> "It's an interesting problem to me because fusion is largely solved and well understood from the physics perspective (which is what most people consider the challenging esoteric part), the remaining challenge is a much more 'mundane' task of developing economic methods to create the needed materials."

On one level, yes, it's a well understood problem. I mean when you get to the point when Make can teach you how to build your own fusion device I think it's safe to say we have a fairly decent handle on what's involved:

http://makezine.com/projects/make-36-boards/nuclear-fusor/

However, the challenge of producing a nuclear fusion device that generates more energy than it consumes is still a technical challenge. Perhaps it'll just be a question of better materials, but from a layman's perspective the plasma confinement/control aspect does not appear to be a completely solved problem.