Posted on 10/24/2007 8:17:26 AM PDT by fishtank
Dr. Robert W. Bussard died at his home in Santa Fe, NM on October 6th. Inventor, entrepreneur and author, he was the originator of the Interstellar Ramjet as known on Star Trek as the Bussard Collector. A fixture in Science Fiction literature, the Ramjet continues to be the only method known with the possible capability to propel humankind to the stars. Dr. Bussard was also instrumental in developing the nuclear rocket program at Los Alamos National Lab in the 1950s and 60s. At his death, Dr. Bussard was the President and CEO of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), a company he co-founded with his wife Dolly H. Gray, to pursue his unique and patented concept to develop practical fusion power. The project will continue. He was a Fellow of both the International Academy of Astronautics and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington D.C. Dr. Bussard loved sailing and captained his sailboat Uproarious twice in the Trans-Pacific Yacht Race as one of the oldest people ever to do so. A man of great intellect and vision, Dr. Bussard by example, influenced many people around the world and has left a peerless legacy. He is survived by his wife, four children and five grandchildren. The family has requested that those who wish to, make a donation in his memory to the Red Cloud Indian School. Pace, Doc.
Just yesterday someone on the net demanded to know my real name. I told her it was Zefram Cochrane.
Not a reader of science fiction, eh!
Bussard was one of the great geniuses of the 20th Century, and, if his last bit of experimental work on fusion pan out, he may well be heralded as one of the greatest of all time. If IEC fusion proves out, he will, posthumously, have permanently solved the problems of 1) energy, 2) poverty 3)global warming, 4) interplanetary, and possibly 5) interstellar travel (and probably a bunch more).
Interstellar travel is mine.
Zefram Cochrane, huh?
I’ll let you two race for fusion-interstellar travel.... I know I can’t keep up.
Many thanks Dr. Bussard, R.I.P.
Without him my collection of Bussards would be embarrassingly low.
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Anyway, magnetic field solar sails could be more useful, though maybe in interstellar space, there may be a place for such a ramjet?
Maybe a magnetic field could be made to be used as a sail while closer to a star, and then turned funnel shaped to funnel interstellar hydrogen into an on-board fusion reactor?
The author didn’t do enough research. There are at least two other technologies (even more ready than the interstellar ramjet) for interstellar travel. Project Orion and magnetic solar sails both have the capabilities to accelerate a craft to a sizable fraction of c.
Just a thought but it's an obituary in what appears to be a small newspaper. They are typically written, with help from the family, by a funeral director.
I think in the case of an obit a little license is allowable. For my father I wrote that he was an avid golfer which wasn't totally true. Rabid golfer would have been more accurate...
I have strict instructions that by obit should contain that I was a graduate of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I met him over dinner once. My first impression was that he was a very creative genius with a bit of slick salesman mixed in. Most of his ideas were flawed when it came to feasibility, but civilization needs idea generators too.
My hubby, SirKit and our homeschooled son, a Senior this year, were talking about this guy just yesterday. SirKit has been interested in Fusors for a while, and hed read about Brussard’s death. They want to make a Fusor as part of our son’s Physics course, which SirKit is teaching. ;o)
Of course it does! They're the ones who the folks who like to tinker follow after, flesh out those ideas, then bring them to fulfillment. If the technology isn't available, the 'hands on' folks CREATE it!
RIP.
When I began my aerospace engineering career, I complained to an old pro about the negative, nit-picking engineers that constituted 95% of our company. He explained, “Darth, you gotta understand that we only need a few geniuses generating new ideas. It takes one hundred engineers to figure out everything can POSSIBLY go wrong to make it succeed. That’s why machines like the Space Shuttle work right on the first flight.”
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