William - you can be assured that our rivals will also hit a...

William - you can be assured that our rivals will also hit a whole host of unsuspected problems down the line. - these are NOT dependent upon "focus" - they happen - the test is having the appropriate people who understand the issues. Contrary to your expectations "discipline", and "penalties" (and also throwing money) are counter productive. I sometimes recall a quote by Einstein "if an untidy desk means an untidy mind what does an empty desk represent". I can assure you (from years of experience) that they way to motivate highly intelligent people is to earn their respect, mentor their somewhat noncommercial attitudes and earn their respect and commitment (NB - it's not usually cash but mostly "discovery" and intricate problem fixing). If you bring out the "whip" or "focus" they leave and/or be demotivated leading to a much bigger mess.

Our centrifuge rivals will have an initial head start since they have "mature" technology - but as we know their technology is expensive and inflexible. ASP technology are as we know from "fuzzy Panda" - (see HERE) have problems which they are now defending in court for what is alleged to be false claims (just look at the track record of AVLIS (see HERE for the substance behind these allegations). This leaves LIS Technologies as the most credible competitor who claim to be at TRL/4 (but IMO are less than this) and are currently re-assembling "test loop" apparatus which has been in storage from 1993 (see HERE pages 55/56) after being rejected by Cameco who then (in 2008) who invested in GLE and finally wrote off US$194m; but since 2014 continued to invest their 24% to 2019 and since 2019 to Dec 2014 (49%) C$106,358 - IMO they must have some faith in our technology.and it's prospects of commercialization.

For more information behind the theory (McNaulty curves) and problems of development see HERE - the First of a Kind (FOAK) is always problematic and subsequent early models will also have problems (hopefully diminishing with maturity) - you have to have patience and build in contingencies but once you have a "breakthrough" with "maturity" you have tamed a monster - however most fail on the way