In his haunting final interview, the late Dr. Robert Bussard describes a last-ditch race against time and funding to realize his career-long dream of clean, affordable fusion energy. Bussard, a founding member of America's fusion research establishment, spent over 20 years developing a modified Farnsworth-style "Polywell" fusor, successfully generating over 100,000 times the output of Farnsworth's original experiments. In 2006, Bussard's Polywell design was awarded the Outstanding Technology of the Year Award by the International Academy of Science.

Born in 1928, Dr. Robert Bussard was best known as the namesake for the legendary "Bussard Ramjet" - a modified fusion-drive starship proposed & christened in the 1960's by Carl Sagan and further popularized by authors such as Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. Seeking glory through achievement rather than fiction, Bussard's career the greater part of the 20th century and included a prestigious tenure as the Assistant Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and designer of the Nerva motor - a government-sponsored project to develop a nuclear powered rocket for heavy-lift applications in the late 1960's.

In our exclusive interview, Bussard describes the disenchantment with big-science Tokamak research that led him to return to the roots of Farnsworth-style fusion in 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 - and in an unexpected twist, a race to bring the prototype online after project funding was cut in 2006.

Never straying far from the dream of manned spaceflight, Bussard's Polywell design is exceptional in being not only designed for high-efficiency, but also for portability - making it perfect for not only the Navy's intended use in powering ocean vessels and submarines, but also for providing high output thrust for proposed nuclear space-applications. Bussard's first intended application was an 8-foot diameter naval reactor capable of generating 100-megawatts of output energy, with the ultimate goal of using these reactors in high-velocity transorbital spacecraft capable of reaching the moon in less than 8 hours time.

Date: May 10th, 2007
File Size: 3.32mb (11kbps)
Format: Windows Media 10

Link: Dr. Robert Bussard Audio Interview - The Polywell Breakthrough
Related Links: EMC2 Online, Michael McDonnough interview, Paul Czysz interview, Pharis Williams on Fusion, Dr. Bussard's Obituary