Again, you seem to think that I'm denigrating that the primary thrust of SpaceX is changing the cost structure. I'm not at all, changing the cost structure of space access is the single most important thing needed in space technology right now. I'm not taking the hipster view, I'm taking the pragmatic view.
I'm separating incremental advancements, which SpaceX is doing, as well as Honda and BMW, from leapfrog enhancements. SpaceX is certainly using some leapfrog enhancements, such as their fabrication techniques for the main tanks, but they didn't do the initial development.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with incremental advancements, and improving the practice of existing technology. It's all admirable. I sit on a patent review board where I work. Every inventor is in love with his own ideas, me included. They all consider "good engineering" to be an insult to their inventions. But to call something "good engineering" isn't an insult, it should be a complement. I've heard of places where patent practices are different, and sometimes "good engineering" is set aside in favor using a locally patented solution that may not be as good for the specific application.
Yes, SpaceX is advancing technology. I guess its an issue of calibration, because by some measure everything in space transportation is "advanced technology." But their advances are primarily in the area of total project cost reduction. It's not like they've come up with a new high-thrust ion engine or something.
I didn't say that cost wasn't important - for now even of primary importance. I agree with you completely on that. I was just taking mild exception to the "technology development" comment in the post I responded to. Right now the space technology we need most is low cost.
Personally, I'd declare a tax holiday on any space-based manufacturing, mining, etc. We're not getting any tax revenue from it today, and it's so dogonned expensive that we're not moving any Earth-based manufacturing up there, unless there are very good reasons for it. I doubt there's much besides automated jewelry making that could be pushed into orbit that could otherwise be done on Earth, and even that seems sketchy to me. (I'm thinking of small, expensive things where weight is less impediment.)
Is SpaceX really advancing the technology? I've gotten the impression that much of what they've done is pick up NASA research and bring it to fruition. That plus they've applied more modern management practices to bring something to market quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. None of that is to denigrate them at all, simply making space access more affordable is a tremendous achievement.
But "cheap" and developing new technologies from scratch don't generally mix well. Once they're established and have a regular revenue stream, I certainly do hope we'll see some new technology development. But that development will probably always be a mix between cost and capability, as opposed to "biggest, fastest, farthest, regardless of the cst."
I grew up in Akron, Ohio, where one of the local heros was Art Arfons. He raced jet cars on the Bonnieville Salt Flats, and several times held the world land speed record. He may have eventually raced jets, but his earlier cars used aircraft piston engines.
He named is daughter "Allison" after an aircraft engine maker that he liked, and presumably because he thought it an acceptable girls name. I believe she goes by the name "Dusty", but have no idea if was because she didn't like "Allison", or some other reason. (Yep, just checked that on wikipedia.)
> lol because drugs do bad things to people. This is something many of us have seen first-hand.
Not being questioned., I've seen it, too. I'm questioning the "War on Drugs" as the proper response to drug use. There are other things we could do to curb drug use. My point is that at the very least, the War on Drugs is very expensive, has many bad side-effects, and many of those bad side-effects aren't even being counted as side-effect and therefore indicators that a better response may be called for.
Not the link I was drawing. US agribusiness drove corn prices so low that many Mexican farmers ended up going out of business and selling their farms. Then we started on our ethanol bandwagon and corn prices started going back up. But at this point Mexico had already shed much of its domestic corn capability. More expensive food, fewer jobs, head North for work.
I find it quite annoying that the entire War on Drugs is pretty much unquestioned at a societal level.
I'll line that right up with all of the other things about our society that disturb me. We're born and conditioned in our culture, and most fail to see the deepest cultural problems.
By the way, I'm still having that "War on Drugs contributing to illegal immigration" discussion with the co-worker. He's accepted the logic of each step of the way, but hasn't quite internalized the whole jump, yet. Ingrained acceptance of the status quo is just that - ingrained.
Actually I thought that the War on Terror was just an opportunistic power/money grab. "Something bad has happened, but WE know The Right Way! (TM) to handle situations like this."
