cmsmith

9 ms·

31.
by cmsmith 10y ago
Some confusion here about government research and patents. As a government researcher with patents, I will weigh in with an approximation of our patent criteria: 1. Increases the potential for commercialization of the technology. If you hav
32.
by cmsmith 10y ago
Doesn't every car maintain positive pressure? I've never seen a car that doesn't only have fans on the air inlets.
33.
by cmsmith 10y ago
The other takeaway would be that Musk, unlike all those other billionaires, is working on things that are in the public interest. He generally wasn't the instigator for the govt subsidies, but his interests of "make money while ma
34.
by cmsmith 10y ago
It seems like 'buying first stage engines from Russia' will have a hard time undercutting the 'reuse the first stage entirely' strategy, no?
35.
by cmsmith 10y ago
I guess this means they're taking a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" attitude towards planetary protection? Musk is on the record as not being worried about contaminating Mars with Earth life, and it seems like a 2
36.
by cmsmith 10y ago
We've been synthesizing one liquid hydrocarbon fuel for thousands of years; ethanol is pretty similar to jet fuel in energy density and combustion. I think the possibility that in the future we'll have cheap solar/wind grid p
37.
by cmsmith 10y ago
The shareholders are paying out of their personal wealth. This was expected and already priced into the stock.
38.
by cmsmith 10y ago
Your link goes on to say, in a paraphrased quote corroborated by the NYT: "we approached them in the past for a similar story, and they didn't want to be involved in such a large collaborative effort, so we didn't bother this
39.
by cmsmith 10y ago
Perhaps they had sold >777 by the end of the month, but they happened to send out their press release after their 777th sale.
40.
by cmsmith 10y ago
Reminds me of a couple paragraphs in this [1] story: >Over and over again, I'd listen to someone's story of how back pain meant they could no longer work, or how a shoulder injury had put them out of a job. Then I would ask: Wh
41.
by cmsmith 11y ago
>Interestingly, when the clocks are synchronized, the common oscillation frequency decreases, i.e. the clocks become slow and inaccurate. From the abstract of the referenced paper. Apparently the effort required to keep the clocks synchr
42.
by cmsmith 11y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by outmoded here. Most listeners to public radio programming are listening over the radio, not by podcast. And I would argue that radio is a superior delivery system for most of the programs (everything but t
43.
by cmsmith 11y ago
>freshwater lake Death Valley has no outlets (is endorheic), so it would be a salt water lake (at least after all the surface salt had time to dissolve).
44.
by cmsmith 11y ago
Unless the inflation is caused by the government printing money. If 10 citizens each have $10, then there are $100 in the money supply. Now the government prints $10. If no actual value was created with that $10, then the value of the dolla
45.
by cmsmith 11y ago
The costs of building and launching small satellites has dropped significantly since the 90s. People are also traveling more and demanding more connectivity, so it seems that Iridium may have just been a bit to early to the game.
46.
by cmsmith 11y ago
>Nothing unexpected, sadly. It shouldn't be too surprising that the version of the article you made up in your own mind said what you expected it to say.
47.
by cmsmith 11y ago
Surprise - a central banker[1] wants to have more control over how people use our currency. Summers seems to be discounting the value of large denomination bills as a savings vehicle for ordinary citizens in countries with weak currencies.
48.
by cmsmith 11y ago
1. New company comes in with VC funding 2. Uses funding to operate at a loss and undercut and outperform existing players 3. Growth slows because there are only a couple billion internet users out there. Raises prices or decreases value to
49.
by cmsmith 11y ago
My issue with GA is that they are definitely the sexiest/best known evolutionary algorithm in their class, so they get used for a lot of things that they're not really designed for. GA work best if you have lots of discrete parame
50.
by cmsmith 11y ago
The wood technology mentioned in the article isn't particularly new, but has certainly been getting more attention recently in the push towards more sustainable construction practices. In the bay area, most new mid-rise (3-8 story) res
51.
by cmsmith 11y ago
>In response to the charger network concern, Kelly said GM is one of around a dozen automakers committed to the SAE combo connector. Tesla is the maverick with its own standard, and GM has not said it would collaborate on a shared standa
52.
by cmsmith 11y ago
I'm also offering USD denominated insurance against the United States descending into anarchy.
53.
by cmsmith 11y ago
The pressure at the bottom of the ocean is just equal to the weight of water above you. So every 1ft of tides produces about half a psi of pressure change (or 1 meter and 1000 Pa). My guess would be that the water doesn't matter so muc
54.
by cmsmith 11y ago
>It turned out that all of those eruptions, from the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, took place from January to June. The cause, she proposed, is Earth’s slightly elliptical orbit around the sun. That changes the strength of the su
55.
by cmsmith 11y ago
>A hydrazine propulsion system is installed on the spacecraft for orbit adjustment maneuvers and orbit maintenance providing a delta-v budget of more than 100 meters per second for each satellite. >Because OG2 satellites are launched
56.
by cmsmith 11y ago
Maybe there was a secondary thruster somewhere to provide some separation. I went back and recorded the release speed (km/hr), altitude (km) for each drop: 25960 626 25954 627 25950 628 25944 630 25937 632 25935 632 A circular orbit at
57.
by cmsmith 11y ago
I must have missed it, but can anyone explain why Orbcomm wants 11 satellites in the same orbit? The stage 2 engine isn't firing in between letting the satellites go.
58.
by cmsmith 11y ago
As you probably gathered from your references, concrete curing is a continuous process - every time a stray water molecule binds with some cement the concrete will get a little bit stronger. We use 28 days to call the concrete 'cured&#
59.
by cmsmith 11y ago
Spain isn't that much farther away than outer space.
60.
by cmsmith 11y ago
With sufficiently networked cars, you can reduce the following distance between cars and significantly reduce the drag coefficient. (Obviously there are safety issues, but we're playing the 'cars are smart enough to make everythin

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