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United States Science

Big Science has a Twenty-Year Plan 275

Posted by jamie from the four-times-five dept.
Earlier this week, Energy Secretary Spence Abraham laid out the Office of Science's 20-year plan for building and upgrading the U.S.'s "Big Science" facilities. Twenty-eight programs got the nod, in all. The top priorities -- fusion, and a massive supercomputer. Other goals on the wish list include studying dark energy, high-speed atomic-scale imaging with an electron laser, and fulfilling several particle-physics dreams, including a collider to rival CERN's LHC. Here's the press release and the full list (PDF). Your grandchildren may write school papers on the discoveries these tools will make...
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Big Science has a Twenty-Year Plan

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  • Perfect (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:44PM (#7479659)
    The fusion powered supercomputer can take care of everything else by itself.

    • Re:Perfect (Score:3, Funny)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 )
      Hopefully it's not running microsoft.

      Your system is about to melt down. (A)bort (R)etry (E)vacuate city?

    • Big Daddy (Score:3, Funny)

      by t0ny ( 590331 )
      Big Science has a Twenty-Year Plan

      Hopefully I wont see Big Science working the grill at Hooters after it steals my girlfriend with that line.

  • This is very similar to... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Qweezle ( 681365 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:44PM (#7479661) Journal
    ....something like 13 or 14 years ago, when Japan was starting to make a technological comeback in the world from an industrial society, they came out with a plan that almost parallels this....on a much different scale. Japan had plans to buid many, I think in fact 20-something, "science cities", which rapidly accelerated them into the 21st century.

    What's happening here is important, because the U.S. could use a serious technological R&D upgrade, in my opinion. Moving to Linux is one thing, and I suppose, particle-physics and dark energy, along with a "massive supercomputer" are another. So long as they stay within the budget...

    • 13 or 14 years ago?! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BJH ( 11355 )
      I used to live in one of those science cities (Tsukuba - home to KEK, mentioned in the PDF), which was mostly constructed in the early '70s. Japan hasn't put forward a big-money scientific program in ages, mainly because they have a high risk of no return.
      A good example of this is the Fifth-Generation Computing project that the Japanese government launched years ago - it cost big bucks but produced very little.
    • Umm... care to tell us why moving to Linux has *anything* to do with science and R&D?

      It has to do with politics and a sort of religion surely, but that won't help R&D one bit. And you only *suppose* the real research is worth it?

      Are you sure you aren't trolling with that comment?
      • Umm... care to tell us why moving to Linux has *anything* to do with science and R&D?

        OK I'll take a stab at this. I am thinking that the parent poster was refering to the not-reinventing-the-wheel aspect of OSS. A big DoE job requires some serious brain cells to write code for a physcis project or one helluva cluster or whatever and if it is done in OSS there is a good chance that code can be reused in other projects/areas/who knows.
        *OR*
        It can be contracted to a private company only to re relice
      • I *think* that you and the parent actually agree. The parent was somewhat poorly worded, however I think what he was saying is that "we talk a lot on slashdot about moving to Linux, and that's all well and good, but this is SERIOUS science, and dwarfs our petty squabbles."
    • The Japanese don't have a Defense budget like we do...how in gods name are we going to pay for all of this if the two headed monster, defense budget and national debt, continue to grow?

      Side note: 10% of Japanese workforce are in construction business. Apparently their is a lot more money in construction than in science and technology...of course they use a lot of technology themselves. The Japanese have taken the concept of pork belly to new heights and I certainly don't want that emulate.

  • But consider mthe big IF... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:47PM (#7479669) Journal
    We had one of those projects going: the Superconducting Supercollider. That went tango uniform as quick as you can say "policy shift".

    All kinds of things can be announced for all kinds of reasons. Mostly the announcements are so you can hear the politicians make announcements and see what forward thinking people they are.

    I don't even believe it when I'm told I've gotten my own grants -- not until I see the check has cleared the bank.
    • We had one of those projects going: the Superconducting Supercollider.

      I remember when I was at Rutgers (88-92), everyone in the physics department hated the Supercondcting Supercollider. They have to beg for public money for a living. The feeling was that this thing was going to suck up all the physics money, and their requests for funding would be met with "we just gave you this wonderful supercollider, why isn't that enough"?

    • The SSC was too controversial. I think there was some massive uproar once people got wind of how the contractors were wasting money and misusing the property. I wish I remembered the details, I'll have to look it up again.

