Hacker News Reader

Comment by axg11 | Hacker News Reader

What is stopping one of the major western governments from printing $50B of their own currency and investing it all in an intensive fusion programme?

There doesn’t seem to be much to lose (these economies are already unreasonably inflated) but so much to gain from viable fusion.

View on HN

In the current economy the funding of these types of projects is usually not the bottleneck. It's finding the people and achieving the actual scientific / engineering breakthroughs. The marginal return on more money is pretty insignificant for that. If you just threw a ton of money at it much of it would probably be splurged or straight away misappropriated. Then you'll get a whole lot of terrible press, undermining other scientific funding and putting the politicians reelection at risk.

I don't believe that is true. This famous chart shows funding levels versus requested since the 1970s:

https://images.app.goo.gl/58YdLFt7R9uY8dyR6

The much maligned prediction that fusion is 30 years away was always anticipating stronger financial support.

Thanks for that chart. Maybe famous, but first time I've seen it. It's a bit pathetic. And explains a lot about progress.

As others have pointed out, ITER has this kind of funding, and it is not the only nuclear fusion research program. It is unclear whether more money will accelerate.

As for green R&D in general, the EU is massively investing in hydrogen research, as something that can be made with excess variable solar and wind power, and be used as a green alternative to natural gas in many situations.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariannelehnis/2021/12/31/the-e...

Well, they do:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2018041...

The latest ITER budget update puts the cost at $65 billion dollar.

And, yes, there's 1 million, 10 million, 100 million and so on grants for smaller scale efforts too, JET being one example.

ITER is doing that, no? Large scale test of fusion energy output.

Problem with ITER is it's not 1 country, it's lots, and they all want their piece of the pie instead of doing it efficiently

A $50b program from 1 country would likely have the same problem (as indeed would a large private program). Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient.

> Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient.

SpaceX would beg to disagree here. The reason why they are so cheap, agile and sustainable (=reusable rockets) is precisely because SpaceX got a load of money without the "pork" requirements that were commonplace with ULA & friends. That enabled SpaceX to embrace vertical, on-site integration and go for what was technically the best option instead of what was required by some buffoons in Congress.

Although a point may be made that a "hand out cash" program needs a competent, strong and undisputed leader at the top. There's a lot of issues with Elon Musk, but it is undeniable that he is a very effective and inspiring leader.

SpaceX is so much more than just the capital. It's the capital plus the unwavering vision of the leadership. The latter is much harder to find.

ITER vs SpaceX is a really poor comparison.

ITER is a high risk foray into still-experimental technology with no hope of direct return on investment (it can not function as a commercial power plant). It had to be built at this scale because they had reached the limits of smaller-scale prototypes (tho I think there was not unanimity about this). Pooling resources makes sense here.

SpaceX is a more efficient take on technologies and processes that have been battle tested over many decades. This gives them a clear path to profitability, with some risk, but low enough to get investors on board, which ITER would have no hope of doing. Granted they are innovating, but incrementally, not from scratch. Very different.

> Pooling resources makes sense here.

Yes, but still - instead of all the components needed being manufactured on or near site, they are shipped from across the world... so parts end up damaged [1], not made according to spec or the spec having errors introduced somewhere among dozens of companies and institutions. With sometimes weeks or months of shipping round-trip times, that is causing a fucking lot of delays. Not to mention that shipping all the stuff around itself is also causing issues given the current COVID-caused shipping delays.

The problem is that ITER, ULA, EADS, Airbus, the ISS and a bunch of other international cooperative projects all are considered by politicians primarily as a way to distribute pork, secondarily as a way to show off on the international stage and only then as a way to actually advance scientific knowledge.

[1]: https://news.newenergytimes.net/2021/09/26/component-issues-...

Airbus is an inefficient port project? They build almosy half the world's aircraft.

Boeing has 1 boss and what are they better at, defrauding regulators to sell dangerous aircraft? And all other private manufacturers combined are a rounding error?

They could be a lot more efficient if they were not forced to ship parts and airframes around Europe multiple times.

SpaceX didn't get anything near $50B in investment though. And certainly not committed all at once.

It helps that SpaceX is just iterating on 1960s technology.

Questions about how effective this would be aside. What is there to really lose? If we inflate the economy via current means or inflate the economy via employing scientists and engineers ineffectively, it’s inflation nonetheless.

If so then it's impossible to advance, which would be annoying.

What's needed is people who know the subject matter and are experts at running large companies.

SpaceX turned rockets into a production line, experimented, blew a load up, and then fixed the problems with landing. But that's productising last year's thing, not inventing a new possibly impossible thing. Interesting to see how Starship goes.

Need a leader to stay: you do x, you do y, not a committee where every country gets to make one of the 12 magnets because they're a primary school and everything has to be "fair"

Does one country have all the smart people needed to go it alone?

(This is not a further joke about Brexit I pinky promise)

If you're willing to print enough cash to pay for the smart people to come to you, you can probably import them. It seems to be more the exception than the rule that people dislike a country so much that no amount of money could get them to go there to do research on the topic they're interested in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com