The milestone is that they surpassed Qplasma > 1. This has not been achieved before even though fusion has been done in ICF and MCF machines. Qplasma > 1 is s

The milestone is that they surpassed Qplasma > 1. This has not been achieved before even though fusion has been done in ICF and MCF machines. Qplasma > 1 is significant because it now enters a regime where the burning fuel heats up unburnt fuel. In MCF machines this is referred to as a burning plasma. In ICF machines this is referred to as ignition. Ignition in MCF machines is Qplasma = infinity, where no external heating is used. This is on the table (maybe, theoretically), we just need to build machines with sufficiently high triple product and plasma control surfaces then learn how to do it. We'll have MCF burning plasma machines soon. https://twitter.com/jb_fusion/status/1506964692627034118 https://twitter.com/jb_fusion/status/1506964692627034118 Helion has not talked about triple product numbers. I wish they would, because that's the key metric for understanding how far they are from D-He3 burning plasma. Also, having the triple product history for all of their machines would help show scaling laws. These are currently closely guarded secrets. Targeting D-He3 fuel means a much higher coulomb barrier needs to be overcome and a higher triple product is needed to reaching burning plasma. Check out slide 40 for more details on fusion fuels. https://suli.pppl.gov/2022/course/IntroductionToFusionEnergy_SULI_20220613.pdf https://suli.pppl.gov/2022/course/IntroductionToFusionEnergy...