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The corrolary to your message is “don’t build mega-projects” which doesn’t make sense to me. And no, Tesla didn’t start by selling batteries: they started by s

The corrolary to your message is “don’t build mega-projects” which doesn’t make sense to me. And no, Tesla didn’t start by selling batteries: they started by selling expensive cars which didn’t need the batteries at the same scale as mass-produced car; which kind of destroys the meaning of whole of your initial message.

kiba 6y ago
I don't think that's necessary the case. Instead, you approach the megaproject as a series of prototypes, spending large sum of money in the hope of quick advancement and iteration cycle.
- Retric 6y ago
  That already happened in the ITER development process with early version safety sitting on people’s desks. Sometimes you get an awesome breakthrough that makes everything work, other times no so much. ITER is designed to be a test bed not the final design. Plenty of advancements have taken place after the design was essentially finalized, but none of them actually help test things like heavy neutron bombardment of a lithium blanket.
dralley 6y ago
Also, Tesla didn't start by using any fancy battery chemistries, they started by packaging cheap "shitty" commercial cells alongside enough monitoring and management hardware to keep them from catching fire or damaging themselves.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
> The corrolary to your message is “don’t build mega-projects” which doesn’t make sense to me. I think the two posters meant that size of the people working on a single thing is negatively correlated with innovation. The analogy was that Tesla is less ground breaking now compared to when it was experimental. > The corrolary to your message is “don’t build mega-projects” Mega projects are more optimized for delivery and leaving lesser things on luck and it is beneficial in most of the cases. But posters are saying given the vast scope of things that could be tried in fusion space, mega projects likely won't be touching those.

kiba 6y ago

I don't think that's necessary the case. Instead, you approach the megaproject as a series of prototypes, spending large sum of money in the hope of quick advancement and iteration cycle.

Retric 6y ago
That already happened in the ITER development process with early version safety sitting on people’s desks. Sometimes you get an awesome breakthrough that makes everything work, other times no so much. ITER is designed to be a test bed not the final design. Plenty of advancements have taken place after the design was essentially finalized, but none of them actually help test things like heavy neutron bombardment of a lithium blanket.

dralley 6y ago

Also, Tesla didn't start by using any fancy battery chemistries, they started by packaging cheap "shitty" commercial cells alongside enough monitoring and management hardware to keep them from catching fire or damaging themselves.

YetAnotherNick 6y ago

> The corrolary to your message is “don’t build mega-projects” which doesn’t make sense to me. I think the two posters meant that size of the people working on a single thing is negatively correlated with innovation. The analogy was that Tesla is less ground breaking now compared to when it was experimental. > The corrolary to your message is “don’t build mega-projects” Mega projects are more optimized for delivery and leaving lesser things on luck and it is beneficial in most of the cases. But posters are saying given the vast scope of things that could be tried in fusion space, mega projects likely won't be touching those.