That's a real problem for all spaced based nuclear reactors (fusion included). It's a difficult problem, but not one that's intrinsically insoluble. And it really should be solved.

(My design goal here is building a large mobile habitat, but not within the next few decades. Ideally something that could be converted into a SLOW interstellar vehicle... say averaging less than 10 km/s different from the local drift. And subsisting by savaging off that drift. So it needs to be a pretty closed ecology.)

That's currently true. Does it have to remain true?

Of course, I think the smaller bodies hold greater promise. It's easier to rebuild an asteroid.

The summary indicated that it would be a joint project with China.

Of all the word processors I've used the best was MSWord 5.2a for the Mac LC2 & LC3. LibreOffice Writer comes close. Nothing since from MS that I've used comes close.

You can talk to a clerk, but the clerk doesn't appear to be able (willing?) to forward the message. That was true for several different clerks.

Yes. There essentially wasn't any feedback mechanism.

And it's often the fault of the local businesses. If I want to buy "unsalted mixed nuts", my local store doesn't carry them any more. (It used to, but it stopped.) So now I buy them on Amazon.

One way it's different is that it's a 2 year commitment. IIUC, there's no plan proposed to extend the employment.

Also, considering the companies I heard named in conjunction with the play, I hope it's a total failure.

Cooperation would, indeed, be better. Unfortunately both sides want to ensure that only they win.

China is the enemy because Realpolitik asserts that there can be only one top country.

I don't know. Having people working there under assumed names sounds sort of like "Manhattan project" level security. I.e. it's a big secretive project with a lot of government backing". I'll grant it's a wildly overused metaphor, but that just means everyone will recognize it.

Sorry, but copying from what others are doing is very normal. Copyrights and patents were originally intended to be quite temporary in duration. And that's as it should be.

I'm all in favor of temporary copyrights and patents, say 5 years. Perhaps 10 if there are a LOT of up front development costs. Beyond that is an aberration, and one shouldn't expect others to abide by it. (And the US basically ignored UK patents and copyrights until quite recently.)

This is a lab machine, and it's not clear that it's making large chips. I think your 5-10 year prediction of last year is probably right. There will be engineering challenges in converting a lab machine into a production machine.

Actually, my (uninformed) prediction last year, and this year, is that it will take about a decade for China to equal the production of TSMC assuming TSMC keeps improving. But that they'll have "good enough for 90% of the market" within a very few years (and perhaps already do).

It's not that simple. Every holder of power acts to restrain challengers. If you allow monopolies, then innovation in that area slows drastically. When you have diverse centers of development, then development tends to be faster...but more expensive.

So if you want the most profitable companies, then you allow monopolies. If you want the fastest development, then you break up monopolies, of prevent them from ever arising...but this will make the companies less profitable (on the average).

Historically democracies have been more willing to break up monopolies. Right now, though, the US doesn't seem to be willing to do so. So now rapid development depends on competition between either countries or blocks of countries.

I don't know what the History Channel said, but Germany was many years away from making the atomic bomb when the Nazi's went on the path of expelling the intellectuals. They had most of the theory, but so did everyone else. They had the people who could have helped convert the theory to practice, but they expelled them. But this was multiple years before theory was converted into practice (i.e. "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world. The natives are friendly.") At at THAT time, the US government didn't really believe in atomic power.