I suppose that's a part of the issue: the SDV camp has been overenthusiastic in flying their "Mission Accomplished" banners, and hitting (pun not intended) yet

I suppose that's a part of the issue: the SDV camp has been overenthusiastic in flying their "Mission Accomplished" banners, and hitting (pun not intended) yet another unexpected problem right afterwards. In other words, we're not at that point yet - in fact, we might not even have the complete toolset to measure this. The field is in flux - alchemic approaches "what if we try something unrelated" might work for unrelated reasons etc.; practical applications that don't spontaneously combust are still some way out there.