Lift12 Extreme Hackers: Mark Suppes and the Open Source Fusion Reactor [en]

[fr] Je suis à la conférence Lift12 à Genève ces jours. Voici mes notes de sessions.

Live-blogging from Lift12 conference in Geneva. These are my notes and interpretations of Mark Suppes’s session — best effort, but might be imprecise or even wrong!

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This guy built a working nuclear fusion reactor.

People think nuclear = fission. (Uranium, etc.)

Fusion takes hydrogen or helium and fuses them. Lighter elements. Much more promising technology!

We’ve succeeded in fusion, but not fusion where we get more energy out than what we put in.

steph-note: don’t know enough about fusion to know when he’s starting to pull our leg… or if

In the 50s, Farnsworth (invented television) invented “fusor”.

Mark has done a lot of web startups. Has learned that there is no such thing as “too ambitious”.

Found this video by a guy released from his gag order after top secret work on fusion. Has a machine which if built big enough, would cross the break even threshold. New tech that would change everything!

Started modelling it on the computer. Started a blog. After some time, people found him.

Tried to make his own 3D printer, but that didn’t work at all 😉

steph-note: another of those hard-to-blog talks, I think my brain is too fried to process this type of talk!

Got funded on Kickstarter.

200 mio $ to build the Bussard reactor. A lot of money to invest.


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