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I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the author's arguments, but good luck optimizing something like those NASA evolutionary antennas [0] with a slide rule... in o
by isoprophlex 4y ago
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the author's arguments, but good luck optimizing something like those NASA evolutionary antennas [0] with a slide rule... in optimizing difficult numerical problems sometimes you DO need dumb, raw processing power.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/antenna/antenna.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/antenna...
- buescher 4y agoThis example is actually one I would trot out to bolster the author's arguments. Good luck optimizing one of those things, period. Really, try building one, let alone manufacturing them. Hansen & Collin's Small Antenna Handbook covers them, as "random segment antennas", in their utterly savage ("we're both retired and don't care what other people think") "Pathological Antennas" chapter. Hansen was, incidentally, one of the pioneers of FTDT computer modeling of antennas.
- isoprophlex 4y agoOkay, TIL, thanks for this little gem. That chapter starts with "Claims on these antennas typically have performance characteristics that violate the physical laws we work under." Savage indeed..!
- Dylan16807 4y ago> Good luck optimizing one of those things, period. But it was already optimized? > Really, try building one, let alone manufacturing them. ...the bent wires they demonstrate by showing off photographs? And you can tell the computer to optimize for a certain amount of inaccuracy in each bend.