Reply To: $40million raised for boron fusion

[AaronB]

Brian, without going into details or complicated formulas, the pinches are not “hot” enough yet, but the extrapolations are there. However, pB11 is a completely different animal than deuterium.

Pretend energy break even is hitting a home run. To get a home run, you have to have a ball, a bat, and a batter. The batter has to swing hard enough, the bat has to make contact with the ball at just the right angle and time, and the ball has to be tough enough and aerodynamic enough to travel over the wall. Up until now, we’ve fired with deuterium at less than full voltage on less than all capacitors at less than full synchronization and without full diagnostics. That’s like swinging with one arm using a plastic bat on a whiffle ball while half blindfolded. Obviously you wouldn’t expect to knock it out of the park under those circumstances, but you can measure the speed of the bat, timing of the hit, angle of flight, etc, and figure out what it will take with a real bat and ball at full power and synchronization, optimal timing, etc.

With that said, and as bad as that may sound, the results we have gotten are very encouraging, and we’re only getting started. We’re at the cutting edge of this research. With the upgraded switches, we should have vastly improved performance by having all capacitors discharge, with better synchronization, at higher voltages. We’ve barely started to test the effects of the angular momentum coil or the magnetic field effect, so we really can’t say just how much those will ultimately improve the results. We’re also getting all the diagnostic instruments installed and the noise eliminated, so we can better see what’s going on, effectively taking off the blindfold. As for finding the “sweet spots”, well, that’s what batting practice is all about. 🙂 We’ve got to get in there and start swinging. I’m very optimistic that by late September, we’ll have some newsworthy results. When all the pieces come together at the right time and place, that’s when things get interesting.