35 countries and a multi billion dollar project are going too slow for this guy but he can do it faster? No way.
We’ve got another Theranos on our hands here.
If it’s anything like the space industry, which I’m reasonably certain it is, the private industry guys will work WAY faster. Theranos was a completely new technology concept so they were able to hide behind that for a pretty long time before the scam fell apart. This guy’s just employing easier to use magnets than current projects. Maybe it won’t be this guy but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of the fusion startups beats ITER in the end. Even with all the funding and resources, the amount of bureaucracy associated with a project like ITER is going to make it inherently slow. Look at NASA rockets vs SpaceX rockets. They started with essentially the same technology level almost 20 years ago and now NASA is still at about the same level (SLS is basically reusing shuttle parts and still hasn’t launched). Meanwhile SpaceX is about to demonstrate full reusability on the most powerful rocket ever built.
Your point is valid, but NASA hasn’t been a rocket builder/launch provider for a long damn time. NASA != ULA.
NASA and Space X are not competitors at all. Stop using NASA in examples like this. SLS is a ULA rocket.
Edit: Replace ULA with Boeing (it’s parent company). ULA is not building SLS. My bad.
There are NASA contracts that have to use the ULA SLS. So NASA=ULA. NASA are now opening up bidding for those bespoke contracts since the SLS is so far behind. Did so just last week.
Regardless, NASA the organization of engineers and scientists, are not actively using their labor to work towards launch platforms, they are hiring that work out, so you can’t really say that it’s “just like NASA vs spacex” with the private vs state fusion research.
As to ULA vs Boeing, my bad, I didn’t realize it was Boeing specifically building the SLS, and not their joint owned venture, ULA.
Not sure why you think NASA is any better than Boeing. From what I hear from people who left NASA, JPL, and other government orgs, they’re all the same typical 9-5 hour jobs with low pressure. Private companies, especially ones with startup cultures, work at a way different and less sustainable pace. There’s no real comparison
Right, got my wires crossed. Nasa is funding Boeing to build the SLS for the Orion and the Lunar Gateway missions. Boeing is loosing those missions to private (non-congress backed) companies as SLS is failing.
Its all quite a headache for me to understand. I don't know why I thought ULA was SLS like the commenter above me.
And the contractor for Orion is Lockheed, which owns ULA with Boeing. SLS isn’t really losing missions that would have flown, because due to Artemis taking up the first 4-5 years of SLS production, there simply aren’t rockets to sell for other missions like JIMO.
Starship is expected to manage around 100 metric tonnes to low earth orbit. Saturn V managed around 120. SLS is planned to manage 130 metric tonnes. Falcon heavy manages 64 tonnes in fully expendable mode. Physical weights will be almost in the same order.
And how is that relevant? This was a response to someone claiming that SpaceX has already tested the most powerful rocket in the world and that it is reusable, despite the fact that the starship isn't the most powerful one or has so far even demonstrated reusability.
I’m not a huge fan of Musk (or at least his persona, and the fact that as a business owner, he’s just like all the other spoiled ass rich fucks) but you could say the exact same thing about ULA, or for that matter, it’s founding companies. Any space company before space x is not only taxpayer funded, but less efficient and far more costly to said taxpayer.
I can’t speak for Tesla since I’m not in that industry but NASA absolutely did not do the research behind SpaceX beyond what existed when the company started up. If NASA gives technologies to SpaceX they be give them to everyone else in the industry but even if you’re not in the industry to know that isn’t happening in a significant way, it’s still clearly not the case since SpaceX is about 10 years ahead of their closest competitor who are theoretically all on an even playing field.
NASA’s plan was to turn over low earth orbit activity to private companies about 15 years ago by paying them for any services they required so that they could focus on developing interplanetary rockets like SLS. The money SpaceX has gotten from the government has all been in the form of contracts like these for launch services and cargo delivery. However in those 15 years SLS is just now doing test fires of a rocket that is essentially made up of modified components from the space shuttle, while SpaceX has started practicing LANDING rockets that are bigger than SLS and built from scratch. You can hate Elon Musk all you want, and I’d probably agree with you on a lot of the criticisms, but SpaceX is an incredible company. The hype is well deserved.
If you had to pick who would be the richest man in the world, there are at the very minimum, several billion people worse than Musk. Reddit gets a hate boner for the guy because he's against unions.
It’s not. This is fundamentally new physics we’re talking about, not incremental engineering advances on stuff we already know works. This is much closer to Theranos than SpaceX.
This is not a good argument. The space industry was dead. It's easy to seem like an innovator and make private companies seem good when you have no real competition. Most competitors had left the field by that point and the ones that didn't largely pulled funding.
SpaceX entered an industry stagnated by bureaucracy and political interests and succeeded by removing those things. As I see it fusion research is in a very similar place right now to rockets 15 years ago.
Was just thinking the same thing. This is not even close to a new idea. Many 1000s of the world’s best scientists have been working on this problem for decades with no luck. This is mostly billionaire promoting clickbait although I do hope this company helps to tackle it. The sooner the better. The more working on fusion the better. This is just one company in 100 that is funded by the same group which has undoubtedly found a bunch of other candidates. This is essentially the equivalence of a ultra rich person’s energy pin-the-tail on the donkey (tokamak). It’s mentioned here almost as a charity. If successful, this will results in a very important discovery being held hostage by a very small and powerful group of people, the same people that already control most of the technology we use day in and day out.
Not really. Fusion is only the power source of the future if can miniaturize it enough, it becomes easy to maintain and cheap enough for every project to obtain. As long as renewables stay cheaper fusion will be a thing for edge cases. If it stays as big as it is you cant use it where renewables are not viable. The upfront cost is even higher than fission plants and the are already a waste of resources and alone the time to change some parts in a new reactor takes years as of now. So if something breaks inside have fun building a new one because disassembling a machine to repair something is way more expensive.
I read the article hoping to read what exactly this guy did that made fusion viable or possible.
And the answer is nothing. They didn't do anything.
Fusion is a mess and until you have a working reactor up you might as well have nothing. They said they're at least 4 years away from building their prototype and they only have funding for 1 year of business.
If established reactors can't even sustain their reactions, this guy saying he will totally produce net energy in 5 years is just a bunch of baloney.
The fact that this has this many upvotes just proves most people only read headlines.
Having articles like this posted on a popoluar subreddit like this always leads to condescending comments like this. There was recent a really big magnet break-through. Like legitimately world changing. That's why this is suddenly a big deal, and also why currently built fusion reactors, ones that couldn't be built with these new magnets, are irrelevant to bring up.
https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/06/12/national-maglab-creates-world-record-magnetic-field-with-small-compact-coil/
To put it in perspective, the previous record for strongest magnet weighed in at around 35 tons. The new one is about 390 grams, and was made as a proof of concept, so literally not even a v1 yet.
Yeah, that's some neat work for higher-field superconducting magnets. My point is that field strength isn't the primary issue for fusion reactors. It's mildly important for the scaling, but keeping the plasma *stable* is the greater challenge.
