gene-h

112 ms·

61.
by gene-h 3y ago
>Plastics are made from by-products of oil and gas refining; many of the chemicals involved, such as benzene and vinyl chloride, are carcinogens. This is like arguing that table salt is dangerous because one of the chemicals involved, ch
62.
by gene-h 3y ago
If you mean smallest robot with an onboard power supply and control, mm is the best we can do. The problem is that the power conversion electronics are too large. Electromagnets don't work well as you scale down. So you need piezoelect
63.
by gene-h 3y ago
maybe more complex animals don't have as high a success rate because capturing the prey they go after is a more complicated problem.
64.
by gene-h 3y ago
>fine motor skills Hardly. Most tasks we want robots to do involve using hands rather than legs. Robots are still very bad at picking stuff up and moving it around. >Teleoperation has been tried. Redwood robotics tried it, but couldn&
65.
by gene-h 3y ago
One problem with this that wasn't as much of a problem in the 1970s is RF interference. The 1970s designs and many other designs use 2.45 GHz, so it will interfere with wifi and bluetooth, with bluetooth being more sensitive to interfe
66.
by gene-h 4y ago
They don't walk very well. They have trouble coordinating all limbs, have trouble handling situations where parts which are the feet/hands contact something, and performance still isn't robust in the real world.
67.
by gene-h 4y ago
On asteroids it will be harder to obtain. It's been found to be present in iron meteorites at about 30 ppm[0]. [0] https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190647926.013.206
68.
by gene-h 4y ago
Using automata is a bit silly and has problems. The biggest problems are vacuum welding and lack of lubrication. Vacuum welding can cause higher wear or even failure on metal components. Gears and cams absolutely need lubrication, which is
69.
by gene-h 4y ago
Water may be recoverable, but what about phosphorus? And why wicker instead of processed plant waste from the food being grown? Quite a bit of agricultural waste should be produced. It would make sense to use that instead of growing reeds.
70.
by gene-h 4y ago
One thing that probably won't change is the need for things which we design to be made of multiple parts which must be assembled together. For any serious application this requires specifying geometric dimensioning and tolerancing info
71.
by gene-h 4y ago
How do you perform functions on faces, edges, points and other topological entities with SDFs? Such operations a necessary for parametric CAD.
72.
by gene-h 4y ago
This study[0] estimated that less than a microgram of dopant is needed per m^2 and that producing 5 MW of solar cells requires 1 gram of phosphorous. [0] https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)0893-1321(
73.
by gene-h 4y ago
Both. And again, the issue with a pressurized manufacturing facility is making seals.
74.
by gene-h 4y ago
Making solar cells like this is a nice first step to making self replicating machines. Being able to make solar cells is especially interesting because these are semiconductor devices, so producing control electronics may be possible too. B
75.
by gene-h 4y ago
Blue Origin might already be pivoting. They recently acquired Honeybee robotics, a company which is focused on making robots for space and other worlds[0]. Honeybee Robotics has also done extensive work on In-Situ Resource Utilization(ISRU)
76.
by gene-h 4y ago
Lava tubes have been measured to be quite warm[0]. This study concludes that "Neither [regolith or PSRs can provide] a abundant long-term supply of carbon to support a sustainable human presence on the Moon"[1] Although permanentl
77.
by gene-h 4y ago
The approach they develop likely doesn't work on Mars. They rely on the ambient high vacuum environment of the Moon as part of the silicon purification step and likely for deposition of the solar cells. Mars is not high vacuum.
78.
by gene-h 4y ago
What they don't mention is how efficient the solar cells produced are. NASA's NIAC studied making solar cells in a similar manner and estimated they could produce solar cells with 6-9% efficiency[0]. Efficiency was limited due to
79.
by gene-h 4y ago
I really hope at some point he releases CAD files for all the mechanisms he animated. He likely has the largest database of mechanisms in a computer understandable format. DMGlib another mechanisms database only has 1905 mechanisms with CAx
80.
by gene-h 4y ago
Helion has claimed that fusion is 5 years away since 2014: https://engage.aps.org/fps/resources/newsletters/newsletter-...
81.
by gene-h 4y ago
Japan has explicitly amended their copyright code to enable machine learning on copyrighted data.[0] [0] https://storialaw.jp/en/service/bigdata/bigdata-12
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by gene-h 4y ago
And the article notes that the cost increases were due to factors such as the price of steel and steel fabrication increasing. Perhaps the cost of building new reactors like Vogtle has gone up similarly?
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by gene-h 4y ago
easy? They started the approval process in 2011 and the cost of approval was allegedly in the hundreds of millions of dollars. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power#Corporate_histor...
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by gene-h 4y ago
LFTRs involve onsite reprocessing which is politically difficult to get approved in the US and may introduce other risks.
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by gene-h 4y ago
It doesn't work well if the layout of wifi transceivers it was trained on changes
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Revisions to the Copyright Act Further Accelerate Development of Japan’s AI(storialaw.jp)
2 points by gene-h 4y ago|0 comments
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by gene-h 4y ago
Hopefully, both. Even if fusion works extremely well, fission should find niches. Fission power is likely to remain more power dense than fusion for a while, so in situations where one cares about weight and size it is better than fusion.
88.
by gene-h 4y ago
It will be quite difficult to make fusion cheaper than present day fission. Fusion reactors are new so significant research work will need to be done. There are difficult engineering challenges related to breeding fuel, which involves movin
89.
by gene-h 4y ago
[0] provides economic analysis for this type of power plant. They conclude it would not be unreasonable to get levelized cost of energy could get as low as $25/MWh. For this one really needs a high gain of 1000, although gains of 400 a
90.
by gene-h 4y ago
By concept, they mean concept art. There is no technical information to back this up. The technology to do such things as using a" delicate layer of engineered enzymes, [to] recycle waste products" is pretty far away.

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