Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Brian H]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: Or maybe I’m just too optimistic in counting chickens before they hatch. But we have to try to keep being optimistic in keeping fingers crossed.

Here’s my “odds estimation” summary:

Either Eric’s modeling and calculations are totally out to lunch, or they’re close enough to work (produce a viable reactor). I don’t see any intermediate possibilities; the critical items are the existence of the quantum gap that prevents X-ray cooling and the resulting long-enough existence of the hi-temp fusion plasmoid. Given those, the rest follows.

At this point, the available data strongly support his hypotheses, and the next 2 years of experiments, culminating with proton-boron fusion, should clinch the matter.

Then comes the 3 yrs of dealing with the engineering devilish details: can the core be cooled adequately? Will the foil shell work and stand up to the X-ray flux it must “drain” for current? Most or all of the rest of the “rig” is off-the-shelf stuff, and would need little fiddling and refinement.

Given the huge payoff for success, I anticipate dedicated and even inspired work to go ahead to attain those benchmarks, and that it will succeed. Probability >60%. IMO.