Agreed. This is a weirdly negative and short-sighted article. It's like... yeah, maybe lasers aren't the way to go, guy. But the fact that we proved it in a pra

Agreed. This is a weirdly negative and short-sighted article. It's like... yeah, maybe lasers aren't the way to go, guy. But the fact that we proved it in a practical, empirical test - regardless of the method we used - means that all of our theories are strengthened. All of our research into the topic is either on the right track, or can now be measured against a practical result. It's... huge. It's a huge deal that was rightly praised. And, like you said, nobody who was interested that I talked to failed to understand the pretty simple setup: overall cost is the asterisk, but gain factor is great! The best I can assume is that this guy deals a lot with students and maybe students didn't grok the whole situation (as all idealistic and naive - wonderful traits in students - are likely to do). In any case, it just seems really pessimistic to say "really don't expect anything to come of this laser process", because of the obvious practical reality: other fusion researchers aren't all using lasers to create fusion, yet all of them can use the results from the laser fusion to make efficiencies in their own designs.