91–100 of 162 posts
It's crazy that the US blew over 4 Trillion and countless lives for oil in Iraq. Yet, we spend practically nothing on technology that could offer clean, safe, energy independence. I'm happy to see any money going into fusion research, but it does seem that Focus Fusion has a much better chance of delivering in the near term. If you're unfamiliar with the technology, check out the Google tech talk below. http://www.yo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fascinating seeing it progress (albeit from afar), true cathedral scale engineering.
I can't seem to find any current pictures using Google. Can someone provide a link or is it prohibited to take pictures of the construction site.
As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."…
I see what you're getting at, but I would argue that all attempts of "generating" energy are actually "transporting" energy from one storage to another. Take oil, for example; it is just a method of storing energy. In the same way, the hydrogen atom is the stored energy. Any of the methods you mentioned - sunlight, wind, streams, temperature gradients, etc. - are all examples of that same stored energy. The game is i…
Hate to be that guy, but how can a star in a bottle cost only ~105% of WhatsApp. One of them is incorrectly valued.
It's crazy that the US blew over 4 Trillion and countless lives for oil in Iraq. Yet, we spend practically nothing on technology that could offer clean, safe, energy independence. I'm happy to see any money going into fusion research, but it does seem that Focus Fusion has a much better chance of delivering in the near term. If you're unfamiliar with the technology, check out the Google tech talk below. http://www.yo…
We didn't go to Iraq for oil, we went there so that more of our own money could be funneled from government coffers into politicians' bank accounts by way of defense contracts.
We're terrified of the fact that we live in an arational, incomprehensible world. It's a comforting fiction that some large conspiracy controls everything for the benefit of itself at the expense of everyone else, because at least that admits the possibility of control. And if societies can be controlled, at least in principle they can be fixed.
Much scarier is the idea that power stumbles blindly around like a drunken three legged elephant, arbitrarily murdering half a million people for no coherent reason beyond, well, why not?
As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."…
Also, what happens if the mechanisms that contain the "Star in a Bottle" fail? Will the French Alps suddenly and catastrophically acquire a new valley? This is a reasonable concern, but your intuitions on the physical processes involved are off by a couple orders of magnitude. From a previous comment on another fusion story, two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839722 Fusion reactors are fundamentally…
My new favorite metaphor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see what you're getting at, but I would argue that all attempts of "generating" energy are actually "transporting" energy from one storage to another. Take oil, for example; it is just a method of storing energy. In the same way, the hydrogen atom is the stored energy. Any of the methods you mentioned - sunlight, wind, streams, temperature gradients, etc. - are all examples of that same stored energy. The game is i…
I would argue that there is a large difference between transporting and transforming. It is easy to transport/store hydrogen in a pressurized cistern. It is also fairly easy to transform hydrogen just by burning it. Of course burning fossil fuels and releasing tons of CO2 is how we got into whole global warming business anyways, so we want a more efficient transformation technology. But wait, it get's more complicate…
Decades from now? Well I hope they build the prototype in space then, and far far away. I don't want that heat escaping...
Yes, a vacuum may stop convection but heat can escape through radiation. What then? That's why I would want this thing so far away that the angular projection of the Earth onto it is small.
Hate to be that guy, but how can a star in a bottle cost only ~105% of WhatsApp. One of them is incorrectly valued.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, what happens if the mechanisms that contain the "Star in a Bottle" fail? Will the French Alps suddenly and catastrophically acquire a new valley? This is a reasonable concern, but your intuitions on the physical processes involved are off by a couple orders of magnitude. From a previous comment on another fusion story, two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839722 Fusion reactors are fundamentally…
"a Yugo rear-ending a garbage truck in Brooklyn doesn't instantly consume all of New York City in a gasoline fireball." My new favorite metaphor.
"Putting a speed limiter on a Zamboni just in case the accelerator gets stuck"
