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Nimeroni t1_j0gutaf wrote

Reply to comment by chasonreddit in Nuclear fusion breakthrough: A physicist answers three vital questions by FarmhouseFan

> What I always have to ask is why? There is a huge fusion reactor not that far away, but far enough that it poses only minimal danger to us here. All we need to do is to collect the energy. Why re-invent the sun wheel?

  1. Most of the Sun's energy is lost due to the atmosphere

  2. Solar panel don't work during night

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chasonreddit t1_j0h4m1a wrote

To both of those: only on Earth. Put it in orbit (SPSS I guess the preferred acronym now is SBSP) and no atmosphere, no night.

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Nimeroni t1_j0h4xvb wrote

Bringing anything up there is hideously expensive.

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chasonreddit t1_j0h6w3z wrote

Yes. It's a capital investment and bootstrap problem. But once you build enough infrastructure, you can build from materials already up there. Kind of like the proposed Mars missions. Lifting out of Earth's gravity well is a huge problem.

My point is solvable with current technology. Land based fusion is simply not at this point. Not after Trillions in investment in research units which will never produce power. You can throw a lot of stuff into space for that money. Unless you know of materials that can resist 15M degrees Celsius.

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