Fusion, like AI, is starting to run into physics. I've always found that the physics you can ignore, is the long-term stuff, like scaling. The short-term physics, like a hammer dropping on your foot, cannot be ignored, since that is in the public consciousness. If you want to make the big bucks, give lip-service to the short stuff, and ignore the long.
Fusion has one physics hurdle they have to overcome. That's the tendency for a fusion reaction to blow everything apart. The Sun operates fusion by using severe convection, which is a topic generally ignored today. That means the hydrogen takes a deep dive, where there is a 'quasi-state' of suspended fusion, and then roars to the top, where that fusion completes separation and we get a nice warm glow. People often wonder why the interior of the Sun is cooler than the top. Of course, nobody really cares to actually do something.
My fusion engine finds a way to keep a large amount of hydrogen under this 'semi-state' and releases it in a controlled state to produce heat. Of course, no physics has been done in that direction. It's all the flashy stuff of temperature that gets the money.
Without the proper physics being done, count on the usual 'always 30 years away' no matter how much is written in the popular press. What we have now, is the fusion of very tiny amounts, with no chance to scale. I don't count throwing some Boron into a plasma as having scaled to the right level.
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