Is Lockheed Martin about to become the biggest company in history?

[cdu7]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

[wolf359]

Boy, I could put that on my house instead of solar panels. DIY.

[barnaclebob]

The stock market doesn't seem to think so.

[cdu7]

Boy, I could put that on my house instead of solar panels. DIY.

Haha you can finally have enough power for that particle accelerator you always wanted!

[pangea33]

Lets hope so. They're the 8th ranked holding in my Vanguard Industrials fund.

I'm gambling that industrials will soar whether at peace or at war.

[Idle_Hanz]

The stock market doesn't seem to think so.

How can a civilization changing energy technology compete with websites that host cat pics and harvest personal data?

[Jack FFR1846]

Doing a quick patent search, they've been applying for various related patents for at least 5 years.

[hilink73]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

The project was announced in 2013.
There's still doubt in the scientific community if this will work.

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_ ... on_Reactor

[tractorguy]

IMOP the comic xkcd did is appropriate here. https://xkcd.com/678/ Even after someone does a proof of concept test (which I've not heard of), it will be decades before the engineering and regulatory problems get solved and we have a working generating plant.

[Pajamas]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

That company that cloned a sheep, do you remember its name?

[willthrill81]

Lets hope so. They're the 8th ranked holding in my Vanguard Industrials fund.

I'm gambling that industrials will soar whether at peace or at war.

Ferengi Laws of Acquisition

#34: War is good for business.

#35: Peace is good for business.

[cdu7]

IMOP the comic xkcd did is appropriate here. https://xkcd.com/678/ Even after someone does a proof of concept test (which I've not heard of), it will be decades before the engineering and regulatory problems get solved and we have a working generating plant.

You are probably right, but in this particular case I really hope you are wrong. This would make all our lives immeasurably better if they are able to bring it to market.

[willthrill81]

IMOP the comic xkcd did is appropriate here. https://xkcd.com/678/ Even after someone does a proof of concept test (which I've not heard of), it will be decades before the engineering and regulatory problems get solved and we have a working generating plant.

You are probably right, but in this particular case I really hope you are wrong. This would make all our lives immeasurably better if they are able to bring it to market.

It might make the stock market temporarily plunge if it happened because virtually the entire energy sector as we know it could collapse.

[oldcomputerguy]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

That company that cloned a sheep, do you remember its name?

Wasn't it Dolly? (Being geographically close to Sevierville, TN, that name sticks in my mind for some reason...)

[cdu7]

IMOP the comic xkcd did is appropriate here. https://xkcd.com/678/ Even after someone does a proof of concept test (which I've not heard of), it will be decades before the engineering and regulatory problems get solved and we have a working generating plant.

You are probably right, but in this particular case I really hope you are wrong. This would make all our lives immeasurably better if they are able to bring it to market.

It might make the stock market temporarily plunge if it happened because virtually the entire energy sector as we know it could collapse.

The key word there is temporary, since the economic growth in such an energy rich world would be astronomical. It would be like the early 20th century again, figuring out all the technological applications for oil.

[oldcomputerguy]

Doing a quick patent search, they've been applying for various related patents for at least 5 years.

That means absolutely nothing. Patents get granted all the time for abstract, even frivolous "inventions". The applicant does not have to have a working model, the concept doesn't even have to be scientifically sound.

[willthrill81]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

That company that cloned a sheep, do you remember its name?

Wasn't it Dolly? (Being geographically close to Sevierville, TN, that name sticks in my mind for some reason...)

Dolly was the sheep. The group who did it was actually affiliated with the University of Edinburgh and the company PPL Therapeutics, a privately held firm.

[Pajamas]

Wasn't it Dolly? (Being geographically close to Sevierville, TN, that name sticks in my mind for some reason...)

No, Dolly was the name of the sheep, not the company that was involved.

[willthrill81]

IMOP the comic xkcd did is appropriate here. https://xkcd.com/678/ Even after someone does a proof of concept test (which I've not heard of), it will be decades before the engineering and regulatory problems get solved and we have a working generating plant.

You are probably right, but in this particular case I really hope you are wrong. This would make all our lives immeasurably better if they are able to bring it to market.

It might make the stock market temporarily plunge if it happened because virtually the entire energy sector as we know it could collapse.

The key word there is temporary, since the economic growth in such an energy rich world would be astronomical. It would be like the early 20th century again, figuring out all the technological applications for oil.

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

[oldcomputerguy]

Wasn't it Dolly? (Being geographically close to Sevierville, TN, that name sticks in my mind for some reason...)

