What to Do with a Failed $5 Billion Experiment?

[ChrisSmolinski]

So you spent 17 years and $5 billion to build a fusion experiment. You built a facility wider than the length of three football fields. You built a 400-foot-long laser with more than 33,000 optical parts; it is currently the highest energy laser in the world. You've been through more budget overruns and management problems than you'd care to admit. 

Now, you finally turn the thing on at full power and carry out your experiment. And it fails monumentally. Now what?     

This is the dilemma facing the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Built with the promise of providing ignition -- creating fusion energy greater than the energy needed to release it -- NIF fell 28,000 times short of its goal. No one knows how to fix it. So NIF has now been finding other things to occupy its time.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/07/what_to_do_with_a_5_billion_failed_experiment.html

[Fansome]

I don't know why these people don't just move on to the obvious solution: Cold Fusion.

[Pigmeat]

I wonder if they'll let me borrow the laser to reprogram Al's brain?

[ka1iic]

Well... IMHO... 

Did Edison give up when his first light bulb didn't turn out all that great?

Experiments are bound to get more expensive...  bigger toys for the military boys ehhh?

Personally I wouldn't toss a dime at this thing but we are paying for it via taxes and we have nothing to say about it...  So much for freedom ...

Did anyone ask the American public if they wanted to have something like this built? <heh>

Yes I am being snarky... sorry but this is par for the course for these large efforts.

BTW has SETI found Doctor Who yet?

Now to head back in my hiddy hole...

[Skipmuck]

Personally, I'd prefer jazz fusion 

[jFarley]

... with more than 33,000 optical parts...

I wonder if Perkin-Elmer had contracts for any of those.

[skeezix]

Repurpose it.

1. Send up multiple geostationary satellites that are stationed around the earth.  Point the laser at one of the satellites. It will split the beam and send it to its two neighboring satellites, and then those satellites split the beam and send them to its neighbors for a pair of beams circling (pair of beams for redundancy) the earth.

2. Those source beams will be split again, redirected, and widened to cover major parts of the earth below it. Experiment with different wavelength lasers to see impact of weather, clouds, atmosphere, and use whatever makes it through to the ground.

3. If the downlink laser isn't making it through the clouds, increase power to burn off the clouds.

4. Modulate the uplink laser beam, play music.

5. Profit.

[paranoid dxer]

all that money wasted    oh well the tax payers have more 

[Nella F.]

all that money wasted    oh well the tax payers have more  

Hilarious! PMP/SMD/SMS Everyone in the library is staring @ me I'm laughing so hard. When I get my pain medication for the split side from laughing my ass off you're getting the bill, brother!
                                                                
                                      (I'm referring to the Real Lt. Sulu, of course!)

[IQ_imbalance]

NNSA should set up a website "NIF your stuff!" and sell the rights for the associated reality tv show to mtv.