>>10569657>Could we speed it up with funding/political activism?ITER is a really messy project. It was set-up some time in the 80s as some kind of world peace project between Democracies and Communist states.
So they decided to manufacture basically a little bit of everything all over the world to please EVERYONE.
This was not a smart idea.
The past decade ITER made almost no progress because of terribly inefficient management and blew past all of its original deadlines.
It's only these past few years that they restructured leadership, reevaluated their goals and actually started running a tight ship. So right now ITER finally has a schedule that it seems to stick to. I've even once heard that they were slightly ahead.
Anyway, when you look at all of this, and consider that all of the industrialized world already pours like 20 billion into this project, it starts to become questionable how much money can accelerate this anymore.
It's just one of those slow and pretty inefficient government projects that money just won't solve.
Also since this is a science experiment at the end of the day, one might also ask how quick science can work and how much money can effect that process.
The only thing that might help is to pour money at other projects to try and overtake ITER with better planning, management and also newer technology.
I know China has taken an interest in pursuing something like this and also there's a bunch of fusion start-ups now who think that a new kind of magnet could move viable fusion out of the multi billions into the hundred millions range.
But since all of these projects still need to put their pants on, it's currently still a bit unclear how fast and how difficult their work will really be.
