NASA Answers Questions About LENR Research

Many people have been wondering about the level of NASA’s interest in LENR. Some are excited that they are looking into the subject, others are concerned that a government agency might be spending tax dollars on unproven science.

Keith Cowing of the web site NASA Watch is concerned that the agency might not be following its stated protocol; on his site he asks, “How do NASA’s Chief Technologist and Chief Scientist allow this stuff to be funded with taxpayer dollars without going through any of the agency’s standard peer review processes? Or do Rich Antcliff and Lesa Roe just fund this stuff with local center director’s discretionary slush funds and not tell HQ what they are doing?”

Because of this concern, Cowing sent some questions to Dennis Bushnell at NASA’s Langney Research Center, and received some responses which you can read here. Not surprisingly for a government agency, it seems that to undergo any project you have to go through some fairly stringent processes, and Bushnell explains in his answers how and why they started the research. The budget assigned to LENR research is quite small — a little over $200,000 per year so far. Bushnell explains that, “Langley’s Center Leadership Council (CLC) made the original decision to support the LENR research. The annual C&I continuations of this funding were approved by the Langley Science Council, which is comprised of Langley senior scientists.”

So it seems that this research has the official blessing of the leadership at Langley. Bushnell states that Joseph Zawodny, who has put out a couple of videos about his research interests, is the person who is heading up the effort. It’s small scale research at the moment, but it will be interesting to see what develops out of this project.