  • Ties (Score:4, Funny)

    by Michael Crutcher ( 631990 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:49PM (#7479679)
    There haven't been that many "ties" since the running of the 100 meters in the special olympics.

  • A collider to rival CERN's LHC? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:51PM (#7479688)
    Hmm, maybe we shouldn't have killed off the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) [hep.net], after 14 miles of tunneling were already completed and two billion dollars were spent.

    The eco-dumbasses talk about it alternatively as an unnecessary geek-scientist's playground, or as a wasteful front for the military-industrial complex.

    What it would have been is a window into the most fundamental building blocks of the Universe. And now apparently we want to try again, even though we should have finished it the first time around...

    • Re:A collider to rival CERN's LHC? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The supercollider wasn't killed because of a bunch of whiny liberals. There were two main reasons it was cancelled. The first is that it was discovered that the design aperture was too small to support 20-on-20 TeV operation as originally envisioned. The choice was made to increase the aperture, with an accompanying large increase in cost due to larger magnets, rather than live with lower-energy operation. That's the main reason the original $4 billion projection soared to $8 billion. The second reason
    • The SSC is (ok, could have been) very cool. Lot's of nice pictures over at the picture archive [hep.net].

      An what happened to the research on solvent-refined coal?
      Apart from the pollution and contamination problems [sandia.gov] everybody had big expectations. Or? All the research in this area lying dead?

      • Horrible USA tax laws have killed real research into synthetic fuels (coal based, shale oil, tar sand, etc...) in the USA. Basiclly you take normal coal, spray with diesel fuel and you have a "synthetic fuel" that gets a whopping huge tax break when sold. This is such a great scam that it makes no sense to do real research into synthetic fuels in the USA. See this article Coal Tax scam [globeandmail.com]. Time Magazine did an in depth article on this issue recently.
    • A funny thing happened on the way to building the SSC...

      Actually, it's what happens AFTER the SSC is completed in a parallel timeline that's the subject of one physicist's (fictional) novel of how the SSC came not to be in our timeline. The book is called Einstein's Bridge and is by John Cramer [washington.edu]. I haven't read it myself, but Cramer's earlier book Twistor is pretty nifty. I suggest it for anyone who might be interested in what happened to our SSC - Cramer takes a lot of the factual happenings from that

  • Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:51PM (#7479690)
    Congress voted Monday to cut federal funding for the superconducting monkey collider, a controversial experiment which has cost taxpayers an estimated $7.6 billion a year since its creation in 1983.

    The collider, which was to be built within a 45-mile-long circular tunnel, would accelerate monkeys to near-light speeds before smashing them together. Scientists insist the collider is an important step toward understanding the universe, because no one can yet say for certain what kind of noises monkeys would make if collided at those high speeds.

    "It could be a thump, a splat, or maybe even a sound that hasn't yet been heard by human ears," said project head Dr. Eric Reed Friday, in an impassioned plea to Congress. "How are we supposed to understand things like the atom or the nature of gravity if we don't even know what colliding monkeys sound like?"

    But Congress, under heavy pressure from the powerful monkey rights lobby, decided that money being spent on the monkey collider would be put to better use in other areas of government. Now, with funding cut off, the future of our nation's monkey collision program looks bleak.

    Congress began funding the monkey collider in 1983, after Reed convinced lawmakers that the U.S. was lagging behind the Soviet Union in monkey-colliding technology. Funds were quickly allocated so that Reed could spend a week procuring monkeys on Florida's beautiful Captiva Island. Though Reed returned with a great tan and a beautiful young fiancee, he reported that there were no monkeys to be found on the sunny Gulf Coast island. Congress funded subsequent trips to the Cayman Islands, Bora Bora and Cancun, but these searches also yielded negative results.

    Two years passed without a single monkey being procured, and Congress was close to cutting the project's funding. It was then that Reed got the idea to utilize monkeys already being bred in captivity. The Congressional Subcommittee for Scientific Investigation was enthralled by the idea of watching caged monkeys copulate, and increased funding by 40 percent.

    With a steady supply of monkeys ensured, construction of the monkey collider began on a scenic Colorado site. Despite environmental pressure, a mountain was levelled to facilitate construction of the seven-mile-wide complex. Huge underground tunnels were dug, at a cost of billions of dollars and 17 lives. Money left over was used to build resort homes, spas and video arcades for Reed, his colleagues and several Congressmen.

    Construction of the collider's acceleration mechanism was delayed for years, as scientists couldn't decide how to get the monkeys up to smashing speed. Last month, it was finally decided that the collider would employ a system in which the monkeys run through the tunnels chasing holographic projections of bananas. "Monkeys love bananas," Reed said, "and they're willing to run extremely fast to get them."