No, Dolly was the name of the sheep, not the company that was involved.

Sorry, I misread and thought that this was what the OP was asking about.

[Pajamas]

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

We already have that. It's called the sun.

[willthrill81]

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

We already have that. It's called the sun.

Sun = free.

Solar photovoltaic = expensive.

[Dominic]

Fusion has a ton of upside, but it's not coming out of Lockheed in the next year.

There are many companies putting far, far more resources into fusion than Lockheed is. It is absurdly unlikely that their small R&D team knows something that none of the dedicated fusion companies don't know.

Sprinkle on top that almost every major engineering project runs over budget and behind schedule, and I'm putting my odds of Lockheed Martin cold fusion in 2019 at near zero.

[nisiprius]

Controlled, small-scale, non-explosive fusion has been just around the corner ever since the late 1950s.

Much was expected of cold fusion in the late 1980s. Fairly respectable stuff, Pons and Fleischmann were publishing in Science and other completely "real" peer-reviewed academic journals. Now, if you search for "cold fusion," everything you find is about rapid web application development, nary a word about palladium and tabletop fusion power.

I was wrong about a number of technologies that hung fire for decades and then did come true--"flat TV you can hang on a wall" among them, so, who knows this may be it.

In any case, world-changing technology breakthroughs do not automatically lead to fabulous stock investments. Xerox's development of everything important in modern personal computing (the mouse, the graphic user interface, WYSIWYG editing, Ethernet) is one obvious case in point.

[Bendee]

Even after someone does a proof of concept test (which I've not heard of), it will be decades before the engineering and regulatory problems get solved and we have a working generating plant.

The latest estimates I've seen are 2050, although in fairness, I am basing that estimate solely on data from SimCity 2000.

[ReadyOrNot]

A former colleague got a patent on faster-than-light communication. I expressed some skepticism, saying that there were well-accepted arguments against it based on violation of causality. He replied, "They don't give patents for nothing, my friend." I did not have a good answer for that. I couldn't remember enough physics to argue.

[unclescrooge]

A former colleague got a patent on faster-than-light communication. I expressed some skepticism, saying that there were well-accepted arguments against it based on violation of causality. He replied, "They don't give patents for nothing, my friend." I did not have a good answer for that. I couldn't remember enough physics to argue.

May be they do...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... s-patents/

[Valuethinker]

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

We already have that. It's called the sun.

Sun = free.

Solar photovoltaic = expensive.

Check the experience curves. PV is now down to cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/leve ... ergy-2017/

Utility scale PV is now down around the cost of gas, for Levelized Cost of Energy.

https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/laz ... on-110.pdf

The problem now is storage/ intermittency (the Lazard estimates don't include that, however the electric power system is a system, and if you have a diversity of supply sources, then the system can cope with one of them not producing/ producing at low output).

[BigMoneyNoWhammies]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

Keep in mind that just because they are attempting to patent the underlying technology, this does not mean that said technology is actually at the point where cost efficient production is possible. Once they get a functional, cost effective functional model, they'll probably come back and patent that product as well.

[Swelfie]

A former colleague got a patent on faster-than-light communication. I expressed some skepticism, saying that there were well-accepted arguments against it based on violation of causality. He replied, "They don't give patents for nothing, my friend." I did not have a good answer for that. I couldn't remember enough physics to argue.

Oh, they do. I had a position where I was charged with bolstering a defensive portfolio. A few of us would pour scotch each Friday and "invent stuff." I have patents on a method of getting dressed, blimps... my patent on a cocktail wiener gattling gun was rejected, so there is some sanity.

Strangely enough, some of my patents actually came to fruition.

[SGM]

Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman were my last individual stock purchases and I have taken a little profit. I am not selling anymore individual stocks with LT capital gains and am mostly in index funds. I bought based on my judgement that defense stocks were ridiculously priced a few years ago and would likely go up so I strayed off the BH path a little. I don't know enough about whether they will be able to profit from this patent.

Maybe my luck will continue. I am not selling anything as I am sick of paying for LT capital gains. I am stuck paying taxes on stock fund dividends and that is enough for Uncle Sam.

[alfaspider]

Fusion is the power of the future! And always will be...

Hope I'm wrong

[Slacker]

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

We already have that. It's called the sun.

Sun = free.

Solar photovoltaic = expensive.

