this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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The amusing thing is that the sun is actually quite a shit fusion reactor. It's power per unit volume is tiny. It just makes it up in sheer volume. A solar level fusion reactor would be almost completely useless to us. Instead we need to go far beyond the sun's output to just be viable.
It's like describing one of the mega mining dumper trucks as an "artificial mule".
Arguably, the nearby sun scale fusion reactor has been fairly useful for us. Nowadays we can convert its output directly into electricity using solar cells
I never said it wasn't useful, just a very low efficiency reactor. Then again, if it was better, it would burn out faster, which would be bad for life on earth.
What I'm hearing is that we should mine the sun and make better use of all that fuel.
Just make sure you do it at night.
That's part of the reason a moon base could be viable. The sun outputs a reasonable amount of helium 3, which is great for fusion reactions. Unfortunately it tends to sit at the top of our atmosphere and get blown away again. On the moon, it gets captured by the dust in collectable quantities.