I don’t know of any piston that can initiate a fusion reaction, but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to be possible. But I think that such a thing would take teams of top researchers decades to figure out with any sort of reliability.

Regarding the rankine cycle, the diagram would need to be much more detailed. From what I am understanding of your diagram, no it couldn’t work that way. I don’t know a lot about fusion, but from my experience in fission nuclear power plants and combined cycle natural gas plants, I can make some assumptions about what to expect from a rankine cycle plant regardless of fuel source. You would need to ensure that only superheated (dry) steam is ever touching the steam turbine blades, and there is a ton of essential equipment that does exactly that. There are a ton of resources out there to learn more about this, and I’d recommend searching “rankine cycle explained” on YouTube to get started. General overview stuff might touch on things like drums and reheaters and condensers and vacuum pumps, but every little piece like that could use its own deep dive, really. It’s fascinating stuff.

Overall, I think there is already a general understanding of how to make a fusion rankine cycle power plant work, and it’s now just a matter of getting a sustainable reaction and then finding the optimal design and operation to safely and reliably maximize the extraction of that thermal energy to perform work. Should this be more like a BWR or a PWR plant? What do refuel outages look like? What sort of preventive maintenance will be required? What sort of hazards will workers be exposed to, and how can we mitigate that?

I’d love to see commercial fusion reactor plants in my lifetime, but I don’t think I’ll see it. We’re pretty close to seeing fission SMR plants really get going. As much as I hate AI shit, their data centers are power hungry af which has pushed these companies to think about providing their own on-site power to relieve strain from the grid, and these SMRs are kinda perfect for this. If we could see that scaled up or at least batched into array designs, we buy a lot of time to figure out fusion while shifting to a greener energy solution or at least replace the existing and very much aging fission plants we already have. And maybe SMRs can teach us something about fusion along the way.

Stay curious :)

So you mean more like a power plant? Are you thinking like brayton cycle, rankine cycle, or both (combined cycle)?

I don’t know much about fusion, but a big part of how a brayton works at that scale is air. For a jet engine the combustion expands, spinning the turbine or afterwards, and this spins the axially connected compressor section which sucks and squeezes air prior to the combustion chamber. A piston engine would be less continuous, so might be better suited? But in any case, this relies on whether fusion moves a shitload of air like a combustion engine does, (and like I said idk if it does,) and if it does then I guess it could be possible so long as pressures and temperatures stayed within metallurgical limits. I also don’t know how economical it could be, but let’s pretend that this is entirely exploratory and costs don’t matter. I’m not gonna shit on your idea because the truth is that I don’t know and you could be predicting a breakthrough idea 100 or 50 or 20 years ahead. Is fusion something that can quickly explode like in a piston engine in the first place or would it be better to run continuously through a turbine? Is that even possible? Idk.

Regarding the rankine cycle, that’s the assumed application of fusion power. It’s just the newest, best idea for how to boil water to superheated steam to spin turbines and condense back to feedwater. I only even bring this up because you specifically mentioned a steam generator, and that really only makes sense if you’re utilizing the rankine cycle. Combined cycle would be using that piston/turbine engine thing from earlier but recycle the exhaust heat to a HRSG which loops to a steam turbine and condenser and back. But you need a large volume of fairly continuous hot exhaust flow for this, so it’s wholly dependent on that thing I said I don’t know lol.

We need some input from people who know something about fusion. I don’t really know how we would control fusion while throwing a shitload of air into it and getting an even bigger shitload of air out the other end. Without that input, idk how anything other than rankine could be managed.

I know you said first person and I’m gonna mention a third person one that’s fun, so I’m sorry if first person was truly a necessary piece of this for some reason…

Warhammer 40k Space Marines 2 came out pretty recently and it kinda feels like it’s 80-20 Gears Of War and Doom. You can play co-op for both the main campaign and a separate side mission kind of thing, and the side thing is highly replayable because you level shit up as you go and then you can play on higher difficulties to get more loot. But they can spoil the story if you do a bunch of the missions ahead of the story chapters since you’re kinda playing out the B squad adventures concurrently with the A squad missions. There’s also a pvp mode, and a horde mode is coming too.

It’s far from perfect. Load times are very long. The lore is tedious if you don’t care, but it’s honestly so fun that I don’t care that I don’t care about the lore. The devs are very much actively working on the game, bringing frequent updates and fixes, plus just straight up rolling out free additional content when ready. And there is crossplay if one of you is on console and the other is PC or something.

The party is 3 player, but if you just want 1 on 1 time with your friend, you can set your party to private and have a bot play your 3rd and he will heal you when you go down and help with the fight somewhat. This is especially nice while you’re learning the game.

“No. Fuck you. Pay me. Now pay me more. Now enjoy ads. Pay me again. We’re now introducing fees associated with the privilege of paying me. So pay that while paying me.”

– approximately everything

What’s the best alternative software to gear up to transition to? I’m pretty pissed because they finally got decent integration for PS5. I was playing Space Marines with a couple friends, one of whom is playing on PC, so we’ve been able to crossplay with voice chat.

Usually 20-25% unless the service is inexcusably bad (like 1-5% of the time, and even then I’ll tip like 15%). I’ll typically approximate 20% and round up to the nearest dollar, then maybe add a dollar or two. I remember 15% being standard with it being acceptable to go down to 10 or up to 20; 18% was sorta my standard at the time, and I’d only go as low as 15%. I’ve only ever asked to speak to a manager three times that I can remember, and both times were due to what the kitchen sent out to me. I still tipped fully to the server since it wasn’t their fault. I was a chef for years, so I know how stressful it gets back there, but there’s still no excuse for the dishes I’ve sent back. There’s usually an offer to cook something else, but if I’m sending food back it’s because I don’t trust the kitchen to send out food that won’t give me food poisoning.

Tipped minimum wage here (and therefore all tipped wage) is $2.17/hour. I believe that these businesses should be forced to pay proper wages, but stiffing your server doesn’t achieve that. These people are on their feet running around for hours and they usually don’t have enough support or leadership to do their job as well as they’d like to, and then they’re too exhausted and broke to study or work to break into another industry. We’re gonna have a lot of 30-50 year old servers living paycheck to paycheck until their knees and back give out. I’m down with tipping an extra couple bucks so they can get some Dr Scholl’s.

Same. I had even paid for the paid tier of my 3rd party app because it was such a good value to me that I wanted the devs to have some of my money. Thanks to that app, I was on the site more and pretty much never via computer anymore.

I think it was for the best though. Quality over quantity here. I find it to be far less toxic on Lemmy overall. It’s like how people tend to be nicer in a small town because you know you’re gonna run into these people over and over again, but the big city you came from had more variety in stuff to check out. Definitely a trade-off, but I think it’s worth it to have this much more pleasant space that isn’t so packed with content as to be addictive. Good vibes.