For decades, government scientists have toiled away trying to make nuclear fusion work. Will commercial companies sprint to the finish?

  • MushuChupacabra
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    151 year ago

    Most highly sought-after technologies ‘take time’, and develop in an iterative fashion called ‘successive approximation’.

    Heckling from the sidelines is what is known as ‘being unhelpful’.

    • @ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
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      61 year ago

      I am not ‘heckling from the sideline’ to the ppl working on it. I am just ‘heckling from the sideline’ the media for trying to generate clicks with such headlines.

    • @Perfide@reddthat.com
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      61 year ago

      You’re completely missing the point. Yeah, this stuff takes time, and it will continue to take time. The point is, this article saying we’re “closing in on it” is clickbait garbage that’s just as useful as the one a decade ago saying we are “closing in on it”, and a decade before that.

      • MushuChupacabra
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        31 year ago

        So you’re unimpressed with what’s been going on at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? Where they’ve induced a fusion reaction for a net energy gain? And repeated with better results?

        Were we achieving net energy gain a decade ago? The decade before that?

        Is net energy gain the goal? If so, does repeatable demonstration of the phenomena mean that we are closing in on it, or does it mean that we are moving further away from it?

    • @notfromhere
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      51 year ago

      It would have been achieved by now if it had more than just token amounts of funding.

      • MushuChupacabra
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        11 year ago

        Maybe? In any case, now would be an excellent time to invest heavily in the technology.

        • @notfromhere
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          11 year ago

          I agree now is the next best time to invest. Best time would have been 30 years ago[1]. This is absolutely needed if we want to remain relevant as a species. Fossil fuels will run out and if we aren’t on something sustainable, we’ll never get off this rock.

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