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Ha. Wonder when the first company that was targeting fusion was started. It seems there weren't any until the 2000s sometime. Now there are lots. People with
by sien 9y ago
Ha.
Wonder when the first company that was targeting fusion was started.
It seems there weren't any until the 2000s sometime. Now there are lots. People with the money to sink 10s of millions into the idea think that it's close.
Danny Hillis will bet you that someone will do this by 2020:
http://longbets.org/605/ http://longbets.org/605/
They have lots of skin in the game.
- scottlocklin 9y agoI think this says more about the credulity of VCs and their general failure at anything approaching heavy metal technologies than anything else. Transatomic, a startup which is vastly less ambitious than any fusion startup (molten salt reactors are old tech) is a great example. Big oops on this one. Tri-Alpha was, as far as I can tell, the most legitimate of the fusion companies. My pal Dave just retired from it; he worked on their data efforts. FWIIW my original comment was quoting him.
- FiatLuxDave 9y agoHi. Fusion company founder from 1995 here (Fiat Lux Research, funded by DFJ). We were probably the first in the internet age, but didn't have a website (stealth mode engaged!). We definitely weren't the first. Companies which were earlier than us that I am aware of include Bogdan Maglich's Migma company (1974), Paul Koloc's Prometheus 2 (1976) and Bussard's EMC2 (1985). You could also include companies with divisions targeting fusion like General Atomics (1974) and ITT (1964).
- sien 9y agoWow. Thanks heaps for that. I had no idea. What do you think of the new wave of fusion companies? Do you think they will get somewhere? There is a subreddit for fusion. reddit/r/fusion. Would you be interested in answering questions, doing a sort of AMA there?