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> In contrast, the expenditure necessarily must be evaluated in money and time, and it's an age old problem: who gets the research allocations? Sure, but a) wh
by Jedd 9y ago
> In contrast, the expenditure necessarily must be evaluated in money and time, and it's an age old problem: who gets the research allocations?
Sure, but a) when does the evaluation occur (after one year, after two years, after ten years, or after a new or accidental technology has been demonstrated to save humanity from certain destruction)?
> In contrast [to genome projects], what can we learn form ITER?
Experimental physics experiments have always suffered this comparison. I can't address your question, sorry.
Your suggestion that it may all be about the end goal (as if there's always and only a single end goal for research) is perhaps intentionally misguided - as you then hint at in your subsequent paragraph.
- epistasis 9y agoI don't mean specifically to compare to biology, but even within physics, is ITER a good place to put research money? Though I'm not a physicist, it seems that even many other fusion projects would be better bets.
- cornholio 9y agoITER does not do fundamental research like the LHC, they focus on very specific technical problems in the field of fusion power - as if it's already a given that their particular approach to power generation is desirable and workable. The author's concern is that even is the problems are solved, tokamak fusion power is still a prohibitively expensive and unsustainable idea; it's only natural to question why those research resources funds aren't devoted to other areas that at least make an attempt to obtain directly useful results. The tritium economy issue is particularly wexing, any commercial D-T reactor will need outside, fission produced tritium.