Getting to net Q leaves you very, very far from useful fusion.
Structural material that can stand up to the neutron bombardment has not been identified; no one has worked on it in decades. No one knows how to breed enough tritium to fuel it, or how to extract it from the shielding ("blanket") fast enough to be useful, if indeed they did manage to breed some.
Current estimate is that working fusion is 40 years off and receding. People, and particularly startup companies, insisting otherwise are simply lying through their teeth. Securities fraud is poorly enforced.
Q is thus not very important, except maybe for getting more money.
So, there is nothing here to get excited about unless you are very keen on plasma fluid dynamics. Plasma fluid dynamics is probably the hardest kind of physics, so anybody who can do it deserves respect. It is a shame we can't find much for them to do besides fool with fusion and work on actually-useful ion propulsion.
Structural material that can stand up to the neutron bombardment has not been identified; no one has worked on it in decades. No one knows how to breed enough tritium to fuel it, or how to extract it from the shielding ("blanket") fast enough to be useful, if indeed they did manage to breed some.
Current estimate is that working fusion is 40 years off and receding. People, and particularly startup companies, insisting otherwise are simply lying through their teeth. Securities fraud is poorly enforced.
Q is thus not very important, except maybe for getting more money.
So, there is nothing here to get excited about unless you are very keen on plasma fluid dynamics. Plasma fluid dynamics is probably the hardest kind of physics, so anybody who can do it deserves respect. It is a shame we can't find much for them to do besides fool with fusion and work on actually-useful ion propulsion.