Not all of them are unwilling to respond to such requests, but those who are willing to show everything that is going on usually don't make fantastic claims either. For them, it is just another interesting physics experiment that may show some additional insights as to how the universe is made. Anybody who tells you that it is anything else is likely a fraud or just wrapped up in conspiracy theories.

The only way they are going to go to a patent clerk is with a functioning device... and there is no point for a patent if it doesn't have net energy production or at least produces more neutrons than a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor (which is used BTW for some medical therapy and research purposes where a neutron source is needed).

No, that is what I tell the 6 digit UIDs to do.

Only when reading Slashdot on a Tesla Model S.

Yes, that is possible. So is watching porn videos...not that it would be distracting or anything for the driver.

But you can buy a 100 year old Baker Electric..... with original batteries that still work!

The problem is all of the money that is thrown about with fusion, and the presumed idea that you can use it to figuratively print money with unlimited amounts of energy and (claimed) low capital costs. These are folks who think that the Mr. Fusion device in "Back to the Future" was real and not just some Hollywood prop.

There is a whole bunch of interesting things that could be investigated with cold fusion theories even if it wasn't producing commercially viable levels of energy. Unfortunately, that thirst for the money and inflating numbers or even simply making stuff up to justify their research seems to be the name of the game at the moment.

It is also driven into the hinterlands of science where peer review is discouraged and further taints the topic when total frauds can't be distinguished.

Not all cold fusion people hide from the neutrons. Some of them even claim detected neutrons, at least in small quantities. Those who are more practical about such issues, however, don't claim to have a commercially viable device and only assert it is a passing curiosity to play with perhaps an interesting physical phenomena to study and a place to sink huge amounts of money with almost nothing in return. Since physics journals won't even take papers on the topic any more, throwing money at the concept won't even produce PhDs as a by-product.

The hope was to use airships as a viable carrier platform, something that was even experimented with on several occasions. The largest problem was recapturing the airplanes once they were launched though.

The rough weather was definitely a problem for the Akron-class airships, but it was something that could be solved if it was required. Larger airplanes, particularly following the development of jet engines, pretty much killed the need for such vehicles though. Using an airship for launching and recovering jet fighters was also way over the top, and the single propeller bi-planes that could be mounted on these airships were obsolete even before World War II started. Similarly, the jet airplanes were much more maneuverable and flexible than airships even for scouting missions, thus no actual need remained.

The crashes were also a problem, but there were crashes and numerous deaths with other forms of aviation, including sea-based carriers. If anything, the airships were safer, but there are now a dozen carriers used by the U.S. Navy and no airships because the carriers can perform multiple missions and the airships can do none of them. It really is that simple.

I wonder what the bet would be that there would be no stories about Cold Fusion on Slashdot in the year 2024?

Almost certain that somebody like Andreas Rossi is going to come out of the woodwork and come up with some other perpetual motion machine based upon "cold fusion" between now and then, likely even in the year 2024.

My hope is that somehow either ITAR, the Polywell, or something else finally is successful enough that practical fusion is possible. Unfortunately I'd be willing to offer the same deal of paying me $1 for a commercially viable fusion device if it doesn't exist and I'll pay you $10k if it does. I won't even bother with the "cold" part.... Lockheed-Martin not withstanding.

It isn't the first time that some scientific experiments were not always reproduced in independent experiments.

One particular early experiment in electricity showed how a magnetically charged needle would move when put in a field caused by a coiled wire and have that needle change orientation. You would think this is a no-brainer and even something taught in junior high schools today.

Unfortunately this experiment was done by researchers who had their labs and lecture rooms oriented so the field was oriented north and south and didn't deflect the needle yet in other places it would work... simply because they weren't taking into consideration the Earth's magnetic field and that the direction of the experiment was thus an important factor.

I could give other examples, but sometimes experiments can't be repeated simply because not all of the variables have been addressed either by the original researcher or by the subsequent follow up experiments.

I could cite examples of Muon-catalyzed fusion (something that has ample experimental evidence) where some of the principles of "cold fusion" can indeed take place. Palladium crystals are also very famous for their absorption of Hydrogen atoms.

Based upon some physical experiments I've seen myself, there seems to be some actual fusion activity taking place in these crystals that could be called "cold fusion", at least in terms of detecting neutrons and some possible secondary detections of that activity. Those who think it could provide a practical source of power on the other hand are folks that I personally think are full of BS and just hyping things up for their own funding. You can even build a more practical "hot fusion" reactor that fits on your desk for a modest amount of money to produce even more verifiable reactions by simply building a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, but I digress on that point. The main issue isn't if cold-fusion takes place (it does), but those who claim to have found a way to make it practical for power production.

