E-Cat world: Robert Duncan Starting Center to investigate LENR at Texas Tech (McKubre to Join?)

The National Science Foundation describes it own "mission" here:

https://www.nsf.gov/nsf/nsfpubs/straplan/mission.htm

The personnel in the slides, linked above and here:

http://www.nsf.gov/about/congr…/pdfs/ttu_speakerBios.pdf

shows any reader here some of the difficulties LENR research will face as it becomes more "mainstream". NSF distributes moneys allocated by the United States Congress for exploratory research in areas that are promising, but not often for specific applied ends. So, it is a major path for basic research funding. Unfortunately only James Neff (in addion to Robert K. Duncan) of those shown will be even likely or capable of grasping the issues with respect to LENR. There are no chemists represented, no other physicists, the "engineer" types, Liu and Clifton are respectively bio-engineering and data-mining-- both unfortunately a long way from the "engineering" training that makes it likely to understand much physics or chemistry. Perhaps Neff can be convinced by Duncan and perhaps the maths and arguments and preliminary evidence can then persuade a chenge at NSF. Certainly it is one path to further money for research.

It is unfortunately difficult to get controversial areas examined more closely. Frankly NASA, DOE and DOD (Dept. of Defense) are likely to be stronger candidate funding streams as LENR becomes vital to national and international interests. Recall that in the early days of the evolution of integrated circuits, it was the military need for real time computation and high data flow rates in jet fighters and guided missiles that led to the first "processor on a chip" devices and the first RAM and ROM initially at what would seem ridiculously low numbers of switches (16K gates was impressive, it replaced 128 X 128 magnetic core arrays of nearly half a square meter) and so on. Once 16K was available, real utility was affirmed. Or as another example of a similar military and defense impetus: fiber optics with IR lasers to maintain communications in spite of nuclear-generated EMP and so on and on.

The need to power satellites while hardening them against "flash attacks" in the vacuum of space, where PV cells are very vulnerable, surely has already caught the attention of DOD and whatever DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-- developer of the Internet) is authorized or deems wise to support. The very dangerous and controversial habit of powering long term satellites with plutonium or other active radioisotopes surely strongly motivates the search for alternatives such as LENR. It probably has already, since the few long term investigators in CF apparently worked under defense-related funding (McKubre, Storms, Swartz, NRL).

So, once LENR as a principle is more widely demonstrated, one might expect the NSF to also begin funding fundamental research. But currently we are just beginning the transition from controversial to exploratory.