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Lockheed Martin has quietly obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor, or CFR. If this project has been progressing on schedule, the company could debut a prototype system that size of shipping container, but capable of powering a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or 80,000 homes, sometime in the next year or so.
The patent, for a portion of the confinement system, or embodiment, is dated Feb. 15, 2018. The Maryland-headquartered defense contractor had filed a provisional claim on April 3, 2013 and a formal application nearly a year later. Our good friend Stephen Trimble, chief of Flightglobal's Americas Bureau, subsequently spotted it and Tweeted out its basic details.
In 2014, the company also made a splash by announcing they were working on the device at all and that it was the responsibility of its Skunk Works advanced projects office in Palmdale, California. At the time, Dr. Thomas McGuire, head of the Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Project, said the goal was to have a working reactor in five years and production worthy design within 10.
[...] Considering the five year timeline Dr. McGuire put out in 2014 for achieving a workable prototype, maybe we’re due for another big announcement from Lockheed Martin in the near future.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @10:02AM (1 child)
Because if it works, some time traveller from the future will beat you by travelling into the past and filing the patent before you can. That's the reason time machines will never be sold: It simply doesn't make economic sense.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:01PM
Yes and it'll start a race with the competing time travelers jumping back into the past by ever bigger increments to try to preempt all the others and be the first to file the patent. First, Venice in 1474 will (have) become drastically overpopulated by millions of such travelers all queuing up at the Senate to file under the newly established Venetian Patent Statute. After a while, the danger of subsequent travelers materializing partially or fully inside the bodies of those that had already arrived will have become exceedingly perilous. Consequently next there will have been ever increasingly outlandish attempts to establish a first patent office earlier and earlier in history, culminating in quadrillions of cloned time travelers arriving infinitesimally close to the singularity of the Big Bang to each put up their own patent offices. In fact it's highly likely that such an event could actually have caused the Big Bang itself.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?