Tuesday 12 June 2012

Analyzing Analogies: Prologue

Several years ago, in a different life almost, when I was trying (and ultimately failing) to do innovative and interesting stuff in aerospace, I had an interesting conversation with an older and wiser aerospace entrepreneur.
At one point he remarked that satellites have been getting cheaper because they're like computers, while space launch rockets are like airplanes and that's why they're not getting any cheaper.

I agree with some aspects of this and disagree with others, but the important thing I took from the conversation is not about rockets and spaceships. It's about comparing things.

The question is:
What makes an analogy meaningful?

Saturday 9 June 2012

"We especially enjoyed the appendix"

Project White Dragon has reached an important milestone, unfortunately the milestone is being selected as a winner in the USAF competition and I didn't win.

I did however get a great review, snippets of which (like the confusing title of this post) are after the break...