[LPM1888]

Collins himself has a weighty reputation. A decade earlier, the Texas Academy of Sciences had named him "Distinguished Texas Scientist" of the year for his research on high-energy lasers.

That title and a $1.00 will get you a cup of coffee any place in town.

If Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore National Labs can't verify his experiment then we damned sure don't need to be wasting any more money on the effort.

[Flightdeck]

Actually, that award will guarantee you some good funding for several years. Texas has some very, very, good laboratories also.