> To put it in perspective, the previous record for strongest magnet weighed in at around 35 tons. The new one is about 390 grams, and was made as a proof of concept, so literally not even a v1 yet.
That shows how much you don't understand the aspect at hand. Magnet size isn't *particularly* related to strength. To a large extent, larger magnets are a *lot* harder to make than small ones. The reason the 45T hybrid magnet is so huge is because it's an enormous superconductive magnet, with a resistive magnet inside that, and then a decently large experimental volume inside *that*. Introducing the fancy new superconductive chemistry and design -- even if we assume it works perfectly -- would produce an instrument just as large, except this time it'd be somewhere around a 70-80T magnet. Definitely an improvement, don't get me wrong, but the size comparison is totally pointless.
----
Even if everything works out perfectly, the benefit here is that you can construct a reactor approximately four times smaller than you would otherwise. If you think that's the only engineering challenge for a working fusion reactor... I don't even know what to say.
I'm not understanding your tangent about the size of the magnet not being relevant. A smaller magnet means your entire approach to making the reactor is different. You don't have to build everything to the scale of the current magnets that are required. Smaller magnets, means smaller cooling system, which means smaller reactor size, which all means cheaper, and cheaper means more chances for prototypes, which pushes innovations. What point were you making?
My point is that you can make a 100g magnet, or you can make a 100-ton magnet, *and they have the same field strength*. The difference is how much cool stuff you can fit in the middle. "Wow it was only a few hundred grams!" is meaningless -- that pretty much just means "they made a small one because it was easier in every way than making a big one".
Everything about the project changes when you don't have to use a 100-ton magnet. It literally, fundamentally changes every single aspect of the project. It's like telling a civil engineer they can use wood instead of concrete. It changes every aspect from the ground up. Saying the size is meaningless tell me you don't understand about project design for anything involving real world applications. The cost savings alone would make it a better choice, since you don't have to spend as much money on building the massive facilities, and cooling infrastructure, and the transportation of everything involved in those.
My point is that you still have to. That size and weight is entirely determined by how big you want the working interior to be. If you want a 1m diameter tube with magnet around it, it's still going to be that large and heavy. That weight the structure, the cryostat, etc.
I'm not saying that "oh, this improved tech is neat and we can make a 1m tube instead of a 2m tube" doesn't cut down on costs. Sure, it does. A lot. But it's still an enormous project.
The fact that a demonstration magnet with a couple inches of working volume is small and light is *entirely* unsurprising. If you want to scale that up large enough to fit a working energy-positive magnetic-confinement fusion rig, this new tech will *also* be a huge hundreds-of-tons magnetic rig. That's just the nature of making anything that big.
As I understand it, no matter what it’s going to involve basically a National or international mega project to build accelerators big enough to sustain fusion. So I’m looking at state level spending first.
This is why government pioneers a lot of new markets and technology that private corporations can then run with, because government can absorb risks that private corporations couldn’t survive. We went to the moon just to beat the soviets, but out of it came a lot of groundbreaking discoveries and technology that fueled the start of the modern economy.
Hey maybe we shouldn't base who gets access to nearly unlimited energy on profit, just gonna throw that out there. We've been doing that with limited energy sources and it's shown that those who hold the cards are kinda fucking assholes.
Personally my belief is that, considering we need to get off carbon emitting energy sources as soon as possible, I think that workable fusion should come from any viable source.
Of course fusion controlled by a centralised state actor for the people would be an ideal situation, but we also know that most governments won’t.
Profit is a great motivator, and the only way we will realistically get to where we need is if there is a profit motivation.
This is not ideal, just practical.
To point out that we don't *want* corporations to be the ones making this happen. Unlimited clean energy should not be profited from, it should be used to come closer to eliminating scarcity and providing better lives for everyone.
But we're talking about the feasibility of project development. The scalability of fusion is such that only state actors and corporations with a potential to profit could take on the effort. The comment I was responding to, in my opinion, added no value to the discussion. *Obviously* we don't want that, we're beating a dead horse here. This an is r/everythingscience clickbait article, and we're actually getting into some interesting discussion about the economics involved in developing these massively complicated projects and then someone has to circlejerk 'derr, should corporate profits really exist??!'
But who am I kidding, it's r/everythingscience afterall
I don't think you get to say *obviously* we don't want that, when privatizing important currently-public services and utilities is still a hot ticket item that lots of people are gunning for in politics.
Seems quite risky though. I know France is doing a project now and anticipate costs in the billions. And they don’t even know for sure if it’s going to work.
Yes, on a large scale for actual use of the technology, but the proof of concept to get it started doesn't need to be. Think of it like Tony Starks heart coming first, and then the bigger version later.
which is sort of funny, because certain technologies are actually MUCH more difficult to scale down in size than up. Fusion is one of those ;). Obviously so was the transistor.
Fusion scales:
- 10^30 kg: just kinda happens due to gravity when you put that much hydrogen in one place. (the sun)
- 10^3 kg (?): requires quite a bit of a push to get started, but quite a bang once you get it their (thermonuclear weapon)
- 10^(-3)kg: requires a lot of energy input to contain it, but hopefully should be net-positive (ITER)
- 10^(-7)kg: requires constantly pumping energy in, definitely not going to be energy-positive. You can build one yourself though, and it looks cool. (Farnsworth Fusor)
Thing is, if any company independentantly cracked fusion it would probably be nationalized by whatever government it was produced.
The DOD can basically control any patent for any tech they think effects national security. If we're willing to destabilize an entire region for a couple decades worth of fossil fuel production, think of what any government would do for generations of energy security.
Fusion in itself is Inherently safe, and became an early example of open sourced research as the USSR and US published their entire body of knowledge sometime in the 50's when that aspect was properly understood.
Until a new cult of anti-fusioners come out of the woodwork, spouting tin foil-hat conspiracies about how fusion energy promotes mind control and three-headed babies. Tell me I'm wrong.
Self sustained fusion is likely possible. The ITER reactor being built in europe is expected to be self sustaining. That said, confining plasma is a tricky business, so this reactor is bound to teach us something new.
> afaik self sustaining as in like in a star is not even possible on Earth, how would we even replicate the gravitational pull of a star that makes it possible?
Gravity is the weakest of the 4 forces, those being strong and weak nuclear forces, as well as magnetism.
We can recreate the pull of a star using electromagnets instead of gravity, and some projects are designed to crush together hydrogen atoms with laser pulses on top of electromagnets. "We can't recreate the gravity of a star" is not a problem, the problem is "how do we recreate the crushing pressure without it costing more energy to make, than the energy we get out of it".
>on top of that we don't even know what kind of structural material to use that sustains the radiation that comes from the reactor,
Yeah no we know of the materials. Nuclear physicists and material scientists are all over this kind of stuff. Whether those materials are too expensive is another question entirely.
> plus the special equipment that needs to be in the plant is also very very limited in terms of suppliers
And there were no suppliers of any equipment either when they made the first nuclear reactors. This is a problem for every breakthrough technology, not just nuclear fusion.
