If we have fusion in 30 years instead of 60 years, we have colonization of the solar system happening in our lifetimes. We'd have the economic rationale for removing all military engagement in the middle east. We have 30*380 billion on petro cost savings here in the U.S: http://www.fuelfreedom.org/the-real-foreign-oil-problem/oil-... God knows how much CO2 we remove from the atmosphere. 100 billion sounds cheap to me.

Agree. It's great to have that energy source. Storing it is a whole different thing.

It comes down to energy. Fusion would dramatically decrease energy costs, which would in turn drive costs of almost everything else down and allow us to do things that had been only a dream before such as fusion propulsion. So run your cost/benefit analysis again with that in mind.

This is even before we get into ecology - most modern energy sources are highly pollutant (oil/coal). How much better off will planetary ecology will be if fusion comes online 10 years earlier?

Excellent points. I certainly know that with much more funding, there could be much more efficient research, though I wonder where the limit is. How many more world-class physicists are there to put on this problem? Are the other theories really "next-best" ideas, or are they simply unexplored avenues, or perhaps more appealing with recent technology advances, but we've already committed to the current paths.