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Re:Lockheed's Skunk Works Building Bigger Fusion Reactor by pfdietz on Monday July 22, 2019 @05:46PM (#20502611)
A showstopper is a showstopper. Yes, physics can rule things out. But so can economics. There is no reason to give the first priority over the second, if the second is sufficiently bad. And I will claim those practical considerations render fusion very dubious. And yes, they change over time: they have gotten WORSE for fusion. It used to be that fusion was competing with fission to be that post-fossil energy source. That was, perhaps, not too unreasonable, especially if the fission had to be with breeding. But now, it competes with dramatically cheaper renewables.
Re:Lockheed's Skunk Works Building Bigger Fusion Reactor by Robotbeat on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:25PM (#20519278)
Yes there is because again, physics does not change. Physics showstopper rules out all others.
Re:Lockheed's Skunk Works Building Bigger Fusion Reactor by pfdietz on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:55PM (#20519592)
To the end user, it doesn't matter if physics or economics caused a technology to be useless. It's still useless. And it doesn't matter to the financier either. In either case, any investment he made is lost.

Your attitude is a reflection of a culture that considers physics to somehow be a deeper subject than engineering, facing more fundamental and important problems. The details are "just engineering", somehow not important or relevant.