The War on Drugs is only one thing of this sort that we're doing. If I were going to go after any one of those policies I'd probably start by making a list of them, find the least interconnected, and go after that one. I'm not sure it would be the War on Drugs, but maybe it would. Some of the stupidities we do are so deeply ingrained that we don't even perceive them, let alone question them. It takes serious effort to step outside and see.
I don't believe I spouted ANY conspiracy theory. I simply believe that the War on Drugs has its underpinnings in a particular mindset. That mindset, like many mindsets, is prone to pursue its chosen path without regard for unintended consequences. In fact many mindsets are prone to studiously avoid seeing any such consequences.
That doesn't take a conspiracy, it just takes stubbornness and frequently Righteousness! (The capital R and "!" are attempts to make a point, not merely poor punctuation.)
Someone was outside my office yesterday making the same gripe about pot laws, so for even more fun I drew another line for him supporting his argument.
Have you ever considered the link between our pot laws and illegal immigration?
Our drug policy is based on interdiction - stopping the supply. Drugs also follow the law of supply and demand. If we reduce the supply and the demand stays constant, the price rises. This has been happening. The net is that drug lords in Mexico and South America are very well funded. In Mexico in particular, the drug lords seem to be better funded than the authorities, so much so that large parts of the country are essentially lawless.
This makes for a bad business climate. No business, no jobs. No jobs, go somewhere else to find them - like the US.
Oh yeah, there's another line to be drawn between our agriculture and energy policies and the same illegal immigration. Think corn.
...and the headgear quits sensing how tired you are, and TELLS YOU how tired you are.
I'm meaning to be facetious with this, but I suspect that at some level this really is possible. Just like medications can keep you awake and improve your alertness, I'm strongly suspect that some form of electrostimulation could do the same, probably with fewer ill side-effects. As has been said about the "brain pills", how far from "neat trick" to "mandatory to keep your job in a competitive market"?
Do Republicans really dislike birth control for religious reasons, or is the dislike really so that there will be a surplus labor market, leading to lower pay?
Once upon a time I was in the thick of this, both working for a Rambus licensee on our implementation of their design, and later reading the patents, including the original 1990 submarine.
I don't see from your Wikipedia link where they say Rambus "stole" their IP from anyone.
As a fun aside, the original 1990 submarine patent application, was abandoned, but not before being continued, which I guess is part of what let it stay submerged for so long. I believe even the first continuation was abandoned as well, but not before it spawned the other patents that they actually used. That orginal patent actually described "Rambus-C", not "Rambus-D", the thing that they eventually brought to market with Intel.
It was an incredible job of mining the teachings to extract claims which just happened to match the JEDEC standards. I was also friends with several JEDEC members on that board, at the time.
Been there, done that, decades ago. Agreed it was in a much cruder, simpler technology, and sometimes size does matter. But US Patents 5278800, 5508968, 5519664, 5555528. There's more, but not relevant to the current topic.
Just to throw a little fat into the fire, many of those politicians you mentioned crank about renewable energy subsidies as being "market-distorting", and had them high on the chopping block during budget negotiations. At the same time, we also subsidize the hugely profitable petrochemical industries to the tune of more than an order of magnitude greater. Yet that subsidy is "essential" and apparently not at all market distorting.
Specifically, the numbers I've heard were $13e9 for alternative/renewable energy subsidies and $400e9 for petrochemical subsidies.
Since this thread is also focused on corn, it also says nothing about the ill effects that our "corn manipulations" have had on Mexico. Though I'm sure it's an unintended consequence, first the price of corn dropped so low as to drive Mexican farmers out of business, then it bounced back higher than it was before, after the domestic supply was disrupted. Combine that with the side-effects of the War on Drugs, and the US has really screwed over Mexico. Then those same politicians mentioned above get all self-righteous about illegal immigration.
As with someone else making some comment about "90 meters deep after a storm," I don't think that's possible. I don't think you can sink this ship - it's already as sunk as it can get, at least in this spot. I get the distinct impression from the pictures that it's already sitting on the bottom, and the fact that the bottom is so shallow is part of the current problem. If the bottom had been deeper, say had the ship been taking another route, none of this would have happened.
To "finish sinking the ship" you first have to move it to deeper water, and if you can move it at all, you may as well move it to drydock. Then you can either repair or salvage. Either way, you've first got the fuel problem.
