Lockheed Martin Fusion Patent Available

Working quietly Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor (CFR). The patent, about part of the confinement system, or embodiment, is dated Feb. 15, 2018. In the process from the famed defense contractor it had filed a provisional claim on April 3, 2013 and a formal application was filed nearly a year later. Stephen Trimble, chief of Flightglobal’s Americas Bureau, subsequently spotted it and Tweeted about its basic details breaking out the news.

Lockheed Martin hag let it be known they had an effort underway back in 2014 with an announcement they were working on a project at the famed “Skunk Works” division. Back then Dr. Thomas McGuire, head of the Skunk Works Compact Fusion Project, said the goal was to have a working reactor in five years and production worthy design within 10.

McGuire was quoted back in 2014 in an interview published by Aviation Week having explained, “I studied this in graduate school [at MIT] where, under a NASA study, I was charged with how we could get to Mars quickly. I started looking at all the ideas that had been published. I basically took those ideas and melded them into something new by taking the problems in one and trying to replace them with the benefits of others.”

Make of this what you will. Note that Lockheed Martin hasn’t backed off and the company’s links are hot.

For more informative depth, The/Drive web page does a nice job on background.