The following would be a better argument, IMO:

No, it wouldn't, because you are presupposing that one already understands why one would want to do such a difficult thing. The whole point of pointing out the implications of acceleration in mortality is to point out real mortality rates can imply very long lifespans and that squaring the curve would have major and desirable implications. Only once the potential benefits have been established does anyone care about how feasible fixing it would be. There are two blades to the idea of 'cost-benefit', and you are dismissing out of hand anyone even trying to roughly estimate the latter.

To use your atom example:

Right now, our power sources like coal and oil produces X joules per gram; but we can see by simply calculating E=MC^2 that the potential energy of somehow tapping into mass-energy conversion rather than normal chemical potentials would generate multiple orders of magnitude more energy than from normal strategies. This is tantalizing and even believable.

And someone else replying:

That's just not how the relevant model works. Thusly, I don't think the arguments brought forth are good enough to warrant the claim that atomic energy is possible.

Go back to the original article. Why are they discussing aging at all? To justify research like Calico into reducing it.

Jeez. Talk about missing the point.