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It's just that PROCESSING it takes energy. Which is exactly why we need fusion power and not the hydro, wind and solar power the shortsighted environmentalists

It's just that PROCESSING it takes energy. Which is exactly why we need fusion power and not the hydro, wind and solar power the shortsighted environmentalists keep pushing. Those will never produce the vast additional amounts of energy needed to make the next step in our general wellbeing. With cheap limitless energy, you can produce all the water you want, bind all the CO2 you want, produce all the O3 you want, recycle everything you want and even use fission to produce whatever materials you want.

olefoo 17y ago
Solar power is fusion power. And if you're dealing with an asteroid you can capture it and use it with no transmission loss.
- jff 17y ago
  Solar power is you sitting 200 feet away from a bonfire. Fusion reactor power is placing a space heater directly in front of you. If you were cold, which would you prefer?
  - bjelkeman-again 17y ago
    Well, if the space heater is ready "in fifty years or so" and the bonfire is right here, right now, then I think I'll take the bonfire. ;)
  - olefoo 17y ago
    A mirror is orders of magnitude cheaper than any fusion containment system you care to name, also orders of magnitude less mass. Seriously, do the math, for the applications we're talking about (asteroid mining), given that the solar constant at earths orbit is roughly 1400 Watts/m^2 a relatively modest set of mirrors could be used to heat metal up to working temperature.
lutorm 17y ago
And what makes you think fusion will actually turn out to be that cheap? People said the same thing about fission, but it's turned out to be quite expensive, and the technology is likely to be very complex. If you calculate how large area of photovoltaics you can build for the price of developing and building a fusion reactor (not that anyone has any idea what this cost will be), I suspect you'd get a lot of it.
- Confusion 17y ago
  And what makes you think fusion will actually turn out to be that cheap? Because fusion scales well. With time, everything limited by technology becomes cheap as technology advances. There are no fundamental problems or limits in fusion, just practical problems. Fusion has never received the amount of funding it should have received. How long did it take ITER to get the measly 10 billion dollars required? As for fission: the all important difference is that the fuel for fusion is much easier to get, is unlimited and the garbage that gets left behind isn't nearly as much of a problem. Moreover, there is no risk of blowing up half the nearby city and irradiating the area for the next 100K years. Fusion and fission are incomparable as for their ability to provide energy.

olefoo 17y ago

Solar power is fusion power. And if you're dealing with an asteroid you can capture it and use it with no transmission loss.

jff 17y ago
Solar power is you sitting 200 feet away from a bonfire. Fusion reactor power is placing a space heater directly in front of you. If you were cold, which would you prefer?
- bjelkeman-again 17y ago
  Well, if the space heater is ready "in fifty years or so" and the bonfire is right here, right now, then I think I'll take the bonfire. ;)
- olefoo 17y ago
  A mirror is orders of magnitude cheaper than any fusion containment system you care to name, also orders of magnitude less mass. Seriously, do the math, for the applications we're talking about (asteroid mining), given that the solar constant at earths orbit is roughly 1400 Watts/m^2 a relatively modest set of mirrors could be used to heat metal up to working temperature.

lutorm 17y ago

And what makes you think fusion will actually turn out to be that cheap? People said the same thing about fission, but it's turned out to be quite expensive, and the technology is likely to be very complex. If you calculate how large area of photovoltaics you can build for the price of developing and building a fusion reactor (not that anyone has any idea what this cost will be), I suspect you'd get a lot of it.

Confusion 17y ago
And what makes you think fusion will actually turn out to be that cheap? Because fusion scales well. With time, everything limited by technology becomes cheap as technology advances. There are no fundamental problems or limits in fusion, just practical problems. Fusion has never received the amount of funding it should have received. How long did it take ITER to get the measly 10 billion dollars required? As for fission: the all important difference is that the fuel for fusion is much easier to get, is unlimited and the garbage that gets left behind isn't nearly as much of a problem. Moreover, there is no risk of blowing up half the nearby city and irradiating the area for the next 100K years. Fusion and fission are incomparable as for their ability to provide energy.