[Fireskull]

2014, October 15, Wednesday


Hi,

Today Lockheed Martin, the USA Pentagon's largest supplier, announced a break in the research to develop the first practical fusion reactor. The first working lab version would be developed and tested, expected to be functioning in about 1 year. A prototype could be ready in about 5 years.

Lockheed says that the reactor section could be towed by a large truck with main component size measuring about 7 feet by 10 feet. The output could be as high as 100 megawatts.

The immediate implications are that viable fusion power is only around the corner. The fusion reactor could economically provide energy for a city or for other major applications such as large ships.

My personal view is that this advancement will enable permanent colonization of space in the foreseeable future, as well.

If this is real, then it would be one of the most important advances in human history!

http://news.yahoo.com/lockheed-says-mak ... nance.html



Clinton

[Deutschmark]

Hey that's very cool stuff about time something like that has come along.

Deutschmark

[caldrail]

My personal view is that this advancement will enable permanent colonization of space in the foreseeable future, as well.

No, it won't, but it would help if it all works./ The problem with space is that human beings aren't evolved to survive in it and the zero-gravity, often high radiation vacuum enviroment is very detrimental to human health, requiring activity regimes and no shortage of engineering solutions to create anything like a halfway safe place to be. We would be extremely vulnerable out there. Star Trek is a little way off just yet (so your daughters are still safe from sex crazed captains and salt sucking monsters)

Come to think of it, CBS Action are showing original Star Trek and Next Generation in digitally re-mastered form. The original is a bit hit and miss. Sometimes the new graphics are stunning, sometimes hideously worse than the 60's version.