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Anyone have more insights into how this works? The figure, deuterium fuel is confusing as deuterium is an isotope and am unsure what they mean 'extraction' (how?).
$1.5 million is not much runway.
is this the equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks? why do vcs with a specialty in software suddenly stray into completely unknown territory? nothing left to fund in software? rarely does this end well.
another perpetual motion machine?
In general the goal is for an exothermic reaction. It should be possible. Perpetual Motion Machine would be one that could sustain itself without fuel. This one can't. It has to use heavy water and helium to form the plasma. To be an actual perpetual motion machine, the system would have to create enough energy to be converted into hydrogen (E=MC^2 and all), then feed itself with the new fuel. Even at 8 times the energy output, they can't get enough energy to create parts of the fuel.
Three... years? Decades? Days? Millennia?
another perpetual motion machine?
They might be a little foolish expecting (and suggesting they can deliver) net positive fusion reactors in three years, but what they're doing is solid physics. It's a high risk, high reward investment and I'm glad it's happening even if I don't think it's likely to work because someone _soon_ is going to be successful in creating a commercially viable fusion reactor, and more separate groups trying makes the chances of success higher.
http://www.nature.com/news/plasma-physics-the-fusion-upstart...
It's certainly interesting, and I wish these companies all the best. The consternation I see occasionally over a company like this getting a (relatively) small amount of funding confuses me. There are so many software startups that receive equivalent or greater funding that eventually die or pivot into something else. Here, you have physical cutting edge engineering with potential implications that blow something like Slack, or Square, or even Uber away. Personally, I love seeing companies in the physical space get in on today's Silicon Valley high.
Semi-related, but I've been to NIF (National Ignition Facility), since I spent a summer at LLNL, and the inside of that facility is like the dream vision of every little kid that was into science and science fiction. Unfortunately (as my physicist significant other who was not working there found out) the public tours are far more restricted and you don't get to see the cool stuff.
is this the equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks? why do vcs with a specialty in software suddenly stray into completely unknown territory? nothing left to fund in software? rarely does this end well.