[ExI] Why space tech isn't cutting edge

[Mike Dougherty]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 2:30 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>> Be aware however that the path to such a
>>> coating in littered with the corpses of those who have gone before and
>>> failed.
>>
>> Are you available for sweeping the corpses aside?  I'd imagine they
>> would also greatly impede progress.
>
> On the contrary.  When inventing something like this, it can be quite
> helpful to look at past efforts and understand why they failed: they can
> often identify non-obvious problems, at the cost of their research
> funding.  Too bad, so sad for them, but at least subsequent efforts can
> learn from their fails.

I was going for the obvious physical impediment of corpses, but
yeah... off to the side of a path might be helpful the way touring a
museum would be helpful.

Identifying non-obvious problem reminds me of the problem of where to
put additional armor plating on fighter planes.  After identifying the
bullet hole patterns on several returning survivors, the answer was to
put plating where there were no holes - because those that took damage
in those areas did not return to participate in the analysis.