User: Stuntmonkey

Re:The tech industry will mature?

On: IT Trends In and Out of Downturn

The technology industry changes each and every day, I don't believe that it will "mature" at any time, if at all.

Your comment is not inconsistent with the original article:

1. The article referred to the computer industry; your implicit assumption that the technology industry is primarily computing may not be valid a few decades from now.
2. Every particular industry matures. The logic is simple: the world economy consistently grows at 2% or less per year, and so over the long term every industry must asymptotically approach that figure. Otherwise you would find that a particular industry would become larger than the world economy at some future date, which is impossible.
3. If you define "technology" as "that which is changing quickly, and therefore likely to experience rapid growth", then technology can continue to exceed the world economy's growth rate indefinitely, essentially because we're continually redefining what we mean by "technology". Yesterday mainframes and floppies, today graphics processors and genomics testing, tomorrow ?

Ion engines are better

On: Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship

Orion is interesting history, but not particularly compelling technology as is. These days ion engines perform as well as the Orion specs. They are also much cleaner and have been successfully tested in space:

• NASA's Deep Space 1 mission concluded last year
• Description of how the DS1 ion engine works

Most significantly, the DS1 engine achieved a specific impulse of 3100 seconds, which is comparable to Orion specifications and much better than chemical rockets. (The specific impulse indicates how efficient an engine is at converting propellant mass into forward momentum.)

The one thing that ion engines aren't good for is producing a lot of thrust, so in particular you could never launch yourself off the ground with one. Presumably the Orion technology also wouldn't be used for this purpose.