This is like saying thread count is always the bottle neck in computation. More money allows more parallelism as you can pay for more people and more equipment for more research. As in computing, there are diminishing marginal returns and surely a version of Amdahl's Law for human endeavors.

> thread count is always the bottle neck in computation

The softer the bed linen, the more rested the computer scientists will be and the more likely they are to come up with novel solutions that lead to faster computing.

You might be right — we threw enough money and put humans on the Moon. The Manhattan Project was well funded and produced results as well.

I believe the Manhattan project (where we basically built an entire new city, and entire new manufacturing process from scratch: mining operations, refineries, enrichment, milling, etc.) cost less in constant dollars than the stealth fighter.

They also had a strong ideological element too.

The talent + purpose (which drew the talent) was what defined Manhattan. The money came easy when all of the greatest minds in the country were pointing a giant flashing light in one obvious direction.

This is big news but fusion will largely be a product of the people it attracts. The people can do the job attracting money and other talent if it's justified.

I've seen the Canadian gov try to throw money at trying to build a local tech scene and it all went to hucksters, old school finance suits with megacorp resumes, and administrators. While all the tech talent just kept going to SF where the capital was going into high risk ventures... not expensive buildings, events, 'entrepreneur/small business programs', and propping up old school D-round investors. Money is easily wasted even when the pursuit sounds noble and valuable on the surface.

The laws of physics also a limiting factor

I would have to agree. The "in general" though is carrying an enormous amount of weight in that statement.

I think what other commentors may be getting at is that in many cases the simple analogy of asking how 9 women can have a baby in 1 month is instructive here. You could throw trillions at that problem, a need to have a baby in 1 month. Sometimes there are hard limits that money has a hard time addressing.

A case could be made that with enough money put towards advanced technology, like gene therapy to force a fetus to maturity in 1 month vs 9, it could be done with horrendous side effects.

So to your point money does solve all problems, but I think diminishing returns is putting it very lightly.