this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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The money is coming from the regional infrastructure fund (RIF); this seems to be new money that started taking applications in mid 2024.
A cynic could say that this is just money that was already allocated to other science; which the NAF govt has removed. So is it "new" funding; not really.
This govt is specifically interested in near-term commercialization; not fundamental research.
I am going to take this as a win....but not a sign that they are moving away from being generally terrible for science.
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Another cynic may mention that the govt don't want to miss the next RocketLab; when they had an option to invest $20M early and didn't take it...that investment would be worth billions now.
You make a good point - this is money spent on research that almost certainly will not lead to a commercial product. They could have picked something more near term but didn't and we should give them credit for that.
I think this is a bit different from RocketLab, because at that point there had been rockets being launched for decades. People have poured money into fusion for decades and no one has succeeded other than baby steps. So if they want a commercial product this seems orders of magnitude more risky. I'd like to think they are doing it for the sake of fundamental research not the payoff.
Or perhaps they expect a breakthrough in one of the other countries and want to make sure we have facilities to benefit from that.
They probably asked chatgpt what to invest in 😂