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Da Vinci and others worked on flying machines, I expect designs go back thousands of years. Yet the result is now thousands of designs and working iterations.
by b112 1y ago
Da Vinci and others worked on flying machines, I expect designs go back thousands of years. Yet the result is now thousands of designs and working iterations.
I think we're also getting better and faster at iteration and design. CAD, modelling, even wind tunnels from 50 years ago made a massive difference over jumping off a cliff with a glider for tests.
I guess my point is, I don't see 50 years as validation of it being hard. And some of those designs were likely dismissed due to tech limits at the time.
- sigmoid10 1y agoThe point is more that 50 years ago, people thought we had sufficient understanding of fusion to build something like this. And thanks to advancements in inertial confinement research at the height of the thermonuclear arms race, they actually had a pretty good reason to believe so back then. There is very little reason to believe these new companies today when they say so, because fusion research is in a deep hole and running on a fraction of the funding it did during the cold war.