[AR] Re: Aviation person?

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 14:56:11 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019, David Summers wrote:

With respect, I submit that this smacks of "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need". Metal 3d printing is in its infancy - things would be expected to be getting dramatically more efficient every year, so any analysis that depends on mere linear improvements of print times should be carefully looked at.

Beware of assuming that every new technology will improve at the galloping pace of semiconductors! That is *NOT* how things work, historically -- semiconductors are a huge anomaly, grossly abnormal. Vaguely-linear improvement (broken by occasional step functions when breakthroughs happen) is far more typical.

(And by the way, metal 3D printing is decades old, although for sure it's gotten much more attention and investment recently. The downside of that recent attention has been a vast outpouring of hype about it. No, for a lot of problems it's probably not the best answer...)

Henry

Other related posts: