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This article is about technological progress enabling doing more with less. I’ve been having a tangentially related thought about general project planning as it
by gamegoblin 5y ago
This article is about technological progress enabling doing more with less. I’ve been having a tangentially related thought about general project planning as it pertains to technological progress.
The thesis is: Unless you can create an optimistic project plan that results in the project’s completion within 5 years, the money would be better spent on doing basic research.
The thesis is informed by the ITER fusion reactor project, which was started in 2007 and whose current target date is 2025 (but will likely slip, as it has before), but that date is for first plasma formation and not actual deuterium-tritium fusion, which won’t happen until 2035.
Meanwhile, during this timeline, advances in materials science, namely higher temperature superconductors, have opened the possibility of significantly smaller and simpler designs, some of which are being plausibly pursued by startups (eg SPARC).
So I wonder if a general heuristic to guide science funding would be something like “if the optimistic timeline is > 10 years, invest instead in basic research that could potentially develop technologies that would shorten that timeline”.
This thesis is also generally informed by the relative success of New Space (eg SpaceX) companies compared to Old Space (eg Boeing) companies. Elon has famously said “if the plan is long, the plan is wrong”, and I think that philosophy has demonstrably worked out well for SpaceX.
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- kurthr 5y agoAgreed, for hardware and manufacturing related development it is very difficult to see out past 5 years where anything new is being attempted. Within 3-5 years you are largely constrained by current available manufacturing, fabs, and processes, but farther out there may be better choices. You may be better served by doing the research (or collaborating with a supplier) to build new production capacity (understanding their challenges) for anything further out. Look at DUV lithography where a huge industry flipped on its head in 5 years, while X-ray lithography had been in development (and written off) for so many decades it had to be renamed. That required real R&D not tweaking current available equipment, which led to asymetric advantages and huge profits (Zero to One).
- 7373737373 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu...
- jeffreygoesto 5y agoITER? 2007? I heard about that in the mid 90s. I can still hear the voice of Prof. Miri [1] in my head: "toroidal,... poloidal,... explain it to me" Had to look it up [0] and found that it started in the late 70s even! Interesting aspect you are bringing up there, lots of truth in it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER [1] one of the nicest persons I met at the University https://iranglobal-info.translate.goog/node/57691?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=nui https://iranglobal-info.translate.goog/node/57691?_x_tr_sl=a...