The fusion Manhattan project? The problem with that is the Manhattan project scientists knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. With fusion research there are already dozens of active research efforts, but we have absolutely no idea if any of them will work, or if we need a new approach nobody has thought of. In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution.
Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.
I don't think scientists in the Manhattan project knew exactly how to do it. That's why they ended up having (at least) two totally different types of bombs, one with a Plutonium core using spherical implosion and another with a Uranium core using cannon-like ignition.
Why try one scheme when you can try two at twice the price?
But both worked fine. So yes, they really did know what they were doing. The reason to do two versions wasn't really in case one didn't work, they had very good reason to believe both would work. It was a matter of which would offer the best combination of efficient fission, weight, cost and reliability. We do not have two clearly viable different routes to practical fusion reactors. We don't even have one at this point.
> With fusion research there are already dozens of active research efforts, but we have absolutely no idea if any of them will work, or if we need a new approach nobody has thought of.
That is the definition of research. Once something is discovered that works, it is called development.
> In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution.
Why is funding fundamental physics research a bad idea?
> Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.
Technology does not solve anything "for us," we choose to develop and apply technology. We can decide to spend resources on solar and wind electricity generation and to fund fusion research.
>Why is funding fundamental physics research a bad idea?
It's not a bad idea and we are doing it. Fundamental research into fusion is happening on many fronts. That is a good thing and I am not arguing against it. There may even be good arguments to increase funding on some of those approaches.
I'm saying that a 'huge' increase in funding, as proposed, at this stage would be premature given that there are plenty of other alternative power technologies that are proving very effective. We already spend billions of dollars on fusion research. If we're going to spend huge amounts of extra funding on power generation, there are better ways to use it right now.
>We can decide to spend resources on solar and wind electricity generation and to fund fusion research
What do you think we should hugely cut spending on in order to fund this huge increase? Proposals to spend lots of money on this or that are somewhat unconvincing unless you can explain where the money should come from.
> What do you think we should hugely cut spending on in order to fund this huge increase? Proposals to spend lots of money on this or that are somewhat unconvincing unless you can explain where the money should come from.
That is actually the easy part. Latest numbers I have seen are from 2009, when the US government paid farmers $5 billion to waste their time growing corn to turn into ethanol (basically to turn 1 barrel of oil into 0.7 barrels of oil equivalent), and paid oil and gas companies $7 billion in oil and gas exploration subsidies. Enough money for huge increases in both renewable energy and fusion research programs:
Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.