Lockheed says makes breakthrough on Fusion Energy project

originally posted by: Nicorette
If this pans out, this could be HUGE news, a literal game changer for humanity. Nuclear fission is dirty, dangerous and cumbersome. Nuclear fusion could solve our numerous energy problems, lift the world out of poverty, and open the way to reasonable space travel.

Sorry to laugh but LOL.
Lift the world out of poverty? ..how, is it going to feed 7 billion people, provide billions of jobs and pay packets for everyone, provide housing for everyone, clothes on peoples backs etc?
Solve numerous energy problems? ..and what makes you think that this technology is going to be economically viable for the majority of the planet, let alone available to every country on the planet?
Open the way to reasonable space travel? ..lol, is this like the nuclear powered space ships?

This post is as funny as the guy who thinks in ten years there will be nuclear fusion powered trucks.


You guys obviously don't understand just how much oil and gas the world really does have, just how many untapped resources remain. We've got hundreds of years left of the stuff. Not just gas and oil, but of all resources.
The worlds biggest multi-mineral mine, Olympic Dam, can be mined continuously for several hundred years. Think about that in the context of things.


In ten years time, the absolute majority of cars on our roads will still be fueled by unleaded petrol, with a small percentage of cars fueled by diesel and even less on lpg or dual fuel. Trucks will still be fueled with diesel.
And even less will be hybrid cars, although there will be more of them on the road then today.
Cars and vehicles in general will start to become more automated in more features, and all will eventually be able to drive them selves and will be electric powered. This technology is already under development and being trialled. Mercedes is even developing and has tested on a road, an electric truck that can drive it self or have the driver take over manually. Even Google is working on this technology.

Nuclear fusion powered vehicles on our roads? Wow.

Look how sweet the suits over at Pepe le Pew are !
Dusting off their small fusion reactor files from 1982 &
quietly setting out the final puzzle pieces for the kids
at the sparks department to "discover".

And in case we forgot who is in bed with who ,
the give away is that this "new" fusion reactor will fit perfectly
into the existing petroleum owned turbine driven infrastructure.
What luck ! I guess the public are getting too close
on their own finally ?

As great as this is, as far as the tech goes,
it's akin to throwing the world a hoof while deep black SAPS
continue to dine on filet mignon.
So "yay" in lower case letters.

a reply to: mortex

I believe the poster you're quoting was more referring to the LONG TERM implications of the technology. Yes in ten years we'll probably have a fusion reactor. Will it magically solve all our problems immediately? No, and anyone who honestly believes that is a silly person. But in the long term, it very well could provide an avenue to vastly improve human life. Imagine huge offshore desalination plants, providing drinkable water to the world.

Imagine permanent bases on our planetary neighbors. Low cost energy and the eventual phase out of our reliance on non-renewable resources. There's a lot of possibility in the idea of a viable fusion reactor, and I think it's just fine for folks to speculate on how it could change our world. I encourage that kind of forward-thinking. The human imagination is a wonderful thing!

These projects are great, but a useable reactor is always "within a decade" away. We've been able to produce a fusion reaction for a long time time now; the problem is always to create more energy than the reaction requires. We'll see what happens, sometimes these "breakthroughs" just fade away because they don't lead to anything useful.

"within a decade" the entire world is going to be a different place. Think of how the world has changed over the last ten years.

The next ten years there are plenty of new inventions that are being developed. Robots, Self Driving Cars, Virtual Reality Gaming, Automated Farming, Universal Medicine, Digital Monitoring, Planck Pixelation Optics, not to mention the MK Ultra patients will be activated....

This is all coming to a technogological climax imo and it's going to lead to one of two situations social class wars or utopia

a reply to: Nicorette

An interesting coincidence that the secretive nasa spaceplane that was in orbit for 22 months, the x-37B, just landed and completed its mission.

Is it possible this plane was testing the nuclear fusion reactor?

I thought about it because of a sentence in the article linked by the OP:

Lockheed believes its scalable concept will also be small and practical enough for applications ranging from interplanetary spacecraft and commercial ships to city power stations.

I would think that the "secretive" Skunk Works wouldn't release this kind of info if it hadn't been tested thoroughly, and maybe even put to use.

Would be cool if true!

a reply to: fedeykin

I think the reactor in the video is the current nuclear reactor. It doesn't exactly look space ready.

The fact that Lockheed presents this info, gives it some 'gravity'

This era needs a breakthrough like this, like the 80s needed the internet.
I wonder if there is a market for Helium3 futures.
Over unity energy, would change the economics of the world in a fundamental way.

Energy is the actual currency of the universe.
you get paid for the energy you spend at work.

An abundance of clean energy, is the human races only way out of long term stagnation and decent.
I trade fiat currency for energy (and bandwidth), every day.

Abundant energy can turn deserts into farmlands, and also kick start the extraction of resources from our solar system.

Also with enough energy, I think you can actually create matter . E=mc2

However I feel that space based energy collection from our star(sol), being the ultimate fusion reactor, is the long term solution, eventually resulting in a Dyson Sphere.

a reply to: Nicorette

I hope we can keep hold of the technology, so other countries have to play catch-up.

a reply to: TheJesuit

Dude links please.

I got to check this out.

a reply to: mortex

And don't forget our obsession with plastic.

That's derived from oil as well.

Man, this downsizing and commercialization of nuclear energy is going to be the end of Earth. If the build up of Fukushima fallout doesn't kill us all then some dumbfunk with a nuke on his flatbed trailer is going to.

originally posted by: Nicorette

WASHINGTON (Reuters): Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

Lockheed says makes breakthrough on Fusion Energy project

If this pans out, this could be HUGE news, a literal game changer for humanity. Nuclear fission is dirty, dangerous and cumbersome. Nuclear fusion could solve our numerous energy problems, lift the world out of poverty, and open the way to reasonable space travel.

