Lockheed Martin Develops Compact Fusion Reactor

[jordan179]

According to Reuters, "Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project," by Andrea Shalai,

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire

Comments

[silent_o]

Pardon me as I jump for joy.

This is news of the most excellent kind.

The applications for space exploration and exploitation give me warm fuzzies.

Mars Direct would benefit greatly.
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Also leaves the troublesome nations that are only relevant for their oil without international leverage.

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Not sure DEW can be considered artillery by classical definitions.

[jordan179]

The applications for space exploration and exploitation give me warm fuzzies.

Oh yes. An ion-drive spaceship powered by one of these would have the potential to go anywhere in the Solar System -- life support would be the major bottleneck. And a plasma-drive spaceship (if the reactor or its future developments are sufficiently power-dense to allow opening one end of the bottle to make a rocket) could do it fast enough that life support would become a relatively minor issue.

Also leaves the troublesome nations that are only relevant for their oil without international leverage.

Indeed. Let's see someone try to monopolize water :) Doesn't even have to be fresh water, either, as the additional cost of distillation is trivial compared to the cost of deuterium separation and enrichment of some of the deuterium into tritium.

[silent_o]

Upon more pondering an optimistic seed has rooted in the garden of my mind.

Could this be the beginning of Post-Scarcity? Are we bearing witness to our species' transition from childhood to adolescence? How much longer until we leave the cul-de-sac and find a nice studio apartment in the Big City? ;)
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On a parallel note, what is your opinion of John C. Wright? I'm considering buying a few books come payday and The Golden Oecumene seems like it could be a series worth reading.

[jordan179]

I don't believe in true Post-Scarcity (because we can always desire infinitely more than we have), but I do believe that we are on the threshold of an economic era in which we will have vastly more than we do now. Consider the way we live in America today -- even in the midst of a Depression -- compared to the way we lived a century or two ago

[jordan179]

Eh, the first practical directed-energy weapons have so far been too big to be man-portable, and they are effective at very long ranges -- so they are functionally artillery in the military sense.

[silent_o]

Call me old fashioned but I've always considered artillery to be indirect fire weapons. I could be wrong though. Maybe I just like parabolas and plunging fire.