David Kirtley

If you make electricity from fusion using a steam cycle,

You now need to have somewhere, you need something cool.

So you get hot water, you have to be able to cool it.

And in space, there's nothing to cool.

There's no working fluid to cool off of.

And so actually a lot of the steam-based systems that infusion don't make sense for space.

And so that's where some of this direct energy, this energy efficiency matters.

It actually comes to some of the origin story of the team that founded Helion.

Before spinning off Helion to focus only on fusion, we worked on a mix of things.

Advanced materials, rocket propulsion, fusion.

Fusion rockets, fusion materials, all of those things.

And one thing that people in the aerospace field know, especially if you're in deep space, you can't waste anything.

that every watt of electricity you make, you better use because it was expensive to get it or the solar panel.

Every ounce of, every joule of heat, every watt of heat you make, you have to reject with a radiator and it's super expensive and heavy.

And so you build in space as efficient as possible.

You recirculate your water and your air and all of those things, you're efficient.

And it's something we brought into thinking about fusion.

Energy efficiency is that you want to, if my goal is to make the product, what's the product?

The product is electricity.

Don't waste any of it.