Asklemmy

43913 readers

265 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

105

What scientific discovery, which could actually happen in the next 5 years, would have the most impact in our lives in you opinion? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] fishos 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

While I agree with what you've said, I've always felt fusion and other such tech is the future of long distance space travel, not Earth based energy use. Wind and hydro are useless in space and solar has issues with power accumulation the further away from a star you go. We will still need some kind of "fuel" based energy source if we're ever to enter deep space and cross the gaps(unless battery tech increases much further to the point that a "battery" lasts a significant portion of the vehicles lifetime). Even then, you'd need recharge stations at each end or to park by a star to refuel in between.

We have fusion/fission now. That kind of battery tech is still a ways off. Feels shortsighted to ignore nuclear now just because it's not perfect in this specific environment. After all, name any vehicle not powered by nuclear that can run for 20-30 years before it needs to refuel/recharge. No battery tech can even come close currently.