Some people quite reasonably object to spending billions of dollars every year on a project with a vanishingly small prospect of success, and of exactly zero practical value if it ever did succeed. There will never be so much as a single kWh of commercial power from these turkeys.

We can all think of numerous projects going unfunded that would have much higher chances of success, and much greater positive impact. But we have a research institution whose only possible recommendation is to continue giving it money, indefinitely.

We see the same dynamic in Alzheimer Syndrome research, where almost all the research money goes to people still fooling with amyloids and tau tangles. The people who control publication, funding, and hiring are people who would have nothing to do if funding for amyloid work stopped. So, they continue funding amyloid work long after it was recognized as a dead end. They have bred up mice that get dementia, and literally everything they do is about the mice.

This is somewhat different from the current crewed spaceflight program in the US, where the absurdly expensive SLS rocket is mandated to be used because senators have constituents in their districts depending on income from building them, useless as they are. In this case NASA would dearly love to abandon SLS, but is required by law to try to launch them. The best they can do is delay launches. Anytime the shoot one, they have to spend $billions building another one.