> What about the ten thousandth one? Will "a nuclear fusion plant" become something that models couldn't possibly get wrong?

For what it's worth, ten thousand terawatt fusion plants probably approaches the level at which the sheer intensity of energy production would cause significant disruption to the climate (it's roughly 5% of the Earth's entire solar input). Every energy source becomes dirty past a certain point. It would be wiser to learn how to build a utopia within a limited energy budget than find a way to produce enough of it to cook the damn planet, but who am I kidding, we're going to build a million of these things.

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itishappy 5 hours ago | parent [-]

This assumes we're still building them on Earth.

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stouset 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, it doesn’t. It assumes we’re using it here. If we beam the power to Earth from space, it’s the same thing.

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RupertEisenhart 4 hours ago | parent [-]

We use it in space too, we just send food and manufactured products down the elevator.

You aren't really trying in good faith to think this through are you? This idea is over half a century old. Not getting it by now is willful.

	▲	j16sdiz 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The more I think about space elevator, the less I believe in it. The material alone is in a quantity beyond what we can reasonably manufacture. and the material needs to be perfect. All design we have today have cascade failure mode -- any material failure translates to a total catastrophic failure. and geostationary does not really meant Geostationary. There are lots of jiggling everywhere. It wear down over time. and let's hope nothing resonance and we need some maintenance / decommission plan. How can we decommission this when it fail or need upgrade?

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breuleux 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why would we have stopped?