Jonfliesgoats

A lot of it is also a lobbying effort for FAA and other ICAO regulatory agencies to alter their regulations. There are a lot of technical problems associated with drone delivery (the RAND video mentions delivery to apartment blocks, for example). Still, I am not sure interest in delivery detracts from surveillance and other applications. There are lots of companies developing drones for everything from military applications to real estate sales to power line patrol. I think there is plenty of amateur and commercial interest in these things to fuel development in many directions. I may be in a bubble of technophiles, however. My perceptions may be skewed.. Also, as soon as valuable goods are flying on drones, criminals will find ways to capture/disable those drones to access the cargo. There will be a learning curve as drone-delivered-pizzas get pilfered by enterprising teenagers. The complexities of dropping a package in someone's front yard or garden are simple compared to flying a drone under an overhang to a person's doorstep or mailbox. There will be some frustrations with delivery. Perhaps a SMS or other message telling people to go outsside when their drone is five and the. two minutes away would help? I see drones as a valuable addition to commercial aviation rather than a replacement to manned aircraft. Like many technologies, it's easy to see them as a panacea of opportunity without acknowledging inherent limitations. In defense, they have distinct limitations and advantages which make them a great partner to manned assets. I suspect commerce will see the same thing. For automation and jobs: http://www.eater.com/2016/7/1/12077990/robot-burgers-san-francisco-momentum-machines

Yeah, it's interesting. I knew about some lava tubes on the moon, but I did not know they were this big or plentiful. Some nation will exploit these for habitation, etc. We just need a reason (economic, military or ideological) to establish a presence on the moon for now.

Hrmm. So something like an oscillating ton of lead would not be detectable a few kilometers away for now. Oh well.

@DBowman Cool link, Dnowman!

My ambitions may exceed my skills and equipment for now. I was thinking of ways to keep kids excited about the cosmos (see my thread regarding pessimism in science for my motivations there.). Having a special trip to a nearby dark sky location and peering at the moon through our telescope may do the trick.

Happy New Year, all! What was your favorite science or tech development of 2016? What are your plans for 2017? I am going to see if I can run on the treadmill in my current state. This could be valuable data for a middle-aged man, but it also could be an example of bad decision making. I can compare this data to the rates at which I stumble and fall in non-post-party scenarios to see the effect of Mew Year's Eve activities on my locomotion under 1g in typical hotel gymnasiums. Anyway, that's MY first experiment of 2017.

I read about that! Very cool!

Here's a nice presentation from the nerds at RAND regarding commercial drones. Hopefully this sparks some discussion. http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE230.html

Gravity waves are just now being observed. This said, detection and sensing of these things will improve over the years. Can an oscillating, massive body generate enough gravity wave signal to overcome background, gravitational noise? Are there high frequency gravity waves or are there noisy and quiet gravitational frequencies, now that we can detect these things? Since most waves are generated by orbiting bodies, I can't imagine much being detected at frequencies higher than .1 hz. Could gravity wave communication effectively ignore line of sight restriction and transmit to facilities underground or under water? I would imagine this offers no advantage over quantum communications, but I still wonder about the possibilities.

@Codraroll I was reading some RAND stuff and thought you may be interested in this study in data-linked fighters v, voice only fighters. I could see lots of drones being pushed into an area to expand detection and communication capabilities into threatening environments. This would be a scenario in which many drones are used to flood air defenses, get active sensors to reveal themselves, send information to manned assets, etc. Here's the study regarding the power of networked versus non-networked fighters, if you are curious. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG268.pdf

@SpaceMouse If I could put that gif on my flightbag, I would. I love it!

Seems like the technology is rapidly evolving at this point. Printing a motor or vehicle around an instrumentation package seems like a maybe. I read here and elsewhere that we can now print wood, What about printing more energetic fuels? Could you print a tailor-made SRB with a rough thrust schedule based on the geometry of its fuel? A pyrotechnic nerd could make some awesome fireworks. I ask this because a gradient of materials is used on the nozzles of my engines. While the printing process between a fuel and an expensive metal would be significantly different, it seems that there could be some amazing possibilities. A package of instruments that can print a tailored solid fuel rocket could send simple sensors to a broad range of locations for research.

Hmm. I am still learning about the system, but apparently it can orient itself to known stars and celestial objects. Perhaps we can track satellites?

Don't HAL and David Bowman start protecting Europan tentacle creatures in this scenario? Man expands onto Titan. I guess Sandbox Universe would have ruined Arthur C Clarke's books.

You know, as costs come down and materials improve, it will be interesting to see what manufacturing for the masses brings.

This is a fluff piece, but it seems there may be large caverns in the moon. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/moon’s-lava-tubes-could-be-colossal?tgt=nr

@PB666 Check this out for dumb, science news: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jet-lag-makes-hamsters-dumb

Whether the state of Chinese science is healthy or not is debatable. Certainly, there are some dubious things about research in China at the moment. However, they are investing heavily in developing their scientific infrastructure. It's easy in the West to forget that Standord and the US Army invested heavily in researching telepathy. Those studies were well funded and very poorly designed. China will achieve some great scientific breakthroughs. As for the translation, I saw the cattle references too. I laughed. Google translate is funny. Imagine how tender steaks would be if they were from cattle raised in orbit! The Beeb = BBC?

Interesting. So you could use local materials with some refinement in a printer? Would that require some sort of small smelter or something? Being able to shovel local materials into a hopper and come out with 3D printer structures sounds amazing.

Could you put a 3D printer someplace far away with materials and produce instruments on site? Say we fly a printer with some reservoirs of different materials to a distant body. Could we get some utility by having the ability to make more thermometers on wheels or barometers on wings via a printing system? Could we use this manufacturing tech to provide more freedom to research things as they catch our interest? Of course, I recognize that with today's technology it is more effective to send lots of existing sensors to a location rather than waste mass shipping a small factory the moon or elsewhere. I am just thinking about possibilities decades in the future. Can this type of thing be used for more utilitarian purposes? http://the3doodler.com/ Also, I want a 3doodler.

I was just curious, really. There is a lot of hype about additive manufacturing in everything from the US government's Global Trends document to fluff pieces in magazines. Sort of like autonomous UAVs, it's hard to sift the facts from the hype. Can your use a 3D printer to print simple sensors, like thermocouples or strain gauges into a maeterial along with associated circuitry? The GEnX engines on the 747-8 and 787 use printed parts as well.

Good post!

Can you use a 3D printer to print an assembly that has moving parts? Can you 3D print an axle, wheel and bearings so that no seams, welds or bolts are required?

Can one do valuable amateur astronomy, like finding comets, etc. with an amateur telescope? Is that something that went away in the 60s?

We had software that could cut through haze on some video processing applications. I wasn't sure if something like that existed for amateur astronomers. Having an excuse to take a long weekend somewhere dark is actually a little nicer.