You can have extremely local high density pressures where it is presumed that somehow two or more Hydrogen atoms are confined in a crystal matrix of multiple other atoms to create a state where fusion has a measurable probability of occurring. That at least is the theory behind how it works. The trick is to be able to open that door into that little pocket, just a few atoms at a time, and then close it up again to make the fusion take place. It could be Buckyballs, Palladium, or some other substance but it is some pretty wicked nanoengineering in order to get this to work. This is also why it is hard to replicate or even to make in the first place.

The problem with major physics journals is that so many frauds and perhaps just misguided fans have submitted papers that they simply don't have time to sift through them to find any real science on the topic any more.... other than perhaps minor tweaks of existing papers that were around before the Pons & Fleishman fiasco.

If Barack Obama was to give a Kennedy-like speech (or rather if he had at the beginning of his first term) that he wanted to commit American industry and energy into establishing a colony on Mars as well as spend some significant political capital towards the endeavor....

I might agree with your assertion that he deserved the award.

The sad fact of the matter is that the Obama administration has put space policy concerns as dead last unless he wants to get the vote of Florida, Texas (especially the Austin area where there is Democratic support), and perhaps Alabama, California, and Washington state due to the huge infrastructure of aerospace industries. This can be demonstrated by the fact that Charles Bolden was very nearly the last major cabinet or deputy secretary level appointment made in his administration and relegates any discussion about space policy strictly upon the chief science adviser of his administration. Even when the Democratic Party controlled the House, the chair of the space subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords, opposed any initiative coming from the White House (in other words, she didn't fear any sort of political consequences from opposing the president even when he was of the same party).

The only reason why commercial crew and some changes have happened at all is simply because it isn't Bush. In other words, current policy is mostly "If the Bush administration did something, we'll do the opposite".

I get your tongue in cheek response here, and I wish it was so simple. I also wish that Obama cared about this initiative to send people to Mars or elsewhere, but in reality it is just political posturing for some pictures and then to be ignored in the end. I seriously doubt any future historian will even say that Obama did anything about space colonization at all.

Aren't you supposed to earn awards before you receive them?

The interesting thing about Sergei Korolev is that he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a Siberian gulag prior to his rehabilitation in becoming the "Chief Designer" of one of the Soviet Union's rocket design bureaus. His life story is something that I find very interesting and something to even admire in terms of the adversity he went through on his life's path to designing the N1 Soviet moon rocket.

Werner Von Braun, on the other hand, was an SS officer who employed slave labor to build his projects in Nazi Germany. I'm not really sure that is anything morally equivalent to even Korolev, much less Elon Musk. The Saturn V rocket was certainly a piece of impressive engineering for its own merits, and Von Braun's management skills in terms of running the Huntsville, Alabama engineering teams is also very impressive and something that I think Elon Musk could certainly learn from as well. None the less, there is some pretty awful baggage that came with Von Braun that if it wasn't for his role in establishing the American ICBM program would have likely put him in prison for a life sentence like did happen to other SS officers of his rank that were engaged in lesser war crimes.

SpaceX and the MCT is at least trying. They claim to be able to send the entire U.S. Senate at once to Mars for permanent relocation. Just convince them that Princess Podkayne of Barsoom is real, and they may even have a reason to go!

How is that any different than NASA spending $20 billion on developing the Orion and SLS system for putting astronauts into space when SpaceX is able to launch those astronauts @ $20 million per seat?

I could name other good examples, but seeing the federal government spend billions of dollars on redundant and otherwise useless projects is hardly new. The bullet train to nowhere being built in California is another similar project.

Now you understand why the karma system was created for Slashdot and other user-driven moderation systems were created like on Reddit or even the "likes" of Facebook. This is hardly the first time complaints about how to regulate trolls has been brought forward, and I have yet to find a reasonable solution to the matter.

Slashdot, at least in the past when Rob Malda and his companions were running the show, at least tried to be respectful and tweak the system when it broke to try and encourage the smart geeks to step forward and post. That obviously couldn't last forever, but it was a major effort, not to mention that Slashdot was relatively obscure and treated as a sort of sweet nugget when you discovered it.

I could say the same thing about Usenet (I used to post there as well) before spambots destroyed it. What also kept Usenet under control was the active enforcement of the non-commercial nature of the internet at the time (not that some people didn't try to push boundaries from time to time). Once the internet went full on commercial, it lost a whole lot of the exclusive geek nature that used to be there as well.... not to mention the invasion by Compuserve and America On-Line that represent the kind of ordinary folks you are complaining about.