<story><title>Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details</title><url>http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jsmthrowaway</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s always a safe bet that the top Hacker News comment will always be &amp;quot;won&amp;#x27;t work, it&amp;#x27;s too hard.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s like sitting around for a year trying to sell a project at my current employer, with everybody and their lead telling you &amp;quot;that&amp;#x27;ll never work,&amp;quot; then you implement in a weekend and those same people start nitpicking what you&amp;#x27;ve come up with. (What happened to it&amp;#x27;ll never work? &amp;quot;Well, your CSS isn&amp;#x27;t great.&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;Honestly, those folks that stand back with their arms crossed watching you fail, and reminding you the whole way that you might fail, are the biggest pains in my ass in this profession. By a mile.&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can contribute your wisdom by going to Lockheed, instead of Internet commentary in which you bet against them?</text></item><item><author>nabla9</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not seeing any top  physicists working in this program (McGuire  is not one). I would be willing to bet 1000 EUR that their math and modeling does not add up, or they have skipped some details.&lt;p&gt;Problem with fusion research like this is that the closer you get self sustainment or energy generation, the harder it gets and problems pile up.   This project looks like many other similar projects that have gone bust. They start by solving the easiest problems first, get some funding and hit the wall.&lt;p&gt;The main problem with any reactor design is how to handle the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reaction (no mention in the article). They tend to damage the reactor and make it economically unfeasible. At this point being able to create fusion reaction is not the main challenge. It&amp;#x27;s the sustainment and economics of limiting the damage. If they really have solved all the problems and demonstrate economically sound fusion in 5-10 years, they will be handed Nobel price in physics for sure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s hardly ever true. In my experience, Hacker News is full of people from the software field; folks whose professions are often unconstrained by physics,[1] and who have a generally optimistic &amp;quot;this can happen&amp;quot; mentality. That&amp;#x27;s why everyone here believes we&amp;#x27;ll have fully self-driving cars in 5-6 years.&lt;p&gt;In the rest of the engineering world, the answer to any question is: it&amp;#x27;ll be harder than you think it&amp;#x27;ll be (physics will beat you over the head at every step). You can cross your arms and say &amp;quot;that won&amp;#x27;t work&amp;quot; and you&amp;#x27;ll be correct 97% of the time. Fusion is something that some of the smartest people in the world, with enormous amounts of money behind them, have been beating their heads against for the last half century or more. Somebody will figure it out, eventually, but statistically, any given project is very likely not to be the one that does, and it will almost certainly take much longer than the optimists assume it will take.&lt;p&gt;Did you know that coal plants, which still make up the majority of U.S. energy production, are only about twice as efficient today than they were a &lt;i&gt;century&lt;/i&gt; ago?&lt;p&gt;[1] Although math can be a kick in the ass too if you&amp;#x27;re working in domains where you can prove there are no polynomial-time algorithms for whatever problem you&amp;#x27;re working on. E.g. there is a reason people have been banging their heads on the garbage collection problem since the 1950&amp;#x27;s and it&amp;#x27;s still an active area of research.</text></comment>
<story><title>Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details</title><url>http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jsmthrowaway</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s always a safe bet that the top Hacker News comment will always be &amp;quot;won&amp;#x27;t work, it&amp;#x27;s too hard.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s like sitting around for a year trying to sell a project at my current employer, with everybody and their lead telling you &amp;quot;that&amp;#x27;ll never work,&amp;quot; then you implement in a weekend and those same people start nitpicking what you&amp;#x27;ve come up with. (What happened to it&amp;#x27;ll never work? &amp;quot;Well, your CSS isn&amp;#x27;t great.&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;Honestly, those folks that stand back with their arms crossed watching you fail, and reminding you the whole way that you might fail, are the biggest pains in my ass in this profession. By a mile.&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can contribute your wisdom by going to Lockheed, instead of Internet commentary in which you bet against them?</text></item><item><author>nabla9</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not seeing any top  physicists working in this program (McGuire  is not one). I would be willing to bet 1000 EUR that their math and modeling does not add up, or they have skipped some details.&lt;p&gt;Problem with fusion research like this is that the closer you get self sustainment or energy generation, the harder it gets and problems pile up.   This project looks like many other similar projects that have gone bust. They start by solving the easiest problems first, get some funding and hit the wall.&lt;p&gt;The main problem with any reactor design is how to handle the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reaction (no mention in the article). They tend to damage the reactor and make it economically unfeasible. At this point being able to create fusion reaction is not the main challenge. It&amp;#x27;s the sustainment and economics of limiting the damage. If they really have solved all the problems and demonstrate economically sound fusion in 5-10 years, they will be handed Nobel price in physics for sure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>protonfish</author><text>And it&amp;#x27;s always a safe bet the top response to that comment will be somebody criticizing it without any solid facts or reason but with fuzzy &amp;quot;you just need to believe harder!&amp;quot; kind of nonsense.</text></comment>