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

[benschachar_77]

When you consider that we are simultaneously studying reactionless drives and warp FTL it sounds like there is going to be a perfect storm that will enable space travel outside our solar system within our lifetimes.

[jordan179]

Possible -- though the difficulties of scaling up pure electromagnetic effects such as the Em-drive or Woodward-effect drive, which so far have yielded only very tiny thrusts, may take many human generations to reach the point of a practical engine. The Alcubierre warp drive would be a true space drive with potentially FTL capabilities, but would require at least minor advances in physics and major advances in engineering to realize -- I would be very surprised if we had a working warp drive sooner than 50-100 years from now, and happy if we got it that soon.

[jordan179]

Now to be more optimistic.

It's very obvious that we're living in a technological Golden Age, something analogus to around 1875-1925 when a whole host of technologies were converging on major breakthroughs in energy generation and transportation (electrification, oil wells and petroleum engine, the steam turbine, the internal combustion engine, the motorcar, the airship, the propellor plane, the oil-burning and eventually steam-turbine surface ship). One of the key factors is that there are now many Powers and private launch companies involved in spacecraft design and operation. We're entering a new Space Age, and while the obvious first targets are the Moon and Mars, I think this will run strong until we have explored and begun colonizing at least the whole Inner Solar System, probably the Asteroid Belt, and possibly the moons of Jupiter and Saturn as well.

[belvarius]

Yes, a new space age indeed! I'm 35 and now with this development I think it's likely I'll live to see colonies (and not just government research facilities) established on the moon and quite possibly Mars. This also gives a huge boost to the possibility of orbital space colonies. We'll quite likely see those future interplanetary spacecraft being constructed in space docks before I die so long as it's old age that gets me.

[gothelittle]

I think that for that to happen, we'll need the same thing we had in 1875-1925... a government more willing to lower taxes and regulations and less apt to subsidize The Old Ways and the specific kinds of directions that it hopes progress will go.