And that’s not really the same thing. Did someone invent the LED bulb in 1920 and that cartel crushed it? Not really.
In reality, the biggest problem was they had no incentive to invest in new lighting technology research, although they had the money to do so. It takes a lot of effort to develop a new technology, and significantly more to make it practical and affordable.
I think the story of the development of the blue LED which led to modern LED lighting is more illustrative of the real obstacles of technological development.
Companies/managers don't want to invest in R&D bc it’s too uncertain and they typically are more interested in the short term.
And it’s hard for someone without deep technical knowledge to identify a realistic worthwhile technical idea from a bad one. So they focus on what they can understand and what they can quantify ().
And even technical people can fail to properly evaluate ideas that are even slightly outside their area of expertise (or even sometimes the ones that are within it )
> Probably the same reason the Space Shuttle wasn't cancelled even through pretty early on it was clear that it didn't make sense.
Upper management decisions are seldom made for good technical reasons.
> SLS's existence has nothing to do with upper management. This is the child of Congress who funded it without any sort of mission.
Which is a big part of why Artemis is kind of messed up - neither SLS nor Orion was designed with the mission in mind. So Orion has to go to a relatively high near "rectilinear halo orbit" instead of Apollo's "low lunar orbit" because the SLS/Orion system doesn't have enough delta-V to get to the superior orbit and back.
I used to see it more like that. But the reality is that one of those candidates is going to get elected whether you vote or not. So not voting is basically just letting other people decide for you. Which is rational if you genuinely believe that will make no difference.
I generally agree with this. I personally feel like this is an extreme scenario that was so easy to avoid. I have voted in every election I was eligible to vote in, including when I lived overseas.
I don't expect to agree 100% with a candidate, heck I'm happy when I agree with two or three policies that I find important. But I just can't accept having to pick between two directions that I think are both fundamentally bad and dangerous.
If one side will cause significantly more damage than the other, why would you not want to limit the damage?
If you have examined the political agendas of both candidates and think they will cause equal harm, then I see your point. But I don't see how it can apply to this election.
Is it really possible to quantify the level of bad each side will lead to in the future? And can it be quantified with such accuracy that it can be compared fairly?
In this election I only see bad outcomes from either candidate (I'm mainly thinking Biden and Trump, though the same for Harris if she is picked).
I can't quantify the bad and I don't know what metrics I would even use. Lets say I thought one would likely lead to economic problems on the scale of the housing crisis and the other would commit a number of troops to die fighting in a foreign war. How would I weigh the damage of those scenarios?
As someone who works for the nasa, I’m not so sure. You’d be surprised how much stuff gets randomly thrown away to save space.
And it’s going to get worse I now that paper files are disappearing.
I wanted some info and data from a test we did 9 years ago. It was a pretty big deal, lots of people involved, many millions of dollars, multiple nasa centers contributing. Every single person on the test randomly kept their own files for the portion of the test they were responsible for. And the only copy of the raw test data was deleted by one of them to save some space when upgrading. There is no record anywhere of what equipment was used for the test.
One of my coworkers has 4 TB external HDD that he keeps everything he has ever worked on. It’s not backed up anywhere else. It just failed and he thought he lost everything, luckily I was able to recover most of it. Wtf.
I think the FAA generally performs audits, not inspections.
They usually make sure the paperwork is in order. Less likely that they make sure the paperwork is actually correct, and vastly less likely that they make sure that the actual things happening in the shop are correctly done.
I worked in an FAA repair station that repaired commercial jet engine parts. We always got the same FAA inspector every year. We never seemed nervous when he would show up.
The only auditor that seemed to really be digging to find stuff was the GE financial auditor to make sure they were getting their repair royalties.
Oh and one time an auditor for an airline snuck in and stole one of his airline’s parts, or something like that. He was making the point that we had zero access control and literally anyone could just walk into the building.
They should really start testing the employees. It doesn’t matter what the paperwork says if the employees are incompetent.
Technically it was in the fan disc, and not a turbine blade. And while there was a defect, a big part of the problem was that an inspector most likely missed a crack during overhaul. The crack was present at a previous inspection, which they knew because there some fluorescent penetrant remaining in the defect.
I worked in a turbine engine component repair shop for 8 years. We had an NDT inspector fall asleep a lot in his booth and miss cracks. I’m pretty sure they ended up firing him. But maybe not as quick as they should have.
The radiators don’t have to increase in size really. If it’s more efficient you don’t have to reject as much heat.
But definitely a large increase in complexity as Stirling engines are mechanical devices and thermoelectrics are solid-state. The Stirling engines can be over 25% efficient rather than like 6% for thermoelectrics.
NASA has operated a Stirling engine in a lab for 17 years so it’s feasible, at least.
In reality, the biggest problem was they had no incentive to invest in new lighting technology research, although they had the money to do so. It takes a lot of effort to develop a new technology, and significantly more to make it practical and affordable.
I think the story of the development of the blue LED which led to modern LED lighting is more illustrative of the real obstacles of technological development.
Companies/managers don't want to invest in R&D bc it’s too uncertain and they typically are more interested in the short term.
And it’s hard for someone without deep technical knowledge to identify a realistic worthwhile technical idea from a bad one. So they focus on what they can understand and what they can quantify ().
And even technical people can fail to properly evaluate ideas that are even slightly outside their area of expertise (or even sometimes the ones that are within it )