From Kitty Hawk to Mr. Fusion?
Dec. 20th, 2022 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI blogged this morning about the breakthrough milestone in nuclear fusion achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory earlier this month. As I explained it's not really a breakthrough (IMO) because what was achieved was so... preliminary. An operational, scalable solution is still countless steps away.
Some arguing to call this a breakthrough compare it to the Wright brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Indeed, the new field of aviation rapidly developed into a commercial and military success not many years after that. Just under 66 years later we landed a man on the moon! Surely it can't be that long until Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future becomes a reality....
Alas, solving for nuclear fusion is way more complex than designing aircraft.
Back to the Future was set in 1985. At the end of the film a future Doc Brown arrives from 2015 with a fusion reactor— cheekily named Mr. Fusion— powering his time machine Delorean on banana peels on stale beer. 2015 vs. 1985.... Thirty years later.
That's a curious coincidence because scientists and science writers have been saying for quite a while now, "Fusion power is 30 years away." Note, of course, that it's perpetually been 30 years away. "30 Years" is science shorthand for, "We're not saying it'll never happen, but there's no way we can draw a map right now for how to get there from here."
And this Kitty Hawk moment? Well, maybe it moves the needle down to just 29 years.
Some arguing to call this a breakthrough compare it to the Wright brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Indeed, the new field of aviation rapidly developed into a commercial and military success not many years after that. Just under 66 years later we landed a man on the moon! Surely it can't be that long until Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future becomes a reality....
Alas, solving for nuclear fusion is way more complex than designing aircraft.
Back to the Future was set in 1985. At the end of the film a future Doc Brown arrives from 2015 with a fusion reactor— cheekily named Mr. Fusion— powering his time machine Delorean on banana peels on stale beer. 2015 vs. 1985.... Thirty years later.
That's a curious coincidence because scientists and science writers have been saying for quite a while now, "Fusion power is 30 years away." Note, of course, that it's perpetually been 30 years away. "30 Years" is science shorthand for, "We're not saying it'll never happen, but there's no way we can draw a map right now for how to get there from here."
And this Kitty Hawk moment? Well, maybe it moves the needle down to just 29 years.
