• acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

    Maybe at some point the Americans will get scared that the Chinese are actually making strides ahead of them in electrification and decarbonization to actually get unstuck from their idiotic culture war over fossil fuels.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        The space race is on. That’s why Starship has been launching so much. Someone at the FAA must have finally realized that if SpaceX doesn’t go ahead at full SpaceX speed, we’re gonna see China take over space.

        They’ve got a space station and a rover on the moon. China will easily overtake us in space, has already in a few places.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            2 years ago

            True. China is making rapid gains in territory and influence on Earth and Luna, and soon plans to expand its operations into the Belt.

        • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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          2 years ago

          And by “take over” you mean uselessly posture and dick waggle and colonialize in brand new space accords breaking ways.

          This is not something anyone is winning.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Oh yes, this is a competition, and someone is going to win it.

            There are lots of resources out there. Far more than here. Most of “the world” is out there. This is happening whether we like it or not.

            And all the “dick waggling” is steps on the path to it happening. Funny flesh images, homoerotic shaming, whatever this dick talk is about whenever space comes up, none of it changes the serious nature of what’s going on in space.

            • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Lmao it would be more economical to colonize the ocean floor than space. Extracting resources from space isn’t happening any time soon, no amount of musks copium will fix that.

              The “serious nature” of what’s happening in space is an accelerating geopolitical posturing. Nothing any country is doing right now are the things they’d do if they seriously intended to settle space.

              If the intent of course was to show off military might, ruin the the space treaty for colonialization and imperialism, and attempt brinksmamship, well they are coincidentally working down the checklist!

    • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      Oh, Amerikans would sooner nuke themselves than even consider uncoupling themselves from fossil fuel. All Amerikans care about is “profit uber alles”; they’d rather choke to death on smog and fracking run-off than ever admit Chinese STEM is beating theirs by every conceivable metric.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Fossil fuels aren’t just a culture war. Energy is really important for people, including poor people.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        Poor people also care about not dying from the effects of climate change.

        Poor people don’t care about the megaprofits of the oil, gas, and automotive industries.

  • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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    2 years ago

    To the best of my knowledge, this is the first commercially-funded (i.e., non-government) nuclear fusion reactor. Notable investors are MiHoYo (developers of Genshin Impact), Nio (Chinese EV company), and Sequoia Capital…

    • kippinitreal@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      In your guys opinion, is that good or bad? Privately funded would mean proprietary & profit driven implementation for such a crucial technology (if successful). I personally don’t like it.

    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      No??

      I’ve supported engineering at several privately funded nuclear fusion companies, though all of them, this Chinese company included, are building a product out of public school research.

      Off the top of my head there’s:

      • CFS
      • TAE technologies
      • Thea
      • Zap Energy

      And several more…

      • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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        2 years ago

        Building, or built? Either way, maybe these companies will come out with a better design than Tokamak, but until then they’re literally just research ventures because the vast majority of investment at actually scaling fusion is happening for Tokamak tractors.

        • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          Built, physically operational reactors that operate as close to Q=1 as they can, with all the diagnostics included.

          The diagnostics are very important, as plasma instabilities have been, and continue to be, the critical issue preventing anything useful coming out of our decades of fusion reactor design. All these companies are sharing data on overcoming plasma instability issues, with multiple geometries aimed at evaluating how plasma responds to different inputs in different environments. We’re all trying to understand how to control and compress something far too hot to physically touch.

          @naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca scaling fusion isn’t a trivial problem, and saying it like it is indicates a lack of background knowledge. This isn’t a competition between companies (no matter what our CEOs suggest), as we in industry quietly all agree that any of us that cracks this unchains humanity from the solar system. Because government funding has unfortunately sucked so much ass, we’re sort of using private money to get the basic research done. We’d be so much farther ahead otherwise.