Check the experience curves. PV is now down to cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/leve ... ergy-2017/

Utility scale PV is now down around the cost of gas, for Levelized Cost of Energy.

https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/laz ... on-110.pdf

The problem now is storage/ intermittency (the Lazard estimates don't include that, however the electric power system is a system, and if you have a diversity of supply sources, then the system can cope with one of them not producing/ producing at low output).

More to the point of the grid being a "system" -> they can do a fair job of predicting weather with respect to wind and solar output at least 24 hours in advance leaving the ability to configure the system to run smoothly with variable amounts of solar and wind. With enough electric vehicles and owners consenting to Vehicle to Grid, all the storage capacity needed would be available. I'd imagine they'd incentivize V2G with very low electricity rates for charging your vehicle (or maybe access to chargers throughout the city at very low rates).

[willthrill81]

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

We already have that. It's called the sun.

Sun = free.

Solar photovoltaic = expensive.

Check the experience curves. PV is now down to cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/leve ... ergy-2017/

Utility scale PV is now down around the cost of gas, for Levelized Cost of Energy.

https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/laz ... on-110.pdf

The problem now is storage/ intermittency (the Lazard estimates don't include that, however the electric power system is a system, and if you have a diversity of supply sources, then the system can cope with one of them not producing/ producing at low output).

All true, but my point is that the idea of solar PV as being "cheap, virtually unlimited energy" isn't accurate.

[Slacker]

Absolutely. Cheap, virtually unlimited energy is what we really need these days.

We already have that. It's called the sun.

Sun = free.

Solar photovoltaic = expensive.

Check the experience curves. PV is now down to cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/leve ... ergy-2017/

Utility scale PV is now down around the cost of gas, for Levelized Cost of Energy.

https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/laz ... on-110.pdf

The problem now is storage/ intermittency (the Lazard estimates don't include that, however the electric power system is a system, and if you have a diversity of supply sources, then the system can cope with one of them not producing/ producing at low output).

All true, but my point is that the idea of solar PV as being "cheap, virtually unlimited energy" isn't accurate.

No details related to costs and output are available for Lockheed martin's supposed compact fusion reactor.

However, based on the stellerator and tokamak -> Fusion will not be cheap nor virtually unlimited any time soon.
Fusion will be best served for space vehicles where demands other than cheap reign.

For the foreseeable future, it appears that solar will continue to be cheaper than and also continue to displace all other sources of generation.

As far as cheap & virtually unlimited -> It takes only 2-3 years of solar energy production with a panel produced today to return back the total energy required to produce the PV cell in the first place. The following 25-27 years (expected life) is essentially "free energy" from an energy cost input point of view. (not even considering the fact that many of the oldest PV cells are still in operation at greater than 90% output after more than 30 years).

[Epsilon Delta]

A former colleague got a patent on faster-than-light communication. I expressed some skepticism, saying that there were well-accepted arguments against it based on violation of causality. He replied, "They don't give patents for nothing, my friend." I did not have a good answer for that. I couldn't remember enough physics to argue.

May be they do...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... s-patents/

They don't give out patents for nothing -- there is a filing fee.

[Slacker]

A former colleague got a patent on faster-than-light communication. I expressed some skepticism, saying that there were well-accepted arguments against it based on violation of causality. He replied, "They don't give patents for nothing, my friend." I did not have a good answer for that. I couldn't remember enough physics to argue.

May be they do...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... s-patents/

They don't give out patents for nothing -- there is a filing fee.

Well, if they continue to pay their maintenance fees for a silly patent, I guess the USPTO can keep the lights on longer...

[David Jay]

Fusion is not the issue. There are many simple, relatively inexpensive ways to create fusion (Farnsworth Fusor, Polywell, etc.) with some form of Electrostatic containment. If you Google you can find an article about the 14 year old who demonstrated fusion in his basement with a Farnsworth device.

The issue is Beta > 1 (net power out). That is the holy grail.

The LM approach has potential, as does the Polywell. No one has demonstrated beta > 1 yet. Then it gets interesting...

[nisiprius]

...He replied, "They don't give patents for nothing, my friend." I did not have a good answer for that...

A lawyer obtained Patent US6368227B1 for sideways swinging.

A method of swing[ing] on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.

Yes, that's right. Children have been doing this for a long time, but nobody thought to patent it.

...The present inventor has created, through experimentation on a standard swing, a new and improved method of swinging. The swing is of the type described above, in which a seat is suspended between two chains that are hung from a substantially horizontal tree branch. As is apparent to those of ordinary skill in the area of swinging, the chains could be replaced with ropes, cables, or the like, or the tree branch could be replaced with another substantially horizontal support such as a metal bar or pole....

