I think the date of commercial nuclear fusion is, like the universe, mysteriously expanding.
We are supposedly 15-20 years away from commercial nuclear fusion plants.
https://news.mit.edu/2021/aggressive-market-driven-model-us-fusion-power-development-0224The thing about this is that the time-to-commercial has been expanding for my entire life. When I did my science report on it in high school, we were only 10-15 years away from commercialization.
So that means that in 40 years of research, we've fallen an additional five years behind. So the timeline is expanding faster than the research. It's like the stars at the edge of the universe that are moving away from us faster than the speed of light and slowly winking out. It reminds me of the quip about soccer: soccer is the sport of the future and always will be.
At some point, of course, the estimate will become accurate and it really will be 10-15 years away, but how will we know when are looking at *that* estimate instead of the optimistic estimates we've gotten for 70 years?
Or will the timeline always expand faster than the research so that 40 years from now scientists will *know* that we are 20-25 years away from commercialization?
