The Four Burner Gates
Four physics gates separate the present burner design from a fielded machine; each is stated with its measured magnitude, never softened.
Why we lead with the gates
Trust in a design study comes from stating its limits precisely. Aegis has four, and every one is a physics finding from our own models. None is an economic statement; we never translate a gate into a cost.
Gate one — plug coil stress
At the design bore the plug coil is overstressed by roughly 3–3.9x. As specified it is infeasible; the field of 26.49 T cannot be held by the coil as drawn. See the plug-stress gate.
Gate two — plasma regime
The plug operating regime is 166–830x beyond any device ever run, so it cannot be post-dicted from existing data. See the regime gate.
Gates three and four — fuel and uptime
None of these four numbers is an economic statement, and we never convert one into a cost. They are distances measured in the models between the current design and a machine that could be fielded. A reader can use them as a checklist: each has a dedicated page explaining what it is, why it is hard, and the specific evidence that would shrink it.
A commercial unit needs about 400x today's domestic helium-3 (why breeder-bred and lunar 3He matter), and modelled availability of 0.86–0.995 is 30–100x short of hyperscale Tier III (0.99982). See the fuel gate and the availability gate.