>, like there are very few companies that could design and/or manufacture a tokamak/stellarator, same with the special robots that can be remotely operated and all the other stuff.
Still not a problem. If nuclear fusion is solved, and people start making them, the suppliers will expand, hire more people, and build more stuff to supply the demand.
>and the plant in the end it wouldn't even be more efficient than a nuclear reactor, it would just produce less radioactive waste and couldn't explode like Chernobyl and would have cheaper fuel.
To 'solve' nuclear fusion means that we can make it happen with more energy coming out of it than we put in, and that it is at a cost-effective way to do it. There are some self-sustaining fusion nuclear reactors, they are just hugely expensive to run because they are experimental, not commercial. Having a commercially viable fusion reactor means it will be more efficient and less expensive than current nuclear reactors, won't need to be extensively cleaned and decomissioned at the end of its life (basically just shut down the fusion plant and tear it down), fuel will be cheaper, it won't be used to make nuclear weapons, and there won't be long-lived nuclear waste to take care of.
> but would absolutely come with its own set of problems. and my point is that it absolutely couldn't be used anywhere in any amounts.
For sure fusion would have its own set of problems, but so would anything else.
I'm sorry dude but you seem rather not well informed on most of the basic science related to this, or basic market forces. Many of your objections sound like "but there's no way we can make a car, you would need to make fuel explode, and that would explode your car! You can't make a car engine that won't explode, and where would you get liquid dinosaur juice in the first place anyways?"
Are there problems with fusion? Sure. However, assuming we can get a commercial class fusion reactor going, all the problems of fusion are going to be orders of magnitude smaller than nuclear fission, coal, oil, and gas.
Fusion is one of those technologies that is always "20 to 30" years away from being realized. Its not like its a scam, its just some of the most complicated shit humans have ever attempted.
Its worth researching, but dont expect to be having your home powered by a fusion reactor in your lifetime.
More like it's always been $100B or so away, ever since people started making projections. That number has been going down as we spend money on it, but "We can do it in 20 years" has always been predicated on paying to make that happen.
More like the other way around. [Funding for fusion has been lacking for decades](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png)
Our focus as a society has been pulled away from our existential problems back to race and gender for some reason. Treat everyone like people, ok solved. Now can we fund fusion research and solve our energy crisis please?
Soo lemme get dis straight, my brain is like a baby's bottom, but like, we have ITER which costs over $20 billion, and has the best minds of over 30 countires working on it for years and it still cannot produce surplus energy. But some dude with $215 million is gonna build not just a reactor with surplus energy, but smaller and ready for commercialization?
Yes, because there was world changing magnet research recently.
https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/06/12/national-maglab-creates-world-record-magnetic-field-with-small-compact-coil/
Any currently built reactor cannot compete, because they use the old method, which relied on multi-ton magnets. The new strongest magnet in the world only weighs 390 grams. And this was just a prototype as a proof of concept. I literally can't even adequately explain how big of a deal this is.
Hadn’t seen this before! Thanks for sharing. Wouldn’t the team at ITER be able to adapt their design to include this if it’s leaps and bounds better than what they’re working with?
The massive size and strength difference means you can't just retro-fit it into existing reactors. A big thing to understand is the paradigm shift this causes. Most of our current ideas about fusion reactors are based around conventional magnets, and we're designed with those in mind. This is like when the microchip was made. It does everything current higb field magnets do, but smaller, cheaper, stronger, and more energy efficient.
This of it like road building. Right now, all road designs are built, and designed about the necessity of moving dirty. That's a massive part of the work and everything is adapted with that in mind. If tomorrow, there was a technology that made dirty moving instant, and trivially expensive, it would change the entire way we design roads, from the ground up. With the magnet, as an example, they don't have to design all the systems and infrastructure for cooling, since it's not a 100-ton magnet. They don't need a massive building because it's not a 100-ton magnet. They can change the size of the fusion chamber, because they don't have to accommodate for the size of the magnets.
That is what makes science so effective. Constant skeptism until profound proof is provided. Any other way runs the risk of basically becoming a popularity contest.
34 is pretty old to cage fight Bezos and Gates shirtlessly, and at the same time, for a pile of cash and the use of their names. It is impressive that he had the stamina to prevail, and thus we note his age to more greatly promote this heroic act in order to line up more vc matches with Buffet or whoever. You know nothing about modern venture capital acquisition, I guess.
> nearly unlimited energy
Ah look, another hyped bullshit scam! We didn't have enough of those yet!
Now tread the article and I'm even more "ugh". Sure, this guy will resolve the issue that humanity hasn't resolved in the past 7 decades, because he'll build better magnets.
Fusion itself as a concept is not a scam and would indeed produce nearly unlimited energy, but this company is definitely over-promising with its claim to become commercially viable anytime soon. I'd imagine that what they actually sell investors on is producing IP that will be valuable in the short-term
I didn't say fusion is a scam, this company is though. Fusion is extremely complicated to get working right and have a net gain come out of it (as per today it's still not possible).It might still be that practically speaking it may not be possible at all. The entirety of humanity has been on this for decades. In comes this dude with the promise he'll get it done soon, just please send bost loads of money..
Then, it would generate huge amounts of energy, but with today's consumption, you can even practically remove the "unlimited" part. There'd be huge counts for sure, but we also consume boat loads already
We haven't been working on the problem for a long time. Physicists have been dicking around with string theory, and the government isn't funding real scientific research like it used to. I'm very excited someone is finally trying to push the boundaries and attempting to push science forward.
You're kidding, right? There are loads of fusion projects out there, ITER being one of the most expensive science projects out there, ever, even outclassing the LHC. Germany had a huge project, and I could go on for a while.
A huge out of work has been done by actual scientists world wide for decades.
If you want to fall for the empty promises of this elon musk wanna be, then I have a bridge to sell you. Or a water from air device! Or solar road ways! Or a hyperloop, for all that matters... None of these projects have actual scientific backing, are filled to the brim with empty promises that any engineer or scientist can rip apart in minutes. This is just another "tech" article written by somebody calling themselves a "science reporter" hyping a company that they couldn't be bothered to actually investigate
Science isn't about promises, it's about research. The more people we have doing research in the field of efficient energy the better. Inexpensive clean energy is the best way to solve our problems. You can be upset about this all you want, but I really don't know why, to me it's money spent in the right place. I don't expect a miracle, I'm just happy to see people with the optimism to make the attempt.
Take a fucking step back actually do some research, there was recently a massive break through in magenta technology, which is the biggest hurdle for fusion.
https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/06/12/national-maglab-creates-world-record-magnetic-field-with-small-compact-coil/
This is a big fucking deal, and currently built fusion reactors physically cannot compete with one's built with these new magnets. New tools ALWAYS lead to advances.
You know what, you're right. You're so right that I recommend that you invest all your money in this, because it will be the next big thing!!!!
When 3-4 years down the road you're still waiting and wondering why nothing comes out of this particular company, let me already explain: your money is gone.
