The story in the Science Times of the NY Times this morning brings us up to speed on where the belief in cold "fusion" has brought us since exploding the atoms to produce nuclear fission has so many problems. You need a lot of money to experiment with something that is theoretical. The tools needed to develop nuclear fusion have yet to be perfected and their expense is enormous. A couple of years ago the cost was somewhere a little over one billion dollars. Today it has risen to over 3 billion dollars - and that money is to "experiment" with and no proof that it can be done. The release of energy through fusion would be tremendous and then there would be the problem of translating this energy to practical uses revolutionizing the production of energy that is brought to our homes through wires so we can plug in our radios, televisions, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens.
Carol is against expansion of efforts to colonize the moon or Mars. Spending money on these projects while people are hungry and have no work here on earth is anathema to her. But, would making energy from fusion without the noxious waste from fission not be a noble and practical goal?
The problem, as I see it, is the difficulty in reconciling expense on proving a theory while practical problems crying out for solution are deferred. The NY Times and its pages on Science have called it correctly by headlining the story as "In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly)". I agree to a point. We all remember the great hullabaloo about "cold" fusion created in a kitchen laboratory. That was one of the greatest follies for we believed before proof was provided. We WANT to believe things like space travel, inspecting far flung planets for signs of life will pay off if we build bigger and better expensive gadgets to do the work.
Right now, as this is being written, there are two remote explorers on Mars that send back information that there might once have been water and life on that planet. One of the explorers is working just fine while the other is mired in sand on the other side of Mars. This is expensive business but not quite as expensive as sustaining life in a laboratory circling the Earth needing sustenance periodically sent up by space rockets that we hope will come back in one piece.
Yes, it is expensive. We do have problems in need of solution here on earth, All the while there is the allure of space and what lies beyond. And, we haven't even brought up the problem of our invasion of "heaven" and the previously living who inhabit the promise of life after death and where that life will be spent. Can the two populations co-exist without bumping into each other and spoiling hopes and plans?