Chen Xiao Fan wrote:
> I believe this is the ultimate goal. I am sure they are not wasting the
> money but I think they could spend the money better elsewhere.

I don't know why you say this, although I recall you have a "history" with
RPI.

This is basic research, and can't be justified by immediate results.  It
seems they are exploring a recently discovered principle where nuclear
fusion can be induced on the table top.  That by itself seems worth
investigating.  I'm sure everyone would like to see a net energy gain, but
for now this group is pushing our understanding of the science along.  Maybe
someday net energy gain is possible from this new knowledge, maybe not, but
for now it sure sounds worth learning more about.  Whether it was their
direct intent or not, this research has already yielded some useful results,
being a "table top" appliance that can generate high energy neutrons.  I
don't see how you can fault anything going on here.  In fact they seem to be
doing a good job.

This sounds like exactly the kind of thing we should be funding research on.
For 50 funded project, one or two might yield useful results within a
decade.  Another one might discover something unrelated but useful, and some
will have been a waste of time in hindsight.  That's the way research works.
This group in particular is already producing useful results, putting them
ahead of most others.

Early transistors were so slow and low gain that they were nearly useless,
but that didn't make research into transistor science a bad idea.


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