I really hope the LPP fusion approach works, and I donated a small amount of money, but here are some issues I see:
1. Eric Lerner probably doesn’t have the business or technical management experience necessary to make this a success, even if the science works. Evidence of this can be seen in his failure to attract the necessary capital and manpower despite decades of trying. He is far too suspicious of losing control to bring in people who could help. This has been fatal to many startups.
2. A major technical concern is that he is hoping his device can create gargantuan magnetic fields that will activate a quantum effect which will prevent the plasmoid from cooling due to Bremsstrahlung radiation. This effect has never been seen before at this scale. Also, some doubt whether the device is actually generating the required magnetic field strength.
3. It is highly doubtful Lerner actually has a detailed theory that describes what is going on inside the plasmoid. He has a few equations, some sketches, and intuitive hunches. That may be enough. But the mainstream fusion field took decades to work out an understanding of what a tokamak plasma is doing, and they still don’t have a complete picture. They thought it was simple in the beginning and that led to naive optimism. The same thing may be going on here.
These are all excellent questions and I'll try to give brief partial answers. Since you have invested a bit, you should be able to dial into one of the monthly updates Eric Lerner conducts with investors. He can be very specific on all of these questions.
1. Lerner could give examples of technology startups that took money from some type of VC and subsequently lost control.
He will not need to relinquish control of the company to hire excellent technical people and managers should he succeed in achieving net fusion energy, nor to attract all the capital needed to engineer and build prototype generators. Net energy has been the holy grail of fusion research for more than a half century. Any company that reaches it will have no problem attracting resources. Despite years of financial and technical challenges LPPFusion is in a position this year to show whether or not much greater plasma densities can be reached which increase fusion yield with deuterium greatly. Should that step succeed they will move on to use pB11 and likely be first in the world to get significant fusion energy output using this ideal fuel.
2. The quantum mechanics showing a giga gauss magnetic field will limit excessive Bremsstrahlung radiation from electrons in the plasma seem to be straight forward. The formation of short lived magnetic 'plasmoid' structures and the incredible compression forces created are all based on magnetic field interactions that are understood. As (if) much higher densities are produced by stronger plasmoids, the magnetic field within the compressed plasma will become stronger and stronger.
Ultimately both reaching giga gauss field strength and measuring it's effect on levels of Bremsstrahlung radiation will only be
proven by actually doing the experiments. If there is no radiation reduction when LPP achieves giga gauss fields, and there is no technical adjustment possible to make it work as theoretically predicted, then the DPF approach will approach but never reach net energy.
3. Lerner does have a theory of how the pinch effect emerges from various plasma instabilities and some elements have been shown to be right based on experiments with the DPF. LPP has also supported years of difficult modeling work designed to better understand all the variables in play and how those effect plasmoid formation, compression and release of charged particle streams. After 50 years of expensive research there is a great deal known about tokamak plasma physics. Lerner asserts that the difficulties that keep arising with tokamaks are due to them fighting the inherent instabilities exhibited by high energy plasmas. That the energy discharged between carefully designed electrodes to create the plasma and then form the magnetic 'pinch' effect occurs because of several instabilities, his belief that the instabilities must be used rather than suppressed seems well proven at this time. The DPF would not be producing any measurable fusion output without plasma instabilities.
