I am used to hearing this from software engineers who are secure in the knowledge that when they want to try out a concept, hardware time to do so will be cheap and readily available. At some point, you are going to have to take all of your shiny materials science and turbulence simulations, and actually build a piece of apparatus to test it out on the scale that your chosen application (in this case, power generation) will require. The universe is under no obligation to make sure that it will cost less than billions to do so; hence ITER.
Having said that, there's been a lot of extremely promising recent progress in high field superconductors and fusion designs based on them (MIT ARC, Tokamak Energy, etc) that could shrink the necessary scale for a working reactor, so perhaps it will turn out we're lucky with the physics on this one after all.
You might be right on this one. I'm a bit curious if any other HN-reader is aware of the private fusion project (aka the SAFIRE project) which is now run by the company Aureon Energy (https://aureon.ca/). I do highly recommend watching the video (also available on the legacy page https://safireproject.com/) for the video recording of the experiments. It's not yet quite mainstream physics but we have to remember that once upon the time the mainstream physics people didn't think that heavier-than-air flying machines are possible while nowadays they have wasted countless billions on their fusion experiments and achieved close to nothing.
> we have to remember that once upon the time the mainstream physics people didn't think that heavier-than-air flying machines are possible while nowadays they have wasted countless billions on their fusion experiments and achieved close to nothing
Challenging authority gets you cool-guy points, but does nothing for actual understanding. “The experts don’t know what they’re talking about and are blinded by tribalism” is rhetoric of the 20th century. Physics has moved on.
> Kind of ironic to post this on the web, given it's history.
it's funny because you think it happened because tim berners lee and CERN. I think, it happened because arpanet and universities connecting with each other.
Internet wasn't an organised effort. it was a bottoms up manifestation. Do i need to remind you what CERN was actually supposed to do?
WorkLobster|5 years ago
Having said that, there's been a lot of extremely promising recent progress in high field superconductors and fusion designs based on them (MIT ARC, Tokamak Energy, etc) that could shrink the necessary scale for a working reactor, so perhaps it will turn out we're lucky with the physics on this one after all.
forgot_user1234|5 years ago
luovatek|5 years ago
willis936|5 years ago
Challenging authority gets you cool-guy points, but does nothing for actual understanding. “The experts don’t know what they’re talking about and are blinded by tribalism” is rhetoric of the 20th century. Physics has moved on.
usrusr|5 years ago
forgot_user1234|5 years ago
it's funny because you think it happened because tim berners lee and CERN. I think, it happened because arpanet and universities connecting with each other.
Internet wasn't an organised effort. it was a bottoms up manifestation. Do i need to remind you what CERN was actually supposed to do?