The standard method of swinging on a swing is defined by oscillatory motion of the swing and the user along an axis that is substantially perpendicular to the axis of the tree branch from which the swing is suspended. This “forward and back” movement has been known for generations, and is illustrated in FIG. 1. In contrast to the conventional method of swinging, the present inventor has discovered that much greater satisfaction can be obtained by alternately pulling on one chain to move the swing and the user toward that side, and then pulling on the other chain to move the swing and the user toward that side. This side-to-side oscillatory motion of the swing and the user is thus along an axis that is substantially parallel to the axis of the tree branch from which the swing is suspended, and is illustrated in FIG. 2. This side to side swinging method has the added benefit that it can be continued for long periods of time simply by alternately pulling on one chain and then the other....

Licenses are available from the inventor upon request.

Unlike faster-than-light communication, this invention actually works.

[asset_chaos]

I believe this falls into the category of interesting, if true. Best wishes for their success, but I don't think I'll change my approach to life, much less to investing, just yet.

[MindBogler]

There are many companies working on fusion and eventually someone is going to succeed. I would be surprised if Lockheed was the company to do so, but regardless, when it happens, it will be a boon for all of humanity. Solar energy has a niche but it will never be a viable power source outside of the near solar system or on the scales required for modern society. For that reason, it is a dead end technology, a means to an end, just like fossil fuel today.

[denovo]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

We're always 5 years away from figuring out this type of fusion it seems.

[Whakamole]

They should combine that with blockchain and come out with FusionCoin. What's next after a trillion?

[cdu7]

All jokes aside, I really hope this is the real deal. I went on an online research binge and it looks like there are several other promising fusion projects (the one at MIT for staters). I know this thing has a history of disappointment, but heck once upon a time they were dumping gasoline in rivers as a “useless” byproduct of kerosine production. All our future fantasies these days seem to be the black mirror / social media / digital terror type. Let’s bring back the 1950s fusion powered flying car in every home dream.

[randomguy]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

We're always 5 years away from figuring out this type of fusion it seems.

The joke is we have been 10 years away for the past 30 years. And that was the joke 20 years ago in grad school. I haven't seen anything to suggest we are close(say a prototype that has run for 30 mins that just costs a 100 million) to the point where you can see a clear path to commericialization.

[MnD]

That company that cloned a sheep, do you remember its name?

The Dolly Lambaaa

[David Jay]

https://www.google.com/amp/houston.cbsl ... artin/amp/

Is this real? Is Lockheed Martin really one year away from a truck sized commercial fusion reactor!? If this is real, trillion dollar company doesn’t even begin to describe the upside potential. Anyone else hear about this?

We're always 5 years away from figuring out this type of fusion it seems.

The joke is we have been 10 years away for the past 30 years. And that was the joke 20 years ago in grad school. I haven't seen anything to suggest we are close(say a prototype that has run for 30 mins that just costs a 100 million) to the point where you can see a clear path to commericialization.

This isn’t Tokamak style magnetic containment (like ITER), which is always 20years from commercialization. This is compact, electrostatic containment. Tri-alpha is also in the mix.

[nisiprius]

Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi patented the nuclear reactor in 1934. How many years did it take from patent to real-world application? The nuclear submarine Nautilus sailed in 1955; the first electrical power was generated from the Shippingport reactor in 1957. So, a bit more than twenty years.

[Valuethinker]

Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi patented the nuclear reactor in 1934. How many years did it take from patent to real-world application? The nuclear submarine Nautilus sailed in 1955; the first electrical power was generated from the Shippingport reactor in 1957. So, a bit more than twenty years.

Nothing like a world war to speed up development .

Seriously, in science and especially aerospace and electronics, WW2 probably turned 10-15 years of development into 5. Maybe 20 years. The period of the 1920s & 30s saw major new developments in technology, and deployments, but WW2 gave us things like economic air travel.

So by that logic another World War will give us controlled nuclear fusion .

There is an urgent need for this technology, but huge barriers to adoption. I remain ever hopeful, but not at all clear we will manage it. If it was easy, we would have done it. My perception of nuclear fission is that although the first pile was 1941 (?) there was 40 years of technology and development to get to that point. Had the pile melted down and contaminated Chicago, it might have taken still longer.

[wrongfunds]

That company that cloned a sheep, do you remember its name?

The Dolly Lambaaa

Very Clever!!