This is laser based fusion, which is super cool, but it might be a stretch to expect 200x more efficient lasers. Still maybe there's other things you could do, like make a bigger fusion reaction. Hydrogen bombs do it, so maybe.
The lasers they use today are 20x less efficient than state of the art. The capacitors are also massively less efficient. So they only "need" to drive the Q factor of the reaction up by ~5x to be positioned to build something with a net energy gain.
Because of the physics of fusion (or ICF) returns on power are non linear. It's very much possible research here results in a path to a "net gain facility".
I wasn't aware actually. I was under the mistaken impression that their progress has only been possible because they were using state of the art lasers. This could actually be possible then, and far sooner than magnetic containment fusion.