This is not some crank with a free energy device. This is coming from Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, reported by multiple credible mainstream media sources.

This Aviation Week exclusive goes into much, much greater technical detail and talks to the scientists.

Hidden away in the secret depths of the Skunk Works, a Lockheed Martin research team has been working quietly on a nuclear energy concept they believe has the potential to meet, if not eventually decrease, the world’s insatiable demand for power.

Thomas McGuire, principal investigator of the Skunk Works nuclear fusion experiment dubbed T4, with the project’s stainless steel containment vessel that is roughly the size of a business-jet engine.

At Lockheed Martin Skunk Works®, we’re making advancements in the development of fusion energy, the ultimate form of renewable power. Our scientists and engineers are looking at the biggest natural fusion reactor for inspiration – the sun. By containing the power of the sun in a small magnetic bottle, we are on the fast track to developing compact fusion reactors to serve the world’s ever-growing energy needs. Watch the video to discover more.


This is the best news I have heard in a long time.

Looks like the US military will no longer be needing fossil fuels to power its military machine. If these things are the size of jet engines, we will be able to power ships, planes, drones etc and have an unlimited supply of energy to do so. Too bad for the countries who may want to "choke us off from fuel".

"Breakthrough"... Yeah, I'm sure they're just discovering this now...

2:16-2:22 - You can tell how hard he had to push that line...

originally posted by: mortex

originally posted by: Nicorette
If this pans out, this could be HUGE news, a literal game changer for humanity. Nuclear fission is dirty, dangerous and cumbersome. Nuclear fusion could solve our numerous energy problems, lift the world out of poverty, and open the way to reasonable space travel.

Sorry to laugh but LOL.
Lift the world out of poverty? ..how, is it going to feed 7 billion people, provide billions of jobs and pay packets for everyone, provide housing for everyone, clothes on peoples backs etc?
Solve numerous energy problems? ..and what makes you think that this technology is going to be economically viable for the majority of the planet, let alone available to every country on the planet?
Open the way to reasonable space travel? ..lol, is this like the nuclear powered space ships?

This post is as funny as the guy who thinks in ten years there will be nuclear fusion powered trucks.


You guys obviously don't understand just how much oil and gas the world really does have, just how many untapped resources remain. We've got hundreds of years left of the stuff. Not just gas and oil, but of all resources.
The worlds biggest multi-mineral mine, Olympic Dam, can be mined continuously for several hundred years. Think about that in the context of things.


In ten years time, the absolute majority of cars on our roads will still be fueled by unleaded petrol, with a small percentage of cars fueled by diesel and even less on lpg or dual fuel. Trucks will still be fueled with diesel.
And even less will be hybrid cars, although there will be more of them on the road then today.
Cars and vehicles in general will start to become more automated in more features, and all will eventually be able to drive them selves and will be electric powered. This technology is already under development and being trialled. Mercedes is even developing and has tested on a road, an electric truck that can drive it self or have the driver take over manually. Even Google is working on this technology.

Nuclear fusion powered vehicles on our roads? Wow.

Olympic Dam hey, are you a South Aussie??

Well here is one way it can help us, see that massive red desert in the middle of Australia, well with a fusion reactor, coupled to a desalination plant could pump endless amounts of water into the desert and make some of the most furtile land to grow crops of pretty much anything.

Then if you look at electricity prices you receive as a customer, price of fuel plus generation costs are a small percentage, the infrastructure (power lines and transformers) take a large cut, then your city provider (SA Power) take a cut to get it to your door and then finally the provider (Origin, AGL) take a sales commission. Move that reactor to the city, you could reduce the cost significantly.

Lower electricity prices means lower manufacturing costs.

Just a few of the things.

Actually I dont know why they dont approach McDonalds for advice, they have been containing fissioning plasma apples inside a cardboard and pastry protective layer for ever.

a reply to: TheCrowMan

Alternately, they could look to Hot Pockets as well.

Just had a thought ....this technology would herald a new steam age !!!!

Even in a nuclear power station all that technology simply boils water to turn a steam turbine to generate electricity (although I'm sure some people think differently Star Trek style !!!!)

Now with a portable generator the only tried and tested way of converting "engine heat" to "work at the wheel" is via steam. Sure you could have a steam turbine and generate electricity but that would simply introducing inefficiencies. Why bother "turning" the steam turbine to make electricity to transmit to wheels to turn an electric motor when you could use the rotation of the steam turbine directly!!!!

So it seems an appropriate time to invest in steam engines ....time to go to Swindon or the York Railway Museum and dig out some of those archived plans.

Seems pertinent to add this to the discussion.... assuming we are still talking about it:



Scientists Skeptical of Lockheed’s Fusion Breakthrough

Apparently, even among the mainstream promoters of the possibility of controlled fusion there are dissenters....

“Normally, if someone says they’re doing well in fusion, they would quote some data, ‘We got a temperature of x and a confinement of y,’” he said, referring to how long a reactor can hold the heat of a reaction before it escapes. “There’s no such information.”

a reply to: Asynchrony

This Aviation Week exclusive goes into much, much greater technical detail and talks to the scientists.

That write up sounds very similar to one I read in popular science back in the 1960's.
Is it just me or does that white switch for the pump look like a standard 115VAC maybe 20A?
To think we spent $50 billion on the tokamak when we could have had one of these.

The lab worker with the flashlight checking the boiler sight port isn't wearing a watch?
None of them are.