Indeed, but it didn't age well in one aspect: "If I were in charge of science funding, the entire world budget for this nonsense would be below that we allocate

Indeed, but it didn't age well in one aspect: "If I were in charge of science funding, the entire world budget for this nonsense would be below that we allocate for the development of Bussard ramjets, which are also not known to be impossible, and are a lot more cool looking". IBM made quite some progress on the industrial design front.