Well actually... 
Seems that there are a few little "thises and thats" y'all might want to make sure you're aware of.
First, Philo T. Farnsworth invented the television camera. Yep, that's right- Farnsworth's invention was used up until CCDs came on the scene in the 1980s. So the fusor wasn't the only thing he ever invented. In fairness, elements of both Farnsworth's and Zworykin's designs were used- but you should also be aware that Farnsworth won a lawsuit against RCA, primarily based on the fact that a schoolteacher of his was able to reproduce a drawing he had made when he was in school that captured the essence of the operation of the cesium television camera tube. The royalties didn't make him rich; after all, how big a market is there for million dollar television cameras?
Second, the IEC design Bussard has developed from Farnsworth's (and, by the way, Hirsch's- and therein lies another interesting tidbit) fusor has several important improvements over the original design, the very latest of which Bussard's company (yes, there was a company, yes, they were funded by DARPA funds, yes, they were getting money from the US Navy up until 2005, and yes, an Admiral in the US Navy thought the work was important enough that he authorized enough money to keep them going until April of 2006, even though the money had run out because the US military had to pay for Iraq and Congress wasn't authorizing raiding Social Security for it any more) completed early this year. No scientific papers have been published because the terms of the government funding contract prohibited it. Thus, the designs have not undergone peer review; however, they were not Dr. Bussard's designs alone, but the designs of a group of nuclear physicists and nuclear engineers working together on a US government funded project, for a company that held the patents. So stop talking about Dr. Bussard like he's Joe Blow, or a mad scientist in a basement somewhere. That's not what's going on here. He was the principal investigator for a defense contractor. It's extremely likely now that the government has let the contract lapse that the papers will be published, and we'll have some serious meat to chew on fairly shortly published in the professional literature. Dr. Bussard apparently also owns the patents (and no, they're not applications, they're US patents, registered with the patent office, with, you know, numbers and like that). (ETA: I've just found that a prior poster has given the patent numbers. Hopefully that will help.)
Third, you should all be aware that the interstellar ramjet concept is by no means Dr. Bussard's claim to fame, particularly not among the US fusion research community. Dr. Bussard was Assistant Director (and Dr. Robert Hirsch- yes, Hirsch of the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor- was Director) of the Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division of the old US Atomic Energy Commission- the predecessor of today's Department of Energy- the Secretary of the DoE is a member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States. Together, Hirsch and Bussard oversaw the birth of the US fusion research community in the 1970s. They are the ones who pushed the Tokamak, and got $18 billion from Congress for it; in essence, they are the reason ITER even exists (and for those not paying attention, ITER was finally ratified by all the signatories just last week- they'll be building it in France). Really, people, this guy AIN'T Joe Blow- he's one of the founders of fusion research. There may not be anyone alive that knows as much about fusion as Dr. Robert Bussard. Certainly there are very few if any who have done as much to advance research into it, both administratively and personally.
Fourth, several unique features of his latest design make it very much worth looking into:
1. It appears that to avoid the problem with the electrode in the middle one must construct a system that presents a "virtual anode" (Dr. Bussard's term) at the center. Apparently, the means to do this are quite simple: use electrons to surround and contain the plasma; they form the cathode. If you can't see why Dr. Bussard would call the center of this a "virtual anode," you should probably study Maxwell's equations a little while. It seems pretty obvious to me.
2. To avoid losses among the electrons, one must have an even number of faces surrounding each vertex of the magnetic coils one must use to control the electrons (yes, of COURSE you use a magnetic field to control the electrons- how do you think Farnsworth came up with the thing in the first place?). This is because magnetic poles come in pairs: north and south. If they are not matched around the vertex, then the electrons (and the plasma) can escape, and energy will be lost. If the number of faces around the vertex is odd, you can't have north-south-north-south... and so forth. They won't be matched- there will be an unmatched pole. Dr. Bussard came to this realization rather late, if I understood correctly; it sounded like perhaps not until 2002 or later. This also seems pretty obvious, and just the sort of thing a whole bunch of nuclear physicists would stare straight at and completely miss.
3. The last key to the device is that the electrons cannot come into contact with the metal of the windings; if they do, they will be conducted away and lost in eddy currents. This was what Dr. Bussard was working on when the funding ran out, and he managed to complete a prototype that proved it. This is apparently the answer to Todd Rider's objections.
4. If Dr. Bussard's calculations are correct, there are two scaling factors involved in this type of device: the power output scales as the seventh power of the size, and the power gain as the fifth power of the size. Therefore, there is a "smallest" size below which there will not be net power output.
Hans, where did you get information that he doesn't intend a small prototype? In fact, he explicitly states that he does, and that he needs about $2 million for it. It will be larger than his previous ones, so that he can test the scaling factors and confirm the minimum size of a working, net power output device. If his calculation of the scaling factors is correct, it will then require between $110 million and $200 million to build a working device that will make net power.
Reading the original article by Todd Rider makes me nearly certain that Dr. Bussard is very aware of it, and has been struggling with the last sentence of the abstract for quite some time: "In order for IEC systems to be used as fusion reactors, it will be necessary to find methods to circumvent these problems."
It looks legit to me. Not to mention the fact he appeared in front of the staff of Google (they have these "tech talks" every so often- I think maybe they're competing with Microsoft, they do that too) and gave a pretty thorough talk about it, a few weeks back. This guy is the real deal, for sure- the real question is, will his idea work? Only time will tell.
