"Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

[vt]

http://www.kurzweilai.net/star-in-a-...3c84-281884401

[jk]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

i remember reading about tokamaks in scientific american when i was a kid, a loooong time ago. just looked it up and they were invented in the 1950's. according to breathless articles, they've been "on the brink" of providing limitless power for the same looooong time. [it's like brazil: it's the country of the future, and it always will be.] i wouldn't hold my breath.

[vt]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

Good point. But the pace of technology solutions is accelerating. did you think we could have self driving cars by 2020 30 years ago?

[jk]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

Good point. But the pace of technology solutions is accelerating. did you think we could have self driving cars by 2020 30 years ago?

self driving cars would have seemed doable 30 years ago, i think, if anyone had asked me. they were a staple of science fiction. enough computing power and enough sensors would do it. back 50 years ago i think people thought of self-guiding vehicles being controlled centrally - getting directions from a central guidance system. i think the analogy was to mainframes and dumb terminals, the model at the time. but self driving cars did not require new physics. there is no guarantee that a fusion reaction can be started and contained, releasing net energy, whether in a magnetic bottle or e.g. by lasers focusing on the plasma particles as is also being explored. you can get better and better at confinement, but whether you can ever gain net energy with our techniques is not obvious.

[Woodsman]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

self driving cars would have seemed doable 30 years ago, i think, if anyone had asked me. they were a staple of science fiction. enough computing power and enough sensors would do it. back 50 years ago i think people thought of self-guiding vehicles being controlled centrally - getting directions from a central guidance system. i think the analogy was to mainframes and dumb terminals, the model at the time. but self driving cars did not require new physics. there is no guarantee that a fusion reaction can be started and contained, releasing net energy, whether in a magnetic bottle or e.g. by lasers focusing on the plasma particles as is also being explored. you can get better and better at confinement, but whether you can ever gain net energy with our techniques is not obvious.

The future was so much more awesome in the past.

Highway of the future:

You reach over to your dashboard and push the button marked ‘Electronic Drive.’ Selecting your lane, you settle back to enjoy the ride as your car adjusts itself to the prescribed speed. You may prefer to read or carry on a conversation with your passengers—or even to catch up on your office work. It makes no difference for the next several hundred miles as far as the driving is concerned.

Fantastic? Not at all. The first long step toward this automatic highway of the future was successfully illustrated by RCA and the State of Nebraska on October 10, 1957, on a 400-foot strip of public highway on the outskirts of Lincoln.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/...-Winter.pdf#14

"It will be made safe - by electricity!"

[jk]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

"It will be made safe - by electricity!"

everything at that link has pretty much come true.

"your food will cook in seconds instead of hours" - microwave

"electricity will close your windows at the first drop of rain."- could be done easily in a house. already done in cars but it's not fully automatic - you have to push a button. otoh there are automatic wipers which can be set and only go on when there are drops on the windshield.

"lamps will cut on and off automatically to fit the lighting needs in your rooms." - automatic outside floods, turn lights on and off with a clap or voice command. you'd need some progress in artificial intelligence to program a room to automatically change lighting for the activity and mood - not worth the bother imo.

"television 'screens' will hang on the walls." yes

"an electric heat pump will use outside air to cool your house in summer, heat it in winter." - installed in houses at the right latitudes. where i am the heat pump is run against ground temperature in geothermal systems.

[Woodsman]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

everything at that link has pretty much come true...

Too cheap to matter

[santafe2]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

Too cheap to matter

As renewable energy systems continue to get less expensive, the business of supplying energy will become more difficult. It may become too cheap to meter by 2050 but the infrastructure required to deliver that energy may be quite expensive.

[Chris Coles]

Re: "Star In A Jar" Could Provide Near Limitless Energy

http://www.kurzweilai.net/star-in-a-...3c84-281884401

This is standard methodology. When you come up with new ways to look at a very old subject; you put out some attractive PR to justify your ongoing application for further funding. The more attractive you can make the PR, the better your chance of gaining it.

What is equally true is that this has been on the table for all of my adult life. I well remember during my engineering apprenticeship working on parts for ZETA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZETA_(fusion_reactor) and that was in 1960, so this is as long as it gets in trying with just sufficient results and GREAT PR to keep the funding flowing.

The perfect research project; a lifetime without success yet fully funded.