Space, our future, and other issues of liberty

New Atlas recently discussed a Brit company (Sunbird) that plans to deploy a fusion engine for spacecraft within one to two years.

Now, we’ve heard this all before. Nowadays from New Atlas, but for a century we’ve seen this kind of over-optimism from the likes of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and more government publications and comic books than we can count. It will be pie in the sky – next year, next decade, but soon, soon, soon! Pie in the sky by and by.

We hear this almost monthly about many things to do with producing energy – especially electricity. From the next great battery that is going to replace lithium-ion, lead-acid, and all the others from AAA up to massive solar-wind storage batteries with tens of thousands of Amp-hours.

The next great fuel: for example, how “green” or “white” hydrogen is now being touted by all sorts of people as being the next best thing to replace gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and natural gas. Oh, and of course, coal.

One company after another touts their successes, the news writers lap it up (and regurgitate it to us), and… crickets. Nary a word. Nada.

And we have (as even New Atlas admits) been hearing this about hydrogen fusion and production of electricity for decades. Year after year, it is just a few years away.

And billions are spent (of stolen taxpayer money, in large part) to pursue this dream. Or pipe-dream. Just as we hear about a closely-related “magic bullet” for electrical power production: the modular, self-contained “fission reactor generator” in a milvan or shipping container.

Company after company, lab after lab, tells us that “next year” they’ll have an assembly line producing these things. We are told excited details (promises): safely sealed, “trade ’em out like a battery” units to be placed in a concrete and steel-lined hole and connected to the nearest substation to power a thousand or ten thousand houses and businesses. Oh my goodness, nickel-a-kilowatt-hour of electricity! But… tomorrow. Always tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Back to Sunbird.

Yes, the dream of a “torch ship” (a term which either Heinlein or Leinster coined back in the 1940s or so) that can make it to Mars in three months – or three weeks or three days or thirty hours – and to Pluto in four years or Alpha Centauri in four years – is a great one. Sunbird does not propose that such engines be used to launch from the surface into orbit. Instead, they propose a tug or carrier up in orbit, and conventional surface-to-orbit bringing the cargo (“payload”) to the tug. And assuming that environmental protection requirements would be enforced on Mars, the same thing would happen on the other end. What could go wrong? Five dollar a pound freight charges to the moon!

Which brings us to the main point of today’s commentary.

Why do these things never happen? We think the answer is two-fold: public fear of anything different and politics. Which leads to government run by politicians that throws up barriers (in the form of regulations and delays). Why? To get votes and money, preying on the fearful people who do not understand and have been conditioned to assume the worst.

Many readers may recall a number of hilarious spoofs over the years on different subjects. What if Isabella and Ferdinand had set up NASA to oversee Columbus’ explorations? What if Noah had been in the jurisdiction of a 21st century county planning and development commission? What if Samuel Colt had to have an Environmental Impact Statement approved by a government agency before he could manufacture and sell six-shooters? Especially if there were “environmental justice” requirements?

Supposedly, reopening a uranium mining and processing operation on federal land in Utah has been approved by the Trump administration in just 15 days. We suspect that there are tens if not hundreds of other approvals, permits, and other things needed that will still take months or years to actually produce a single pound of U235. Assuming the courts don’t get involved – and you know the lawsuits are being filed as we write this.

Do we exaggerate when we state that while we aren’t supposed to treat the Constitution as a suicide pact, the spider’s web of environmental and other regulations created by politicians and fear is more and more to be viewed as economic euthanasia?

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Source: https://freedombunker.com/2025/06/12/space-our-future-and-other-issues-of-liberty/