Prometheus Fusion Perfection

I have successfully calculated the icosahedron inside the dodecahedron using an a simple formula and some ugly brute force.

Here is how I did this:

Starting with the vertices of a unit dodecahedron, I find the midpoint of each pentagon in the dodecahedron which defines the icosahedron. Given the vertices of each pentagon, you can easy find the midpoint by averaging the points in the pentagon. EASY!

What’s not as easy is grouping the vertices of the dodecahedron into pentagon faces. I used some ugly brute force to find this:

I tested every combination of 5 vertices to find the ones farthest from the center. These vertices define the related icosahedron.

Here we see the tori defined by the icosahedron nested inside the vertices of the dodecahedron:

Now we can just solve for the midpoint of each edge of the dodecahedron. Here are the edges:

The truth is, I don’t really understand the physics of the Polywell reactor. Fortunately I’m not alone. An often expressed sentiment on the forums is that you really need to “build it and see”. I couldn’t agree more. 

So I will attempt to build it. 

How do you build a device when you don’t understand the principles of it’s operation?

Trial and error.

Now you won’t get very far with trial and error if you are making a handful of attempts. But you _might_ get somewhere if you are making a large number of attempts. I’m suggesting applying brute force to the problem.

What this means in practice is a fully automated fabrication and testing cycle. Computers and robots will fabricate, assemble and operate all of the candidate reactor designs. This approach would allow for the fabrication and testing of a large number of reactor designs, potentially in parallel.

Essentially I am describing finding the solution using an evolutionary process. Although the candidate reactor designs can come from human designers or from genetic algorithms.

Now, this all sounds pretty expensive no? I’m sure it will be! So how does a broke loner like me make any progress?

Turns out quite a bit can be done in the pre-production that doesn’t cost money, although is does cost time (lots of it).

It all starts on the computer.