Using 10% to 20% by weight of silica is not the optimum concentration - but if you use old processing technology you are forced to use a large excess of silica to ensure that you get a good coating.
The optimum concentration of silica is 1% or less - but more sophisticated processing is required to (1) Ensure that the silica is properly dispersed (one of the problems is that silica itself will agglomerate due to van der Waals forces) and (2) Ensure that the silica evenly coats every spore.
This can be achieved with modern processing methods.
These are outlined here:
http://web.njit.edu/~dave/Dry-Coating-Flow.pdf
1% or less of fumed silica evenly coats these powder particles - in some SEM micrographs the silica is difficult to see.
Why use silica? Actually, almost any material could be used - but it just so happens that silica can be obtained in a form of 10nm sized nanoparticles rather easily - it’s made by flame hydrolysis. These silica particles are about the same size as particles of smoke. They will rapidly clump up themselves in the bulk, and need to be dispersed (this means broken back down into hopefully their primary particle size) before they can be used to coat a larger particle. If they are not properly dispersed the product looks like “cotton candy”.
As ZACKandPOOK says, you just endlessly use the same bizarre interpretations to make your arguments.
Tom Geisbert wasn't accustomed to working with dry spores, so he IMAGINED that the "goop" he saw oozing out the spores under high magnification was an additive. And when AFIP detected silicon and oxygen, he IMAGINED the "goop was some form of glass or silica.
That whole comedy of errors is described in detail in Chapter 15 of my book. That chapter is available for reading HERE.
I've been trying to get you to discuss science, but all you do is repeat the same nonsense over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
When I post questions you cannot answer without showing that your beliefs are nonsense, back you go to posting your interpretations of articles again.
This morning, I put my analysis of the physics behind the Dugway process on my web site. When I get some free time, I'll create a separate web page with illustrations to show in detail what my analysis indicates.
By putting this on my web site, I'm inviting everyone who comes to my site to challenge my analysis with SCIENTIFIC FACTS, not interpretations of articles as you always do.
My analysis shows that your beliefs about van der Waals forces are WARPED and UNREAL. You are also invited to use scientific facts to prove me wrong. But don't waste my time with more of your interpretations of what someone wrote in some article. We're past that now.