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> He says it is trivial to reproduce, you need like $10 worth of material (more to do it in a vacuum)

He lie.

Crookes radiometer don't work in really high vacuum, which is not cheap, if do all things with boring rules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer

Without rules, high vacuum is achievable on just ~150km, with amateur rocket, I hear in US somewhere about thousand dollars for sub-orbital launch (smallest orbital rocket cost about million).

For example in electronic microscope also used high vacuum, and such microscope usually cost about million dollars and as I remember, it need about tens hours to achieve such high vacuum, so could easy calculate, about thousand experiments in 3-4 years (accounting amortization period for high cost equipment), and also each experiment will cost about thousand dollars without interest rate.

I think, he is typical NASA scientist, bored at his work and have spare money to play game with fake patent.

As NASA worker, he really have possibility to place his experiments in high vacuum chamber, and I'm sure he have experience and seen nothing.

And I'm sure, he understand well, mentioned in patent configuration is very hard to research, and very easy to accidentally achieve some extraordinary results.

But you, humble reader, don't have such opportunities, but you could donate to him for his crazy experiments.



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