    But now it seems the acceleration mechanism may never be built. With the monkey collider placed on indefinite hold, the huge research facility in Colorado lies dormant. To keep the space from going to waste, Congress Monday voted to convert the empty underground tunnel into a federally funded drag-racing track. The track is expected to create hundreds of jobs in the form of pit crews and concessions workers, and will allow President Clinton to impress important foreign dignitaries with America's wheelie technology.

    Despite this promising alternate plan, most involved with the monkey collider project feel the sudden cuts in funding are inexcusable. "It is a travesty of science," Reed said. "I remember the joy I felt in college when I would launch monkeys at one another with big rubber bands, and this project would have been even more enlightening."

  • Priorities (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:51PM (#7479691) Homepage
    The top priorities -- fusion, and a massive supercomputer.

    Whatever. I'm still waiting on the flying cars.
    • Oh come on, how can you forget?

      you rememebr in 2001, when they came out with the anti-gravity car? I can't believe you forgot. we got them and the quentum compuer at the same time, we just couldn't tell the stupid peo..... ahhh Look, something shiny!

  • I'm glad about the focus (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alphakappa ( 687189 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:53PM (#7479700) Homepage
    It's heartening to note that the report gives so much importance to fundamental research unlike most of the research that happens today which is so geared towards creating marketable products or intellectual property. While the latter is also good for all, science will stagnate in the absence of fundamental research . This 20 year outlook is definitely a pat in the back for schools all around the country.

  • The Secretary of Energy... (Score:3, Informative)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42@DALIosu.edu minus painter> on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:56PM (#7479709)
    ...is Spencer Abraham.

  • This is a travesty!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phosphor3k ( 542747 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:57PM (#7479713)
    No Battlemechs on the list?
  • Granted, most of this stuff is beyond me, but one item that I didn't see on the list was Terahertz Imaging. Out of all this technology, that is one thing that I see some extremely practical applications for in the next few years, especially for things like homeland security.

    On the other hand, I suppose that it's hard to argue with something like "Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) Second Target Station"... I mean, *what is that*? Sounds like an appropriate label for one of the levers that the imperial gu

  • My Penis is Bigger Than Yours (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bitsformoney ( 514101 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:57PM (#7479715)
    "Big Time" projects look to me mostly like they are built to show off. The particle thingy has to be there not because there's some valuable insight to be gained, but because the US can't let Europe possibly have a bigger one.


    Same with supercomputers. Supercomputers are so 80s/90s. Decentralization is the thing of today, but, say, creating a grid network of 10,000 computers is not so easy to compare to some Japanese mega-thingie.


    I sometimes wonder, if you took just 0.1% of that money and gave it to a random bunch of OSS developers, how much progress would come out of that.

    • Re:My Penis is Bigger Than Yours (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda@NosPAM.etoyoc.com> on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:05AM (#7479752) Homepage Journal
      Frankly if they spent a fraction of that amount on Science Education we would be getting somewhere too. Or combine OSS and Science Education to develop a set of textbooks that don't need to be re-purchased every year because the publisher re-orders the chapters.

    • Re:My Penis is Bigger Than Yours (Score:5, Funny)

      by Woy ( 606550 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @01:07AM (#7479964)
      I sometimes wonder, if you took just 0.1% of that money and gave it to a random bunch of OSS developers, how much progress would come out of that.

      932 new text editors?

      /me runs

    • Re:My Penis is Bigger Than Yours (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @01:16AM (#7479996)
      Same with supsercomputers. Supercomputers are so 80s/80s. Decentralization is the thing of today, but say, creating a grid network of 10,000 computers is not so easy to compare to some Japanese mega-thingie.

      It's been said before, I'll say it again: Grid Computing and distributed clusters are a nice on a small budget, but are not a suitable replacement for a real vector supercomputer in all applications, particularly simulation applications. Note the current Top 500: The "Japanese mega-thingie" is whomping the next closest competitor by a factor of about 2.5. A cluster with about 1.5 times as many processors. And thats been around for over a year now.

    • I sometimes wonder, if you took just 0.1% of that money and gave it to a random bunch of OSS developers, how much progress would come out of that.

      Twenty new P2P applications, six new unrelated GUIs for Linux (but ooh, look, this is more like 200 because they support skins), and STILL no functioning GNU/HURD.

