<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 28, 2010, at 11:45 PM, Keith Henson wrote:</div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">Myhrvold only has to do it once for his idea to work, you have to do it many thousands of times.</blockquote></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">You don't seem to understand the point of engineering a standard<br>design. Once you do it, it's possible to turn out millions of copies.<br></span></blockquote><br></div><div>If you intend to make millions of something then you need to take time to ensure that your design is as efficient and economical as you can make it, but if you only intend to make one then you can afford to be much more extravagant and say to hell with the cost. And its cheap right now to send a balloon tethered to the earth carrying broadcast equipment to a height of 5 miles, so it does not seem to me that it would be financially impossible for the world to pay to build something extending that altitude to 18 miles carrying a different payload if doing so would save the planet.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><br></body></html>