Fusion generators coming soon?

[Roger]

I ran across this the other night:

 

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

 

Now, I realize that this is in the early stages still and I take everything I see on the internet with a grain of salt, but if this is the real deal then this would solve a lot of problems.

[Fuchur]

That would be a major step a head... my dad worked at a researchcenter near to my hometown on the ITER project, but having it in 5 years was not all possible there.

 

We will need to be patient till then...

 

Thank you very much for the link. Very interesting!

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[pixelplucker]

That actually might be somewhat safe.. I noticed in the picture the scientific team still had hair!

[robcat2075]

Somehow, something bad will come of this.

[robcat2075]

When I think about this it occurs to me that our ability to do really disastrous bad things has been limited by the cost of them which is usually wrapped up in the energy they consume somehow.

 

Nearly free, nearly limitless energy is going to be a big destabilizer. Crazy star wars weapons that were impractical before will be possible and no one will be able to resist doing them.

[NancyGormezano]

Humans: an extinct species that evolved to have big smarty-pants brains, but were too stupid to use them.

[robcat2075]

I suppose there's still hope that it's impossible. There seems to be some doubt about it all among physicists

[Fuchur]

Be careful not to sound like the guys who said that driving faster then a horse would destroy mankind . theoretically this is possible but it does not yet generate much power or is stable enough to generate consistently energy. they are very likely using a pulse laser (at least the last time i checked that was the startingpoint for the american approach) which has draw backs in terms of consistent poweroutput compared to other approaches)

 

anyway this will not result in cost free energy or in that much more output then before... it is just a start and it is not sure for now that everything will work out great...

[robcat2075]

Be careful not to sound like the guys who said that driving faster then a horse would destroy mankind .

 

I got rid of my car four years ago.

[Roger]

Well we already have enough nukes to kill everyone on the planet. So I don't see how superlasers are worse than that, other than they might be more likely to be used due to no radiation.

 

Anything that gets us off fossil fuels is a good thing. Cheap energy would allow you to cheaply desalinate water, which allows you to grow food in more areas that currently can't grow anything (think of desert regions of Africa or Australia that are near the coast).

Cheaper energy would also allow us to colonize our solar system, instead of talking about how we used to do cool stuff like go to the moon. With a fusion or nuclear rocket you could get to Mars in weeks instead of months.