Trained in physics, computer scientist and engineer by profession, now retired. My opinion wasn't about the feasibility of this, but rather that of a tax-payin

Trained in physics, computer scientist and engineer by profession, now retired. My opinion wasn't about the feasibility of this, but rather that of a tax-paying citizen who expects to get value for money spent. I don't see it in this, and I don't really expect the authors imagined they would be describing something that was likely to get any funding attention - the project is too big, and too far out there from an engineering perspective, given the little we'd get from it. So, yeah, I think their writing a long feasibility study is just published paper padding.