward as I can't be bothered to create yet another account for comments. You can find me on Twitter as @osnoww.
You raise an interesting point about the video. I will try to answer it - I was involved in its creation. We debated long and hard about should we put more of the science in or not. We came to the conclusion, by speaking to many people, both scientists, engineers and lay people, that we lose the majority when we talk about science. Since the purpose of the video is to engage the majority, we left the science out. We figured that most people who see it AND who care about the science, will go out and do the research. All the information is there. You say this feels like a scam. I would say that it is controversial. In the sense that the majority of scientists working in fusion support the large tokamak approach (ITER, NIF) etc. There is a minority who think there is a better way. The WHOLE POINT of the Focus Fusion campaign is to raise the funding to check out the alternative idea. Science (and this still is a science research project) is speculative, i.e. there's an idea that something could work (or not) and you set out to prove (or disprove) the idea. If this idea checks out, it WILL change the energy generation business and much more besides. I have donated to the crowdfunding campaign because I am interested to see if this will work. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong: it's one small contribution for a person, one giant leap for humankind (if it works).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @04:48PM
So 2044 then?