Submitted by noelcowardspeaksout t3_y1akde in Futurology
Dermutt100 t1_irwnmb4 wrote
Reply to comment by oldcreaker in UK to build first grid connected Fusion Power plant by noelcowardspeaksout
Britain has more "firsts" than any other nation, it sort of invented the modern world.
I'm sure it will be alright.
Chewable_Vitamin t1_irxok68 wrote
First place on earth to put beans on toast
Aceticon t1_irzwumy wrote
Modern Britain is nowhere near at the same level as 19th century Britain when it comes to the Science & Tech of its age.
Nowadays the country specializes in talk, not in doing.
Dermutt100 t1_irzx2l0 wrote
It's nowhere behind anywhere else.
Even in the 2oth century it still provided most of the world's "firsts", the jet engine, first commercial jet airliner, atm, DNA, IVF, the hovercraft, Concorde, VTOL aircraft and the first nuclear power station in the West,
Aceticon t1_is0154d wrote
Absolutely, the run lasted until the mid XXth century.
(Although some of the stuff you list as "great firsts" didn't turn out quite as amazing as all that or was much better done elsewhere)
After that, not so much. I can only think of graphene, a discovery rather than an actual implementation (and which, by the way, has yet to produce actual practical results anywhere close to matching the grandiose announcement of how groundbreaking a discovery it was).
For a country of 60 million people with all the wealth and institutions it still has left of from the age of Empire, Britain has been punching below its weight since maybe the late 70s or early 80s.
As I said, modern Britain isn't a country of doers, it's a country of talkers (a subsection of whom seems specialized in relentelessly celebrating past glories) or at least a country that rewards tall stories and swindling your fellow man far beyond merit in execution and the direction of travel seems to remain a worsenning of things in that regard.
It's thus not surprising to see a story like this selling this Great British Achievement (tm) which turns out to be a plan to start work on planning it and is clearly a play for getting more funding.
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