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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

http://www.livescience.com/technology/a … tml]Senate could kill it

*I checked Search with "NIF" (no results) and also with "laser" (1-1/2 pages of results; I scanned the most recent active threads...no mention of this that I could see).

NIF is apparently composed of 192 lasers which can simulate the explosion of a hydrogen bomb.  We've already spent $2.8 billion on it, and yet it's in danger of the Senate killing it.

::shakes head::

Not sure this would be used as a space weapon and it doesn't pertain to probes, so have opted to create a new thread for it.

We've sunk this much money into it; continue it.

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

What is equally as scary is that it has the promise for fusion fuel ignition and for laser propulsion drive concepts. Not to mention it also was probably part of future star wars space weapons.
It is to bad that we dump so much money down to research but get so little from it.

C M Edwards

Member

From: Lake Charles LA USA

Registered: 2002-04-29

Posts: 1,012

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

It is to bad that we dump so much money down to research but get so little from it.

I would disagree.  The bulk of funded research doesn't reveal anything of immediate use, yet funding research still gives a net return because the few projects that do pan out tend to be of sufficient economic value to cover the loss for all the rest.

$2.8 billion is a lot of expense for a set of failed projects, but it will be made up elsewhere.

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"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger

Cobra Commander

Member

From: The outskirts of Detroit.

Registered: 2002-04-09

Posts: 3,039

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

$2.8 billion is a lot of expense for a set of failed projects, but it will be made up elsewhere.

I'd agree if it actually failed, but cutting funding to something so near completion for non-technical reasons bothers me. It would be almost like cancelling a Mars mission when the rocket is on the crawler just save the launch cost for something else.

But then I may have a preference for expensive hardware exploding over that same hardware being mothballed.   ???

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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

Ummm... the NIF wouldn't be too useful as a weapon system. It is comprised of a sphere of 192 smaller lasers, none of which are very good at blowing things up, and since they are aimed at eachother you can't exactly shoot stuff down with it.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8249374/]Future giant laser threatened by cuts
With $2.8 billion already spent, Senate panel votes to cut funding[/url]

with just four beams, the device remains the world's most powerful laser and "is capable of performing many useful experiments."

Achieving fusion ignition would allow nuclear weapons scientists to study the performance and readiness of the country's aging nuclear arsenal without actually detonating a nuclear device.

reddragon

Banned

From: Earth

Registered: 2005-01-24

Posts: 193

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

Although I oppose canceling it at this stage, I'm not sure what the use of simulating the effects of an H-bomb are. Don't we already know what they do? (i.e. make a really big explosion, the exact force of which can be calculated fairly easily mathematically)  Besides I hope we're not going to use any nukes anytime soon. I see more promise for this experiment in developing laser fusion for power production or space propulsion. By the way is NASA or DOA paying for this project?

Ummm... the NIF wouldn't be too useful as a weapon system. It is comprised of a sphere of 192 smaller lasers, none of which are very good at blowing things up, and since they are aimed at eachother you can't exactly shoot stuff down with it.

Once you have the technology for this sort of laser fusion, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to change it from a sphere to a dish shape in which all the lasers are aimed at a point some distance away, sort of death star style. Of course it could be quite difficult to get it to be powerful at large distances such as on the Earth's surface when fired from orbit.

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Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

             -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
              by Douglas Adams

PurduesUSAFguy

Banned

From: Purdue University

Registered: 2004-04-04

Posts: 237

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

I'm not too worried about the money situation yet, this is the sort of thing that gets hammered out in confrence between the Senate and House versions of the bill.

The NIF has some major implications for fusion research, and since it's the only fusion project currently active in the US I would hate to see it killed.

Also it's implications for space propulsion are huge.

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

Although I oppose canceling it at this stage, I'm not sure what the use of simulating the effects of an H-bomb are. Don't we already know what they do? (i.e. make a really big explosion, the exact force of which can be calculated fairly easily mathematically)  Besides I hope we're not going to use any nukes anytime soon. I see more promise for this experiment in developing laser fusion for power production or space propulsion. By the way is NASA or DOA paying for this project?

Ummm... the NIF wouldn't be too useful as a weapon system. It is comprised of a sphere of 192 smaller lasers, none of which are very good at blowing things up, and since they are aimed at eachother you can't exactly shoot stuff down with it.

Once you have the technology for this sort of laser fusion, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to change it from a sphere to a dish shape in which all the lasers are aimed at a point some distance away, sort of death star style. Of course it could be quite difficult to get it to be powerful at large distances such as on the Earth's surface when fired from orbit.

Um, that wouldn't make much of a weapon at all...

...what it would make though is a fusion rocket engine. Take that dish or sphere-with-a-hole shape point it out the back of your rocket and light it up. Each pulse would generate a small wave of hot gas that would push against the "reaction chaimber" (or a magnetic shield) and provide thrust.

The big question about nuclear weapons is, how well do they work as they age? That since we are dumb and won't test the things underground anymore, at best all we can do is guess. A computer simulation is only as good as the assumptions that go into writing the program, and so having an actual fusion explosion to study, like the NIF would produce, would go a long way into refining the computer models.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

C M Edwards

Member

From: Lake Charles LA USA

Registered: 2002-04-29

Posts: 1,012

Re: NIF: $2.8 billion down the drain??

...this is the sort of thing that gets hammered out in confrence between the Senate and House versions of the bill.

All right, then, I'll change my vote.

I still say that no amount of past expenses on a research project automatically justifies future expenses on the same project.  That won't change.

However, the whole reason that $2.8 billion in research funding could be let go without a qualm is the hope of hitting on another scheme that will work.  Unless you are a psychic who can predict the result of a experiments that have never been run, cancelling research projects before results become available is just bad policy.  Use of that threat by the US Congress to manipulate another bill is just wrong, both morally and economically.

There's no return from projects that pan out if none are ever allowed to pan out.

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"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger