Are we about to achieve Fusion Power?

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The political will isn't there in the government sector because the cold war is over. This is a private sector initiative.

I have mixed views about it. Finally we will have boot prints on the red planet but on the other hand its being reduced to a commercialised, profit over science reality TV circus.

There is also a significantly greater chance that the explorers will die en route.

I have no doubt that you can send dead bodies to Mars. The problem is sending them to Mars, having them arrive safely, and then getting them back to earth--safely.

The private initiatives might actually be scams, similar to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, though.

They aren't coming back. That is a cost cutting caveat as part of the Mars One project. They are sending a series of habitation modules in advance where the settlers will spend the rest of their lives and form a proto colony. Or at least that is the theory.

I have no doubt that this is a legitimate project. I know of people with contacts involved and they have nothing to gain from lying about it.

A lot of people seem to be practicing the fallacy that because something has taken a long time to happen, was predicted to occur much more shortly than it has, and may yet take a long time to happen, it will never.

This is a pretty significant development. The prospect of fusion as an energy source is huge, so even small advances are important. The fuel is abundant and the waste inconsequential. Best of all, fusion eliminates carbon without imposing the enormously ghastly footprint of solar and wind farms on the land, and without suffering from their uncontrollable availability. Widespread fusion to supply power would usher in an era as far beyond ours in terms of prosperity and ease, as ours is from the Dark Ages.

When you spend your resources on the best and brightest, this is what you get.

Exactly, Leonardo Da Vinci was probably scoffed at when he did the first sketch of a hang glider and of a helicopter.

Leonardo DaVinci could have started with a sketch of jet plane and would have still been marginalized by some. People are too impatient, they expect instant gratification.

Going to Mars will take tens of billions of dollars. I see no evidence that it will happen any time soon. I think it's perfectly doable given a lack of solar storms enroute and barrels of investment money but...

Even Elon Musk will likely look for NASA to drive the mission. And NASA is 20+ years away, as usual. 30+ to land.

Nobody's saying that it won't happen eventually, but it will take much longer time than expected. I doubt that efficient fusion power plants, a cure for cancer, or successful manned missions to Mars will take place during my life time; maybe it'll happen in a century... give or take a decade. I also doubt that we will ever have sentient artificial intelligences.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/82227 ... in-english

Funny how we thought this about the Industrial and Digital Revolutions, and yet we're still working harder, for less.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was successful manned missions to the moons of Jupiter within our lifetime.

Its not an issue of technology, the problem is lack of political will.

Edit: Apparently some true believers are already planning that:-

http://www.gizmag.com/objective-europa/ ... ictures#12

Not really. Do you seriously think that a peasant from the 18th century was wealthier than most people are today? Do you seriously think that a factory worker from the early 20th century was? Neither of those had access to the worlds biggest library. Neither had cameras that would allow them to shoot fairly decent quality video; they were far too poor for that. How much did they have to pay for clothing, food, energy? How much time did they have to spend on household chores?

I was born in 1994; I'm practically a digital native. But even so, I've still seen the rise of the smartphone. I spent effectively the same amount of money on my first mobile as I did my latest [secondhand] one, and the first, whilst it was a camera phone, it didn't have internet access. But the latest one (HTC Wildfire) lets me access the worlds biggest library and talk to guys on the other side of the planet, whilst standing in the middle of the street. Yet, you seem to think I'm poorer than I would have been before...

I will admit that the benefits technology haven't been distributed as equitably as they should. But that's changing, thanks to open source designs, FabLabs, hackerspaces, and lower cost manufacturing.

Magic would also solve all our problems.

Fusion just takes mixing the right amount of Gravitons, Higgs Bosons, to make it stick together.

We could just switch to using the abundant Dark Energy, or even burn Dark Matter.

These stories seem to come up everytime the political wisdom of letting corporations run wild is questioned.

My view, the cheap long term single tool we need is a space elevator, where solar cells work much better, do not use up the earths surface, and the energy can be used to move the thousands of tons of material up to where we could build something useful.

A ring around the planet, unlimited energy for magnetic launches, we can go full Space Cowboy.

Yodah says: Do not your breath hold until we controlled fusion have, else blue turn you will

controlled nuclear fusion is 30 years in the future where it has been since 1960 and will almost certainly be in 2043.

ruveyn

I do not believe a working solution will come from these big science projects it will come from somewhere unexpected. It might come in a few years, 200 years or maybe more. The Wright Brothers are an excellent example of this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMLSrqYk0UE[/youtube]