Actually, I think framing it as a grade is beyond silly; it is irresponsible. Giving a letter grade to long-term scientific project makes little sense. It is not a one-shot thing with a predefined notion of correctness. What can we compare such a grade to?
Instead, we should be asking what we've learned and how the project has advanced science.
Given that, the way to evaluate the project is not on grants received, articles published or citations in premier journals, but rather 'Did you make a controlled explosion? If not when will you be able to?' And I think, so far an 'F' is fair.
Disclaimer: I worked in a fusion lab in undergrad.
Science requires experiments, no?
"What was happening, of course, was that all the boys had decided to work on this and to stop their research in science. All science stopped during the war except the little bit that was done at Los Alamos. And that was not much science; it was mostly engineering."
The same is true of fusion research. That's why it's "research", not merely "development".
In particular, the physics of plasma instabilities has always been quite imperfectly understood, and that has been one of the key problems with controlled fusion since the 1950s.
Science is about understanding, engineering is about building something.
If the Manhattan project had resulted in no new understanding, but had created a nuclear bomb it would have been a success. The science was incidental to the success of the project.
Engineering is built on science so there will often be scientists involved in Engineering projects, however the assumption with an Engineering project is that the science is already understood (or at least significantly understood) and so the main effort is in the design and construction.
The problem with Science projects is that they are hard to sell to the public. Thats because its hard for someone who isn't a domain expert to put a value on its significance. This is why a lot of Science projects are dressed up as Engineering projects[1] to sell them to the public.
Its pretty clear that the above fusion research is a Science project, i.e about understanding.
If this facility is being used to produce new bombs then that is an engineering project but if it is just being used to gain understanding about existing bombs then its science.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Love_of_music
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
See for instance Gleick's Feynman biography, "Genius".
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius
Another good read about the project is this bio: "The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor"
...which is obviously mostly about Taylor (on the Manhattan Project), but has some Feynman anecdotes.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Bindin...
The Manhattan Project can be judged by the simple question, is there a working bomb? Evaluating basic research is much harder.
I ask you, how do you know what are they doing at NIF is different, from the for theory important work at LHC?
How long is "long enough" to deem that a line of experimentation "didn't work out?" There is no period long enough. Sometimes a negative result is quite useful down the road. Some research just comes together when the right things are learned and tried. So any notion of a "dead end" is really just a tentative assessment, frozen in time.
It sounds like you're saying "don't bother exploring dead ends, either do it right the first time or give up," which is a lot like saying "I just want a penthouse apartment, stop wasting time building a foundation."
Not really. The point of big scientific research is that at the moment a project is being conceived, no one has any idea where it will go and whether it will bring anything useful. Yet in time, it always brings breakthroughs.
I'll put it bluntly: we need more trust. The right way to do science is to keep throwing money at it, no questions asked[0]. IMO the reason we've seen so much progress during last two wars was not because war per se stimulates research, but because during a conflict the military has infinite budget and it starts throwing more money at research that can be used, so scientists can do whatever they want without justifying it for general public[1]. Free of money&management issues, creative minds could focus on doing fundamental research in whatever they felt like doing[2].
Come to think of it, science is best done in the same conditions the programming (or any creative endeavour) is - when you're free to think, don't feel the pressure of looming deadlines, don't have to deal with managerial bullshit, and when you have enough money to not have to think about it (both in life and in cost of work materials).
So yes, I advocate some kind of almost blind trust. Just throw some part of taxpayer money at R&D, no questions asked. It's a long-time investment.
[0] - Of course there's a need to build in a system to limit the amount of parasites who will feed on free money; but they ultimately cannot be avoided, we can only try to limit their numbers.
[1] - I think it was Feynman who pointed out that the problem with science in the 90's was that scientists suddenly found themselves accountable to general public and struggled with explaining why their research was useful.
[2] - If that last paragraph rings bad to you, please note that I'm skipping over a lot of points related to creativity needing to be free of trivial bullshit, intrinsic motivation beating monetary rewards/prestige in performance, etc.
Look at the Large Hadron Collider. Do you suppose they scrub from their data stores all tests that fail to produce a "working" result? Are you suggesting that trying and failing produces irrelevant knowledge?
Why?
I mean, why don't they admit that this is four-month-old news? Why is this getting sudden publication? Is their agenda as transparent as informing the public, or is there a strategic element to it?