[m0zg]

We'd have electricity beaming out of our asses by now if we didn't attack Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and instead spent $2T on fusion R&D. And hundreds of thousands civilians would be alive, on top of that.

[dang]

Ok, since you obviously don't intend to use this site as intended after the countless warnings we've given you, and this was such an egregious flamewar tangent, I've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [e-mail] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[baud147258]

hey, just wanted to thank you for the work you're doing here on HN. Thanks again, have a nice day.

[leephillips]

I don’t see why spending more money would have led to anything other than a more expensive failure. There are fundamental physical reasons why controlled fusion is unlikely to be a practical commercial power source. Nature is not impressed by how big your budget is.

[willis936]

As someone who has spent a few years on this problem: what do you think are the the fundamental physical reasons why controlled fusion is unlikely to be a practical commercial power source?

[m0zg]

See Moon landings and the Manhattan project for an example of what unlimited budget and the best brains were able to accomplish in this country between the 40s and 70s. Then it all went way downhill precisely because of this kind of reasoning, utter lack of vision and ambition, and mismanagement. And even if this were an utter and complete failure in the end, it'd have generated priceless knowledge, and hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern civilians would be alive. No matter how you slice it, this would have been a _way_ better way to spend taxpayer money.

That's if it were a failure. If it were a success, we'd end global warming, attach a ginormous rocket booster to the world's economy without dooming the planet, kick the stool from underneath several authoritarian/theocratic regimes, and who knows what else.