David Kirtley

Wow, if I had massive amounts of power in a small place that is low cost, this is what it could do.

But I'm excited by what it can unlock that even we can think about now, but even what we can't think about.

or we don't know yet.

I mean, that's, honestly, in a lot of ways, that's how I got into fusion, is thinking about that intersection of energy

And space travel.

And when you are in the solar system around Earth's orbit, collecting the sun's energy makes a lot of sense.

And it's there.

It's free.

When you're in space, you get a lot more of it because the atmosphere is not blocking it.

And so that's why spacecraft run on solar panels.

But if you want to go further out, the sun's irradiance falls off as R squared, radius squared.

And it's a long way out there.

It doesn't take very long before there is not a lot of energy anywhere from the sun.

And so you have to bring it with you.

And in space, mass is expensive.

Mass is hard.

That's the rocket equation.

And so being able to bring high energy density fuel is really exciting.

And that's what fusion enables.

But here's one of the challenges.