The Chysler-Daimler device is a modified Farnsworth device. It is the work of the Univ. of Illinois Urban-Champagne and George Miley's team there.
Scaling of purely thermal plasmas is the trap which big science has used to take a lot of public treasure and funnel into "make busy projects" since 1950 snd Project Sherwood, reaching its apex with the ongoing debacle at the National Ignition facility.
Bob Hirsch offered up a mea culpa to me when I last talked with him and admitted to his sin of pushing for scaled up systems while head of the AEC's national fusion effort in the early 70's. In retrospect, he acknoledge it was a bad idea.
He now feels that the money would have been better spent of many smaller, tightly controled, do or die projects and ideas to see if other concepts or variations offered promise on a smaller scale.
Richard Hull
Created on Monday, January 22, 2001 1:06 AM EDT by Richard Hull