Buzz,
I asked him about that comment last summer and what I think he meant was more along the lines of material progress and hurdles we overcame. Since then and over the past year or so I believe most of the challenges we've faced are engineering hurdles as opposed to synthesis.
Before we could put our material up to these stress tests, we had to get to the point of making consistently pure, usable material.
Obviously we know now that there's still more work being done on material development but the scientists will never stop toying with it. Our upcoming test results could be a huge breakthrough if they 'pass' so to speak, and the chance of commercializing EO polymers would increase significantly.