Whenever I hear that, the technology is not there yet or that scientists predict we may have the technology by x year, I wonder why is it so ? We have acess to the same materials on earth as before so how do we constantly find new ways to improve our tech and why does it happen in small doses over long periods of time ? Why can’t we develop technology now, that would otherwise take us 200 years or some ?
In: Technology
Consider the Duke Nukem Forever of power, a fusion reactor. The end goal is to achieve and sustain fusion and be able to generate electricity with it.
To get fusion, we need to understand fusion and how to induce it as well as sustain it and have it be powerful enough to be a meaningful source of power, which we have not yet accomplished that I’m aware of. Tests are done and different things tried from using materials or the way they’re shaped to the size of things etc etc etc. Testing testing testing.
But to even think of fusion we need to first understand nuclear reactions to begin with so we had to get down with fission. Before that we had to even know that such a thing was possible so we had to discover radiation and the atom and all that. We also had to discover that we can generate electricity to begin with, discover useful harnessing of steam…. Real life is pretty much one big videogame tech tree with all sorts of interconnected dependencies.
Plus we aren’t stuck with the same materials and that’s it. We find new ways to harness those materials like going from nitrogen to liquid nitrogen to offer enhanced cooling. Or steel, the steel we have now is *nothing* like the steel of the 19th century, we have many grades and alloys with different properties so we are inventing new materials now and again. Or plastic. It’s very reductive to just say “plastic.” What kind of plastic? Over the yeard we’ve gone from bakelite to having ABS and PVC and PP and PE and even *Teflon* (PTFE) which certainly offers some handy and unique characteristics.
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