Dennis Whyte

That's why we have a partnership, right?

Is that our purpose at MIT is not to commercialize directly, but boy, do we want to advance the technology and the science that comes along this.

And that's the reason we're sort of doing it together.

It's great that you brought that up.

We use several historic analogs and one of them is around SpaceX, which is an appropriate one because space, you know, putting things into orbit has a minimum size to it and integrated technological complexity and budget and things like this.

So, you know, our point when we were, like, talking about starting, like, a fusion commercialization, you know, company, people look at you like, like, isn't this still really just a science experiment, you know?

But one of the things that we pointed to was SpaceX to say, well, tell me, like, 25 years ago, how many people would have voted that, you know, the leading entity on the planet to put things into orbit.

It's a private company.

People would have thought you were not so, right?

It's like…

And what is interesting about SpaceX is that it proved it's more than actually just financing.

It's really the purpose of the organization.

So the purpose of a – and I'm not against public finance or anything like that, but the purpose of a public entity like NASA correctly speaks to the political –

Because the cost comes from the political assembly that is there and I guess from us eventually as well too.

But its purpose wasn't about like making a commercial product.

It's about fundamental discovery and so forth, which is all really great.

It's like why did SpaceX –

It's interesting because why did SpaceX succeed so well is because the idea was it's like the focus that comes in the idea that you're going to relentlessly like reduce cost and increase efficiency is a drive that comes from the commercial aspect of it, right?

And this also then changes the people in the teams which are doing it as well, too.

And, in fact, trickles throughout the whole thing because the purpose isn't – while you're advancing things, like, it's really good that we can put things in orbit a lot more cheaply.