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Sounds like Altman used his personal relationship with Microsoft CEO to do this meaningless PR stunt, so he can more easily pursaude stupid money to actually in
by mola 3y ago
Sounds like Altman used his personal relationship with Microsoft CEO to do this meaningless PR stunt, so he can more easily pursaude stupid money to actually invest in this.
- M2Ys4U 3y agoWelcome to venture capitalism.
- thepasswordis 3y agoWhat the hell is this cynicism? Seems completely inappropriate. Helion isn’t vaporware.
- next_xibalba 3y agoWhile you’re probably right about GP’s cynical tone, this announcement does seem fairly meaningless. Does Helion have a working prototype that can be reasonably moved into production? Or is that still years away?
- aetherson 3y agoHelion in 2014: We're about 3 years away from break-even energy. https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-VCDB-15246 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-VCDB-15246
- DennisP 3y agoThey didn't get the funding they needed until 2021. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/helion-series-e/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/helion-series-e/
- DennisP 3y agoTheir sixth reactor achieved 100M degree temps, ran for 16 months under vacuum, did thousands of fusion shots, and demonstrated D-He3 fusion. Their seventh will start up in 2024, and is supposed to demonstrate net electricity from D-He3. Their eighth is supposed to be the commercial reactor. If they don't achieve that, they will have to pay penalties to Microsoft.
- chasil 3y agoDivorced from both cynicism and hype, how does this compare to the recent advance in hohlraum laser fusion? https://www.llnl.gov/news/lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory-achieves-fusion-ignition https://www.llnl.gov/news/lawrence-livermore-national-labora...
- gpm 3y agoIt's a completely different approach to fusion. Lasers are really inefficient (poor at transforming electrical energy into light energy). They got more energy out than they put into the pellet, but nowhere near as much energy as they put into the lasers. Which means that turning that experiment into commercial fusion is... "not straightforward".
- DennisP 3y agoNIF's lasers are only 1% efficient but they date back to the 1990s. Equivalent modern lasers are over 20% efficient. If they had modern lasers they'd have produced fusion power of about 20% of the input power. They seem to scale well, too. In their big shot they increased the laser power by 8% and output went up 230%. That said, compared to Helion it'd still be a lot harder to make a practical reactor with NIF's approach.
- pfdietz 3y agoIt's much more promising than the laser approach, IMO.
- zardo 3y ago> Their sixth reactor achieved 100M degree temps, ran for 16 months under vacuum, did thousands of fusion shots, and demonstrated D-He3 fusion. I don't have anything near the expertise to evaluate Helions approach, but I know enough about fusion to say that just because you have a design that can achieve fusion conditions does not mean the approach could even theoretically lead to a power plant. e.g. electrostatic fusors
- 3y ago
- julienchastang 3y agoAlso from the WSJ this AM: https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-bets-that-fusion-power-is-closer-than-many-think-cb1b09dc https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-bets-that-fusion-powe...
- Algurnon 3y agoIn a world drowning in self-interested promotional 'puffing," calling this cynicism is in itself cynical. I prefer to see what your referring to as HN's community hype-filter.
- dj_gitmo 3y agoEven if it doesn't work, it's more noble to work on this than say, Juicero.
- switchbak 3y agoA century from now, Juicero will be honored for the wonderful stupidity that it was. That's an achievement in itself.
- izend 3y agoWhat about this detailed criticism of Helion's entire reactor and long term plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw
- schainks 3y agoAIUI Helion’s bottleneck is the number of capacitors needed to run a sustained reaction at a given scale. The numbers don’t seem out of this world to me, and it’s probably smarter money than what we are throwing at ITER given time to market.
- ramraj07 3y agoI mean I won’t put MY money in to Helion. From whatever I’ve read it’s not that simple for Helion to get their reactor to work and even if they did it likely won’t produce meaningful net power. But let’s see.
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoOf course you shouldn't unless you have billions lying dedicated for leaving your legacy. It is a semi moonshot semi charity project, I don't think even investors would disagree with this. Similar to what OpenAI was like 4 years ago when it raised $1B as a non profit.
- tim333 3y agoWell as a small investor there's no way to get in really. But if they sold shares at a modest valuation I'd give it a punt. I mean I kind of agree that the microsoft thing is probably a bit of a stunt give that I think they haven't generated any net electrical output at all yet. But I think they have a reasonable chance of getting it working at some point.
- sourcecodeplz 3y agoWasn't the bottleneck that it was difficult to get H3?
- anonuser123456 3y agoIt’s not that difficult. You can mine it from the surface of the moon, or produce it via Tritium decay.
- random_cynic 3y agoSounds like you've no clue what you're talking about.
- mjfl 3y agowhat you are saying is, he found money for a startup he invested in, and is good at his job.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoMaybe people are getting desperate enough for meaningful progress on environmental stuff they've decided to throw money at the problem on the theory that if we don't find real solutions soon, we're all dead anyway. (A la the scene in The Titanic: "You're money won't do me any good at the bottom of the ocean.")