Why ex-SpaceX ‘Mother of Dragons’ Darby Dunn moved to building fusion

From March 2009 to December 2018, derby dun played several engineering and production roles in space x.

“In one role in particular, my unofficial title was ‘Mother of Dragons,'” Dunne told CNBC in an interview in Devens, Massachusetts. “In that role, I was leading the construction of a new manufacturing facility. crew dragon vehicle. “

Dunn said that while she oversaw production of the Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX began ramping up production, building its first spacecraft, and regularly sending cargo to the International Space Station on its spacecraft. It says.

Building rockets is such a wonderful thing.However, in January 2019, Dan Commonwealth Fusion System, A startup that is trying to commercialize nuclear fusion as an energy source. Nuclear fusion is how the sun and stars produce energy. If it were available on Earth, it would provide virtually unlimited clean energy.

But for now, large-scale fusion remains the realm of science fiction.

Dunn said he made the switch from building rockets to working on fusion energy because he wanted to see the impact of his efforts in his lifetime.

“I strongly believe that SpaceX will make life multiplanetary,” Dunn, 37, told CNBC at the end of May.

But Dan has lived in California, home of SpaceX, for most of his life, and has seen the effects of climate change up close, with wildfires and landslides caused by extreme rains.

“For me, it boils down to wanting to use my energy to cleanse the earth instead of getting off it, so that was the big change for me coming to CFS,” Dunn said. told CNBC.

Joining Commonwealth Fusion Systems in its early stages as the 10th employee has allowed her to see another stage in the company’s growth process.

“We are a five-year-old company with 500 employees,” Dunn told CNBC. “I was in my sixth year at SpaceX, which has about 500 employees.

The main difference between the two jobs is the maturity of their respective industries.

“The aerospace industry has been around for a long time, so the building of rocket engines, the mechanics of it, is very similar, and the structure itself, or the physics of how it works, is all very well studied. It’s been done and very well understood,” Dunn told CNBC.

fusion machine It has been studied in academic settings and laboratories since the early 1950s, but the industry as a whole is just in the early stages of proving that this science can be applied to commercial applications. For Dan, being a part of that excitement was a big draw.

Of course, there are plenty of skeptics who say the industry is like Don Quixote tilting his windmill. But Dunn says her tenure at SpaceX prepared her to face her skeptics.

“When Elon publicly said he was going to launch a rocket out of space and land it, everyone said, ‘That’s impossible! It’s impossible!'” said Dunn, SpaceX CEO Elon He referred to Mr. Musk. SpaceX’s response is that the laws of physics say it’s possible, so they were going to prove it, Dunn told CNBC.

“It took a lot of trying, a lot of learning, a lot of software iteration, a lot of failure overboard. And we did it. And we did it again. And we We did it again, and we did it again,” she said.

“Now we’re at the point where the aerospace industry is saying, ‘Why aren’t other companies renting rockets from space?'” People’s perspective has completely changed. At first I was told ‘that’s not possible’ but then I said ‘ok, it’s possible’. And now I’m saying, ‘Then why aren’t others participating?’ “

Dunn wants to be part of this transition of the fusion industry in the Commonwealth.

Dan is the Vice President of Operations responsible for Manufacturing, Safety, Quality and Facilities. She helps the Commonwealth move from R&D scale processes to manufacturing and full-scale production.

The company is independent of Massachusetts Institute of Technology research, and the company’s goal is to build 10,000 fusion power plants worldwide by 2050, Dunn told CNBC.

But first, the Federation must prove that it can produce more energy than is needed to start a reaction in a fusion reactor, a key threshold for the fusion industry called “ignition.” To that end, the company is currently building his SPARC tokamak, a device that will help contain and control fusion reactions. The company plans to have it operational in 2025 and demonstrate net energy shortly thereafter.

To build SPARC, the Federation will need to create a large number of magnets using high-temperature superconducting tape.

“The cool thing about this building is that the concept for this building started with a scribble I wrote on a whiteboard three years ago,” Dunn told CNBC. “Seeing the steel beams rise, the walls rise, and the concrete being poured, the whole vision becomes a reality, and it’s very exciting.”

To fund construction, the Commonwealth has raised more than $2 billion from investors including: bill gates, Google, Khosla Ventures and low carbon capital.

Even as the Commonwealth seeks to find a way to make one magnet, Dunn says he is leading a team to develop a manufacturing process that could eventually be extended to a process like an automobile assembly line. she told CNBC.

Acting quickly is a top priority for Dan and the rest of the team. After building a demonstration fusion machine, SPARC, the company is looking to build a larger version of his called ARC. We plan to supply power to the grid. The goal is to bring ARC online in the 2030s.

“The biggest thing I think about a lot is time, how fast can you run,” Dunn told CNBC. “The sooner the magnet is built, the sooner the SPARC is built, the sooner it can be powered up, the sooner it can introduce net energy, and the sooner the first he can reach the ARC. I think that’s probably the factor.” That’s what I think the most. “

Speed ​​is important because critics argue that it will take too long for fusion to function as an energy source and contribute meaningfully to the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

top climate scientist The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states: A 45% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 compared to 2010 levels for a 1.5°C warming overshoot above pre-industrial levels would require a 45% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, It is expected to reach net zero by 2050.

“I asked myself, ‘Why are we doing fusion instead of what’s going to be deployed next year?'” she told CNBC. “For me, it comes down to the fact that nuclear fusion is the most energy-dense reaction in the solar system.”

But she doesn’t think fusion should be the only solution.

“I am a big believer in solar and wind and many other renewable energies. We absolutely need them. We need to deploy them now. told CNBC. “But I don’t think they are enough to get us into 2050 and beyond.”

Electric vehicles, heat pumps, green steel and green cement all rely on access to large amounts of clean electricity. Dunn is focused on building the energy sources the world needs for decades and centuries to come.

But if the Federation were to offer that solution, Dan would first have to manufacture a large number of very strong magnets.

“My own personal opinion is that I’m going to keep going, keep building, and in the back stairwell there’s a poster that says ‘Keep calm and focus’. It’s on it,” Dunn told CNBC. “Regardless of what the outside world says, we are working towards our mission to get net energy from fusion every day, and we look forward to proving it to the world in the next few years.” I have.”