From: Robert Lynn *
* If you have a few hundred million $ to put into Stirling development then by all means have a go and see what you can do, but almost no-one who has actual experience of Stirling engines and their problems (and I know a fair number) would put their own money into developing them for automotive LENR. Of course it makes no sense to use a Stirling for fossil-fuel powered automotive, given the sunk cost in the ICE - and NONE of these companies you mention presently believe that LENR can provide low cost heat. So you are conflating two distinct issues that do not mix well. Once you get over that hurdle - that LENR is valid, then the Stirling makes a lot of sense, compared to other alternatives like steam - but not to be implemented by aerospace companies, whose cost structure is not competitive with the automotive arena by a wide margin. No one can disagree with you that the Stirling make little economic sense to use with fossil fuel, but we can all agree that this fact is irrelevant to anything related to LENR, other than that it represents an added risk, when most companies want to avoid risk, and especially when LENR is not proved. Even with solar, where the Stirling has not worked out yet -that is due to greed and mismanagement more than anything else, combined with a massive drop in PV pricing. Stirling Energy Systems (SES) filed for bankruptcy after failing to obtain financing for massive projects that were boondoggles to begin with. This is part of the same Solyndra, SpectraWatt and Evergreen scams, where billions of taxpayer dollars was wasted by "entrepreneurs", most of them former DoE staff - who came out smelling like a rose. The absurdly high cost of manufacturing of the SES engines were actually the crux of the problem that was never adequately addressed by competitive bidding. They expected DoE to step in bail them out, and for once this did not happen. The Stirling technology is valid, and the Chinese will once again seize our missed opportunity and optimized the Stirling for solar - and maybe for LENR as well - by producing those same $20,000 reciprocating engines for less than the $5,000 that should have been our goal to begin with. All these technical issues are solvable, but you have to desperately want to solve them; and China is in that position, since they have little oil. whereas the USA and even GB are only moderately committed, due to having just the right amount of oil (to maximize incomes of oil barons and politicians) - and also by having well-placed technology manipulators - who would love nothing more than to see LENR and a Stirling implementation of it be delayed as long as possible. Jones
