>they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity. Helion has a clear path to net electricity by 2024,
Explanation required. Does the first sentence have any bearing on fusion, and how does it relate the the second?
I mean, I have a generator that produces electricity (it doesn't use fusion). What is the point of having one that uses fusion, but doesn't have net output?
By analogy, imagine an aeroplane in a wind tunnel. It's not the real aeroplane - it's a scale model. It has no engine and it's not moving, the wind is moving over it. On one level the experiment hasn't achieved anything - that model can never do anything useful in the real world.
But we are making measurements on aerodynamic performance - on another level we have learned that if you can make an aircraft that shape and give it an engine that moves it at the same speed as the airflow, then the aeroplane will generate enough lift to keep it in the air. That's a really important result that gets us significantly closer to a useful aeroplane. If separately someone has demonstrated an engine with suitable weight and power characteristics to match, then we can say "now we just need to build the aircraft and it should fly".
Helion involves a unique method of extracting energy from the fusion process (direct extraction from the magnetic field). That's new and therefore uncertain. Producing a reactor that performs something fusion-like and generates electricity in that way is a great result even if the fusion process isn't generating as much power as it should and is fundamentally driven by electricity. Like the plane above, if they have separately demonstrated a fusion process that is powerful enough, "all" they need to do now is put the two things together.
I guess I'll forever be apologizing for that post, but (as I mentioned in another, after digging into their technology) there was no mention of the novelty of their approach to generation in Sam's announcement. So "they have built a generator that produces electricity" has little meaning outside of the context of most commonly-known methods of generating electricity from fusion, i.e., heat.
I think if I were a billionaire investing in fusion technologies, I think I'd be sure to mention my investment's special sauce when I drop a few sticks on it.
It was a reasonable question based on the linked article. Fusion announcements (like new battery chemistries) are almost worthless on their own - you have to read more about the company, what stage they're at, what the tech actually is etc.
Have you watched The Imitation Game? This is exactly the same question that the antagonist had about Turing's computer. "The human computers can do 10 things a day and your machine does 0 things a day". Well, yeah, until you get it working it's useless. But once it works it does all the things.
Getting a fusion reactor to work is trivial; at least one 12 year old has done it [1]. Getting net energy out of the reactor is much more difficult. The point of the funding is to figure out how to increase the gain factor. Once that's figured out, the rest (manufacturing and deploying reactors) is comparatively trivial.
My understanding is that fusion power theoretically has net positive output, but practically no one has achieved this yet. If they are able to achieve such it would be a scientific and commercial breakthrough.
We know that it does, all you have to do is look up at that big ball of fusion in the sky. However, can we humans harness it? We don't know for sure but it sure looks like it. In our lifetimes? who knows, I certainly hope all these new ideas spark some fusion though.
My understanding is that most of the fusion net balance problems are proportional to scale.
Machinery to initiate fusion must be at least this big, consume at least this much power, and cannot be scaled down arbitrarily.
However, if one were to scale it up in size, the same doesn't hold. Output power scales faster than increased input requirements.
Consequently, most current fusion work is (a) find a design that theoretically has those scaling characteristics, (b) build a prototype to investigate / prove any unknowns (net negative power, but not ITER/NIF expensive), & (c) if able to prove (b) then scale up into a net positive example.
Investing in a prototype and believing it will turn into a successful product, when that prototype can't even demonstrate the fundamental technology itself, just seems like wishful thinking. And I see no evidence to suggest they have a path to viability other than "trust me bro."
I see a bunch of patents and hand-waving that seems intentionally complicated. I spent much of my career helping companies raise money based on demos (I'm talking billions of dollars) and this just seems like more bullshit to me. And all of those demos I worked on were smoke and mirrors, despite building quasi-functional prototypes you could interact with.
I'd love to be wrong but they aren't make an effort to convince me otherwise, they just want to raise a shitload of money.
It's called Research. It's much riskier than traditional investments and you need to know the technology deeply and have high trust in the team in order to effectively make such risky investments. But the payoffs of net-positive fusion energy are nearly incalculable. Step change in humanity type of thing.
> I spent much of my career helping companies raise money based on demos
And I've made a bunch of money sitting on my ass watching a few stocks go to the moon. Knowing how to invest in webshit or getting lucky picking stocks can make you rich much easier than R&D can make you rich. Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process.
> And all of those demos I worked on were smoke and mirrors, despite building quasi-functional prototypes you could interact with.
The investment isn't being made on the basis of an existing reactor. There are tons of existing fusion reactors. The investment is being made on the basis of the team's plan to get to net positive energy.
* I'd love to be wrong but they aren't make an effort to convince me otherwise*
Luckily there are other folks in this world who are willing to make risky investments in important ideas.
(BTW, no one's getting rich on fusion research until fusion works... every year the fusion community leaks a bunch of folks to finance and tech because even entry level positions pay 3x and offer more stability.)
> Knowing how to invest in webshit or getting lucky picking stocks can make you rich much easier than R&D can make you rich.
It seems like you missed my point, because I make all my money investing nowadays too after failing forever trying to turn R&D into viable products. It's easy to raise money on bullshit and almost impossible to actually make it work. In fact, it likely is actually impossible, we just don't know yet.
> Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process.
I've met Sam and I don't think he cares about making the world a better place. I think he just likes money and attention.
You seem awfully idealistic. I'm terribly cynical. We're not going to agree and that's fine.
First you point out that this seems like bullshit and a waste of money.
Then you point out that Sam doesn't care about making the world a better place and just likes money.
You're contradicting yourself, and on top of that, publicly insulting a core figure in this community. I've never met Sam, I don't care about him or if he wants to make the world a better place or not, but your comments are completely uncalled for.
You're a cynic, cool, that's fine. Comment on why you think the technology is bogus and don't publicly insult others.
My point is I think it's a shitty investment. You're welcome to celebrate it and I'm welcome to criticize it. I don't take back what I said about Sam and think he deserves more criticism, not less.
What you said is not criticism, it's just an insult. It adds nothing to the conversation and lowers the level of discourse.
I'm not celebrating anything. I'm a skeptic at heart and don't believe in any hype until I see meaningful progress. I just don't see the need to shit all over something because my gut tells me it's hype.
> Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process.
I thought I'd reply with my personal experience why I disagree. And again, I stand by what I said about Sam. I really think he deserves much more criticism than he gets. If criticizing someone's character is an insult then I think we need more insults. I don't want a nicer world, I want a world with less bullshit.
The problem with your comment is that anyone could have made it. I could make the same comment about you because for whatever reason I don't like you. It may be true or not. Anonymous attacks on the internet do nothing but lower the level of discourse.
Now if you posted about a specific negative experience you had with the individual and actually put something on the line, that would be different. But as it is, there is no reason to believe you. For all I know, you just dislike him because he didn't invest in your company.
I don't care about your opinion the same way you don't care about mine. Making a vague comment about disliking someone is a lot less damning than being specific about why I don't like him, and unfortunately I can't really get into that without doxxing myself and frankly it isn't worth the hassle anyway. If you want to write me off as worthless then go for it. It seems you already have, that's fine.
Maybe. I don't really care. My point wasn't about him per se.
I'm willing to concede you're right about Sam. Sure. Investing in fusion is a terrible way to make money. If rich folks' egos get more money thrown at the right problems, so be it.
Some day some billionaire is going to save the Earth from a giant asteroid impact and there will be a bunch of people saying "meh, he only did it as an ego trip."
I'm happy to thank people when they give me a reason to thank them. Having personally met Sam I feel confident in my assessment he does not merit your gratitude. If the founders of Helion pull it off and actually usher in a new era of plentiful cheap energy I will be ecstatic to congratulate them on their success.
If someone does a good thing, I don't much care why they did it.
And if this works out, between (a) Sam funded the project that cracked cheap fusion and saved the planet, and (b) HN's OnlineGladiator met him and disliked him, I think the balance will tilt toward feeling some gratitude towards Sam.
I hardly think my opinion is going to sway the majority's view of a public figure. If the world wants to love him I'm not going to change that. But it still doesn't change my opinion about him since it's not based on what I read about him online but based on actually interacting with him in person. Also if Helion turns out to be successful I'll have no problem admitting I was wrong. I hope they succeed, or rather I hope someone succeeds in creating cheap and plentiful energy.
What does it matter what I think, anyway? Think for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I don't care if you disagree.
Edit: I'm not trying to be (too) pedantic. But the brief investment announcement went to the trouble of saying "they built a generator that produces electricity" and (effectively) "but no net electricity".
Isn't thathat generator a nothing-generator then? Why even mention it?
• Better techology (that still needs to be R&Ded) makes it more efficient and net positive in the future.
• Prototype v1 is a required step towards v2(-v3...vn?) that actually accomplishes the goal. An example of this is SpaceX's Starhopper -> Starship.
• Some economy of scale makes it work at some point. Example, put a single box in a big ship from Shanghai to LA, cost of shipping = millions of $; vs. put a million boxes in the same ship, cost of shipping = a few $.
Neither: their proposed design doesn't generate electricity from heat, so what they're talking about here is proving out the alternative mechanism of electricity generation that they propose to use. That's a valuable to demonstrate because it's novel, and necessary to eventually being net-positive, so showing that's possible shows that their eventual plan could work.
Yes, I figured that out long after my original post.
It's just that Sam's post didn't mention any (semi-)novel method for generating electricity from fusion, so the actual words - "they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity" - appear as either hype or non-information outside that context.
Their "generator" in this case appears to be the reactor which generates helium-3 fuel by fusing deuterium fuel. Their eventual endgame is a first stage D->3He (dont know the exact process) fusion generator followed by the second stage D+3He->He+p (or 3He+3He->He+p+p) fusion reactor. They claim that even the precursor process of fusing Deuterium into He3 is net-electricity-positive overall, which is a claim that kind of works on a napkin as long as there is a physicist nearby engaging in some wild hand waving. It will be quite amazing if true.
Explanation required. Does the first sentence have any bearing on fusion, and how does it relate the the second?
I mean, I have a generator that produces electricity (it doesn't use fusion). What is the point of having one that uses fusion, but doesn't have net output?