Not all particulates are the same. Their site says they're injecting materials that are biodegradable and seed clouds. Such a thing should be fine, but also needs more physical testing.

  > I could see funding research into it

SBIR == Small Business Innovation Research. Phase I is up to ~$314k and pretty short term. Phase 2 is up to ~2M and a bit longer. I've worked on and won some NASA, DoD, and DARPA and these were usually around $150k and 6mo for Phase I and $750k for 2 years on Phase II (those were STTRs)[0]. So those maximums aren't always being handed out. (The first few Phase I awards I saw for 2025 were $140k and the first Phase II was <$650k)

So yeah, it's not much and they're not going to have a huge impact.

  > It would likely be illegal if the amount weren't so small as to be useless.

  => @andyjsong <=

Or are you just saying you applied and have no award? Good luck, these can be tricky to write but once you get the hang of it it isn't too bad.

[0] They've since bumped the numbers, but not a ton. You can go look at awards on [1] to see actual numbers.

[1] https://www.sbir.gov/awards