----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan Coffey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 1:40 AM Subject: Re: Girls more confident of success...in an empathicaly focused world
> > --- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Look around you, at the rate things ~were~ going, super sonic travel > > should > > > be commonplace, a moon station should be old news, maned mars mission > > should > > > be old news as well. Highly destributed concurent systems should be > > > commonplace. > > > > There is a much easier explanation for this. It first happened in physics, > > and then it happened in engineering as the simple applications of physics > > all happened. I think Pauli may have been the first to talk about it, but > > I won't swear it was him. It might have been Dirac, and I'd appreciate > > correction: > > > > "Back then, a second rate mind could have a first rate idea. Now, a first > > rate mind has a hard time coming up with a third rate idea." > > > > The last fundamental revolution in physics was about 75 years ago. Recent > > fundamental theoretical advances, like the standard model, have no known > > commercial applications, even 25 years later. QED does, but that's 50 > > years old, and its probably the last innovation. > <yada yada> > > Nice try Dan, but we both know that's not what is happening here. No, I strongly differ with you. What you write is diametrically opposed to my experience developing hardware. Its also opposed to what I've gleamed talking to people who have demonstrated their ability to develop hardware. For example, I asked a friend who was the test engineer for the Saturn I rocket what would be the cost savings in getting something into orbit if the best guys possible started an organization from scratch and did things right. He thought about 40% or so, no more. >I was not > referencing anything we don't already know ~how~ to do, just stuff we aren't > doing that we do know how to do, or worse, have done. > > Granted the space exploration stuff might take a bit of thought here and > there, but we've already built supersonic airlines and highly destributed > concurent systems. They aren't being used though, and when you realize why > you learn something about the culture. People don't like throwing money down the toilet? If what you said were true, other fields wouldn't have advanced as they did. Look at my small neck of the woods. We now can drill a well that can stay in a 2 meter wide formation for many kilometers, even if that formation changes dip. This has allowed one multibillion dollar platform to be put in place once to drill wells to extract oil that, using older techniques, would have required moving the platform scores of times. As a result of this and advances in seismic processing, about $5.00 barrel has been taken off the price of oil. With supersonic travel, we've been able to do that for years, but not cost effectively. There has not been a massive breakthrough, so costs have not fallen by the factor of 5 or so that would be needed for real commercial operations. We could, indeed have supersonic transport on a regular basis if we were willing to put up with sonic booms all day and all night long and had a special tax that supported it. But why should we. As far as distributed concurrent networks go, I know some applications where it is being employed because the applications are very straightforward. But, like AI, the ease of use for many problems has been greatly overstated. >It's not like we aren't advancing as quickly, it's that we are moving backwards. You know it, I know it, >everyone who stops and thinks about it knows that for the real big stuff, the > possible, the known, we just don't have it any more. You are the first person I know of who has claimed this. The number of counter examples to this is overwhelming. Engineering is so much more efficient than it was when I started out. We're able to use sensitive equipment in environments with 20 g rms vibration, 1000 g shocks with MTBFF*s for, say, a microprocessor board exceeding 10,000 hours. We're able to use FEA* to design equipment that was impossible when I started out. Yet, there are some places where we've come close to the wall; where added FEA work doesn't buy us much. Let me ask you about one that you mentioned. Given the physics of supersonic travel, how are we to eliminate sonic booms when used over land. If just used over water, how do we get the operating costs down a factor of 4 or 5, when the transport costs are tied to the large use of fuel required by supersonic transport? >From http://www.everything2.net/index.pl?node=Concorde we see that half of the takeoff weight is fuel. Over 300 gallons/passenger is required for the basic transatlantic crossing...slightly over 3000 miles.** The 777, on the other hand, uses only 100 gallons/passenger and has a much larger range (over 5000 miles). The tools we have to throw at the design of airplanes are much more sophisticated than they were in the '60s, yet only incremental progress has been made. In other areas, such a stealth, a lot of progress has been made. So, my argument is that we hit a wall in aviation. If you know how to have a reasonably priced commercial supersonic air industry, I'd be interested in hearing about it. Dan M. . *Mean Time Between Field Failures. Its basically how long the equipment works while drilling between failures. *Finite element analysis ***the stated range is over 4000 miles, but it is likely that this may require traveling at speeds less than Mach 2 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