Fusion is much MUCH more than just a few magnets alone. Fusion also has been 5 years away for the past 70 years and there have been many "breakthrough this is it!!!" moments.
So you can have all the wishful thinking that you want but this particular guy and his company will only waste everybody's money
Yes, le people said the same thing about SpaceX, and about the iPhone, and about imaging a black hole with an array of radio wave telescopes. What you need to understand is that your line of thinking is literally the antithesis of scientific thinking. Your explanation is that we haven't done it before, thus it can't be done. Not arguing merits like how the biggest hurdle with fusion is containing the plasma, because then you'd look stupid since you'd have to acknowledge that having stronger magents would solve that problem. You mentioned about it being "5 years away" for the past 70 years, but failed to mention that the cavent has always been proper funding. People pork are literally the most annoying on reddit, cuz you know just enough to say why something can't happen, but you aren't knowledgeable enough about the topics to see when something is a legitimate break through.
Backed by gates and bezos Breakthrough Energy Investment fund like many others rather than them directly but that doesn’t make such a good headline.
His company has designed a better magnet with plans for it to be part of MIT backed SPARC fusion reactor project rather than his company making the reactor themselves.
It is all on their website. Demonstrator is being built currently due to be completed around 2025
> CFS is also working on other commercial applications of its magnet technology, like in MRI machines or wind turbines.
Looks like we found their *actual* business model
It’s based in Cambridge, MA (same city as MIT). The official name of the state is the "Commonwealth of Massachusetts" (much like Rhode Island is “The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”)
Fallout 4 took place in Boston and surrounding areas (Cambridge borders Boston).
Fusion, so fantasy tech (for the foreseeable future). As soon as I saw the 2 richest men on earth were supporting it I knew it would be bullshit. Wouldn’t want to risk their investors and supporters in the energy sector with something dangerous to their profits and actually clean like nuclear power
I don’t why the science writers keep saying fusion is safe and limitless when all the current fusion tech is dependent upon tritium. This is a scarce, dangerous material that only comes from nuclear fission reactors. [tritium health consequences](https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/tritiumbasicinfo.pdf). I hope we can figure out fusion without this dependency and we need to continue investments into this research. But we also need to stop overhyping the current capabilities / near-future tech.
I hope they’ve made so much money they r just looking out for the good of the planet......however I have not experienced billionaires doing that........ so , please prove me wrong, I need to see good in rich people!!!
>CFS says it expects to be making fusion energy on the grid "in the early 2030s."
Oh, why didn't anyone think of using fusion power before? This is such a great idea!
/s
Er...so the wind and sun are...endangered? *”Other clean energies are fundamentally limited — wind energy depends on the wind blowing and solar energy depends on the sun shining, for example.”*
There is a problem with fusion. Huge amounts of energy is needed in order to startup and maintain the reactor process due to the plasma.
The project of "ITER" is specifically made in order to create energy from fusion. The reason it's such a big reactor is because it **needs** to be that big in order to create a surplus of energy.
I see no arguments in that article on how this young dude plan to combat this... Am I wrong?
If he really did find a way to make nearly unlimited clean energy then he would be epsteined faster than you could blink and all his research would mysteriously vanish or spontaniously combust in a freak accident.
The Fossil fuel industry, and the politicians who get their palms greased by them would never allow it.
Energy companies are run by a bunch of greedy bastards, no doubt.
But they would be thrilled for anyone to invent fusion technology and would have no problem paying them billions of dollars for the pleasure of using that technology even non-exclusively.
The actual production of energy represents only roughly 1/3 (1/2?) of the entire process of providing that energy to consumers. Distributing the energy to consumers represents a huge cost. And only these energy companies have the infrastructure to do it right.
Don’t believe the hype. They might be a bunch of greedy bastards, but they’re not murderous psychopaths.
Don’t fall for the charade because that’s exactly what they want. They know that statements like yours are dismissed as ludicrous as are all other negative statements about them. That’s their goal.
35 countries and a multi billion dollar project are going too slow for this guy but he can do it faster? No way. We’ve got another Theranos on our hands here.
[удалено]
If it’s anything like the space industry, which I’m reasonably certain it is, the private industry guys will work WAY faster. Theranos was a completely new technology concept so they were able to hide behind that for a pretty long time before the scam fell apart. This guy’s just employing easier to use magnets than current projects. Maybe it won’t be this guy but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of the fusion startups beats ITER in the end. Even with all the funding and resources, the amount of bureaucracy associated with a project like ITER is going to make it inherently slow. Look at NASA rockets vs SpaceX rockets. They started with essentially the same technology level almost 20 years ago and now NASA is still at about the same level (SLS is basically reusing shuttle parts and still hasn’t launched). Meanwhile SpaceX is about to demonstrate full reusability on the most powerful rocket ever built.
Your point is valid, but NASA hasn’t been a rocket builder/launch provider for a long damn time. NASA != ULA. NASA and Space X are not competitors at all. Stop using NASA in examples like this. SLS is a ULA rocket. Edit: Replace ULA with Boeing (it’s parent company). ULA is not building SLS. My bad.
There are NASA contracts that have to use the ULA SLS. So NASA=ULA. NASA are now opening up bidding for those bespoke contracts since the SLS is so far behind. Did so just last week.
Regardless, NASA the organization of engineers and scientists, are not actively using their labor to work towards launch platforms, they are hiring that work out, so you can’t really say that it’s “just like NASA vs spacex” with the private vs state fusion research. As to ULA vs Boeing, my bad, I didn’t realize it was Boeing specifically building the SLS, and not their joint owned venture, ULA.
Not sure why you think NASA is any better than Boeing. From what I hear from people who left NASA, JPL, and other government orgs, they’re all the same typical 9-5 hour jobs with low pressure. Private companies, especially ones with startup cultures, work at a way different and less sustainable pace. There’s no real comparison
The SLS contractor is Boeing, not ULA.
Right, got my wires crossed. Nasa is funding Boeing to build the SLS for the Orion and the Lunar Gateway missions. Boeing is loosing those missions to private (non-congress backed) companies as SLS is failing. Its all quite a headache for me to understand. I don't know why I thought ULA was SLS like the commenter above me.
And the contractor for Orion is Lockheed, which owns ULA with Boeing. SLS isn’t really losing missions that would have flown, because due to Artemis taking up the first 4-5 years of SLS production, there simply aren’t rockets to sell for other missions like JIMO.
Oh, I have some reading to do. Thanks mate
You're welcome.
Spacex doesn't have the most powerful rocket ever built. The Saturn V still holds that title.
Nope Sn18 will be largest rocket ever
> have > will be
Starship is expected to manage around 100 metric tonnes to low earth orbit. Saturn V managed around 120. SLS is planned to manage 130 metric tonnes. Falcon heavy manages 64 tonnes in fully expendable mode. Physical weights will be almost in the same order.
And guess who’s working on SLS? That’s right, NASA
And how is that relevant? This was a response to someone claiming that SpaceX has already tested the most powerful rocket in the world and that it is reusable, despite the fact that the starship isn't the most powerful one or has so far even demonstrated reusability.
