Right now things are bad in this world and will get worse but the future is filled with abundance and new levels of comforts not seen in human history.
I'm all for new tech but we should at least try to project the cost to build a working fusion power plant. Fusion not only has to work, it has to be at least somewhat cost-competitive with other forms of energy generation.
Perhaps silly, but I wonder how this comparison would shape up if we were capable of calculating reasonably-accurate long-term figures about effects of pollution, mining for resources, construction costs, etc. in the process of producing each form of energy. I'm really curious what that'd look like.
Physicist having fun with other people's money?! On top of the fact that this demo reactor costs a fraction of the development cost of the F-35.
Eric Weinstein: "We can't afford to pay these people. We can't afford to give them an accelerator just to play with in case they find something at the next energy level, these people created our economy. They gave us the rad lab and radar, they gave us two atomic devices to end World War Two that created the semiconductor and the transistor to power our economy through Moore's Law as a positive externality of particle accelerators that created the World Wide Web.
And we have the insolence to say, why should we fund you with our taxpayer dollars? Now, the question is, are you enjoying your physics dollars?"
So, how are you having fun with your physics dollars?
I would rather the other ones get it, because maybe something of value might come from that.
That said, plasma fluid dynamics physicists are chronically underfunded, and they can often use money from fusion projects for their experiments. I never begrudge money to plasma fluid dynamics physicists. But we shouldn't expect to get useful fusion out as a result.
In one sentence you suggest funding one group without the expectation anything will come from it. And then the next you say we shouldn't fund one group because there is no expectation anything will come from it.
You are just anti-fusion.
Kinetic neutrons are almost the worst energy delivery vehicle conceivable, even worse than gamma rays. (Only neutrinos would be worse.) Visible photons are good.