Comment Re:Public cynicism about fusion (Score 1) 147
It took somewhere between 1500 and 1700 years from the time the first steam engine (aeolipile) showed up until it was practically applied. If that's your idea of instantaneous development, then fusion should be no problem for you.
Likewise, depending on where you want to consider the development of the internal combustion engine beginning, it took somewhere between 60 and 2100 years to develop it into a practical application.
The key difference with fusion is that we're not saying "here's an invention, what can we do with it?", we're saying "here's what we want to do, what can we invent to do it?". It's a very different way of approaching things, and should explain why your development idea of "here's a prototype" obviously doesn't apply. It's more akin to the well-known anecdote about Edison's "ten thousand ways that don't work" - you know your goal, you just need to figure out how to get there.
One other thing to keep in mind is that fusion, if we can find a way to make it work, could potentially outshine every other technological achievement in human history up to this point because of the possible applications. It's very much a high-risk/high-reward endeavor.