There is one thing to be said for Rossi's bizarre output of 'information' at the moment. I feel it might be some sort of 'Richter/Spitzer' moment.
{For those who have not appraised themselves on the history of fusion, Ronald Richter was the German scientist who inveigled his way into Peron's attention, getting money from the Argentinian leader for his 'work'. In the end it all turned out to be fraudulent, but not before it stimulated Spitzer into dreaming up magnetic plasma confinement, and thereafter all the rest.}
The thing that makes me ponder is because it is worthwhile to ponder. Not just because of the energy such a scheme might produce, but something wholly more significant - the fusion of hydrogen.
The issue is thus; we know we can fuse deuterium and tritium and whatever the doubts, etc., it looks at least possible else there'd not be such a big investment of time and money.
But proton-proton fusion is out. It is a total and absolute non-starter as far as current understandings go. But nonetheless I suggest we will need this, for one simple reason - interstellar transport. I don't see that we will be able to viably carry a payload of sufficient deuterium for a trip. What we need to do is to be able to collect the fuel along the route, and the only stuff out there is hydrogen.
So for me this is a kind of moment as did Spitzer on his ski slope - the claims so far are not yet credible, but it is a problem that needs to be approached one time or another, and we know that we can't do proton-proton fusion by any currently known physics.
I am wondering if there is a nucleus out there that could be excited into a state that can cause it to draw in a proton. Is there some excitation mode that means its nucleus can suck in one, then two, protons and fuse them. I'm not overly concerned about whether it gives energy, just whether we can recover and manufacture fusion fuel in deep space.