The founder's stated baseline for the burner is a discipline: it is an experiment, not a power plant. The claim is staged — an unchannelled experiment resting on no speculative physics, with confinement and conversion as measurable gates, not assumptions. The language is chosen to keep the claim honest.
The baseline makes no bet on unmeasured physics: no alpha channelling, no assumed converter efficiency, a below-unity gain stated plainly. Closure is staged behind measurable gates — the plug density ratio and electron direct conversion — so the path from experiment to plant is a sequence of demonstrations, each of which can be checked.
Calling the baseline an experiment is what earns the right to state the closing numbers when they come. A concept that calls its experiment a power plant forfeits credibility on everything after; one that stages the claim keeps it. The phrase is the method in miniature.
| Baseline | an experiment, not a power plant |
| Rests on | no speculative physics |
| Channelling | none assumed |
| Closure | staged behind measurable gates |
| Gates | plug ratio, electron DEC |