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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: US Intuitive Machines set for second moon landing in February
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:42:39 +1100
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On 12/01/2025 9:59 am, Joe Gwinn wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 22:37:45 +0000, Martin Brown
> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 11/01/2025 21:04, Jeff Layman wrote:
>>> On 11/01/2025 13:11, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>> On 11/01/2025 7:29 pm, Jeff Layman wrote:
>>>>> On 11/01/2025 04:17, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Everything I've read about fusion power states that to start it an
>>>>> immense amount of power is required.
>>>>
>>>> Then you haven't read much. Cold fusion wouldn't take much power at all,
>>>> if it worked.
>>>
>>> Is that the best you can do? You'll get a reputation for trolling, or
>>> perhaps you've got a signed picture of Fleischmann and Pons on your wall.
>>
>> To be fair they were perfectly good electrochemists but out of their
>> depth where calorimetry was concerned. I'm still just about prepared to
>> believe that they really did see something very odd but irreproducible.
>>
>> They published prematurely for fear of another real muon catalysed cold
>> fusion method stealing their thunder. Unwisely as it turned out.
>>
>> You couldn't buy palladium or heavy water for months after their paper
>> was first published since everybody and their dog had a go at it. No-one
>> else could make it work although some are still trying.
>>>
>>>> is perhaps also moonshine, but they do seem to be attracting investors.
>>>> Boron-hydrogen fusion does have the advantage of not generating
>>>> neutrons, so the hardware would last a lot longer if they ever got it to
>>>> work (and the prospects are rather better than they are for cold fusion).
>>>
>>> Perhaps you'd like to predict when /you/ think that fusion energy will
>>> become commercially available, and what form it will take. That should
>>> be easy enough as you obviously know a lot about fusion energy.
>>
>> I predict that fusion power will be commercially viable in about 50
>> years from now (according to its proponents looking for venture capital)
>> and also that this prediction is time invariant.
> 
> This is progress!  It used to be 30 years in the future.

It's not progress. "Thirty years in the future" and "fifty years in the 
future" are just an expression of the opinion that fusion power will 
eventually be viable but we don't know when. The numbers don't signify 
anything more than "not all that soon".

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydhey