I'm hopefull. This may well be a total flop as claimed by the Fusion science establishment, but what I like about the approach is the "build a little, test a lot, build another better, test a lot" iterative approach. Unlike claims by the Tokamak elite, the Bussard group's claims are testable in real time with real money. As stated we'll have a better idea on how viable this is by late fall, a distraction from the football season, but worth it.

I wish we could do spacecraft development incrementally this way. It seems to this geezer that the current scales of big science and big space seemingly prohibit a 'build often and test often' approach and leads to huge expensive risk it all programs whose test flights either never occur (Al Gore's Billion Dollar X-33 Hangar Queen) or only occur well after MANY years and several 10s of billions (Tokamak fusion, ARES). Too late to make changes.