This will be good for creating random toys and knick knacks. The problem with 3d software for the masses is that it's technical. When you create a part for use (as opposed to a blob of toyness), holes, edges, parts have to be in a specific place. That requires math, which is beyond the reach of the average user. It's like trying to create a technical drawing with an iPad sketch program. You can make pretty pictures with your finger (okay - artists can, you can just make ugly dogs and weird looking trees), but you can't make a scaled technical drawing for fabrication.

Oh, and kickstarter is not a mainstream consumer outlet. Call me when they have the model for sale at WalMart or Staples.

TSA doesn't give a shit. Go charter a private jet and you can skip all that silliness and they won't care. They want us to feel safe, not be safe.

FAA on the other hand will not be amused.

The next insurance renewal will almost certainly forbid such activities. They'd be fools not to. I'm a little surprised there isn't a clause in auto insurance contracts about it (unless current laws require coverage of any passenger).

It's way the fuck out there, bathed in EM radiation, and goddamned cold. Mars is right next door and practically balmy in comparison.

It would still work (capacitors/batteries) in the sense that it would smooth the grid loading - you would charge during low times so that you could service at high times.

Of course, that requires enough storage for buffering - which would be probably 50-60% of the total capacity charged in a day. Well, that and cables too big to handle - even at 400V, you're still talking thousands of amps - and cable diameters measured in inches.

It doesn't matter. They're dead either way; the question is how much it's worth to recover the bodies.

There are 11 million flights in the US alone every year. You claim that potentially thousands of lives could be saved, but you haven't stated how. You're presuming (1) that this crash will yield some amazing insight into flight safety that was never before considered and is easily correctable. In all likelihood it's the result of a combination of system failure and human error - not some magic force we've never considered. The chance of finding this one aircraft and the information gleaned from the wreckage to be of unique and revolutionary to the safety of air travel - something which can improve on the 0.999998 reliability of commercial aircraft (based on 2012 US statistics - 23 incidents involving fatalities for 11 million flights) - is very nearly zero.

This is why we can't have nice things

" the only extra cost attributable to this search is a bit more fuel."

Your definition of "a bit" makes me think you must work in the government. Otherwise, you'd say shit-ton of fuel. This is way the fuck out in the middle of the ocean - nothing is close and everything they use to get close burns a huge amount of fuel to get there. Unless you compare it to, say, the fuel budget of the US Military, which one of the few places where it wouldn't seem like a lot.

You're kidding right? How come you haven't ponied up a couple hundred grand for Jet A to send out a recon plane? How about you give you give up the next month of your salary to go hunting?

Great idea...and it's already been tested an priced. Just $60,000 per aircraft for a known-working system.

With roughly 31,000 commercial passenger aircraft in use, that's about 1,800,000,000 (1.8 Billion) dollars to equip. You could mount searches for 35 lost planes for that money, and a plane goes missing (of this magnitude) once every 3-4 years. So about a 120-150 year payback period, or about 3-4x the life span of the aircraft in question.

No, because this allows the gaming of the system - it just requires that more of it be done to keep the retained profits up.

By moving the taxes away from profits, it becomes a fixed cost of operation - like every other business cost - rather than a "penalty for success" as some call it. Your electric co, water co, copier lease co., coffee supplier, and landlord don't base their fees on your profit (okay, for that last one, some do; esp. in retail and for large corporate clients - but that's the exception). Heck - even your broker charges a fee based on your volume/value, not on whether you profit from the transaction.

Interesting. Seriously - thanks for the reply and link. For reasons I can't quite fathom, I find IP law fascinating - though it's only tangentially related to my work (engineer).

"Oh, I'm sorry - I must have grabbed the wrong row."
"Oh, I'm sorry - they said my seat assignment was provisional because I arrived so late, I'll find another one"

Board near the end of the boarding time and take a free center seat near the back -unless then plane is 100% full, you're golden.

On the contrary - you come up with a hypothesis and then you test to see if that hypothesis is true.

You make guesses from observations, such as "God strikes down the unworthy" and then you attempt to find worthy people and unworthy people and follow them to see whether the unworthy are striken down in supernatural events at a statistically greater rate than those who are worthy. By using a second set of scientists or clergy who are unfamiliar with your research, you can sort into various forms of unworthiness to see if there is a type bias - sexually deviant, unfaithful, unrepentant, vanity, boastfulness, and others. Your belief that certain unworthiness will result in smiting by a deity is then tested and you review your data.

You may find that God's wrath is not statistically biased towards the unrepentant sinner. Being wrong isn't a problem in science - it's just a path to being right. So, for instance, if you find that your original hypothesis that God strikes down the unworthy is not just incorrect, but backwards. If it seems the virtuous are more likely to get stricken down, and that those of greatest natural virtue are our youth, you can then present this. It may, in fact, then be used to change behavioral patterns and encourage participation in activities. The great researcher into this particular effect, Billy Joel, was instrumental in bringing this research to light, indicating in one of his more widely distributed papers "only the good die young."

Plants. Plants take in CO2 and release O2 as part of respiration. It's known that increasing CO2 spurs plant growth (there are placed you can get CO2 systems for hydroponic growth). The graph you linked shows a sawtooth graph with spikes of CO2 and then random-walk decreases over tens of thousands of years until another spike occurs. What your graph misses is the last 100 years:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...