Breakable wrote: I think its much to early to talk about the onion, and especially its design. Its yet to be proven as a x-ray to electricity converter. I believe it is possible to reach 50-60-70-maybe even 80 % efficiency in this conversion, but it is probable the final device will look nothing like the onion, especially when no efficiency has been demonstrated yet (as far as i know).
While I agree that the final form may not even resemble an onion, all of those layers (donkey) and our existing convention make it a good name. It also helps counter the sterile scientific sounding nomenclature of the FF and Polywell projects, imho.
I also believe that the best time to begin solving a challenge, especially one as big as the onion’s engineering, is well before funding and trying to build anything along those lines. Nothing to gain by approaching the engineering phase(s) like a cram session the night before a final exam.
Nor would I expect early onions to have impressive stats- the first performance breakthroughs may well be adding 125 or 250kW to the previous best performance level.