Is this the day the world changed?

Last week we science fiction geeks got news that made our day. Skunk Works, an autonomous research division of aircraft giant Lockheed-Martin, announced they were hot on the trail of practical hydrogen fusion power. They said a working model in five years, production models in ten. If they could get the funding.

The initial euphoria dampened almost as soon as we pushed the “like” button on Facebook when we remembered that forty years ago fusion, like strong AI, was “just around the corner.”

(Strong AI, “artificial intelligence” means the day you can discuss the meaning of life with your laptop.)

Fusion is the nuclear reaction that powers the sun. Unlike fission which releases power from the splitting apart of heavy atoms into lighter atoms, fusion is the combining of light atoms, isotopes of hydrogen, into heavier helium atoms releasing heat and neutrons.

There is a lot of potential heartbreak in this. On the one hand, the Skunk Works, a.k.a. the Advanced Development Programs, is an old and established research organization with a solid record of accomplishment. Their best known product is the U2 spy plane. Others include the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk, and the F-22 Raptor.

Better still, Lockheed-Martin claims their unit will be small-scale and portable, small enough to fit in a pickup truck bed, and generate enough power to run a small city or a big ship.

All other fusion research such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), funded by the European Union, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, India, and the United States, focuses on giant power plant applications.

And why is China throwing in with the U.S. the EU and other countries it is not necessarily on good terms with?

Because there is no downside. A hydrogen fusion reactor is not a bomb and can’t be made into one. If the reactor malfunctions, it just stops. Mildly radioactive byproducts are short-lived and easily disposed of.

Then comes the downer.

There is a lot of skepticism in scientific circles and “breakthroughs” in fusion technology have a history of disappointment.

Some have pointed out, if this is so great why is the Skunk Works looking for outside funding?

But just suppose they’re on to something and the time frame is realistic.

Then the whole world changes forever.

For one, the green energy agenda is moot. No more debate about windmills, solar, etc.

For another, the coal and petroleum industry is still there, not for energy but as sources of an almost endless number of different organic molecules.

We may keep gasoline to run our cars, or we may choose to switch to hydrogen produced locally by electrolysis.

No part of the world will be without power. Our civilization will start to radically decentralize with social and political consequences we can’t imagine yet.

We can build great ships that are essentially floating cities, capable of staying at sea indefinitely. Fast ship designs will become economical, vastly speeding up ocean cargo transport.

We can build great airplanes, perhaps with electric motors driving propellers or turbines, which can stay aloft indefinitely.

And space travel may at last come within reach of ordinary people with pioneering spirit if we can use fusion to power a practical laser or electromagnetic launching system to lower the cost of transport to orbit, which is 99 percent of the cost to getting anywhere in the solar system.

But though the reactor itself cannot be weaponized, the power produced will make practical cheap electric-powered weapons such as rail guns which shoot projectiles at literally meteoric speeds.

Economically, the cost of almost everything will come down by orders of magnitude.

Will we remember this as the day the world changed?

We’ll see.