Tim Ventura Interviews

Dr. Robert Bussard shares his vision for clean, affordable fusion power. The late Dr. Bussard was a founding member of America’s fusion power establishment, spent over 20 years developing the Polywell fusor, which he claimed to generate over 100,000 times the fusion power of Farnsworth’s original experiments. Polywell was awarded the “Outstanding Technology of the Year” for 2006 by the International Academy of Science, and though Bussard passed in 2007, his research team continues to develop the Polywell fusor.

Bussard was best known as the namesake for the legendary “Bussard Ramjet”. He conceptualized the device in 1960 during his tenure in the Nuclear Propulsion Division of Los Alamos National Labs, where he designed the Nerva motor – a nuclear powered rocket proposed for heavy-lift orbital applications. He later rose to the position of Assistant Director of the Atomic Energy Commission under Robert Hirsch in the early 1970’s, where they founded the fusion power research program for the United States.

Bussard describes his disenchantment with big-science Tokamak research that led him to return to the roots of fusion power with the “Polywell” project that he initiated in 1986. Funded for over 20 years by the Department of the Navy, Bussard’s EMC2 corporation was tasked with solving 19 fundamental challenges that stood in the way of designing commercially viable Farnsworth fusors.

The Polywell design is a modified Farnsworth-Hirsch style fusor which traps electrons in a magnetic confinement inside its hollow center. The negatively charged electrons then accelerate positively charged ions for the purpose of achieving inertial electrostatic confinement fusion. Bussard theorized that by utilizing magnetic fields he could avoid losses from electrons striking the grid, and he reported achieving fusion rate of 10^9 fusion reactions per second as a result of the magnetic shielding, which is about 100,000 times greater fusion power than Farnsworth achieved.

Polywell was designed for high-efficiency fusion power and also for portability, which was required to satisfy the Navy’s needs for ocean vessels and submarines. These characteristics also make it suitable for high-output fusion power for space applications. While Bussard’s first intended application was an 8-foot diameter naval reactor capable of generating 100-megawatts of output energy, the ultimate goal for Polywell was to facilitate the development of a high-velocity transorbital spacecraft capable of reaching the moon in less than 8 hours time.

Dr. Lisa Randall is a leading scientific authority on M-theory, an incredibly powerful model of theoretical physics that offers solutions to problems that are off-limits to conventional physics. The core idea is that the there are 11 dimensions in the universe, contained on different membranes. Billions of years ago, two of those membranes collided in space, and the overlap between them became the big bang. M-theory offers big answers to questions about how our universe began, but that’s not what I wanted to speak with her about.

Interviewing Randall was a dream come true in terms of timing. About a month before our interview, two of the first applied physics papers on M-theory were published: the first one was a proof of the Alcubierre Warp Drive and the second proposed a way to utilize neutrinos to communicate backwards in time. I interviewed the authors of both those papers, and wanted to follow up by speaking to an authority on the subject who might offer some perspective. For me, seeing applied physics papers on M-theory meant that this theoretical model was starting to come of age, which recast it for me as something worth being seriously discussed.

I would have loved to do the same for String theory, but then again so would everybody else. For decades, proponents of String theory (the precursor to M-theory) spent considerable time promoting their theoretical model, and yet never offered any practical, real-world predictions based on it. M-theory arrived later, based closely on String theory, and for a while it appeared that it wouldn’t offer predictions either. However, in 2006 we finally saw M-theory start to stretch its legs, and those first two papers were aimed directly at disruptive technologies, which seems like a great place to for M-theory to start.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s no better place for a theoretical model to start than by supporting the predictions of earlier theories. However, if the primary value of M-theory was to tell us what we already know then it wouldn’t be very useful. The place to start is with predictions that conventional models just can’t address, and that’s what M-theory is producing.

It is worth noting that M-theory is still very young, and still hasn’t been fleshed out enough to answer a lot of the questions that I asked Randall. As a mathematically-derived theory, in a sense M-theory is a bunch of relationships searching for definitions to anchor them in reality. However, what I feel it truly offers is a new sense of hope for mainstream physics, as the conventional theories just don’t seem able to keep pace with the human imagination. M-theory most certainly does.

We’re joined by Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, to talk about the Soviet race to the moon in the ’60s and his own role leading the development of the Proton Rocket, used to this day as one of the most successful boosters in the history of spaceflight.

The USSR had a shot at the moon in 1967, but politics got in the way.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Sergei Khrushchev is the son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and holds several advanced engineering degrees, including a doctoral degree from the Ukrainian Academy of Science, a Ph.D. from Moscow Technical University, and an M.A. degree with distinction from the Moscow Electric Power Institute.

Since immigrating to the United States in 1991, Khrushchev has served as a a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and lectures at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

We're joined by hypersonic pioneer Paul Czsyz for the inside scoop on Aurora and a next-generation Mach-15 successor that may be capable of even reaching space.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Paul Czysz was a Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering (retired) at Saint Louis University, the former Chief Scientist for the National Aerospace Place (NASP) project, and the CEO of his hypersonic research & consulting company, Hypertech Concepts, LLC.

Paul was a graduate of St. Louis University High School and Parks College of St. Louis University (Aeronautical Engineering). After graduation, in 1955, he worked for McDonnell Aircraft and served in the Air Force at Wright Patterson Air Force Base from April 1956 to February 1958. He transferred from Military to Civilian career and remained at Wright Patterson until September 1963. He returned to St. Louis to join McDonnell Aircraft and remain there until his retirement in 1991.

Paul specialized in aerodynamics, hypersonic flight and many other aerospace technologies. In 1986, he was named McDonnell Douglas Fellow for his work in hypersonic aircraft concepts. Upon his retirement from McDonnell Douglas, he opened his own consulting businesses.

We’re joined by Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center to discuss the Lunar Gateway, interplanetary travel, and NASA’s plan to enable the human exploration of Mars without risking the health or safety of explorers.

NASA wants explorers on the Moon by 2024 and they’re preparing for Mars after that.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dennis Bushnell is the Chief Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, and is responsible for technical oversight & advanced program formulation.

Bushnell obtained his M.E. from the University of Connecticut in 1963 and his M.S. from the University of Virginia in 1967, both in Mechanical Engineering.

A discussion with legendary science-fiction author Ben Bova on the subject of breakthrough space technology, and learn more about his fiction stories, thoughts and opinions on space colonization.

Stuart Hameroff is an American anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness and his controversial contention that consciousness originates from quantum states in neural microtubules. He is the lead organizer of the Science of Consciousness conference.

We’re joined by award-winning science fiction author & space scientist Dr. David Brin to talk about his latest novels, the evolution of electric vehicles, and mankind’s future in space.

America is going back to the Moon, but we should be pushing further out into the solar system — and we have the technology to do it today.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. David Brin is an award-winning science fiction author & space scientist who has authored dozens of best-selling novels & short-stories, some of which have been adapted for film & television.

In addition to his literary career, David is a 2010 fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, helped establish the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, serves on the advisory board of NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group, and does futurism consulting for diverse organizations including the US Department of Defense, Procter & Gamble, SAP, Google & many more.

David is the winner of numerous awards & honors, including the prestigious Nebula, Hugo & Locus awards for science fiction, and holds a PhD in Space Science from the University of California.

We’re joined by Dr. Dean Radin, the Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, to discuss how statistical analysis & scientific rigor may finally bring credibility to the subject of human psychic abilities.

For centuries, science has turned a blind eye to the paranormal, but daring experiments like the Global Consciousness Project hope to change that.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Dean Radin is the Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Dr. Radin has given over 500 talks and interviews worldwide and is author or coauthor of hundreds of scientific and popular articles, four dozen book chapters, two technical books, and four popular books translated into 15 foreign languages.

Dr. Radin is also the former President of the Parapsychological Association, and is currently the co-editor-in-chief of the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.

The NASA-funded MEGA Drive is a small device with big possibilities for reactionless propulsion — and according to Dr. James Woodward, it’s already producing results in the lab. Learn how a new interpretation of Mach’s principle may open the door to future propulsion without fuel or reaction mass.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. James Woodward is a professor emeritus of history and an adjunct professor of physics at California State University, Fullerton.

He has a B.A. from Middlebury College in Physics (1964), an M.S. from New York University in Physics (1969), and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver, in the History of science (1972).