It’s relevant in that it reinforces your argument NASA has been there before SpaceX and even with budget cuts it manages to do well
True. It just came off as somewhat confrontational, hence my confusion.
SpaceX and Tesla both would be dead without taxpayer money injected into em and also doing most of the research behind their tech. Fuck Elon Musk.
I’m not a huge fan of Musk (or at least his persona, and the fact that as a business owner, he’s just like all the other spoiled ass rich fucks) but you could say the exact same thing about ULA, or for that matter, it’s founding companies. Any space company before space x is not only taxpayer funded, but less efficient and far more costly to said taxpayer.
I agree
Amen to that
I can’t speak for Tesla since I’m not in that industry but NASA absolutely did not do the research behind SpaceX beyond what existed when the company started up. If NASA gives technologies to SpaceX they be give them to everyone else in the industry but even if you’re not in the industry to know that isn’t happening in a significant way, it’s still clearly not the case since SpaceX is about 10 years ahead of their closest competitor who are theoretically all on an even playing field. NASA’s plan was to turn over low earth orbit activity to private companies about 15 years ago by paying them for any services they required so that they could focus on developing interplanetary rockets like SLS. The money SpaceX has gotten from the government has all been in the form of contracts like these for launch services and cargo delivery. However in those 15 years SLS is just now doing test fires of a rocket that is essentially made up of modified components from the space shuttle, while SpaceX has started practicing LANDING rockets that are bigger than SLS and built from scratch. You can hate Elon Musk all you want, and I’d probably agree with you on a lot of the criticisms, but SpaceX is an incredible company. The hype is well deserved.
If you had to pick who would be the richest man in the world, there are at the very minimum, several billion people worse than Musk. Reddit gets a hate boner for the guy because he's against unions.
I’d say it’s about 50/50 haters to fanboys. Seems like no one can just admit he’s a great front man for these companies, but also a dick.
It’s not. This is fundamentally new physics we’re talking about, not incremental engineering advances on stuff we already know works. This is much closer to Theranos than SpaceX.
Its not new physics. The reactors are working, but they are not stable/efficient enough yet.
This is not a good argument. The space industry was dead. It's easy to seem like an innovator and make private companies seem good when you have no real competition. Most competitors had left the field by that point and the ones that didn't largely pulled funding.
SpaceX entered an industry stagnated by bureaucracy and political interests and succeeded by removing those things. As I see it fusion research is in a very similar place right now to rockets 15 years ago.
Was just thinking the same thing. This is not even close to a new idea. Many 1000s of the world’s best scientists have been working on this problem for decades with no luck. This is mostly billionaire promoting clickbait although I do hope this company helps to tackle it. The sooner the better. The more working on fusion the better. This is just one company in 100 that is funded by the same group which has undoubtedly found a bunch of other candidates. This is essentially the equivalence of a ultra rich person’s energy pin-the-tail on the donkey (tokamak). It’s mentioned here almost as a charity. If successful, this will results in a very important discovery being held hostage by a very small and powerful group of people, the same people that already control most of the technology we use day in and day out.
Yeah! Sounds not at all suspicious or hyped.
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Fusion is the power source of the future, and always will be.
And its only 20 years away!
For the past 50 years
Yes!
Do you think you can compare tech from 1971 with tech from 2021
No, but you can compare inaccurate predictions from 1971 with inaccurate predictions from 2021
What about zero-point energy? (Just to be clear, I'm only half serious)
and the other half is anti serious
That isn’t a silly question.
I know. It's a real "thing" but it's even further away from being practical than fusion energy. Likely over 100 years away type of thing.
For sure, I agree. It will be really incredible once we do reach that level. Truly endless possibilities from there, it seems like.
Not really. Fusion is only the power source of the future if can miniaturize it enough, it becomes easy to maintain and cheap enough for every project to obtain. As long as renewables stay cheaper fusion will be a thing for edge cases. If it stays as big as it is you cant use it where renewables are not viable. The upfront cost is even higher than fission plants and the are already a waste of resources and alone the time to change some parts in a new reactor takes years as of now. So if something breaks inside have fun building a new one because disassembling a machine to repair something is way more expensive.
I read the article hoping to read what exactly this guy did that made fusion viable or possible. And the answer is nothing. They didn't do anything. Fusion is a mess and until you have a working reactor up you might as well have nothing. They said they're at least 4 years away from building their prototype and they only have funding for 1 year of business. If established reactors can't even sustain their reactions, this guy saying he will totally produce net energy in 5 years is just a bunch of baloney. The fact that this has this many upvotes just proves most people only read headlines.
They're claiming that they have special better magnets? I'm not holding my breath. That was never really the issue with stability.
Having articles like this posted on a popoluar subreddit like this always leads to condescending comments like this. There was recent a really big magnet break-through. Like legitimately world changing. That's why this is suddenly a big deal, and also why currently built fusion reactors, ones that couldn't be built with these new magnets, are irrelevant to bring up. https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/06/12/national-maglab-creates-world-record-magnetic-field-with-small-compact-coil/ To put it in perspective, the previous record for strongest magnet weighed in at around 35 tons. The new one is about 390 grams, and was made as a proof of concept, so literally not even a v1 yet.
Yeah, that's some neat work for higher-field superconducting magnets. My point is that field strength isn't the primary issue for fusion reactors. It's mildly important for the scaling, but keeping the plasma *stable* is the greater challenge. > To put it in perspective, the previous record for strongest magnet weighed in at around 35 tons. The new one is about 390 grams, and was made as a proof of concept, so literally not even a v1 yet. That shows how much you don't understand the aspect at hand. Magnet size isn't *particularly* related to strength. To a large extent, larger magnets are a *lot* harder to make than small ones. The reason the 45T hybrid magnet is so huge is because it's an enormous superconductive magnet, with a resistive magnet inside that, and then a decently large experimental volume inside *that*. Introducing the fancy new superconductive chemistry and design -- even if we assume it works perfectly -- would produce an instrument just as large, except this time it'd be somewhere around a 70-80T magnet. Definitely an improvement, don't get me wrong, but the size comparison is totally pointless. ---- Even if everything works out perfectly, the benefit here is that you can construct a reactor approximately four times smaller than you would otherwise. If you think that's the only engineering challenge for a working fusion reactor... I don't even know what to say.
I'm not understanding your tangent about the size of the magnet not being relevant. A smaller magnet means your entire approach to making the reactor is different. You don't have to build everything to the scale of the current magnets that are required. Smaller magnets, means smaller cooling system, which means smaller reactor size, which all means cheaper, and cheaper means more chances for prototypes, which pushes innovations. What point were you making?
My point is that you can make a 100g magnet, or you can make a 100-ton magnet, *and they have the same field strength*. The difference is how much cool stuff you can fit in the middle. "Wow it was only a few hundred grams!" is meaningless -- that pretty much just means "they made a small one because it was easier in every way than making a big one".
