I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t a major milestone… but the first step of many and the goal of Qtotal > 1 is not particularly close. But a lot of the messaging ignores Qtotal completely and at least to me suggests ‘just a few more dollars and we’ll have clean free energy forever. trust me.’ I’d be fine with small scale projects but some (ITER) are billions. To me a proof of concept is worth more like millions.

Do people in the industry find the messaging around fusion ‘Q’ values as gross as I do (who is firmly in the Dunning–Kruger area of the knowledge curve)?

The media is gonna media going after clicks but even science people in interviews tend to gloss over or outright ignore the uncounted energy going in to the reaction and inefficiencies coming out (making Q total < 0.1 or worse). They make it sound like real world fusion is right around the corner. I can’t help but think they are doing it for the funding.