Mr. Fusion

[rcjordan]

Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists

[ergophobe]

Nuclear fusion is the energy of the future and always will be.

[ergophobe]

says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years

This, by the way, is not that different from the timeline they gave back when I did a report on nuclear fusion in high school in the late 1970s.

Could be true this time, but I'm a skeptic until the electrons start coming down the wire.

The team intend to use a new class of high-temperature superconductors they predict will allow them to create the world's first fusion reactor that produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going.

And they even made the same joke that I did

Decades of disappointment in the field has led to the joke that fusion is the energy of the future – and always will be.

And then... Ba Ding!

Prof Wilson was also cautious about the timeframe, saying that while the project was exciting he couldn't see how it would achieve its goal of putting energy on the grid within 15 years.

[littleman]

>Nuclear fusion is the energy of the future and always will be.

It has been right around the corner ever since I could remember, but maybe someday it will happen.  Perhaps this is how people thought about heavier than air flight in the nineteenth century?

[ergophobe]

Well, the first time I heard the quip above, it was someone saying "Soccer is the sport of the future and always will be." And now it seems more popular among the 30 and under crowd than football is, at least in some parts of the country.

So yes, we're seeing lots of things that were just around the corner for decades finally come around the corner
- speech recognition: yes
- cheap energy: maybe
- flying cars: probably not
- extraterrestrial colonies: the feel closer than they did in 1995, but not as close as they did in 1969

[rcjordan]

>flying cars

We're going to get them but they're going to require a pilot's license if a human is at the controls.

[littleman]

Other than safety the problem with flying cars is that overcoming gravity is very expensive.