I feel very comfortable saying in 5 years Helion won't have anything.
Because HackerNews was soooo confident that a startup style skunkworks initiative would lead to over-unity fusion in 5 years[1]...in 2014.
Then they were soooo confident that MIT was going to blow past ITER to over unity fusion[2] ... in 2020.
It's 2025, and the latter project is still running but now predicting it'll finish it's big reactor post-2030.
Helion are currently now reporting no new results, but claiming they'll hit net-energy in 2028 somehow despite little technical detail. After claiming they'll show net-energy fusion in 2024.[3]
So there's my evidence. Where's your evidence?
It should be noted that I'm not actually against private fusion research - more research is great. But the unfounded confidence with which HackerNews users make predictions of the obvious superiority and success of private industry in achieving fusion has a track record of "we still don't have fusion" despite company's dating back as early to early last decade when we're mid-2020s now.
I feel very comfortable saying in 5 years Helion won't have anything.
Because HackerNews was soooo confident that a startup style skunkworks initiative would lead to over-unity fusion in 5 years[1]...in 2014.
Then they were soooo confident that MIT was going to blow past ITER to over unity fusion[2] ... in 2020.
It's 2025, and the latter project is still running but now predicting it'll finish it's big reactor post-2030.
Helion are currently now reporting no new results, but claiming they'll hit net-energy in 2028 somehow despite little technical detail. After claiming they'll show net-energy fusion in 2024.[3]
So there's my evidence. Where's your evidence?
It should be noted that I'm not actually against private fusion research - more research is great. But the unfounded confidence with which HackerNews users make predictions of the obvious superiority and success of private industry in achieving fusion has a track record of "we still don't have fusion" despite company's dating back as early to early last decade when we're mid-2020s now.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24629828
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy