FUSION and FIRST CONTACT

I've lived a life where I have been able to professionally dabble in pure fantasies. Three years with the U.S. Senate working on energy and the environmental legislation.  I drafted the bill that created the national hydrogen program in 1979.  Worked on laser fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at the NASA Ames Research Center.   I had a full career in renewable energy, directing the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii and co-founding the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research.

Here is a nine-year old posting providing some details on my experience with fusion.  in the mid-1970's I remember having an apartment adjacent to Wente Brothers, and watching the Watergate hearings.  That was almost half a century ago.  At the end of 2022:

Lawrence Livermore first achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers. That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said.

Seven months later, LLNR repeated that breakthrough, with a higher energy yield.  Unfortunately, we have been close to achieving fusion power...for 50 years.  I worked at this lab in the 70's, and left the field for that reason.

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in Cadarache, France, apparently hopes to attain some form of fusion in 2035 at the earliest, with perhaps commercialization a decade after that.  I wouldn't bet on that.

A five-year old blog article with more of laser fusion, plus my experience with SETI and a segue into my initial fascination with Petite Sirah and Paso Robles.  About why SETI?  My interest was spurred by the potential of fabulous humanitarian and scientific benefits:

However, the larger question of intelligent life out there somewhere remains intriguing and worthy of considerable vision, for, what if the equivalent of an Encyclopedia Galactica, first suggested by Isaac Asimov, is streaming in from a civilization a billion years older than ours?  The cure for cancer, the solution for world peace...and more.

One of my most intriguing assignments was a stint at NASA Ames on designing a device to detect extrasolar planets when none was yet found.  At this Mountain View facility, I met Carl Sagan and a couple years later actually helped him get initial SETI funding when I worked in the Senate.

But is it dangerous to try to detect and then communicate with extraterrestrials.  Some say yes.  Stephen Hawking felt that alien contact could be risky.

Then there is the Fermi Paradox.  Enrico Fermi once during lunch blurted out to Edward Teller, Herbert York and Emil Konopinski about first contact, but where is everybody?

About SETI, this was all about first contact with aliens.  My interest was sparked by the 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still, with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal.  Checked with tubi, and they have the 2008 version with Keanu Reeves and Jeniffer Connelly.  This is the entire 2 hours and 37 minutes film.  So I further searched other sources and found the full 1951 black and white 1 hour 28 minute movie.  I'm tempted to watch both as a double-bill after I post this blog today.

Here is a 2023 article of the ten best First Contact movies with aliens, from Forbes, which left out Signs, War of the Worlds, The Andromeda Strain, Mars Attacks!, Oblivion, District 9 and Europa Report. But did include:

• #10  Star Trek:  First Contact
• #  9  Interstellar
• #  8  The Day the Earth Stood Still
• #  7  ET. The Extra Terrestrial
• #  6  2010:  The Year We Make Contact
• #  5  The Abyss
• #  4  Contact
• #  3  Arrival
• #  2  Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• #  1  2001:  A Space Odyssey

The above was written by Mark Hughes.  He is a Tomatometer-approved critic.  Here is another compilation of Ten First Contact Movies.  I've seen them all, except perhaps one, #10, Flight of the Navigator (1986).  There are many more such compilations.

My all-time favorite is Sagan's Contact, with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.  So I went to tubi, typed in...Contact, Jodie Foster...and got:

• First Contact, 2016, a 1 hr 35 min documentary.
• Contact, 2009, a 1 hr 21 min documentary.
• Contact, 2019, a reality documentary.
• Contact, 2014, another documentary, I think about Margaret Thatcher.
• First Contact, 2019, another documentary.
• So tubi did not carry the one I wanted.
• Various streaming channels have this film, but there will be a rental charge.

Tomorrow....Was the First Contact God?

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