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It's interesting that you can justify this investment in at least four separate ways, independently: 1) Even if there is a low chance of success, it would be w

• ChuckMcM 12y ago
  The risk of #3 is that they don't create fusion but they do develop a machine that can emit streams of hot plasma which is then turned into the Navy's weapon of choice for close weapons support on carrier battle groups. That said, I am looking forward to at least one of the fusion efforts bearing fruit. I'm something of an optimist here but I expect a durable solution to the 'energy problem' to emerge from our developing understanding of both quantum mechanics and particle physics. I am also cognizant of the fact that it also raises the bar on both good and bad things that humans can do. The tricky parts are in the transitions, pre and post event.
  • TillE 12y ago
    We've already weaponized nuclear fusion into the most destructive bomb ever created. It probably couldn't get a whole lot worse than that. I think there are other paths to sustainable energy, but certainly viable fusion power is the holy grail.
    • malandrew 12y ago
      I don't understand why this was downvoted. I'm not going to discount the possibility to invent something worse then our most powerful fusion bomb, but if we talk probability here, developing processes that allow greater control is likely to result in a worst case scenario where we have a weapon that is at most as powerful as what we already have, but more focused. IMHO focused fusion destruction is likely to be far more humane than the indiscriminate destruction caused by the weapons currently in our arsenal. i.e. a highly focused weapon is likely to to result in instant death for the victims instead of minutes to months to years of suffering for victims depending on their exposure levels.
      • mkaziz 12y ago
        This is true, but a focused bomb is also one more likely to be used because you're not laying the countryside to waste using it.
      • soperj 12y ago
        I'll never understand being able to kill someone in a humane way(through acts of war). You're killing someone.
        • ghshephard 12y ago
          It's like humane slaughter of animals for food - there are ways that don't cause unnecessary pain, others that do.
          • soperj 12y ago
            Sounds like a misuse of the word to be honest.
        • BugBrother 12y ago
          How about if we put it like this? When a democracy has a war with a dictatorship it is similar to when the police defends civilians from violence. (So this don't get into a shouting match: Check "democratic peace theory". I am aware of that the police can misuse their position. A democracy often also do cynical realpolitik when it isn't its voters that gets harmed.) Edit: You might want to do the distinction of a junta that do a general draft, so there are soldiers for the dictator which didn't volunteer. It isn't an easy solution, but citizens in a country can theoretically overthrow their dictator. Hopefully with more help than the Syrians got from Obama. Edit 2: I assume that you don't think it is immoral to sell weapons to police. If you are that pacifist, then I think you should move to some place without police to protect you... I hear they have good weather in inner Somalia and southern Yemen. Both are traditional clan societies without police. Edit 3: Ah, you have a 60s style of police racial violence discussion in the USA right now. I get the down votes.
  • sillysaurus3 12y ago
    The risk of #3 is that they don't create fusion but they do develop a machine that can emit streams of hot plasma which is then turned into the Navy's weapon of choice for close weapons support on carrier battle groups. Why is that a risk? I'd like to live in a country with that technology, because otherwise other countries will have it and we won't.
    • Arnor 12y ago
      It's a risk to the investment firms because it would deplete an upside they get from this investment: the halo effect.
      • cpwright 12y ago
        But it would create a financial upside. They are a fund after all, and you'll find plenty of institutions investing in LMT, NOC, and friends. You might lose some of the halo effect for one audience, but gain it from another. Not everyone things defense (or if you prefer weapons, or arms dealing) is a bad sector to be in.
      • deleted 12y ago
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      • rdl 12y ago
        Depending on the military application, it might still have a halo effect. Great skill in manipulating magnetic fields would probably be useful for: MRI. Detecting landmines and UXO in a field from a UAV or otherwise safe distance. Detecting submarines, including those by terrorists or rogue states transporting NBC weapons. While those are military applications, they're fairly unalloyedly positive. Even the hypothetical plasma rifle isn't necessarily a bad thing; if a plasma rifle allows rich countries like US, Japan, etc. to overmatch poor countries and thus prevent war, that's kind of a plus.
  • Aerospark 12y ago
    It would be pretty difficult to weaponize a closed system design without significant R&D. The only risk I see would be if some small component of their design was transferred to an existing military weapon to make it better.
  • philwelch 12y ago
    > The risk of #3 is that they don't create fusion but they do develop a machine that can emit streams of hot plasma which is then turned into the Navy's weapon of choice for close weapons support on carrier battle groups. The possibility of pivoting your business model to "building plasma cannons for the Navy" is less of a risk and more of an awesome opportunity. I mean, defense contracting is a bit of a drag and there's tons of red tape, but if there's anything as cool as building fusion reactors small enough to replace diesel generators, it's building plasma cannons for the Navy.
    • rsync 12y ago
      "I mean, defense contracting is a bit of a drag and there's tons of red tape" Not to mention the tremendous moral hazard. I am unclear as to how anyone can function as a reasonable moral actor when they profit from war. Calling it "defense" does not solve that problem.
      • kghose 12y ago
        Plasma cannons don't kill people, people kill people, and we've already invented those.
        • deleted 12y ago
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        • lotsofmangos 12y ago
          Changes in topology kill people.
      • Dylan16807 12y ago
        Generally I would expect direct fire weapons to have much less collateral damage than bombs. Building a better bullet can save lives.
        • ctdonath 12y ago
          And of late someone has: guided .50BMG bullets which can adjust their flightpath to assuredly hit a target (which, one can presume, is being shot to prevent others from being killed). EXACTO .50-caliber demonstration: http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/07/10a.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/07/10a.aspx
  • jccooper 12y ago
    No doubt they could come up with something dangerous, but I wouldn't worry about that particular mode. Plasma doesn't travel far. A nice portable high intensity directed neutron radiation source might be pretty nasty, though.
