this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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They have been 'closing in' for 60 years.
Most highly sought-after technologies 'take time', and develop in an iterative fashion called 'successive approximation'.
Heckling from the sidelines is what is known as 'being unhelpful'.
I am not 'heckling from the sideline' to the ppl working on it. I am just 'heckling from the sideline' the media for trying to generate clicks with such headlines.
It would have been achieved by now if it had more than just token amounts of funding.
Maybe? In any case, now would be an excellent time to invest heavily in the technology.
I agree now is the next best time to invest. Best time would have been 30 years ago[1]. This is absolutely needed if we want to remain relevant as a species. Fossil fuels will run out and if we aren’t on something sustainable, we’ll never get off this rock.
1
You're completely missing the point. Yeah, this stuff takes time, and it will continue to take time. The point is, this article saying we're "closing in on it" is clickbait garbage that's just as useful as the one a decade ago saying we are "closing in on it", and a decade before that.
So you're unimpressed with what's been going on at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? Where they've induced a fusion reaction for a net energy gain? And repeated with better results?
Were we achieving net energy gain a decade ago? The decade before that?
Is net energy gain the goal? If so, does repeatable demonstration of the phenomena mean that we are closing in on it, or does it mean that we are moving further away from it?
Just 10 more years!
I have been hearing this since the mid-80s.