You can sure tell when people have been drinking the Cyclone Kool-aid. They start chanting talking points like "R&D takes time" and engaging in magical thinking such as a long string of failures logically must lead to success.
Tom used an example before: it's like trying to teach a horse to sing. No matter how patient and dedicated you are, your string of failures is never going to end in success.
Harry Schoell is guarantying continued failure by sticking to his design that neither he nor Ohio State University could make any progress with. Ohio State designed out the spider bearing to eliminate the failures it caused, and they proposed a research program to invent new bearing materials to have some chance of water lubrication ever working. Harry's response was to put the spider bearing back in and pretend he can make water lubrication work.
Harry, after 12 years of continuous failure, has made zero progress. Has a Cyclone engine ever survived for one hour at full load? They've never said.
Part of what the fans never get is that "research" and "development" both involve methodical, thoughtful processes. Harry Schoell is proudly ignorant of all relevant branches of engineering and does nothing but trial and error. Being ignorant of the underlying science means he has about the same chances of fixing problems as a monkey at a CAD terminal.
No, strike that. A monkey wouldn't be emotionally attached to a bad design concept and could move on to designs with a chance of working.
