And there are plenty around still who'd take a little radiation poisoning for TWO Nobels

The examples were emotive. The real loss to the universe will be the maths and physics we've discovered, and DNA. These are worth preserving, if only so later intelligences can use them for comparison

...you don't ask a fish, how to be fished.

I refer to the BBC World Service reporting of this story, where a female psychologist explained why Daniel Craig was not attractive to women because touchy-feely. Every single girl I know, even the gay ones, just say 'phwoooar'

At least in the cosy parts. Certainly you wouldn't want to live in a Neal Asher World (The Owner Trilogy)

oh well done! +1 funny (I wasted my mod points today)

...is no longer not even wrong ?

I was reminded today of a far more likely avenue for 3D printing - Medecine. Since people rarely fit to a common blueprint, there is already a market for tailored body replacement parts - cartilege, structures for plastic surgery, or replacement teeth for example.

Yes, I agree entirely. This is what I meant by 'prototyping.' and it is very useful for this. On one project we were retrofitting a new system to address a changed regulation requiring the fuel tanks to be purged with 'inert' (low O2) air. We printed the unit so we could see how it could be 'threaded' through all the existing systems in the place we'd picked to install it. On new designs you can design everything together using digital mock-up but for this niche case, a physical object was much easier to deal with. Sorry for my rather strident tone in the previous post...

I am one. I do this. It's a tiny fucking deal because the cost of a failed experiment is still in the millions and beleive me, the guy making the tool die makes a thousand times fewer errors than any engineer younger than fifty does in his CAD. You do not work in my industry, obviously.

even three better would be good

Did you mean this? This is a long long way from the printer in TFA.

Of course there is a place for such technology, especially in rapid prototyping, but you are NOT going to get commercial aeroplane turbine blades made like this in your or my lifetimes, not until you can 3D print a single metallic crystal.

I work in aerospace, where I can't see this technology being used anywhere other than prototyping in decades. The cost of a part has very little to do with 'making' it. The value is in the design, the materials, the quality control and traceability and the qualification testing. The other big industries (Automotive, Oil...) have similarly regulated practices and, although they may adopt this a little sooner, it's still decades away.

...that will never be disproved, is the first law of thermodynamics.