Which schooling were you in, in the 60's? That's when I was in grade school, either sitting under the desk or sitting out in the hall back to the wall, for the nuclear war practice alerts.
As a general commentary, it appears to me there there is indeed a phenomenal amount of snake-oil surrounding CNF or LENR, whatever you call it. I strongly suspect that that happens any time there's a nascent technology that could make such a difference to our lives. These days the 100mpg carburetor is apocryphal, but once upon a time there were articles all over about it, and frequent conspiracy theories about how the oil or auto industry had bought out the patents to keep the status quo.
But there does seem to be something happening here that we haven't explained adequately, yet. A little research is not a bad idea, at the very least it can have one of two outcomes - it'll debunk the whole thing, which won't stop it, but will at least push it back to the fringe where it belongs, or perhaps there really is something there that can be exploited once we actually understand what is happening. Keep in mind that what's happening at the snake-oil level is not science. What NASA is talking about is. If NASA's effor stays as science, then they will either find something or debunk. Of course if it turns into bureaucracy instead of science, all bets are off.
But other than that last clause, doesn't this also describe the state of conventional nuclear fusion, as well? Hasn't fusion been 20 years away for the past 50 years, or so?
I liked both books also, each had their good points. I was a bit annoyed with the "Starship Troopers" movie because of its sarcastic stance. I'd rather see the book played straight, but we probably haven't been capable of that as a society since 1960-1970. If you want sarcasm and cynicism I'd rather see "The Forever War" done straight.
By the way, did you mean "mayority of sociopaths" or "majority of sociopaths". I presume by the former you mean "sociopathic leaders" and with that I fear I must agree. I feel that the majority of people are decent.
The people beating the war drums the hardest for the Iraq War were also considered "chicken-hawks" - they found ways to evade going to Viet Nam - by deferments, national guard, reserves, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you seem to think that I'm denigrating that the primary thrust of SpaceX is changing the cost structure. I'm not at all, changing the cost structure of space access is the single most important thing needed in space technology right now. I'm not taking the hipster view, I'm taking the pragmatic view.
I'm separating incremental advancements, which SpaceX is doing, as well as Honda and BMW, from leapfrog enhancements. SpaceX is certainly using some leapfrog enhancements, such as their fabrication techniques for the main tanks, but they didn't do the initial development.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with incremental advancements, and improving the practice of existing technology. It's all admirable. I sit on a patent review board where I work. Every inventor is in love with his own ideas, me included. They all consider "good engineering" to be an insult to their inventions. But to call something "good engineering" isn't an insult, it should be a complement. I've heard of places where patent practices are different, and sometimes "good engineering" is set aside in favor using a locally patented solution that may not be as good for the specific application.
Yes, SpaceX is advancing technology. I guess its an issue of calibration, because by some measure everything in space transportation is "advanced technology." But their advances are primarily in the area of total project cost reduction. It's not like they've come up with a new high-thrust ion engine or something.
I didn't say that cost wasn't important - for now even of primary importance. I agree with you completely on that. I was just taking mild exception to the "technology development" comment in the post I responded to. Right now the space technology we need most is low cost.
Personally, I'd declare a tax holiday on any space-based manufacturing, mining, etc. We're not getting any tax revenue from it today, and it's so dogonned expensive that we're not moving any Earth-based manufacturing up there, unless there are very good reasons for it. I doubt there's much besides automated jewelry making that could be pushed into orbit that could otherwise be done on Earth, and even that seems sketchy to me. (I'm thinking of small, expensive things where weight is less impediment.)
Is SpaceX really advancing the technology? I've gotten the impression that much of what they've done is pick up NASA research and bring it to fruition. That plus they've applied more modern management practices to bring something to market quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. None of that is to denigrate them at all, simply making space access more affordable is a tremendous achievement.
But "cheap" and developing new technologies from scratch don't generally mix well. Once they're established and have a regular revenue stream, I certainly do hope we'll see some new technology development. But that development will probably always be a mix between cost and capability, as opposed to "biggest, fastest, farthest, regardless of the cst."
