http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/ene ... -fusion-go
...but here's a name we haven't heard for a while:
It does appear though that just having Hirsch's name on board helped raise almost $200K....Last year, LPP commissioned a scientific review panel to assess both the physics and the engineering behind their Focus Fusion device. The panel’s report formed a substantial part of the organization’s pitch to its potential base of crowd-funders.
Robert Hirsch, who, from 1972 through 1976, directed fusion research for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Energy Research and Development Administration, chaired the review panel. Hirsch says his panel was allowed full access to LPP’s equipment and labs as well as their proprietary process for harnessing proton-boron fusion.
Hirsch says he was impressed by the “innovative thinking” behind the Focus Fusion device. Proton-boron fusion had been considered in fusion’s early days, as far back as the 1950s. But he says this pathway to fusion was abandoned in part because of the high temperatures required to sustain the reactions.
“One of the big questions you’d want to ask is: Why are these guys doing this thing after this thing had been pursued decades ago?” says Hirsch. “The reason is they brought in some physics that people hadn’t thought to apply to this particular case—but may apply. And it was very clever. And they found their way conceptually around the limitations as we knew them.”
Hirsch says he cannot, however, disclose any more details about the new physics that “Focus Fusion” builds on.
--PS