    • sounds 12y ago
      Sadly enough, those already exist: "Fusors have also been developed commercially, as sources for neutrons by DaimlerChrysler Aerospace" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor But you're right, plasma is not the deadly weapon. Neutrons are.
    • ufmace 12y ago
      There are already commercial oilfield tools that use neutron generators with relatively low power input requirements. I'm not seeing how to make a useful weapon out of something like that, though. What can it do that isn't already done better by normal guns and bombs? I guess you could use it to attack people inside a building without directly destroying the building, but I would figure that if you got a high enough neutron flux to reliably kill everyone inside the building, you'd also get enough activation radiation to render the building uninhabitable for at least weeks. You might well need fancy decontamination, and possibly to demolish the building and haul away parts of it. Seems easier to just use a bomb.
  • cpihl 12y ago
    We'd certainly be concerned about those kinds of applications. Fortunately we don't use beams in this approach. The plasma used in the Fusion Engine is akin to a balloon or pillow, granted - a really hot pillow, but luckily a terrible projectile.
    • rdl 12y ago
      Do you have an opinion about Bussard/Polywell?
  • aetherson 12y ago
    Regardless of everyone's feelings on whether weapons research is or isn't a good idea, this strikes me as a grossly unlikely application. The problem with direct-fire weapons is not something like "bullets don't do enough damage." It's aiming and range and so forth. A plasma weapon seems unlikely to have good range or good aiming, and if it does not come with a fusion reactor alongside it, it's also kind of hard to see how you'd power the damn thing. I'm sure someone can imagine some upside to such a weapon, but in practice, the odds that that particular result would come instead of a million other variations that would be inferior to just shooting bullets at things seems deeply unlikely. And as everyone has already said, we already have fusion bombs. And for that matter small tactical nuclear weapons for more battlefieldy uses.
    • sillysaurus3 12y ago
      Rather than a literal plasma gun, I think they were just saying the risk is that the team will pivot into weapons research. But no one has thus far explained why weapons research would be anything but a positive thing. Yes, using weapons is unfortunate. The decision to ever use a weapon should be made with the utmost discretion. But when it comes time to use a weapon, it seems hard to argue against having the most effective weapons that also have little collateral damage. Maybe people are worried that a new, extremely effective weapon will be discovered which happens to have high collateral damage. That's a concern, but it's never been possible to delay the advancement of technology. If something is possible to discover, then it seems like some diligent researcher will eventually discover it. But the concern itself seems misplaced: most new weapons have less collateral damage, not more.
      • afarrell 12y ago
        I think people are worried about a low-collateral-damage weapon which means political leaders can be more likely to deploy it. Observe the objections to the use of precision-guided munitions fired from long-hovering remote-controlled drones.
      • aetherson 12y ago
        And what I'm saying is that regardless of the ethics of it, why should we regard it as in any way plausible that this company would pivot into weapons research? By a huge margin, the most plausible military application of anything this company develops is "a fusion reactor on an aircraft carrier." And I say that as someone who regards it as deeply unlikely that this company will create any major step towards a fusion reactor.
  • JVIDEL 12y ago
    The biggest fear of carrier groups are mach 7 ramjet antiship missiles launched from hundreds if not thousands of miles away, way too fast to destroy with anything even laser (you barely see them coming at you) and on top of that relatively cheap at maybe half a million a piece compared to the billions a carrier costs, meaning the enemy could launch tens of them at each ship.
• wamatt 12y ago
  It's insanely cool that YC is now part of this. Also love that pg credits Sam for making it happen. On a somewhat related note. Despite the setbacks and the bad rep nuclear gets, fusion really could be a better future. The energy density is in a class of its own, compared to that of renewables. Prof David MacKay demonstrates this quite effectively here[1]. This of course is not to take anything away from renewables or imply we shouldn't pursue funding both. One group of companies I find particularly interesting, are those attempting aneutronic fusion.[2] Like many good ideas, that became bad ideas (in the 60's), it appears to now be back in fashion.[3] Theoretical advancements have pushed the achievable temperature ceiling northwards, allowing a move towards commercialization. Whether this particular line of fusion innovation will ultimately pan out, is perhaps anyone's guess. Personally however, I suspect there is a chance it can work. The benefits would be almost too good to pass up. Small, modular, cheap and safe (with almost no radioactive waste) Some examples in the industry: Raman-budget: Focus Fusion [4] Secretive and heavily funded: Tri Alpha Energy [5] [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion [3] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-boron-nuclear-fusion-returns-spotlight https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-boron-nuclear-fus... [4] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-empowertheworld--3 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-empowerthewo... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri_Alpha_Energy,_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri_Alpha_Energy,_Inc.
  • phaemon 12y ago
    Prof Mackay's talk pretty much says that in order to use renewable energy the whole UK would have to be covered in electricity generating equipment. However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which would mean that currently one seventh of the landmass of the UK was covered in wind turbines etc. Which it isn't. You'd be able to tell. So, one of us has made a mistake with our calculations somewhere.
    • mschuster91 12y ago
      > However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which would mean that currently one seventh of the landmass of the UK was covered in wind turbines etc. Which it isn't. Most likely brought in from other countries, and the wind parks in the North Sea. Many local utilities in Germany hold stakes e.g. in a Norwegian (iirc) dam project, so they recieve a given amount of electricity output. This increases Germany's renewable-source amount even if the energy itself isn't produced in Germany.
• Aerospark 12y ago
  Well if they really "Developed complete self-supplied He3 fuel cycle" like it says on their website, that is number 3) right there.
• nyan_sandwich 12y ago
  I would also add that YC investment boosts nuclear stuff as a legitimate thing. Could lead to copycat investment (which we dearly need in the nuclear field).