To create a spacefaring civilization

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Wow, tag teaming, so reminiscent of the earlier usage of the NathanA and other accounts. Well, at least for now ye aren't using pictures of me and my wife.

At present there are no practical methods of generating heat (which can be turned into electricity) with controlled fusion reactions. All the fusion reactions produced to this very day consume more power than they produce. Controlled Nuclear Fusion is the power source of the future. It will be 30 years in the future a hundred years from now.

ruveyn

A Pacer power plant uses the energy obtained from underground hydrogen bomb explosions to heat water and to run turbines. Controlled nuclear fusion is not required and is only a political concession to make nuclear fusion power more acceptable than the Doctor Strangelove approach.

That is NOT controlled nuclear fusion. When you have to blow up an H-bomb to get heat, you are using a wild and wooly process. The Nuclear Fusion that is sought after will take place in some kind of reasonable size containment.

ruveyn

Indeed, pure fusion power, like D-T or D-D fusion power, is what I mean; the H-bombs of today still need a fission bomb catalyst to work.

That being said, I do believe that fusion power is centuries away but decades: With such progress being made with the soon to be completed ITER, I think fusion power is, if we put a good amount of effort into it and do not go for silly solutions like "clean" coal or natural gas to our energy crisis, at most 15 years away.

Believed when seen. Controlled nuclear fusion has been 20 years in the future since 1960. I have no doubt it will be 20 years in the future in 2060.

ruveyn

I think uncontrolled fusion power would be safer than controlled fission power. Once a hydrogen bomb blows up that's it and it quickly dies down. Nuclear fission plants melt down and the fire smolders for years.

I still think the far greater efficiency of controlled fission, or fusion in the future, far outweighs the potential disadvantages of either. Besides, it is effectively impossible to have a meltdown in a fusion powerplant while fission powerplants still are very safe; it is just that the public thinks of Chernobyl, Fukushima or 3 Mile Island, which are the great exceptions, instead of the far greater effort and time that would need to be spent to produce an amount of wind, wave or solar power significant enough to work outside some small, niche areas, the limited availability of hydropower and tidal power or the constant pollution produced, even when used properly, by all fossil fuel powerplants. Nuclear, fusion or, until fusion comes, fission, is the way to go in my opinion and the only realistic way to go beyond the Inner Solar System.

You need to have an efficient energy source for any space civilization. Until Fusion reactors become a reality this will not happen.

IF Fusion was available today then a space faring civilization would be relatively easy to build and maintain by mining Jupiter for the He3 via 'scoops' and shipping them to the inner planets via a sustained ferry system. The ferry system is simple: once the very first shipment leaves the He3 mining stations around Jupiter the container would take a few years to reach Earth...and the station keeps sending containers on a daily/weekly/monthly basis so that once the first container arrives the supply chain is established and a steady supply secured.

With the power source secured, even with our current tech. level we can easily start building colonies on the inner solar system as well as any number of space stations and mining operations in the asteroid field.


interstellar travel would require a big leap in tech so that for now ill leave off the table

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion can harness fusion energy with today's existing technology and is practical for even interstellar expeditions. Also a nuclear pulse PACER power plant can harness fusion power with today's technology.

There is no form of controlled nuclear fusion operative today that can put out more energy than was required to rev it up. In short there are no practical fusion energy generators. There have not been any to date and it is unlikely there will be any in the next hundred years.

Nuclear Fusion is the energy source of the future and will be still be the energy source of the future in 2060.

ruveyn

Space exploration by the US will go nowhere in the foreseeable future, for all the reasons Ruveyn points out: with our current economic attitude, we'll only put money into ventures that will pay off. Doing that eliminates the possibility of any major innovation. All our little gadgets will keep getting more s**t we don't need every year, but any major leaps forward that require years or decades of investment with no payoff are not possible in the post-Reagan US.

Can't scrimp on the space program because the Sun is burning out and we need to migrate to a new planet.

Our species is not going to last for five billion years.

ruveyn

A child is terrified of the possibility of the Sun burning out even if it is billions of years into the future. Adults on the other hand don't care because they are not going to be around when the time comes.

The human species will not be around anywhere that long.

Mammalian Species do not have a long shelf life on this planet.

ruveyn