> In the minds of potential investors, fusion is no longer a "lol maybe in 50 years" technology. No. Potential investors are used to extremely skewed investmen

> In the minds of potential investors, fusion is no longer a "lol maybe in 50 years" technology. No. Potential investors are used to extremely skewed investments results for startups. Most startups fail, but some of those that succeed, succeed spectacularly. A successful fusion startup is almost guaranteed to have a spectacular success, something that would make Facebook or Uber or Tesla look like small potatoes. Given that, a VC is ok with investing in it even if they think the likelihood of success is only 1%. They would not if they think that likelihood is only 0.01%, because at that level estimates are not reliable (who's to say it's 0.01% and not 0.00001% ?). But if there's a reasonable argument that P(success) ~ 1%, then it's a no-brainer to invest, because even a mistake of 2 orders of magnitude would still result in a positive return. For the rest of us though, the "fusion is 50 years in the future" can simply be replaced with "there's a 99% chance fusion will not be done in the next 50 years". Or, what the heck, just leave it at "fusion is 50 years in the future" and you'll be much more right than wrong.