Reply To: EmDrive + Focus Fusion = Space Access for all?

[Brian H]

KeithPickering wrote:

It may turn out that you can get to theoretical breakeven, but not quite to practical breakeven … or just barely over the line, which would mean that the excess salable energy would be a lot more expensive than assumed.

That is the worry I have as well. According to Eric’s simulation results in the Technical Paper 1 the maximum reasonably achievable ratio of (Xray + Beam) / Input is 1.57.

Thanks for that link, and the very interesting technical paper. Apparently EL’s zero-dimensional simulation has addressed this problem pretty well, and assumes that energy recovery is 80% for both ion beam and for x-ray. As the input energy increases, the recoverable energy also increases, but the ratio of x-ray to ion beam also increases … so more and more of the fraction must be recovered by the x-ray capture shell. Since EL invented it himself, we must assume that his 80% figure is roughly correct.

A couple of final results then: at a ratio of 1.57 (energy recovered to energy input), the salable output of a reactor using 5 kg of borax per year (see my previous post for computations) would be 1111 kW. To convert ALL electric production worldwide (2.5 million megawatts) to pB11 fuel would require 12,500 tonnes or borax per year, or about 8% of current worldwide production.
Borax, or boron?