Now, about mid, early

2011, I got a call to join a National Academy study, right, of if this is successful, how will we then take this to commercial energy? And this being laser containment? Laser containment.

Right.

But the problem was they hadn't got ignition and there was no sign of any yield of fusion from these targets.

What had gone wrong? Well, what you do with laser fusion is what you actually do is the laser shine on the inside of a little box.

It's a little gold thing that's about that big, right? And inside the gold thing, it makes x-rays.

Those x-rays... ablate the outside of a pellet and that rocket effect squeezes the pellet down.

What are you trying to do with that? And why is it hard? Let's start with the real basics.

I know you get asked this question a lot, but do you think that we're going to see a time, let's say in the next 20 years, where Fusion has made its way into commercial reality?

So, you know, that was a joke.

I always tell this joke when I give a public lecture, because if I don't tell it, somebody will ask me a question at the end and tell that joke.

And so I want to get there first, which is the joke is that fusion is 30 years away and always will be.

Because we've been trying to do it basically since the lab at Princeton was founded 75 years ago in 1951.

We've been trying to do fusion energy.

And there's a simple reason.

Now, so