Setting or rising?

Several people have asked something like: “Your Chief Scientist, Eric Lerner, is 72 years old. What happens if he is not around?” So, I wanted to answer this in an update.

Basically, we don’t think this is a big risk factor in our project. My role in the project is indeed key right now, when we have a full-time team of four and we are still in the research phase. I am the only theoretical physicist on the team, so if I died right now, it would be a major blow to our effort. But that is quite unlikely. We anticipate that we will complete the present research phase in the next year. Give that things take longer than you think, say it will take us two years. I am in good health and my chances of dying in the next two years are under 5%. Indeed, the senior people still working in our field are more than 15 years older than I am.

Clearly, compared to other risks, that is not a significant one. We can’t say what probability technical or financial risks to the project have, but obviously if people thought our chance for success were anywhere near 90%, we would have a much higher share price!

Looked at another way, tens of millions of people in the US are planning to vote for a President this year, and the four top contenders are all my age or older. So that means lots of people think the chances are pretty good for someone that age surviving at least four years of a job which certainly seems more stressful than mine.

After the research phase is complete, my role in the company is going to become a lot less critical. The engineering development phase—turning a laboratory device that produces net energy into a prototype ready to roll down an assembly line—is a job for around 100-200 engineers and scientists. Leading that engineering effort takes very different skills and experience than leading a research project. So LPPFusion will be hiring a team of highly qualified engineering managers to lead and coordinate that effort. While I will continue to contribute to the effort, my role will be far less central. Of course, I hope and expect to see the project through to completion (my life expectancy right now is around 20 years and we expect the development stage to be 3-4 years), but my premature death during the development stage will not greatly impact our chances for success.

So, the take-away is that my age is not a big issue!