[skelpmargyar]

It's better to focus on standardised production lines for small fission reactors currently if your goal is to produce energy for the power grid right now, but that's not what cutting-edge research or science is about. Whoever launched the first firework probably didn't see how people could walk on the moon either.

Science is rarely a linear path. It's also rarely "I have this problem so I solved it this way." That's more engineering than science. It's really disappointing to me to see people, for lack of a better term, just shit on this accomplishment on HN when it's some seriously amazing stuff. It seems like a lot of people here don't understand science, they only understand engineering and then think about engineering mostly from a dull business and product oriented perspective.

[oblio]

Nuclear fusion is stuck into an "early MASER/LASER phase".

Laser was cool, but nobody knew what to do with it. These days we're at the stage where we're thinking: what can't we do with it??? But for about 3 decades (before CDs, basically) laser was a pop science laughing stock, more or less.

And fusion is much harder plus has been talked about and hyped for at least as long.

[graycat]

> laser was a pop science laughing stock, more or less.

Yup:

In college English classes I took, they wanted the students to write term papers. Ah, sure, they expected some review of some case of belles lettres, maybe Medieval French romantic poetry!!!!

Instead, in one case, I picked the transistor and another, the laser.

For the laser, I had no idea of the applications. For the transistor, all I knew was, what it seemed was all Bell Labs had in mind -- replace their usage of vacuum tubes, that is, analog amplifiers and not digital, Nyquist sampling, etc., even though Shannon was at Bell Labs, etc.

The idea of a few billion transistors on a sheet of silicon about the size of a large postage stamp, 16 cores, 64 bit addressing, 4.0 GHz clock, etc. -- beyond all expectation or belief. The graphics processors -- still less belief! Lasers sending trillions of bits per second per hair-thin glass fiber -- not even ready for science fiction!

No doubt I picked the transistor and the laser out of media hype. So at least some people in the media expected something from those two. Here the media was not wrong, and in the long term the hype was way below the reality.

[HPsquared]

Fusion is different: we know what we want it to do, but it's proving very difficult. It's a problem in search of a solution, unlike lasers which were (initially) a solution in search of a problem.

[oblio]

Yes, you're right, I guess I blanked out while writing the original comment.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's because this breakthrough is being sold - from a dull business and product oriented perspective - as an incredible etc etc which makes a new kind of product more likely.

No one is shitting on the research itself. But the PR around this story has carpet bombed sci-comm as a potential practical energy source. Not as basic research.

So it's perfectly reasonable to ask if there's a there from a commercial POV. And to note out that currently there really isn't.

If they really had announced a viable commercial product everyone here would be cheering.

[skelpmargyar]

I don't see one part of the article that sold this from a dull business and product oriented perspective or any unreasonable sci-fi nonsense. They only explained some of some people's future goals of fusion. Not necessarily even the goals of this program. You can't ask about a commercial POV of something that likely isn't even close to existing. Think past the damn business perspective! It's science! This is Hacker News not Shark Tank! It's like asking what is the commercial POV of lake houses on Titan. It's just ridiculous. One step at a time.

The comment I replied to stated "Better to focus on standardised production lines for small fission reactors." To you, is that not shitting on the research? It implies the only purpose for this research is for power generation. And that it is clearly inferior to small fission reactors for that purpose, when the technology doesn't even exist yet. It just diminishes the accomplishment as a whole. It's so short sighted from a group of people who's jobs only came to existence <100 years ago.

[nayroclade]

Except it isn't the HN readership who choose to constantly frame these stories in terms of engineering. From the article:

"These and other scientific, technological and engineering hurdles will need to be overcome before fusion will produce electricity for your home. Work will also need to be done to bring the cost of a fusion power plant well down from the US$3.5 billion of the National Ignition Facility. These steps will require significant investment from both the federal government and private industry."

If fusion research scientists continue to insist that their research has any viable path to use in commercial power generation, and to demand large amounts on funding on that basis, then they should expect to be critiqued on that same basis.

[skelpmargyar]

What that that paragraph means is that things that do not exist will cost money to bring into existence. A significant amount. It's not a critique. This is not new. This is not a fusion problem. There is an initial cost and development to any new technology. This technology is particularly difficult, however. It's also sustainable real renewable energy. You have to worry about actually being able to invent something before you can worry about saving money on that thing. Look up how much the Manhattan Project cost! This shit is not software engineering; It's really really fucking complicated it will cost a load of money.

We don't really know what path fusion research will lead to. It's science. We don't know what we could find out tomorrow that could apply this research. But even the promises of commercial power generation alone should be enough to keep funding the project whether it will happen in 50 years or 100 years. It's not like they aren't making progress. You can't rush research and also under fund them.

[survirtual]

The Manhattan Project cost $2 billion, equivalent to $23 billion in today’s dollars — for the entire project.

~$2 trillion was used to bailout big businesses. If money was properly accounted for, $2 trillion could fund approximately 87 Manhattan Projects simultaneously in today’s dollars.