Is there truly such a thing as "the standard Polywell view"?
I would describe that as what Bussard claimed and Nebel has agreed with. They have the experimental data, so...
But seeing as you seem to be the most prominent standard bearer of it ... I'll ask you directly ... is there any evidence we can point to that the ions never get far enough out of the potential well to see the electron sheath, i.e the beta=1 surface?
I'm basing that mostly on a vague recollection of something Rick said, which he probably gets from the PIC simulations and whatever other things they have going at EMC2. The Chacon paper might be relevant here too.
Surely some of them will become energetic enough to rise to this region?
Apparently not enough of them to matter much. We could probably set an upper limit if we did some math on WB-7 confinement.
This sounds like a cop out,
A cop out is exactly what it is. I'm more than happy to call the system too complex for this kind of thing, and there's very little chance I'm going to attempt to model it in software myself. Guilty as charged.
In the above statement, the inclusion of the word "dynamic" is a non-sequitur that may be more an attempt to bamboozle than add any useful information.
Innocent here, Your Honor. I mean this in the specific sense of "having a variable or constantly changing nature," i.e. something which requires a simulation rather than an equation.
you yourself have resorted many times to simplistic equations when it suits your cause
Well, some things are complex and dynamic and some aren't. Converting fusions to watts is relatively straightforward relative to modelling ion behavior. For instance, square wells give very different results than parabolic ones, but a watt is always a joule per second.
Actually, I'm surprised you would say that, Art has often been critical of me in the opposite direction.