No, it can't. Again, the grant came only after WB-7 results were reviewed. And the contract asks for a net power reactor design. It doesn't sound like the Navy thinks this is makework.Or it can mean nothing else than the govt. was desperately throwing money around to boost a crashing economy.
What the hell are you babbling about? We know there will be .8T B fields. The lead scientist's statements aren't "hearsay." And what in God's name makes you think I have legal liability for anything?Hearsay. Officially, they don't got squat. Please stop publicly pumping this as something it is most certainly not, or until you can show otherwise. You are treading on very dangerous grounds, legally speaking.
The line item it was politically expedient for it to go under isn't especially meaningful; it still had to go through ONR first. Fusion research funding has always risen and fallen with the political tides. When oil prices cratered in the 1980s a lot of fusion projects were abandoned. IIRC Livermore had a $300M magnetic mirror project sold for scrap before it was ever fired.But it finally sunk in that this is "Recovery Act" money and while I prefer it going to something like this rather than some other long-shot, it is still money that basically came with a "here, spend this by tomorrow" attitude.
If you want to make the argument they're just throwing money around for fusion... how's ITER funding doing in the U.S. over the same period Polywell went from zero to WB-8? They were zeroed out one year, got half their budget in the next, and were cut further for 2011.
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/2010/0 ... drops.html