  • Many different promising technologies... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zeux ( 129034 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:59PM (#7479724)
    It's nice to see that the US government cares about supporting future technology and 'science facilities'.

    In France our government is doing major cut in funding of many science labs and projects and that means that we will soon be unable to keep up with America's technology.

    Anyway I wonder why building a new collider where the US government could have helped funding the construction of the LHC (allowing it to be even larger) ?

    I would also like to know if you think that these fundings are military related. I mean do you think the US government is putting money in because most of these technologies could have military use ?

    Unfortunately it seems nothing goes to the space elevator...

    • I would also like to know if you think that these fundings are military related. I mean do you think the US government is putting money in because most of these technologies could have military use ?

      I think we use the term "homeland security" now:

      I would also like to know if you think that these fundings are

      homeland security related. I mean do you think the US government is putting money in because most of these technologies could have homeland security use?

      Definitely.

      Larry

    • Supercomputers are going to be a critical component of many scientific advances in the next hundred years.

      If you haven't noticed, professors and researchers are moving away from scribbling equations on notepads and hoping they remembered to carry the '1' to trying out their theories in a numerical environment and seeing how close it matches reality.

      They are also using supercomputers to solve with the brute-force method. What used to take hundreds of grad students slaving away for decades now takes a coup

  • Virginia is in the hizy (Score:2, Informative)

    by aws4y ( 648874 )
    Tie for 7 the CEBAF upgrade. Hopefully we will be able to get higher resolution and decern the nature of the Nucleon, w00t

    Sorry, every one here at UVa is pretty excited since CEBAF, or JLab, is one of our primary projects, along with conributions to the D0 experiment at Fermi Lab, and the PI-Beta experiment at SLACK.

  • Show me the money! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xanthines-R-yummy ( 635710 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:07AM (#7479757) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how many of these things will actually be completed in 20 years.

    I don't really keep up with politics like I should, but I've been hearing the Bush pretty much raided the piggy bank. Where's the money going to come from for all of these projects? The senate just spent $87B USD for that Iraq thing. I know Congress will spend lots of money they don't have, but will they actually do that for something useful, like advancing science?

    Don't get me wrong. As a budding scientist, I'm excited by all these plans. I just don't want to get my hopes up and then crushed.

  • What about Neuro Science? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cookie_cutter ( 533841 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:15AM (#7479787)
    I'm disappointed to see a lack of any brain research in the list, considering how beneficial applications of neuroscience could be, and how much the field is maturing.

    Why they would ignore such a field, I can only speculate: perhaps there is too much of a stigma of "mind altering" to neuroscience (though I do recall Bush senior declaring the 1990's to be the decade of the brain [loc.gov]). Or perhaps the present administration has a vested interest in keeping the populous away from mind improving developments. Or perhaps they just don't think it's necessary; after all, you don't have to be a genius to become president these days.

    • I'm disappointed to see a lack of any brain research in the list . . . Why they would ignore such a field, I can only speculate

      How about that this is a list of major facilities, not a list of research projects?

      Now, yes, some of the facilities are narrowly focused on one specific type of research (fusion, dark energy), but some are general-purpose research assistance (like the computer projects) and some are fairly broadly applicable within a field (like the protein synthesizer).
    • [..]Bush senior declaring the 1990's to be the decade of the brain
      Yeah it _must_ have been in the 1990's; because we all know for sure that it is not now [whitehouse.gov]
    • I'm disappointed to see a lack of any brain research in the list, considering how beneficial applications of neuroscience could be, and how much the field is maturing.

      Well, IAANS (I Am A NeuroScientist) and I am all for more funding for neuroscience. However, there is other science out there that does need funding. I would most certainly like to see fusion work as that would decrease our dependance on fossil fuels and radically alter the global geopolitical balance as well as improve the environment.
    • I'm not sure the department of ENERGY would have much of a clue as to what neuroscience projects to fund. I've been hearing in the energy world that we don't have the "next big thing" to replace oil. This is a start towards that.
    • Nah, the conspiracy theorists would have used it to claim that Bush Jr. wants to brainwash everyone.

  • What about time travel? (Score:3, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:17AM (#7479789) Homepage Journal
    Why don't I see Time travel on the list? I, for one, would certainly like my tax dollars go towards some serious time travel research.

    Well, here's hoping that something like CERN's black holes [nature.com] will eventually help us build a time machine [firstscience.com].

    *fingers crossed*

  • It's a wish list. (Score:2, Informative)

    by xaxat ( 309420 )
    I like this proposal, however I'm not putting much stock into it ever being completed. It's real easy to trot out these kinds of "wish lists", the real trick is getting funding. The release even notes that these projects are their priorities, not neccessarily the President's. With a rapidly balloning deficit, I would be very surprised if more than a couple of these projects got any serious kind of funding.

  • You fools! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 )
    expirementing with dark energy will only anger the tree goddess!

  • Grandchildren (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Salamander ( 33735 ) <`jeff' `at' `pl.atyp.us'> on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:27AM (#7479827) Homepage Journal
    Your grandchildren may write school papers on the discoveries these tools will make...

    Not likely. I'm all for research, but most of the stuff on this list is "big science" only in terms of the money that will be spent, not the knowledge that will be gained. There's tons of biotech, materials-science, computing, optics, and other research that would be more rewarding. The most appalling omission is that the Department of Energy doesn't seem to think that battery technology - the thing holding back deployment of many other technologies - deserves even one project. Nothing on portable fuel cells, microturbines, biodiesel, wave power, or other energy-related technologies either, except fusion. What is the Department of Energy thinking?

    There might be a few things in there to write papers about, but if we spend all of the money to fund these projects there won't be any left over for schools...or paper, for that matter. The only way my grandchildren will be writing papers on this stuff is if I or my children move somewhere with a sane science policy.

    • Re:Grandchildren (Score:3, Informative)

      by SEE ( 7681 )
      Except that those aren't omissions, because this isn't a research project list, it's a facilities list. You don't need multi-billion-dollar dedicated research facilities to study batteries, biodiesel, fuel cells, or microturbines. Therefore they won't be on a list of major new research facilities.
    • Of course, our grandchildren are going to be paying through the nose, still working on the interest, because of these boondoggles.

      "Fusion" indeed; that has been 20 years away for the last 50 years and probably will be for the next 50. Wind power will easily serve 100% of our energy needs [google.com], and it is already online, paying for its clean renewable self creating wealth [awea.org] instead of sucking up our grandchildren's tax dollars.

    • So you and your friends never wrote a report on the nuclear weapons program in the 1940s? They were heavily funded and had all the cutting edge technology of the time.

      And there's a major thing your forgetting - we've already worked out the budget. The department is just allocating their funds the way they think best fulfills their mission.

      As far as why they are not spending big bucks on microturbines, biodiesel, wave power and such is because these are all being researched quite thoroughly without mega fu

    • Re:Grandchildren (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ESSBAND. ( 651615 )
      How the hell is this modded Insightful? Your children aren't going to be paying interest on these projects, they're going to be paying interest on this fucking war that little bush is waging. Take a look at the budget and get back to me--these projects are CHEAP compared to the $100bn that we're spending killing people. How about the cost of a new B2 bomber? The DoE budget for fundamental science research is such a pittance in this country. We barely have the money to keep our labs staffed, buy new com

    • Re:Grandchildren (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) * on Saturday November 15, 2003 @06:52AM (#7480638)
      There's tons of biotech, materials-science, computing, optics, and other research that would be more rewarding. The most appalling omission is that the Department of Energy doesn't seem to think that battery technology - the thing holding back deployment of many other technologies - deserves even one project.

      Battery technology is an engineering problem, and is being actively worked on by corporations all over the world. The purpose of direct funding from the DoE is to do research that does not have an immediate commercial application.

      Nothing on portable fuel cells, microturbines, biodiesel, wave power, or other energy-related technologies either, except fusion.

      All of those are engineering problems, not science. We already know how to make wind turbines, for example, and we already know how to make fuel cells, extract wave power and so on. Actually doing them is merely a matter of implementation. Actually, it is a matter off implementing them in an economically viable way. Solar cells are a classic example of this problem - they take so much energy to make that when you account for that, they actually aren't very efficient at all, despite solar energy being "free"! We don't know how to do fusion practically yet, and that is why it's being funded. And fusion, when it works on an industrial scale, will make all other forms of power generation irrelevant apart from for niche applications.

      • Re:Grandchildren (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Salamander ( 33735 )

        All of those are engineering problems, not science.

        Bull. Maybe they're not "pure science" at the "fundamental nature of the universe" level, but they are squarely on the science side of the fence. There's still a lot we don't know about things like proton exchange, for example, or about how mitochondria or chloroplasts work so efficiently, or what's really going on in different types of solar cells. That knowledge is being sought by scientists, in academic labs, not engineers. The DoE actually funds

  • Hello!?!? (Score:4, Funny)

    by R33MSpec ( 631206 ) * on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:29AM (#7479834) Homepage
    Your grandchildren may write school papers on the discoveries these tools will make...

