From: jtkare@attglobal.net   
      
   George  wrote:   
      
   > Does anyone know how feasible Bussard's Inertial Confinement Fusion   
   > EXL engine is? It is not laser ICF but electrostatic. I read an old   
   > article about using one to power a large arcjet and just wanted to   
   > know if it actually works?   
      
   Not so far.   
      
   There's no question that electrostatic confinement can produce fusion;   
   there are a variety of designs for neutron generators based on   
   electrostatic confinement, including some you can literally build at   
   home.  However, these devices are all far short of producing net power   
   output, and are limited in power density by the fact that they use solid   
   grids to control the ion motion.   
      
   Bussard has developed a more advanced electrostatic confinement concept   
   with no grids.  He's worked on in for many years and remains convinced   
   that it will generate net power if scaled up to an appropriate size, but   
   has not been able to get a large experiment funded; the small   
   experiments he has done are inconclusive.   
      
   Many (probably most) other fusion researchers are equally convinced that   
   it will never reach breakeven  because of fairly fundamental physical   
   limits, mainly related to how fast the radial motion of the ions   
   "thermalizes" (i.e., becomes random motion).   
      
   Jordin Kare   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)