I love seeing the progress in mechanical (real world) tech.

I'm becoming somewhat (although not completely) cynical in a "devil is in the details" kinda way.

It seems we see a lot of hype which either fizzles out, or never seems to make it all the way.

This one us at the pilot plant stage, so at least made it out the lab. I hope it makes it all the way to full size production.

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bawolff 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Its the nature of reporting that people want to report "new" things. However if the stuff actually worked it wouldn't be "new" it would just be in use. So instead they report on stuff that is 90% of the way there. Sometimes people figure out the last 10%, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they figure it out but it takes 20 years.

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rafaelmn 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

With the investment world being more exposed, and the research funding incentives, I seriously doubt it's just about reporting what people want to click. If I've learned anything in the last 15 years I've been paying attention - hype is more important than fundamentals for investment.

	▲	kragen 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		No doubt you're correct about Aspiring's incentives, but I don't think Laurie Winkless at IEEE Spectrum gets a payout if they close an investment round.

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kragen 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Usually they report on stuff that is 10% of the way there, because there's 1000× more of it.

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mike-the-mikado 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You probably have to go quite a long way into answering "is it feasible" type questions, before you can answer "is it cost effective" questions. Maturing a technology will typically take many steps, each with exponentially increased costs. Finding the money for the initial (cheapest) steps may be a lot easier, especially since the pay-off may prove to be higher than expected.

Research is akin to gambling. You cannot predict which bets will pay off, but if you can win on average, it's worth betting as many times as you can afford.