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RIP, Bob Bussard



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 9th 07, 01:14 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Rand Simberg[_1_]
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Posts: 8,311
Default RIP, Bob Bussard

http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833
  #2  
Old October 9th 07, 03:09 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Damon Hill[_4_]
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Default RIP, Bob Bussard

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833


Thus far, not a word of this on talk-polywell.org

I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.

--Damon
  #3  
Old October 9th 07, 04:54 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Paul F. Dietz
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Posts: 599
Default RIP, Bob Bussard


"Damon Hill" wrote in message
38...

I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.


I'm saddened by the death of almost anyone, but I have to say
that I don't think he'd have seen greater results, had he lived.
I fear that, perhaps motivated by approaching death, he pushed
the concept publically much more than was warranted. He
had nothing to lose.

Paul

  #4  
Old October 9th 07, 05:34 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
kT
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Default RIP, Bob Bussard

Damon Hill wrote:

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833


Thus far, not a word of this on talk-polywell.org

I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.


The world certainly needs more crackpot ideas.
  #5  
Old October 9th 07, 04:48 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Al
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Posts: 81
Default RIP, Bob Bussard

On Oct 8, 7:14 pm, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833


I notice Wiki listing this too.
I meet Robert once in late 1970's , had a long dinner with him. In
those days he was not yet the quasi-quixotic character he later
became.
He was still Mr. Nuclear Propulsion , probably the top expert in that
in the world.
He told me that the Interstellar Ramjet came to him at Los Alamos
while he was looking at his Mexican breakfast and a rolled up
tortilla!
His paper ...R. W. Bussard, "Galactic Matter and Interstellar Flight",
Astronautica Acta 6 (1960): 179 - 194... is still a marvel of
relativistic engineering.
He was lean smooth talking dude with a PhD in physics from Princeton
and a very nice man.

  #6  
Old October 17th 07, 01:31 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Al
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Posts: 81
Default RIP, Bob Bussard

On Oct 8, 11:34 pm, kT wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:


http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833


Thus far, not a word of this on talk-polywell.org


I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.


The world certainly needs more crackpot ideas.


I don't think any of Robert Bussard's 'fusor' ideas were crackpot,
they had a sound construct within theoretical physics, its just that
he had a little too much optimism about technological realization and
time lines.

Can't let this thread pass without mention that Bussard was, at one
time, one of the world's most important experts in nuclear rocketry
during the 1950's and 1960's(*,**). An important figure in the
development and implementation of the USA's only nuclear rocket motors
at Los Alamos.

*Bussard, R & DeLauer, R (1958), Nuclear Rocket Propulsion, McGraw-
Hill
**Bussard, R.W. & DeLauer, R.D., Fundamentals of Nuclear Flight,
(McGraw-Hill: New York, 1965).

  #7  
Old October 17th 07, 01:41 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Rand Simberg[_1_]
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Posts: 8,311
Default RIP, Bob Bussard

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:31:23 -0700, in a place far, far away, Al
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:

On Oct 8, 11:34 pm, kT wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:


http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833


Thus far, not a word of this on talk-polywell.org


I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.


The world certainly needs more crackpot ideas.


I don't think any of Robert Bussard's 'fusor' ideas were crackpot,


Consider the source of this comment, and note the irony. If you look
up "crackpot" in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Tommy
Elifritz. Well, actually, make that Nazi crackpot.
  #8  
Old October 17th 07, 02:14 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
kT
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Posts: 5,032
Default Thomas Lee Elifritz

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:31:23 -0700, in a place far, far away, Al
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:

On Oct 8, 11:34 pm, kT wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833
Thus far, not a word of this on talk-polywell.org
I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.
The world certainly needs more crackpot ideas.

I don't think any of Robert Bussard's 'fusor' ideas were crackpot,


Consider the source of this comment, and note the irony. If you look
up "crackpot" in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Tommy
Elifritz. Well, actually, make that Nazi crackpot.


Ok, let's look critically at what I've done, besides point out the
obvious that the Ares I is a piece of ****, which unfortunately isn't
obvious to an American public dumbed down by years of the fascist Bush
regime. What Mr. Elifritz did, was only to apply the BCS-BOSE theory to
chemistry, years before the BCS-BOSE theory was fashionable, before the
discovery of the pseudo-gap in the cuprates, before the demonstration of
Bose-Einstein condensation on atomic gases, before the demonstration of
the Feshbach resonance in atomic gases, and before the demonstration of
the fundamental nature of the BSC-BOSE model and the verification of the
BCS=BOSE theory as the definitive theory of condensed matter physics.

What did this get me? I gave me the necessary insight into the
previously mysterious behavior of metal-ammonia solutions and bismuth
iodide solutions, in order to establish these particular systems as the
definitive condensed matter physics examples of the BSC-BOSE transition.

Now tell me again what Robert Bussard did? While you're at it, please
tell me what Mr. Rand Simberg has accomplished lately in science.

I won't be waiting around for the answers.
  #9  
Old October 17th 07, 02:17 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
kT
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Posts: 5,032
Default RIP, Bob Bussard

Al wrote:
On Oct 8, 11:34 pm, kT wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:
(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...33.html#009833
Thus far, not a word of this on talk-polywell.org
I'm saddened that Bussard didn't live to see more and greater
results of his concepts, but hopefully his work will go on.

The world certainly needs more crackpot ideas.


I don't think any of Robert Bussard's 'fusor' ideas were crackpot


Anybody who thinks nuclear rockets in situ are a good idea is nuts.

If you'd like to look at one of my crackpot ideas :

http://www.lifeform.org/bion.htm
  #10  
Old October 17th 07, 03:32 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default RIP, Bob Bussard



Al wrote:
Can't let this thread pass without mention that Bussard was, at one
time, one of the world's most important experts in nuclear rocketry
during the 1950's and 1960's(*,**). An important figure in the
development and implementation of the USA's only nuclear rocket motors
at Los Alamos.


We still aren't using them you'll note, which may say something...coming
up on fifty years afterwards.
NERVA was heavy; Dumbo was iffy, and both were dirty for surface liftoff.
Even the far later Timberwind project went nowhere fast.
A lot of the isp advantage disappeared in shielding weight and the
weight of the reactor itself.

Pat

 




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