So starship1, let's chat about costs for a minute.

Whenever I come up with something that might be hard to explain or predict, or calculate and veryfy to my satisfaction, I build it. If I can, I find a simple way to build something for the lowest cost that can answer the basic questions and verify basic assumptions. Fortunately, for the kinds of things I am working on, costs are fairly low.

I can understand that for the engine you are describing, even for an initial small scale test engine, the costs would be higher. Are you, in a general way, able to quantify the costs in terms of:
a) the basic cost of the raw materials(at today's market prices)
b ) the pro-rated cost of equipment needed(for example, a 15 year lifespan milling machine used for x number of years)
and,
c) roughly the number of person-hours to fabricate and assemble the engine and associated systems?

What would you estimate, roughly, the cost in money and time to be? Roughly.

__________________
Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan