# How realistic is this practical fusion timeline **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 2, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041 "2015-03-02T20:21:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041/21 "2015-03-02T22:59:05Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > That’s all fine, but this has been lather-rinse-repeat for nearly 60 years with very little fundamental movement forward. Any article that’s jumping ahead to producible units and so forth is well into moonbeam land. > > Build a sustainable fusion reactor of any kind, then build one that can generate power sustainably using any model and combination of technologies, and then start musing about optimizing it for a small, manufacturable package. Otherwise it’s like those fan efforts to design the last detail of a real starship… except, you know, for that engine thingy. > > I believe fusion power is humanity’s only good option for long-term survival. But I’ve watched the disparity between the gosh-wow stuff and reality for most of my life… and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s some loopy individual inventor or an entity like LM doing the gosh-wowing. > > Make it work, _first_, fellas. I don’t disagree. I posted what I posted to point out that the reality of what they’re saying is not what the Forbes article seems to imply. It’s projection based on speculation. It’s the same old “we’re almost there. Give us a few more years”. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041/22 "2015-03-02T23:10:22Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I don’t disagree. I posted what I posted to point out that the reality of what they’re saying is not what the Forbes article seems to imply. It’s projection based on speculation. It’s the same old “we’re almost there. Give us a few more years”. I don’t think there is anything against being highly skeptical of this, but it’s almost infinitely more likely we will develop fusion power than anti-gravity or time travel in the near future. And even the Forbes article wasn’t being as ridiculous as Amateur Barbarian’s strawman, and that was a fluff article. Digging into the other article I linked too, LM seems to be saying that this is something they have been working on for decades, that they THINK their concept will make prototyping easier and quicker, and that they HOPE they can have something working in 5 years or so. Whether they can or not remains to be seen, but I see no reason to dismiss it all as pure science fiction. We know that fusion is possible…well, at least anyone who has ever gotten a sun burn knows this at an empirical level anyway. 😛 I’ll say one thing though…if LM doesn’t produce something in the time frame they have set forth (even with the hedging and caveats), then someone there is going to lose their job, as this will be a hit to their public relations and perhaps impact their business as well. Someone will have egg on their face anyway for not hedging more. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041/23 "2015-03-02T23:21:21Z")
I’m just pointing out, as you are, that the Forbes article seems to be implying more than what Lockheed Martin is claiming. Thinking about it, I suppose it _could_ be that confined, controlled fusion that has a net energy gain is just as impossible as time travel or anti-gravity. Sure, fusion exists, but stars and H-bombs are different things from controlled reactors. Hopefully it’s possible. I think it probably is possible. But the existence of stars and H-bombs doesn’t prove it. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041/24 "2015-03-02T23:32:49Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I’m just pointing out, as you are, that the Forbes article seems to be implying more than what Lockheed Martin is claiming. > > Thinking about it, I suppose it _could_ be that confined, controlled fusion that has a net energy gain is just as impossible as time travel or anti-gravity. Sure, fusion exists, but stars and H-bombs are different things from controlled reactors. > > Hopefully it’s possible. I think it probably is possible. But the existence of stars and H-bombs doesn’t prove it. No, but we at least have a theoretical basis for fusion. Anti-gravity, as far as I know, we gots nuffin at all. We can’t even detect gravity waves/particles, which would be a first step to even modeling how we COULD create an anti-gravity device so we are a bit further from that than from fusion. A sun proves that it’s possible, even if building one might not be practical (in the end, if you could, you could always simply pull in enough hydrogen and some helium and other trace elements and build a small version of the sun…not practical but possible ;)). As far as I know, we don’t know if gravity is even a paired force (i.e. if there are gravity particles and thus anti-gravity particles), so we don’t even have as crude a model as the sun to go on for a theoretical basis. At any rate, I don’t think that anything more could be said about the OP right now. LM isn’t releasing more (this is actually not a new story) and so we don’t really know if they will fall on their face or be the hero. My big annoyance is simply dismissing something like this out of hand. Just because we have been working on this for decades doesn’t necessarily mean it will never happen. People worked on manned flight and then powered flight for more than a few decades before it happened. People thought about going to the moon before it happened as well. When I see this sort of knee jerk reaction I think along the lines of ‘That steam engine thing is never going to work, Fulton, and it’s folly to even pursue such a silly ideal’. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041/25 "2015-03-02T23:48:41Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Well it looks like we’re making progress on the fusion front. For the last 50 years, fusion was 15 years away, now we’ve reached the point where fusion is 2 years away, although it will probably stay there for the next 20 years. We’ll have fusion right after Iran gets the bomb. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2015, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041/26 "2015-03-03T00:12:59Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > . . . Thinking about it, I suppose it _could_ be that confined, controlled fusion that has a net energy gain is just as impossible as time travel or anti-gravity. . . . I don’t think so, for two reasons. 1. Experiments with lasers have already proven the concept possible, at least in abstract physics. There aren’t any real scientific issues left to overcome, only engineering ones. 2. Time travel, at least, leads to paradoxes and causality violation; nothing in fusion violates any known principles. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-realistic-is-this-practical-fusion-timeline/714041.md?page=1)