Nuclear fusion, explained for beginners

Simone: There's an easy way to remember which is fusion vs. fission.

When you weld 2 pieces of metal together, you "fuse" them into 1.

That's where Fusion gets its name. It "fuses" 2 atoms into 1.

This was a great video, and I can't wait to see the fusor working, I'm rather jealous:)

Just a couple more quick additions.

I think the biggest problem we see with people thinking that "fusion is always 30 years away", is that it's presented as a binary. It's either here now, or it's not. What gets lost is the enormous amount of progress that has been made. In your aviation analogy, we are far beyond the point of strapping some leather/canvas to your arms and jumping off of a cliff. We're probably more in the Wright Brothers era: It can be done, in small bursts. It's not practical yet, but as long as we can keep progressing, it will be quite soon.

Consider ITER: We are right now building a fusion reactor that will at its core produce around 10 times as much energy as is put in. It's still a research reactor, so it has other inefficiencies and problems, but it's focused on the core tech. Testing out combining a bunch of theories, advances, etc. A critical theory it is expanding on is simply that "Tokamak" style fusion reactors get more and more efficient the larger they are. So far this is the case, but will it continue? Just a few of the other key things it is testing are production of Tritium and how different materials handle the harsh environment inside the reactor.

My final parting thought on Fusion is rather simple: We should be putting a large effort into making it a reality, because it is the ONLY future power option we have. Solar, wind, coal, natural gas, wave, etc. are all on a different scale, and are already in the ballpark of their maximum potential. If we are to have any hope for a greater future, including but not limited to real space travel, we HAVE to make fusion work. The only other 2 comparable power technologies are Fission ( which unfortunately people refuse to use, and is a whole extra discussion ), and Anti-Matter ( which is more of a battery, since we have no natural source of it. )