[musingsole]

But why is that? Have they not completed the science? Or is scaling up the controllable elements of a lab environment for fullscale production really so difficult?

I've seen the inside of some magical labs...Their actual setup when you stared real close and knew enough of how they were doing things was anything but.

[tuatoru]

> Or is scaling up the controllable elements of a lab environment for fullscale production really so difficult?

It's even more difficult than that. :-)

Ideas have negative value; lab prototypes also have negative value; pilot plants are worth a small fraction of what they cost - scrap value.

You get value from full scale production, and every bit of that value is paid for in the engineering required to get to full scale.

[iseanstevens]

I don’t think functional prototypes have negative value…

[tuatoru]

The cost of the great number of prototypes that fail to scale far exceeds the value of the few that do go on to be workable technologies.