    Hello?!? This is Slashdot, the chances of readers being able to find a 'mate', let alone produce offspring is a 'Big Science' matter that really needs to be funded IMHO.
  • It was scrapped because of budget deficits back in the early 90's.

    Do we have more budget deficits ? yes.

    We could also build a distributed network supercomputer using plain regular desktops. It might rival the BLUE GENE.

  • Didn't the Soviets and Red Chinese Try This? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @01:04AM (#7479954)
    A 20 year plan? If the Communists couldn't get their 5 year plans to work, how much success will a 20 year plan have? It is much more plausible that an independent college, research center or corporation will come up with such discoveries, not because it's interesting, but because they actually have a vested interest, and have to pay the bills. A 20 year plan will either fizzle out into nothing, or just grow into a larger and larger government bureaucracy while achieving less and less. Let's leave billions of dollars back with the people who earned them, the taxpayers, and there is no limit to what they may do.
    • A 20 year plan for facility development is different than the 5 year plans the Soviets were doing. On one hand are developments that will take many years to bring up to operational status and then have many years of fruitful use, and on the other we have long range determinations of how many razors will be needed. Projects can be and should be planned for the long haul; budgets can rarely be predicted beyond a month, let alone a year. Much of the Soviet 5 years plans were not long-term projects, but simply
    • Unlike China & the USSR, when the government lets us down, we turn to private enterprise to make the discoveries.

  • It's about effing time... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by snilloc ( 470200 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `snilloclj'> on Saturday November 15, 2003 @01:11AM (#7479974) Homepage
    ... the DOE started pouring some serious cash into fusion research.

    We should have been going balls to the wall on fusion since the energy crisis... of the SEVENTIES! Maybe we wouldn't have had it by now, but maybe it would be a lot closer.

    Academics in the 50's (!!!) were writing about how US dependence on foreign oil (specifically Persian Gulf/Arabian oil) was just asking for trouble. Then OPEC bites us in the ass. We freak out a bit (price controls, wear more sweaters), but when the "crisis" (largely self-inflicted; read some economics books) abates, we go back to business as usual, just waiting for our dependence on foreign oil to bite us in the ass again... as it has several times to varying degrees.

    • what do you expect from a long line of oil rich republican regimes? Its in their best interest to keep us dependant on big oil.
    • Actually, we have been pouring money into it. In fact, IIRC, we ahve spent somewhere around 30B so far on fusion since the 70's. And yes, we are a lot closer.
      The problem has not really been one of funding but one of science trying to determine which approach works. Each one costs literally billions to experiment with.

  • Holy Smokes, Batman! (Score:4, Funny)

    by UPAAntilles ( 693635 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @01:43AM (#7480077)
    Slashdot has killed the Department of Energy's website! Does this constitute terrorism?

  • OK, maybe I need to adjust my tinfoil hat... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Saturday November 15, 2003 @01:53AM (#7480108) Journal
    But this PDF file from the "Office of Science" seems to be something straight of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Just weird Big Science apparently mostly driven by the need to Spend a Lot of Other People's Money.

    Then, on page 5, there is a picture of the Secretary of Energy, and if he is not a dead ringer for Cuffy Meigs in the book, I can't think of a better candidate.

    Plus, the spell Feynman's name wrong. Death is too good for them.

    thad
  • Will this new ]_[bur 3133t supercomputer run linux?

  • Little Science (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ndavidg ( 680217 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @04:55AM (#7480485)
    Why build another supercollider when there is one in Europe? What a waste of money!

    Little Science could have a much grander impact. Here are some worthwhile projects the DOE could pursue:

    1. Microbiology research for dissolving nuclear waste.
    2. Fuel Cells
    3. Engineering atoms/molecules using a small Linux cluster for the purpose of creating more lightweight, durable materials. The applications range from space travel to camping gear.
    4. Building the proton computer and loading an older version of Slackware on it. By the time this is built, you won't want to put Windows on the computer, since the OS will be so bloated it would take too long to download a page with java applets.

  • Nanoassemblers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rxke ( 644923 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @05:00AM (#7480489) Homepage
    What amazes me is that there is no talk of nanoassembly. It is now widely accepted that it would be possible to come up with the first nano self-assembler within about ten years, given enough funding and research. google for primitive nanofactory design study big peer-reviewed (84 pages) white paper that'll blow yer socks off...

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