I grew up in Akron, Ohio, where one of the local heros was Art Arfons. He raced jet cars on the Bonnieville Salt Flats, and several times held the world land speed record. He may have eventually raced jets, but his earlier cars used aircraft piston engines.
He named is daughter "Allison" after an aircraft engine maker that he liked, and presumably because he thought it an acceptable girls name. I believe she goes by the name "Dusty", but have no idea if was because she didn't like "Allison", or some other reason. (Yep, just checked that on wikipedia.)
> lol because drugs do bad things to people. This is something many of us have seen first-hand.
Not being questioned., I've seen it, too. I'm questioning the "War on Drugs" as the proper response to drug use. There are other things we could do to curb drug use. My point is that at the very least, the War on Drugs is very expensive, has many bad side-effects, and many of those bad side-effects aren't even being counted as side-effect and therefore indicators that a better response may be called for.
Not the link I was drawing. US agribusiness drove corn prices so low that many Mexican farmers ended up going out of business and selling their farms. Then we started on our ethanol bandwagon and corn prices started going back up. But at this point Mexico had already shed much of its domestic corn capability. More expensive food, fewer jobs, head North for work.
I find it quite annoying that the entire War on Drugs is pretty much unquestioned at a societal level.
I'll line that right up with all of the other things about our society that disturb me. We're born and conditioned in our culture, and most fail to see the deepest cultural problems.
By the way, I'm still having that "War on Drugs contributing to illegal immigration" discussion with the co-worker. He's accepted the logic of each step of the way, but hasn't quite internalized the whole jump, yet. Ingrained acceptance of the status quo is just that - ingrained.
Actually I thought that the War on Terror was just an opportunistic power/money grab. "Something bad has happened, but WE know The Right Way! (TM) to handle situations like this."
Where to start...
The War on Drugs is only one thing of this sort that we're doing. If I were going to go after any one of those policies I'd probably start by making a list of them, find the least interconnected, and go after that one. I'm not sure it would be the War on Drugs, but maybe it would. Some of the stupidities we do are so deeply ingrained that we don't even perceive them, let alone question them. It takes serious effort to step outside and see.
I don't believe I spouted ANY conspiracy theory. I simply believe that the War on Drugs has its underpinnings in a particular mindset. That mindset, like many mindsets, is prone to pursue its chosen path without regard for unintended consequences. In fact many mindsets are prone to studiously avoid seeing any such consequences.
That doesn't take a conspiracy, it just takes stubbornness and frequently Righteousness! (The capital R and "!" are attempts to make a point, not merely poor punctuation.)
Not conspiracy, just unintended consequences.
Someone was outside my office yesterday making the same gripe about pot laws, so for even more fun I drew another line for him supporting his argument.
Have you ever considered the link between our pot laws and illegal immigration?
Our drug policy is based on interdiction - stopping the supply. Drugs also follow the law of supply and demand. If we reduce the supply and the demand stays constant, the price rises. This has been happening. The net is that drug lords in Mexico and South America are very well funded. In Mexico in particular, the drug lords seem to be better funded than the authorities, so much so that large parts of the country are essentially lawless.
This makes for a bad business climate. No business, no jobs. No jobs, go somewhere else to find them - like the US.
Oh yeah, there's another line to be drawn between our agriculture and energy policies and the same illegal immigration. Think corn.
...and the headgear quits sensing how tired you are, and TELLS YOU how tired you are.
I'm meaning to be facetious with this, but I suspect that at some level this really is possible. Just like medications can keep you awake and improve your alertness, I'm strongly suspect that some form of electrostimulation could do the same, probably with fewer ill side-effects. As has been said about the "brain pills", how far from "neat trick" to "mandatory to keep your job in a competitive market"?
Do Republicans really dislike birth control for religious reasons, or is the dislike really so that there will be a surplus labor market, leading to lower pay?
Once upon a time I was in the thick of this, both working for a Rambus licensee on our implementation of their design, and later reading the patents, including the original 1990 submarine.
I don't see from your Wikipedia link where they say Rambus "stole" their IP from anyone.
