> People get taken by the theoretical coolness and ultimate utility of the idea, and assume it's just a matter of clever ideas and engineering to make it a reality. At some point, it becomes mandatory to work on it because the win would be so big it would make them famous and win all sorts of prizes and adulation.

Good description. Commercial fusion power seems to be in the same category currently.

The next step once you have enough thinkers working on the problem is to start pretending that commercial success is merely a few years away, with 5 or 10 years being the ideal number.