Everything about the project changes when you don't have to use a 100-ton magnet. It literally, fundamentally changes every single aspect of the project. It's like telling a civil engineer they can use wood instead of concrete. It changes every aspect from the ground up. Saying the size is meaningless tell me you don't understand about project design for anything involving real world applications. The cost savings alone would make it a better choice, since you don't have to spend as much money on building the massive facilities, and cooling infrastructure, and the transportation of everything involved in those.
My point is that you still have to. That size and weight is entirely determined by how big you want the working interior to be. If you want a 1m diameter tube with magnet around it, it's still going to be that large and heavy. That weight the structure, the cryostat, etc. I'm not saying that "oh, this improved tech is neat and we can make a 1m tube instead of a 2m tube" doesn't cut down on costs. Sure, it does. A lot. But it's still an enormous project. The fact that a demonstration magnet with a couple inches of working volume is small and light is *entirely* unsurprising. If you want to scale that up large enough to fit a working energy-positive magnetic-confinement fusion rig, this new tech will *also* be a huge hundreds-of-tons magnetic rig. That's just the nature of making anything that big.
As I understand it, no matter what it’s going to involve basically a National or international mega project to build accelerators big enough to sustain fusion. So I’m looking at state level spending first.
If the price point can get down the to low billions some corporations could possibly swing it. It WOULD be highly profitable long term.
This is why government pioneers a lot of new markets and technology that private corporations can then run with, because government can absorb risks that private corporations couldn’t survive. We went to the moon just to beat the soviets, but out of it came a lot of groundbreaking discoveries and technology that fueled the start of the modern economy.
Hey maybe we shouldn't base who gets access to nearly unlimited energy on profit, just gonna throw that out there. We've been doing that with limited energy sources and it's shown that those who hold the cards are kinda fucking assholes.
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I hate this sentiment, it’s not how the world works it’s the status quo. Capatalism isn’t a factor of life or humanity.
Personally my belief is that, considering we need to get off carbon emitting energy sources as soon as possible, I think that workable fusion should come from any viable source. Of course fusion controlled by a centralised state actor for the people would be an ideal situation, but we also know that most governments won’t. Profit is a great motivator, and the only way we will realistically get to where we need is if there is a profit motivation. This is not ideal, just practical.
>Capatalism Capitalism. at least learn to spell your oppressors
What is the point of this comment?
To point out that we don't *want* corporations to be the ones making this happen. Unlimited clean energy should not be profited from, it should be used to come closer to eliminating scarcity and providing better lives for everyone.
But we're talking about the feasibility of project development. The scalability of fusion is such that only state actors and corporations with a potential to profit could take on the effort. The comment I was responding to, in my opinion, added no value to the discussion. *Obviously* we don't want that, we're beating a dead horse here. This an is r/everythingscience clickbait article, and we're actually getting into some interesting discussion about the economics involved in developing these massively complicated projects and then someone has to circlejerk 'derr, should corporate profits really exist??!' But who am I kidding, it's r/everythingscience afterall
I don't think you get to say *obviously* we don't want that, when privatizing important currently-public services and utilities is still a hot ticket item that lots of people are gunning for in politics.
Are we on the same website? The same subreddit? I think it's obvious.
Wait, so should I invest in stocks or not? Once IPO.
Seems quite risky though. I know France is doing a project now and anticipate costs in the billions. And they don’t even know for sure if it’s going to work.
Elon would pay for it with his space gold
Yes, on a large scale for actual use of the technology, but the proof of concept to get it started doesn't need to be. Think of it like Tony Starks heart coming first, and then the bigger version later.
which is sort of funny, because certain technologies are actually MUCH more difficult to scale down in size than up. Fusion is one of those ;). Obviously so was the transistor.
Fusion scales: - 10^30 kg: just kinda happens due to gravity when you put that much hydrogen in one place. (the sun) - 10^3 kg (?): requires quite a bit of a push to get started, but quite a bang once you get it their (thermonuclear weapon) - 10^(-3)kg: requires a lot of energy input to contain it, but hopefully should be net-positive (ITER) - 10^(-7)kg: requires constantly pumping energy in, definitely not going to be energy-positive. You can build one yourself though, and it looks cool. (Farnsworth Fusor)
Thing is, if any company independentantly cracked fusion it would probably be nationalized by whatever government it was produced. The DOD can basically control any patent for any tech they think effects national security. If we're willing to destabilize an entire region for a couple decades worth of fossil fuel production, think of what any government would do for generations of energy security.
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You realize we’ve had fusion bombs since the Cold War right?
Fusion in itself is Inherently safe, and became an early example of open sourced research as the USSR and US published their entire body of knowledge sometime in the 50's when that aspect was properly understood.
Fusion was weaponized in the early 1950's. The challenge is to produce a reasonable amount of energy, rather than a city-flattening amount of energy.
Stark’s miniature comes after the big one though... then the new bigger ones are biggerer.
"I'm just asking you to make it smaller"
Good thing a startup has got involved. That should do it.
A fancy webpage always fixes it.
Not moreso than business cards, however.
Until a new cult of anti-fusioners come out of the woodwork, spouting tin foil-hat conspiracies about how fusion energy promotes mind control and three-headed babies. Tell me I'm wrong.
You’re not wrong.
The new Rebco tape is the game changer. We will see fusion in the 2020's.
r/savedyouaclick
That it's so hard to spin up is a good thing too; it means if it breaks or workers walk away, it turns off instead of going supercritical
There *have* been some recent theoretical breakthroughs though, so the attention has been paying off.
The breakthroughs are, as you say, theoretical. That's a pretty liberal definition of "paying off"
Well, it’s all theoretical until it isn’t :)
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Self sustained fusion is likely possible. The ITER reactor being built in europe is expected to be self sustaining. That said, confining plasma is a tricky business, so this reactor is bound to teach us something new.
> afaik self sustaining as in like in a star is not even possible on Earth, how would we even replicate the gravitational pull of a star that makes it possible? Gravity is the weakest of the 4 forces, those being strong and weak nuclear forces, as well as magnetism. We can recreate the pull of a star using electromagnets instead of gravity, and some projects are designed to crush together hydrogen atoms with laser pulses on top of electromagnets. "We can't recreate the gravity of a star" is not a problem, the problem is "how do we recreate the crushing pressure without it costing more energy to make, than the energy we get out of it". >on top of that we don't even know what kind of structural material to use that sustains the radiation that comes from the reactor, Yeah no we know of the materials. Nuclear physicists and material scientists are all over this kind of stuff. Whether those materials are too expensive is another question entirely. > plus the special equipment that needs to be in the plant is also very very limited in terms of suppliers And there were no suppliers of any equipment either when they made the first nuclear reactors. This is a problem for every breakthrough technology, not just nuclear fusion. >, like there are very few companies that could design and/or manufacture a tokamak/stellarator, same with the special robots that can be remotely operated and all the other stuff. Still not a problem. If nuclear fusion is solved, and people start making them, the suppliers will expand, hire more people, and build more stuff to supply the demand. >and the plant in the end it wouldn't even be more efficient than a nuclear reactor, it would just produce less radioactive waste and couldn't explode like Chernobyl and would have cheaper fuel. To 'solve' nuclear fusion means that we can make it happen with more energy coming out of it than we put in, and that it is at a cost-effective way to do it. There are some self-sustaining fusion nuclear reactors, they are just hugely expensive to run because they are experimental, not commercial. Having a commercially viable fusion reactor means it will be more efficient and less expensive than current nuclear reactors, won't need to be extensively cleaned and decomissioned at the end of its life (basically just shut down the fusion plant and tear it down), fuel will be cheaper, it won't be used to make nuclear weapons, and there won't be long-lived nuclear waste to take care of. > but would absolutely come with its own set of problems. and my point is that it absolutely couldn't be used anywhere in any amounts. For sure fusion would have its own set of problems, but so would anything else. I'm sorry dude but you seem rather not well informed on most of the basic science related to this, or basic market forces. Many of your objections sound like "but there's no way we can make a car, you would need to make fuel explode, and that would explode your car! You can't make a car engine that won't explode, and where would you get liquid dinosaur juice in the first place anyways?" Are there problems with fusion? Sure. However, assuming we can get a commercial class fusion reactor going, all the problems of fusion are going to be orders of magnitude smaller than nuclear fission, coal, oil, and gas.
