Reply To: March 5-9 2007: 7th Symposium on Current Trends in International Fusion Research in DC

[Aeronaut]

Brian, I agree that numbers are easier in concept than action. Until the tipping point, that is. The hardest 2,500 or so sales is to the local person or group that can see Rezwan’s triple bottom line and popularize it in his, her, or their community. This is simply a variation of think globally, act locally. Science/engineering really is cool, and when they’re promoted correctly, you should be seeing 4th and 5th graders exploiting the help system of a delta-v space plane game, for instance.

So in the next 10 to 20 years we’re graduating a bunch of techies competing for jobs like new teachers are today. By adding a fourth branch to the government vs industry vs academic research environment, we’re not upsetting anybody else’s funding. My fantasy runs more along the lines of an announcement that the

“Podunk Development Co-operative seeks 50,000 partners contributing $100 annually to build and operate cutting edge aneutronic fusion research and tooling support lab to employ 2 degreed physicists, 10 physics undergraduate students, and up to 100 physics majors and promising high school students, who will graduate with solid work experience. Other intangible benefits include mentoring opportunities while developing a community of motivated problem solvers in all areas of business and the community. Creating and maintaining a global reputation for the highest energy density aneutronic fusion generators is the driving focus. Contact _____ “

Now we’re out of the ownership mentality and back into the frontier-style barn raising thinking. Do I own any of the barns I’ve helped build? No more than anybody who helped build mine owns part of mine. The tangible and intangible community benefits are worth far more than $100/yr for almost anybody. LPP’s got a barn to build. So might polywell and tri-alpha.

Now, imagine 2,500 of these communities’ political impact. “Speak softly and carry a big stick” said Theodore Roosevelt.