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Give it another decade.

I've seen people blaming NASA's need for protecting jobs (shuttle) for the stalling of the space age. Things seem to have started moving. For real bases, two-three decades.

Fusion power? Check Polywell and General Fusion, et al. There is hope.

Strong AI? No clue.



If there is a landing on Mars in the next 30 years I'll be delighted as anyone (pinning my hopes on Elon Musk for this one).

Fusion - we're probably 40+ years from a commercial plant (ITER is being constructed, then there is probably going to be a DEMO plant and only after that would there be a commercial design). Assuming, of course, that someone doesn't do a SpaceX round the current Big Science projects.

Strong AI - very unlikely, unfortunately, as it would presumably help with everything else on the list.


I find it strange the binary Weak/Strong AI assumption so many people hold. What about medium AI? Or Not So Weak AI, Or 0.23 Strong AI? Presumably, each level of Not so strong AI will help to lessen the gap between the then current AI and Strong AI.

And I am not talking about recursive self improving AI growth - just that each additional improvement in Nonhuman intelligence increases the total intellectual efficiency of humanity and that these benefits are multiplicative.


You didn't check out General Fusion or Polywell, I take it. There are others, too. One of these dark horses might come in.

Here are a couple of links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Fusion


I was aware of the Polywell work - hadn't seen General Fusion before. The description of how their reactor would work on the Wikipedia page is pretty interesting!


Steam punk fusion is ridiculously cool. :-)

Google for the funded Tri Alpha, too. And then there is Lerner and team. I hope at least one of the groups succeed, the world will change.

(If you check talk-polywell.org, there is some positive info which is "only" 6 months old.)




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