Scrap space research, put the money into fusion.

[Trolldor]

They're testing the effects of fusing bullets with protestors.

[Coito ergo sum]

Cause it's Merka, your politicians are beyond error.

Our politicians are just pathetic.

[Trolldor]

Billy Bob and his Sister/Wife disagree.

[Coito ergo sum]

Iran has just announced a fusion research programme.

The US ought to take some "stimulus" money and offer foreign scientists green cards and six-figure jobs to research fusion and work in our space program (and energy programs). A great weapon that the US could use would be a "brain drain" to sap Iran and certain other countries of their scientific experts.

[Ian]

Iran has just announced a fusion research programme.

The US ought to take some "stimulus" money and offer foreign scientists green cards and six-figure jobs to research fusion and work in our space program (and energy programs). A great weapon that the US could use would be a "brain drain" to sap Iran and certain other countries of their scientific experts.

It sure worked against Britain in the 50s and 60s.

[Trolldor]

Actually, the best thing to do would be to establish and international organisation, to operate in conjuction with a number of other countries .

[mistermack]

Actually, you aren't saving on anything just by investing in to fusion unless the money is going directly towards a workable model. The better alternatives would be to invest in the already existing sustainable methods of power, such as wind and solar.

If you followed that principle though, you would never invest in anything that had a long lead time.
The way I look at it, if you were to shorten the time it takes to get to a working fusion industry by just one year, you would save a huge chunk of that four thousand billion dollars. Shorten it by five years, and you're talking about 20,000 billion.
This is incredible sums of money, and every dollar represents a chunk of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
Wind and solar don't really compare, because they need a lot of materials, per unit of electricity, and you actually have to release a lot of CO2 making the hardware, before you produce a single unit. And they will always be expensive, compared to fossil fuel, so the incentive is extremely limited.
They are ''more for show, than for dough''.
.

[Coito ergo sum]

Actually, the best thing to do would be to establish and international organisation, to operate in conjuction with a number of other countries .

That's usually the best way to create a political cluster-fuck.

[Coito ergo sum]

Actually, you aren't saving on anything just by investing in to fusion unless the money is going directly towards a workable model. The better alternatives would be to invest in the already existing sustainable methods of power, such as wind and solar.

The only method capable of generating enough energy efficiently is nuclear fission (or fusion, if we could ever develop it).

The amount of energy we get from fossil fuels is so astronomical that we couldn't build enough wind and solar....not that I've seen, anyway.

We ought to build 100 new, modern, safe, efficient nuclear power plants, for starters.

[Trolldor]

Jesus Christ, there are more important things than money.
Such as the environment.
That is why your idea is stupid. There is no workable model on which to develop, and we can't wait for them to magic one up. We don't have the time.

That's usually the best way to create a political cluster-fuck.

Not really. If people could get over themselves and not interfere with science, it'd be wonderful.

The only method capable of generating enough energy efficiently is nuclear fission (or fusion, if we could ever develop it).

The amount of energy we get from fossil fuels is so astronomical that we couldn't build enough wind and solar....not that I've seen, anyway.

We ought to build 100 new, modern, safe, efficient nuclear power plants, for starters.

Solar Power is already capable of powering a home for the entire duration of the day, and for part of the night with power stored via battery. You shouldn't be relying on a power source which produces waste to replace a power source which produces waste.

[RuleBritannia]

Actually, you aren't saving on anything just by investing in to fusion unless the money is going directly towards a workable model. The better alternatives would be to invest in the already existing sustainable methods of power, such as wind and solar.

The only method capable of generating enough energy efficiently is nuclear fission (or fusion, if we could ever develop it).

The amount of energy we get from fossil fuels is so astronomical that we couldn't build enough wind and solar....not that I've seen, anyway.

We ought to build 100 new, modern, safe, efficient nuclear power plants, for starters.

[Clinton Huxley]

Let the North African nations into the EU and then plaster them with hundreds of square miles of solar panels. Europe's emery problems sorted

[mistermack]

Actually, the best thing to do would be to establish and international organisation, to operate in conjuction with a number of other countries .

That's usually the best way to create a political cluster-fuck.

Actually the ITER program is very international.
Wikipedia says this about it :

Currently there are seven parties participating in the ITER program: the European Union through the legally distinct organisation EURATOM, India, Japan, People's Republic of China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States of America (USA).[4] The host member, and hence the member contributing most of the costs, is the EU (through its Fusion for Energy organisation). However Japan is also a privileged partner.

International is probably the best way to organise it, but it amazes me that the sums involved are so small. Ten billion split between that lot is just pin money.
If they took all the money they waste on global warming projects and regulations, and spent it on fusion, they could really get it moving.
.

[Ian]

The amount of energy we get from fossil fuels is so astronomical that we couldn't build enough wind and solar....not that I've seen, anyway.

Not in terms of lineal thinking. But exponential thinking is what's needed. Photovoltaic cost per kWh has dropped a hundredfold in the last thirty years, and efficiency continues to rise (with potential jumps in efficiency due to nanotechnology in the forseeable future). And neither of these trends are expected slow much, much less reverse. And this is just what's been happening with photovoltaic solar development.

Put it another way: in 1980 the percentage of households using personal computers in the US was expected to go up modestly over the next fifteen years. And even if the numbers in 1980 were multiplied several hundred times over, it wouldn't make much of an economic difference. But there was an exponential growth, not a linear growth. The same could be said for cellphones from the mid-80s to the mid-90s.

[RuleBritannia]

The OP seems to be under the impression that scientific research isn't serendipitous.

Part of the transcript of Dr. Brian Cox's talk at TED:
What about scientific discovery? What about driving innovation? Well, this looks like a picture of virtually nothing. What it is, is a picture of the spectrum of hydrogen. See, back in the 1880s, 1890s, many scientists, many observers, looked at the light given off from atoms. And they saw strange pictures like this. What you're seeing when you put it through a prism is that you heat hydrogen up and it doesn't just glow like a white light, it just emits light at particular colors, a red one, a light blue one, some dark blue ones. Now that led to an understanding of atomic structure because the way that's explained is atoms are a single nucleus with electrons going around them. And the electrons can only be in particular places. And when they jump up to the next place they can be and fall back down again, they make light at particular colors.

And so the fact that atoms, when you heat them up, only emit light at very specific colors, was one of the key drivers that led to the development of the quantum theory, the theory of the structure of atoms. I just wanted to show this picture because this is remarkable. This is actually a picture of the spectrum of the Sun. And now, this is a picture of atoms is the Sun's atmosphere absorbing light. And again, they only absorb light at particular colors when electrons jump up and fall down, jump up and fall down. But look at the number of black lines in that spectrum. And the element helium was discovered just by staring at the light from the Sun because some of those black lines were found that corresponded to no known element. And that's why helium's called helium. It's called "helios" -- helios from the Sun.

Now, that sounds esoteric, and indeed it was an esoteric pursuit, but the quantum theory quickly led to an understanding of the behaviors of electrons in materials, like silicon for example. The way that silicon behaves, the fact that you can build transistors, is a purely quantum phenomenon. So without that curiosity-driven understanding of the structure of atoms, which led to this rather esoteric theory, quantum mechanics, then we wouldn't have transistors, we wouldn't have silicon chips, we wouldn't have pretty much the basis of our modern economy.

So space research actually gave you the ability, through your computer, to bitch about space research. How ironic.