As a fun aside, the original 1990 submarine patent application, was abandoned, but not before being continued, which I guess is part of what let it stay submerged for so long. I believe even the first continuation was abandoned as well, but not before it spawned the other patents that they actually used. That orginal patent actually described "Rambus-C", not "Rambus-D", the thing that they eventually brought to market with Intel.
It was an incredible job of mining the teachings to extract claims which just happened to match the JEDEC standards. I was also friends with several JEDEC members on that board, at the time.
Has nobody here heard the (in)famous quote by Churchill? All the grammar griping, and no attribution.
First step??
Been there, done that, decades ago. Agreed it was in a much cruder, simpler technology, and sometimes size does matter. But US Patents 5278800, 5508968, 5519664, 5555528. There's more, but not relevant to the current topic.
Just to throw a little fat into the fire, many of those politicians you mentioned crank about renewable energy subsidies as being "market-distorting", and had them high on the chopping block during budget negotiations. At the same time, we also subsidize the hugely profitable petrochemical industries to the tune of more than an order of magnitude greater. Yet that subsidy is "essential" and apparently not at all market distorting.
Specifically, the numbers I've heard were $13e9 for alternative/renewable energy subsidies and $400e9 for petrochemical subsidies.
Since this thread is also focused on corn, it also says nothing about the ill effects that our "corn manipulations" have had on Mexico. Though I'm sure it's an unintended consequence, first the price of corn dropped so low as to drive Mexican farmers out of business, then it bounced back higher than it was before, after the domestic supply was disrupted. Combine that with the side-effects of the War on Drugs, and the US has really screwed over Mexico. Then those same politicians mentioned above get all self-righteous about illegal immigration.
As with someone else making some comment about "90 meters deep after a storm," I don't think that's possible. I don't think you can sink this ship - it's already as sunk as it can get, at least in this spot. I get the distinct impression from the pictures that it's already sitting on the bottom, and the fact that the bottom is so shallow is part of the current problem. If the bottom had been deeper, say had the ship been taking another route, none of this would have happened.
To "finish sinking the ship" you first have to move it to deeper water, and if you can move it at all, you may as well move it to drydock. Then you can either repair or salvage. Either way, you've first got the fuel problem.
Which schooling were you in, in the 60's? That's when I was in grade school, either sitting under the desk or sitting out in the hall back to the wall, for the nuclear war practice alerts.
As a general commentary, it appears to me there there is indeed a phenomenal amount of snake-oil surrounding CNF or LENR, whatever you call it. I strongly suspect that that happens any time there's a nascent technology that could make such a difference to our lives. These days the 100mpg carburetor is apocryphal, but once upon a time there were articles all over about it, and frequent conspiracy theories about how the oil or auto industry had bought out the patents to keep the status quo.
But there does seem to be something happening here that we haven't explained adequately, yet. A little research is not a bad idea, at the very least it can have one of two outcomes - it'll debunk the whole thing, which won't stop it, but will at least push it back to the fringe where it belongs, or perhaps there really is something there that can be exploited once we actually understand what is happening. Keep in mind that what's happening at the snake-oil level is not science. What NASA is talking about is. If NASA's effor stays as science, then they will either find something or debunk. Of course if it turns into bureaucracy instead of science, all bets are off.
But other than that last clause, doesn't this also describe the state of conventional nuclear fusion, as well? Hasn't fusion been 20 years away for the past 50 years, or so?
I liked both books also, each had their good points. I was a bit annoyed with the "Starship Troopers" movie because of its sarcastic stance. I'd rather see the book played straight, but we probably haven't been capable of that as a society since 1960-1970. If you want sarcasm and cynicism I'd rather see "The Forever War" done straight.
By the way, did you mean "mayority of sociopaths" or "majority of sociopaths". I presume by the former you mean "sociopathic leaders" and with that I fear I must agree. I feel that the majority of people are decent.
Along that line:
http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=f1c2660f-54b9-4193-86a4-ec2c39342c6c
The people beating the war drums the hardest for the Iraq War were also considered "chicken-hawks" - they found ways to evade going to Viet Nam - by deferments, national guard, reserves, etc.
I'm looking more at your latter, and that an 18yo is more likely to think of getting to "play with guns" as nifty than a mid-20s type.