More good news

"George William Herbert" wrote in message
...
Dave O'Neill wrote:
You're right. We bought it off the shelf. Things like drill presses and
lathes and arc welders are Technology We Already Have.

Arc welders are an interesting one right there, last time I checked we
didn't have any that work well in a vacuum.

Oh, they work perfectly fine in a vacuum;
just not for welding two solid pieces of
metal together.

That's kind of what I was thinking of, but thanks for the image. :-)

Dave

Michael Gallagher wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 03:05:02 -0600, "Paul F. Dietz"
wrote, in part:

..... with any luck at all, we might have another 60,000 years to go.


I did not write that.

Paul

On 4 Jan 2004 19:49:08 -0800, (Vincent Cate) wrote:

Would you say we had the technology for powered flight before anyone
had done powered flight? I don't think most people would.

Yes. We must have, or we couldn't have done it.

Think about it. We know we had the technology to build and fly the
airframe, because people had been had been flying unpowered models for
years. We know we had the technology to make the air screw
(propeller), because that was mostly carving wood with a spoke shave
and a draw knife. We know we had the technology to make the engine,
because the internal combustion engine was already in use. We know we
had the technology to transfer power from the engine to the air screw
because that was routine in textile plants.

What's left? Integrating these technologies. Combining an airframe,
an internal combustion engine, an air screw, and a power transmission
technique. Off-hand, I'd say the last piece of technology to mature
enough to be used was the engine, by the way.

Was the first airplane to fly perfect? No, but it was good enough.
If we'd waited for it to be perfect, we'd still be crossing the
Atlantic on liners. Perfect results from improving imperfect. It
doesn't appear ab initio out of nowhere.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Tue, 06 Jan 2004 13:41:41 -0800, in a place far, far away, Mary
Shafer made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

On 4 Jan 2004 19:49:08 -0800, (Vincent Cate) wrote:

Would you say we had the technology for powered flight before anyone
had done powered flight? I don't think most people would.

Yes. We must have, or we couldn't have done it.

Think about it. We know we had the technology to build and fly the
airframe, because people had been had been flying unpowered models for
years. We know we had the technology to make the air screw
(propeller), because that was mostly carving wood with a spoke shave
and a draw knife.

The hardest thing about the propeller was not the tools to cut it, but
knowing what shape it should be. The Wrights invented that
technology.

Mary Shafer wrote:

On 4 Jan 2004 19:49:08 -0800, (Vincent Cate) wrote:

Would you say we had the technology for powered flight before anyone
had done powered flight? I don't think most people would.

Yes. We must have, or we couldn't have done it.

This is like building things "beyond the state of the art" which is a
definition
of a path to failure.

At least before some kind of a program aimed at extending the
"state of the art".

Going the other way, it is a bit akin to building things with
"off the shelf" hardware and software. Yes, this is done all of the
time with mature products, but less frequently with new products.

"All it takes is a little tweaking" and sometimes that gets
very time consuming and costly.

Just noting that I agree with your terminology,
although this doesn't mean you necessarily should agree
with mine.

Mike Walsh

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Joann Evans wrote:

This sounds like putting out a fire in my house by blowing it up. It
would work, but I still have no house in the end...

If your house is going to blow up anyway, this is like blowing it up
when you've removed your furniture and are staying with your brother.

Paul


3 words... Bung in Hole... cork the bloody thing up and we'd have a sweeeet
bottle of champagne

Michael Walsh
This is like building things "beyond the state of the art" which is a
definition of a path to failure.

Sometimes failure, sometimes a paycheck, and sometimes fame and fortune.

I grew up in silicon valley. Advancing the state of the art is what
a lot of people there do to put food on the table.

-- Vince

jeff findley wrote:

If we can make 1 gigabit memory chips today it does not mean we
have the technology to make 10 gigabit chips today. Having an
engine powerful enough and light enough is like this. It is
just incrementally different not fundamentally different.

Hard to say. Perhaps you can make them today, but they'd simply cost
too much to be immediately profitable. Established companies often

Umm... 1gb is not what "we" know how to make, 1gb is what is presently
commercialy available for DDR and DDR2. It is also possible to go from
such to larger chips by for example doing MCMs and / or stacking.

in fact, hitachi was selling memory modules based on chips using
stacked 256mb parts ending up in a 2GB module (for which you'd
otherwise need 1Gb dram parts) back in '99.

focus on incremental, or even no, improvements in technology because
they can more readily predict the development costs of the new
products and predict the profits for next quarter. Just because the
desired ROI (return on investment) isn't there doesn't necessarily
mean the technology isn't there.


Well, one could make 10gb dram parts and make a dimm out of such. It
would probably be ~ 10GB per DIMM and cost $15K or similar. So
unless you just bought a Ultra Enterprise 15K and discovered that
you wanted to get 4-5 times as much RAM inside it as you could
otherwise you wouldn't be interested in it...

You have to admit that sometimes new products are developed using
existing technology, which reduces the design effort to engineering,
not technology development.

The state of the art in rockets does not give us $100/lb to orbit
yet. It will have to be advanced some still. This too can be an
incremental process. The people at SpaceX and other places are
working to design and build hardware that advances the state of
the art. It may not be "totally new technology" or "fundamentally
new technology" but it is new technology. After the Falcon-5
exists there is "technology in hand" or available "off the shelf"
that was not before. There may not be any new scientific theory,
but that is not tech.

My argument applies to CATS just as it does to memory chips. Just
because the established aerospace companies aren't willing to invest
their own money in designs that apply existing technology in new ways
doesn't mean that CATS isn't possible. It could mean that the
existing companies are unwilling to invest in revolutionary designs
and instead focus on evolutionary designs.

It would be inetersting to see what a launch using North Korean /
Iranian ballistic missile derived launchers would cost. It may well
be it could singinficantly reduce costs.


Jeff

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

jeff findley
Vince:
Rutan is advancing the state of the art in suborbital rockets.
SpaceShipOne is new technology. You might say it is only
incrementally better than the X-15. But I think that in
terms of operating costs or safety it is better.

What technology is new?

You seen another airplane that bends in the middle so it is stable
during atmospheric reentry?

Seen another nitrous-oxide/rubber hybrid engine with fiber optics wound
into the casing to detect if the case is burning through and shut
off the engine?

This is a very clever, innovative, and elegant solution to the problem.
There really is plenty of new tech in SpaceShipOne. For what they are
doing, the overall system is very safe. In my opinion, this is one of
the most impressive advances in the state of the art in the last
30 years.

-- Vince

In article ,
Vincent Cate wrote:
Seen another nitrous-oxide/rubber hybrid engine with fiber optics wound
into the casing to detect if the case is burning through and shut
off the engine?

*That* part is not particularly novel. The power wires to the solenoid
valves of the shuttle RCS engines wrap around the combustion chambers,
for the same reason.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |