Nuclear fusion seems increasingly achievable.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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They are down to 2 main problems now. The main one is (the cost of) scaling up. Fusion reactors will be more effective then bigger they are. The tiny test ones are already past break even.
The other is wall material. Apparently the radiation has an annoying ability to transmute the elements making up the wall of the reactor. They are working out a material that can maintain its bulk mechanical properties, even with random elements appearing in its internal structure.
The only one I heard news about breaking even was that thing that shot a lot of lasers to a pellet. For a fraction of a second It broke even or produced slightly more than they poured in, but it was much less of what they spent.
There's been something else new?
I saw a talk on the subject about a year back. It was discussing tokamak reactors, from an engineer working on them. The small ones can't sustain a break even state, but they are affected by the inverse square law to a larger degree. I believe China is about to start/has started construction on a power station sized test reactor.
The pellet sort are a different type. They have different pros and cons.
Asteroid mining. We've had the tech to get people to the asterodi for decades, just lack the will to do it.
Okay I've had this astroid mining concept dining around my empty skull for a while now. The way I see it is that going up to space and mining an astroid for minerals and then bringing them back down to earth will never be a worthwhile endeavour. If you're mining them in space and using the material manufacturing in space then that seems more plausible. The only way I can think of planetary based astroid mining being worthwhile is if instead of mining the rock and sending it down in crafts, you just bump the astroid so it's on a collision course with earth and then mine whatever is left from impact. In anycase, I'd say we are far off being able to mine asteroids since imo, the only worthwhile way to do it is by having the entire process in space. And we're not even close to that level of infrastructure existing in space.
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=asteroid+mining
Here's a link to some books on the subject. You're right, most people figure it would be putting our heavy industries in space and bring down what ever products are needed.
We can get a major shot in the arm if we can find a solid industrial use for iridium that sufficiently eclipses any other element. Or some alloy to the same effect.
Unfortunately, it's so rare that it's next to impossible to do any real amount of testing.
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Suicide Machines on Street Corners.
They already have them that you can carry in your pocket.
Yeah but they make such a mess.
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Is it cheating to say AI and humanoid robots?
Anti-aging tech, if so.
Direct brain interfaces for, like, VR. So instead of a screen strapped to your face, your visual cortex is just stimulated so you see the game using your own "hardware." A literal Matrix type environment for your mind.
This is either gonna be cool and fun, or scary and evil. But it will exist.
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I think we can make an oven with a tiny fire breathing dinosaur in it.
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Portable communicators. It would be slick to have a USB c tricorder though.
...you mean phones?
Download the Phyphox app to access your phones raw sensor data. Very much like a tricorder.
You've just destroyed my afternoon, thanks and congratulations
Edit: installed it. very cool. It would be crazy on my watch though.
Hold up. I'm pretty sure things that already exist don't count.
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Fully autonomous humanoid robots. Unfortunately with out-of-control AGI they will probably kill me.
It would have been cool to have a benign C3-PO or R2D2.
I would guess that we'll most-likely have AGI in 100 years. That's pretty futuristic and impactful.
fusion maybe, but in scifi, it often requires an alien race making first contact, we wont even get to things like anti-matter tech without that intervention. SG1 is more in our time frame, but with aliens already possessing advanced tech
Orbital habitats with rotational gravity.