Reply To: Set up a holding company

[Brian H]

The history of fusion research link you gave a while ago indicated that the reason the Tokamak wound up victorious was that theory and projections indicated that all that was necessary to attain unity was size: get the donut big enough. No big or significant breakthroughs necessary. So that set up the huge money vacuum.

In practice, of course, the consequence is that the plasma instabilities are turning out to be very chaotic and hard to corral, indeed, so the size and expenditures required are still increasing without known limit. With all the ‘sunk costs’ and career commitments on the line, everything else is being drained and sidelined.

IMO, the only way this cycle is going to be broken is by demonstrated success of some other approach; my money, if I had any, is on FF, of course!

Unity and then some engineering progress would/will make the issue moot. And at that point gubmint money would be unnecessary and (again IMO) very unwise to accept.