Abstract
The United States and France are constructing multi-billion-dollar laser facilities to demonstrate inertial fusion as a potential source of energy for the future. These facilities aim to use the inertial confinement fusion scheme to demonstrate ignition on the 2010-2012 timescale. The recently launched High Power Laser Energy Research facility (HiPER) project is a European initiative to offer a credible way to build upon this work and demonstrate the possibility of opening up inertial fusion energy as a commercial process for energy generation. These facilities pose huge engineering and scientific challenges not only in their design but also in the technical challenges of providing the targets that will contain the fuel required to run them. We review the current manufacturing techniques of the cone target component as well as the work toward mass production of this component.