Reply To: 600 kmph MonoRail Ship Ferry VLCC Fare $1/100 km

[Rezwan]

Aside from waiting for ARPA-E to come together, how else can we tap the stimulus grants? It’s a bit daunting looking at the literature.

The feds have some handy sites: http://www.recovery.gov/ and http://grants.gov

For recovery grants, we’re directed to this link http://www07.grants.gov/applicants/recovery.jsp

Looking at their timeline, there doesn’t seem to be much time to jump in, find a grant, and apply for it. http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/timeline This all seems very rushed.

The National Council of Nonprofits offers these words of comfort:

With so many businesses, governments, and nonprofits struggling to survive financially, there may be an immediate “feeding frenzy” as people eye the stimulus bill and angle for a slice.

and

Nonprofit leaders should review their mission statements, review their community needs, and review the stimulus bill to see if there is alignment. If not, then pass and find other ways to help our nation’s economy recover, including stepping forward to ensure that wise decisions are made so the stimulus funds really “stimulate” the broader economy. Avoid mission drift: don’t chase after the money. Keep true to your mission and core values.

I’m just overwhelmed, back at the grants.gov site, trying to find a grant that fits focus fusion or LPP. Take the NSF “Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation” grant, the title sounds right, but the emerging frontiers they’re interested in are BioSensing & BioActuation: Interface of Living and Engineered Systems (BSBA), and Hydrocarbons from Biomass (HyBi). And many other stipulations which disqualify LPP, even if the frontier were aligned.

The timing does seem to have passed on all of this (the above required an initial letter of intent in December, before Obama was even in office. Grantseeking was never my best skill.

Here’s hoping the ARPA-E thing materializes.