Who cares if its not gonna be practical, science funding is good and there are lots of things to be learned even from unsuccessful fusion projects.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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This is the right answer. Humanity should not stop to be curious simply because it does not turn a profit.
Capitalism is a cancer that destroys the best thing about humanity
Capitalism is like fire. Let it run free and it will burn your home down, and your family to death. If it's controlled, and focused however, it will keep them warm, and power your industry.
Unfortunately, we've let capitalism run rampant, and now we need to bring it back under control.
Great analogy, but I cant fully agree. It seems to me that capitalism will almost always act the same way, it will always seek out every manipulation and loophole possible to get money into politics and then its good game. The people will never be able to stay as informed and hardworking at voting for right people and policies, as private money will be at buying the worst candidates and policies. Greed is essentially baked into capitalism.
....Then again what system wont be broken by the worst parts of humanity given enough time. I feel like the constitution should have been more robust, set out ethical guidelines for the country, it would make it so much harder to be a piece of shit and claim you love America at the same time. Especially as I see nationalism as the final nail in our coffin.
This is not capitalisms fault. It’s weak and corrupt leadership. Leaders who care more about people than power and money are required to keep it in check. Last time I looked they were all doing their own thing and I can’t blame them but still, it would be nice.
Except it is capitalisms fault. If the capitalist must make more money each year than it did the year before, eventually the only way to make that happen is by influencing elections to get bills passed that bring up the ladder behind you solidifying your monopoly, or by deregulating the market so you can produce more with less.
What you’re describing is not only caused by unchecked greed (solved by strong leadership), it’s lazy capitalism. In actual capitalism the business must achieve constant growth yes, but the part people forget is this is supposed to be achieved through innovation and adaptation. If the businesses fails to do this it goes out of business. Capitalism allows for years of decline so long as the business is strong enough to sustain it. What we’re seeing by companies influencing elections is open admission that they are either struggling to produce innovation or they are greedy. Sometimes probably both. If they are innovating like alphabet or meta and they still do it it’s lazy greed plain and simple. Capitalism ends here, strong leadership should start here and push back against it. You could argue this is where democracy is broken because these companies can control the flow of information and will sway public opinion to vote out a politician that doesn’t play their game. Unfortunately this is still poor leadership. A truely good leader will do their job regardless of public opinion or in the face of losing an election.
I think we disagree on one specific point, I believe weak leadership is a guarantee when massive institutions can no longer grow and instead seek to cheat growth through political action. The vote of the people is meaningless when compared to so much capital. I believe it to be inevitable. Sure strong leadership could prevent this, ,but we elect leadership and are easily manipulated.
Yeh I agree it’s fucking dire. The electing of easily manipulated leadership is the problem. Basically capitalism has hijacked democracy and the only way forward is through selfless leadership. Without it capitalism will probably consume us. You’re probably right that it will but it’s nice to know there’s a solution, better than no solution.
If you talk billions you gotta chose which science to fund.
Wait, but fusion is working. They're seeing net positive output. It's still quite small at the moment, but moderate gains continue to be made in the field.
We already have a perfectly good nuclear fusion reactor about 93,000,000 miles from our planet. We just need to make better use of its output.
I mean yeah, we should absolutely be replacing as much fossil fuel use as we can with existing renewable energy tech. But there's no reason we shouldn't also be investing in fusion research, at least as far as I'm aware
Because bad actors like fossil fuel and car companies will say "look, the government is funding fusion. Don't make us go renewable now, just wait five years until fusion is here." You have to consider the political impacts pursuing research will have on society's perceptions. Even if you know your project is just a wild experiment that probably won't work, journalists won't.
You mean like exactly what they did to Nuclear power when Solar and wind were those experimental and untested at scale technologies?
They already do this fyi. Solar plants tend to use mirrors that concentrate light to heat water and turn a turbine instead of actual solar panels. Amazingly, iirc converting light into heat, the heat into steam, and then the steam into kinetic energy, is still more efficient than a normal photovoltaic cells.
The concept is viable. Just needs moar mirrors
Mythbusters used a lot of mirrors, and could not get it to work.
The concept is viable. Just needs moar mirrors
Sadly I believe they found adding more mirrors did not appreciably raise the temperature of the focal point. Diminishing returns and all. So unfortunately more mirrors is not the answer, more Lasers is!
Well seeing how you almost need the output of a Dyson swarm to make a Dyson swarm, cool glowy rock power and explodey gas power can and will work just as good. Especially for places that are far away from the ideal conditions to exploit solar energy terrestrially. Where I'm at we have to use literal piles of garbage to be able to get high enough above the trees to achieve sustainable output.
This isn’t properly calculated though. They only count the actual laser energy inside the reacttvs output. They don’t account for the huge amount of energy thatch’s needed to run the lasers in the first place or the rest of the facility. It’s nowhere near putting out more energy than it consumes and it’s also a reactor for nuclear weapons testing so they don’t really try to produce energy anyway.
You're not wrong. It's still an important step for the field though. Having a net positive within the reaction itself could theoretically mean eventually the energy from the reaction can help sustain the reaction after the initial higher activation energy. But with the poor state of science journalism the result was reported with extreme hyperbole.
Exactly. And that's with the little reactors. If I remember correctly ITER is less than 5 years from first plasma. After that monster gets online, fusion research gets much easier.
Haven't we already confirmed ignition and just entered the "how do we sustain this at scale?" phase of the development?
So the thing you've heard about wasn't the first "ignition" (almost certainly the wrong word, it's not a flame) it was just the first fusion reaction that output more energy than was directly input. This is confusing to readers because there was actually a ton more energy required, but the lasers that directly impacted the material had less energy than was released, but total energy needed was much higher than was created. Also, that test was, as far as I'm aware, more suitable for a weapon style design, not a reactors that can sustain itself and create electricity. It was basically a capsule shot by a bunch of lasers, not in a reactor.
Haven't we already confirmed ignition?
Not that I know of. You can obviously just neglect most energy costs when considering "ignition" and the proclaim you've achieved ignition. These may legitimately be significant advances but it doesn't mean we're ready to start thinking about actually sustaining fusion energy at scale.
hehe funny graphs
Nuclear threats against enemy countries have been overused so much by Ruzzia being a tough-guy and more recently by Iran and Israel that they are now meaningless. When America legalized gay marriage in 2015, Iran shat a brick and fantasized about nuking us, but no nukes flew. Iran and Israel routinely threaten each other with each of their 3 warheads, but no nukes have flown. Ukraine started buying tanks, ordering F-16s and attacking Crimea, but no nukes flew. NATO recruited Finland which Ruzzia said was an attack on them, but again, no nukes flew. Ruzzia started directing its legions of keyboard warriors to salivate over Alaska, but no nukes flew. An Israeli politician fantasized about the country committing hara-kiri by nuking Gaza, but no nukes flew. Whenever someone fears that WW3 will start, I remind them of that fact.