alt Hacker NewsThis would be very optimistic, essentially the project meeting its main goal, I'm not sure why you're calling it dark comedy. A 20 minutes pulse alone would mean the fuel injection, aux heating, plasma control systems and the divertor are working as designed. Net positive energy also means we got the physics of a burning plasma right.
The most recent timeline I know (from 2024) in fact puts the start of the DT operation at 2035, so I doubt ITER would achieve such a huge result within less than an year.
I think it's the "consecutive" that makes it funny. This thing that entire continents have been working on together for decades was operational for 20 consecutive minutes?!?
It's dark comedy because the progress of fusion just feels so agonizingly slow, that even a very optimistic prediction for 10 years from now sounds like such small and functionally useless progress.
And there's no shade toward any of the entities involved, it's a hard problem, but it's still funny.