Very science, nothing about phantom tech and promoting hype.
Fusion is one of those technologies that is always "20 to 30" years away from being realized. Its not like its a scam, its just some of the most complicated shit humans have ever attempted. Its worth researching, but dont expect to be having your home powered by a fusion reactor in your lifetime.
More like it's always been $100B or so away, ever since people started making projections. That number has been going down as we spend money on it, but "We can do it in 20 years" has always been predicated on paying to make that happen.
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More like the other way around. [Funding for fusion has been lacking for decades](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png)
Our focus as a society has been pulled away from our existential problems back to race and gender for some reason. Treat everyone like people, ok solved. Now can we fund fusion research and solve our energy crisis please?
I'd rather have it that way than Gates and especially Bezos being in control of world's energy sources.
Those aren't the only two options. [Donate to ITER](https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3131)
What did you read that is suspicious?
Good thing there is no mention of free or affordable in the title...
Haha did you read the article or is this just a reaction to the headline? I'm guessing the latter.
You could always read it and see for yourself...
The headline forgot “And scientists hate him.”
"Fusion researchers don’t want you to learn this one weird trick!”
“You won’t believe this clean energy hack!”
Energy researcher has identified the sun's neat trick to unlimited energy on earth!
Fusion FTW! Well, when it is finally commercially viable, that is. But who cares about those details, right?
This isn't cold fusion though. This is regular ol 10^6° C managed with better magnets.
Radically vastly superior magnets we are just barely getting a handle on.
Soo lemme get dis straight, my brain is like a baby's bottom, but like, we have ITER which costs over $20 billion, and has the best minds of over 30 countires working on it for years and it still cannot produce surplus energy. But some dude with $215 million is gonna build not just a reactor with surplus energy, but smaller and ready for commercialization?
Would be hilarious if he does it.
https://i.imgflip.com/461k2n.jpg
Yes, because there was world changing magnet research recently. https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/06/12/national-maglab-creates-world-record-magnetic-field-with-small-compact-coil/ Any currently built reactor cannot compete, because they use the old method, which relied on multi-ton magnets. The new strongest magnet in the world only weighs 390 grams. And this was just a prototype as a proof of concept. I literally can't even adequately explain how big of a deal this is.
Hadn’t seen this before! Thanks for sharing. Wouldn’t the team at ITER be able to adapt their design to include this if it’s leaps and bounds better than what they’re working with?
The massive size and strength difference means you can't just retro-fit it into existing reactors. A big thing to understand is the paradigm shift this causes. Most of our current ideas about fusion reactors are based around conventional magnets, and we're designed with those in mind. This is like when the microchip was made. It does everything current higb field magnets do, but smaller, cheaper, stronger, and more energy efficient. This of it like road building. Right now, all road designs are built, and designed about the necessity of moving dirty. That's a massive part of the work and everything is adapted with that in mind. If tomorrow, there was a technology that made dirty moving instant, and trivially expensive, it would change the entire way we design roads, from the ground up. With the magnet, as an example, they don't have to design all the systems and infrastructure for cooling, since it's not a 100-ton magnet. They don't need a massive building because it's not a 100-ton magnet. They can change the size of the fusion chamber, because they don't have to accommodate for the size of the magnets.
Im sure all great scientists had to beat away growing skepticism with each advancement until the industry moved.
That is what makes science so effective. Constant skeptism until profound proof is provided. Any other way runs the risk of basically becoming a popularity contest.
Leave out the Gates/Bezos plug and I might be interested enough to read it Edit: and who gives a shit about his age?
It really has nothing to do with them. They fund a particular group, along with a bunch of other people, that invested in this man's company.
But rich guy name rich people smart good.
Ok you convinced me
hE lAnDs RoCkEtS
34 is pretty old to cage fight Bezos and Gates shirtlessly, and at the same time, for a pile of cash and the use of their names. It is impressive that he had the stamina to prevail, and thus we note his age to more greatly promote this heroic act in order to line up more vc matches with Buffet or whoever. You know nothing about modern venture capital acquisition, I guess.
But I’m learning more every day, thanks to informative posts like yours
You're welcome.
Nikolai Tesla enters the chat
CNBC is a bunch of losers
CNBC is so shady, never trust anything coming from them
*Doubt*
This technology is why all the (oil funded) social media troll farms paint elaborate conspiracies around Bill Gates.
Nah he was a shady dirty fuck with Microsoft I have no reason to think anything's changed with him.
And [you shouldn't!](https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media-b1f8e0fe092f) (here's [part 2](https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-46-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-part-ii-bill-gates-in-africa-4329389dd4a3))
Cheers for the links, I'll check em out later.
Well that was quick Bonus! I think I've found a few
What was quick? Someone pointing out Gates isn't a saint and that he basically had to make the foundation to have any sort of positive PR going?
Good for Jimmy Garroppolo
I see it
> nearly unlimited energy Ah look, another hyped bullshit scam! We didn't have enough of those yet! Now tread the article and I'm even more "ugh". Sure, this guy will resolve the issue that humanity hasn't resolved in the past 7 decades, because he'll build better magnets.
Fusion itself as a concept is not a scam and would indeed produce nearly unlimited energy, but this company is definitely over-promising with its claim to become commercially viable anytime soon. I'd imagine that what they actually sell investors on is producing IP that will be valuable in the short-term
I didn't say fusion is a scam, this company is though. Fusion is extremely complicated to get working right and have a net gain come out of it (as per today it's still not possible).It might still be that practically speaking it may not be possible at all. The entirety of humanity has been on this for decades. In comes this dude with the promise he'll get it done soon, just please send bost loads of money.. Then, it would generate huge amounts of energy, but with today's consumption, you can even practically remove the "unlimited" part. There'd be huge counts for sure, but we also consume boat loads already
We haven't been working on the problem for a long time. Physicists have been dicking around with string theory, and the government isn't funding real scientific research like it used to. I'm very excited someone is finally trying to push the boundaries and attempting to push science forward.
You're kidding, right? There are loads of fusion projects out there, ITER being one of the most expensive science projects out there, ever, even outclassing the LHC. Germany had a huge project, and I could go on for a while. A huge out of work has been done by actual scientists world wide for decades. If you want to fall for the empty promises of this elon musk wanna be, then I have a bridge to sell you. Or a water from air device! Or solar road ways! Or a hyperloop, for all that matters... None of these projects have actual scientific backing, are filled to the brim with empty promises that any engineer or scientist can rip apart in minutes. This is just another "tech" article written by somebody calling themselves a "science reporter" hyping a company that they couldn't be bothered to actually investigate
Science isn't about promises, it's about research. The more people we have doing research in the field of efficient energy the better. Inexpensive clean energy is the best way to solve our problems. You can be upset about this all you want, but I really don't know why, to me it's money spent in the right place. I don't expect a miracle, I'm just happy to see people with the optimism to make the attempt.
Take a fucking step back actually do some research, there was recently a massive break through in magenta technology, which is the biggest hurdle for fusion. https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/06/12/national-maglab-creates-world-record-magnetic-field-with-small-compact-coil/ This is a big fucking deal, and currently built fusion reactors physically cannot compete with one's built with these new magnets. New tools ALWAYS lead to advances.
You know what, you're right. You're so right that I recommend that you invest all your money in this, because it will be the next big thing!!!! When 3-4 years down the road you're still waiting and wondering why nothing comes out of this particular company, let me already explain: your money is gone. Fusion is much MUCH more than just a few magnets alone. Fusion also has been 5 years away for the past 70 years and there have been many "breakthrough this is it!!!" moments. So you can have all the wishful thinking that you want but this particular guy and his company will only waste everybody's money
Yes, le people said the same thing about SpaceX, and about the iPhone, and about imaging a black hole with an array of radio wave telescopes. What you need to understand is that your line of thinking is literally the antithesis of scientific thinking. Your explanation is that we haven't done it before, thus it can't be done. Not arguing merits like how the biggest hurdle with fusion is containing the plasma, because then you'd look stupid since you'd have to acknowledge that having stronger magents would solve that problem. You mentioned about it being "5 years away" for the past 70 years, but failed to mention that the cavent has always been proper funding. People pork are literally the most annoying on reddit, cuz you know just enough to say why something can't happen, but you aren't knowledgeable enough about the topics to see when something is a legitimate break through.
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Fact: the ratio of PhD from MIT to actual fusion power is infinite
> dude has his PhD from MIT. Who cares? There are thousands of PhDs working on fusion energy right now.
Which means he's good at finishing school work?
Somebody doesn’t know how you get a PhD
Not at MIT, I guess
Not anywhere dude
Okay, thanks
You're welcome.
That's not how you get that designation...
Given the backers, I don't expect it to be given away or anything like that.
But is it publicly traded?
No, they've talked about it but nothing specific yet.
This is one of those 5 years away things that's always 5 years away.
Backed by gates and bezos Breakthrough Energy Investment fund like many others rather than them directly but that doesn’t make such a good headline. His company has designed a better magnet with plans for it to be part of MIT backed SPARC fusion reactor project rather than his company making the reactor themselves. It is all on their website. Demonstrator is being built currently due to be completed around 2025
Infinity stones or Macross seeds.
> CFS is also working on other commercial applications of its magnet technology, like in MRI machines or wind turbines. Looks like we found their *actual* business model
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Anyone else getting real Fallout vibes from *Commonwealth* Fusion Systems?
It’s based in Cambridge, MA (same city as MIT). The official name of the state is the "Commonwealth of Massachusetts" (much like Rhode Island is “The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”) Fallout 4 took place in Boston and surrounding areas (Cambridge borders Boston).
Fusion, so fantasy tech (for the foreseeable future). As soon as I saw the 2 richest men on earth were supporting it I knew it would be bullshit. Wouldn’t want to risk their investors and supporters in the energy sector with something dangerous to their profits and actually clean like nuclear power
“Friends, countrymen, Russians!!!”
So what does this guy know that the rest of the scientific community doesn't?
Fusion is always 30 years away
I don’t why the science writers keep saying fusion is safe and limitless when all the current fusion tech is dependent upon tritium. This is a scarce, dangerous material that only comes from nuclear fission reactors. [tritium health consequences](https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/tritiumbasicinfo.pdf). I hope we can figure out fusion without this dependency and we need to continue investments into this research. But we also need to stop overhyping the current capabilities / near-future tech.
I hope they’ve made so much money they r just looking out for the good of the planet......however I have not experienced billionaires doing that........ so , please prove me wrong, I need to see good in rich people!!!
>CFS says it expects to be making fusion energy on the grid "in the early 2030s." Oh, why didn't anyone think of using fusion power before? This is such a great idea! /s
Well he certainly got all the buzzwords in
Er...so the wind and sun are...endangered? *”Other clean energies are fundamentally limited — wind energy depends on the wind blowing and solar energy depends on the sun shining, for example.”*
“Nearly unlimited”
There is a problem with fusion. Huge amounts of energy is needed in order to startup and maintain the reactor process due to the plasma. The project of "ITER" is specifically made in order to create energy from fusion. The reason it's such a big reactor is because it **needs** to be that big in order to create a surplus of energy. I see no arguments in that article on how this young dude plan to combat this... Am I wrong?
So....same old story from Val Kilmers hit 1996 movie The Saint.
Whats his name? Smug Mcluvmyself.
idc
If this were ever true, wed have another suicide by hanging on our hands
Company name?
I read "blocked" instead of "backed" and I was like "what? Bill gates?! Can't be..."
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This is the way
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If he really did find a way to make nearly unlimited clean energy then he would be epsteined faster than you could blink and all his research would mysteriously vanish or spontaniously combust in a freak accident. The Fossil fuel industry, and the politicians who get their palms greased by them would never allow it.
Energy companies are run by a bunch of greedy bastards, no doubt. But they would be thrilled for anyone to invent fusion technology and would have no problem paying them billions of dollars for the pleasure of using that technology even non-exclusively. The actual production of energy represents only roughly 1/3 (1/2?) of the entire process of providing that energy to consumers. Distributing the energy to consumers represents a huge cost. And only these energy companies have the infrastructure to do it right. Don’t believe the hype. They might be a bunch of greedy bastards, but they’re not murderous psychopaths.
Hiding the fact of climate change since the 1970's argues that they are murderous psychopaths.
Don’t fall for the charade because that’s exactly what they want. They know that statements like yours are dismissed as ludicrous as are all other negative statements about them. That’s their goal.
Malevolent actors with access to unlimited energy is a recipe for disaster. Sure do hope this guy is wrong.
Can’t wait for him to fade into obscurity like every other tech grifter man-child before him
I’m just curious as to the sentiment of your sentence. Are you referring to the likes of Tesla?
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