The promise of fusion power is coming to life in a pioneering lab in Oxfordshire.

the whole "Military is 10-20 years ahead of consumer" thing is a hold back from the cold war, people should really stop parroting it.

Achieving sustainable fusion is a challenging thing, none of us, from what iv been able to gather are an actual expert on this or the confinement technology involved. Some might have worked on related technology but, from this thread, i don't see that much input from people like that. So it is hard to really say which will be successful in producing the first device.

The whole cold war aspect of the these comments are pretty funny. Id not be surprised if it is a similar thing in this case.

a reply to: ErosA433

Yeah, I think it's more an economy of scale thing. Take LCD monitors, for example. The military used them in tanks in the 80's, some 20 years before public adoption. Is this because the military has secret tech decades more advanced than consumer tech? No, it's the simple fact that the military was prepared to spend tens of thousands for an LCD screen whereas it wasn't until the price dropped into the hundreds that consumers adopted them.

a reply to: GetHyped

LCDs are an interesting one, mainly because when people say LCD they think of a nice TFT monitor system, and then think, WOW in the 80s they where like that?!?! OMG thats amazing.

Reality was that the LCD displays used in Tanks to gain back space back then where NOT anything like TFTs, they where slow, suffered from terrible ghosting, and where more related to calculator displays than full motion video. Any video used on them was minimal, very slow as i said and low resolution.

So when people say things like OMG they are 15 years ahead! OMG OMG! I just think that its not really what people think, and what they think is confirmation bias that 'their military' is so far ahead of the 'enemy' when the truth is, meh, not much if at all, depends on lots of things.

a reply to: ErosA433

I see what your saying. but I disagree when it comes to certain technologies.

For instance lockheed has an aircraft they claim won't be operational until 2030. But what they aren't telling people is that they've had it operational for about 10 years now. The capabilities I know it currently has right now will seem high tech even in 2030 to the public. Its not always a cold war myth. Sometimes they really do have stuff they arent telling the public.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: ErosA433
The capabilities I know it currently has right now will seem high tech even in 2030 to the public.

Supporting evidence required, otherwise, its he says she says, a man i know down the street, his brother friend said...