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Originally Posted by tsofian
You make a lot of assumptions that I don't see as being the only path forward. If Bruce is smart he will bring back tech items that can be made with the manufacturing technology of the 1960s-1970s. For a person with the genius of Bruce it would be obvious that bringing back anything that requires a huge investment in new technology or exotic tooling is going to increase costs and reduce security.
I look at it this way. A 16 year old kid can turn smoke detectors into a functioning neutron gun in a shed in his mom's back yard using nothing but simple tools. It cost Billions of dollars to run the Manhattan Project, but once the basic principals and materials were discovered the investment has been made and the science and technology may possibly be produced more easily, more cheaply and on a different scale.
If I was Bruce I'd either have items specifically designed in the future for construction in a series of war surplus factories in 1965 or at least ensure that all the really hard R&D had been done. For all we know a fusion reactor could cost no more than a jet engine, or even no more than a high end Color TV set.
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Yes, yes I do make a lot of assumptions. I make those assumptions as someone who finished college applying to grad programs in fusion technology, switched into advanced optical systems, and then made a career as an R&D engineer trying to turn "simple" concepts into high performing pieces of working technology.
That kid was able to build a neutron gun in his mom's shed, but what he built performed really poorly and was in practice little more than a massive public health hazard. Someone with access to select materials could build a working atomic bomb without all the R&D, but what they built would be unreliable and unsafe, likely to kill anyone who spent too much time near it, unlikely to go off when desired, likely to go off by accident, and delivering a relatively low yield for the amount of radioactive material.
One of my college professors (a laser specialist) used to have his students build a laser using a particular brand of toothbrush - the dye in the translucent handle made an effective lasing medium, and the ends could be polished to form the laser cavity, needing only a modest pumping source to lase. That doesn't mean those lasers are useful for anything more than demonstrating the concept.
The Project doesn't need concept demonstrators, they need high performing technology that is compact and reliable, and that isn't something you are going to be able to do in mom's shed. You need advanced materials, and high power computing, and precision machining, and lots and lots of other foundational technologies. Heck, half of my work consists of taking concepts that have been around for decades just waiting for someone to develop the dozens of other technological advancements necessary to make those concepts practical.
And as a final note, the only reason jet engines and tv sets are as cheap as they are today is because of massive investments in dozens of technologies and hundreds of industrial processes. It is a massive conceit to think that someone could build a compact, reliable, long-lasting fusion reactor cheaply using 1980's technology when hundreds and thousands of incredibly intelligent, specially educated people who were trying to accomplish that very thing all failed miserably. What you are suggesting is neither more nor less than magic.
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Originally Posted by tsofian
As for land purchases. If this was my project I'd buy up land right off the go. Land won't get any cheaper. Any surplus can probably be sold at a profit. A bolt hole will be expensive to build and fairly large but a cache is about the size of a basement for a standard house, or even smaller. Until they get loaded up they are just concrete boxes in the ground. There are huge numbers of such things serving dozens of purposes all across the civilized world. No one really notices them.
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I agree across the board. Early land purchases make perfect sense. You can probably even pour the concrete, provided you have plans that reflect the technology that will be installed decades later.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tsofian
If the project bought up a lot of form military land no one is even going to wonder about concrete boxes in the ground, unless they find a bolt hole...
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I think this makes a reasonable partial solution, but it only goes so far. The Project needs a lot of land and doesn't want to be predictable. It all goes to heck if someone starts to notice that everyone buying a particular type of property is also doing the same other suspicious things.