Machining titanium is substantially more difficult and expensive than machining cast aluminum, so it's not quite as simple as comparing prices of raw materials. I'm also assuming the current chassis is machined cast aluminum, and could be strengthened by being replaced by Ti, but I've not taken an iPhone 6 apart to know.

Upon arriving at the moon, They can visit the Bigelow Aerospace gift shop that will be there by 2030.

No, it doesn't. Oh, the diameter of the bullet is very similar, but it's longer, heavier and moving much, much faster and therefore carrying an order of magnitude more kinetic energy. Of course I'm comparing to the ubiquitous .22 LR, but the comparison doesn't change much if you step up to the .22 magnum, and the difference is even larger if you look at the .22 short.

What's wrong with having a star close to our solar system. There are plenty within 20 light years.

Wikipedia says: "Semiconductor properties allow solar cells to operate more efficiently in concentrated light, as long as the cell Junction temperature is kept cool by suitable heat sinks. Efficiency of multijunction photovoltaic cells developed in research is upward of 44% today, with the potential to approach 50% in the coming years.[4]"

So not 4x efficiency like I said, but still 2x.

You missed my point: I claimed only that their capabilities were proven - I didn't feel the need to say that it was evidenced by crappy phones that bend, and have a battery life of about half a day.

sam-zenpous

I'm waiting for Gnome Tau myself. It makes a lot more sense.

Then if you can focus 20 times the light on it you're generating slightly less than 20X the power

No, actually more like 80X! Because it converts the light to electricity at 80% efficiency instead of 15%-20% for un-concentrated. This is due to the extremely steep temperature gradient between the super-heated front-face diode receiving the sunlight and the water-cooled electrode behind it. (I'm sure somebody else can explain the physics better).

The point being, say you have a rooftop in a city and want to make power - in that case, density matters.

And if this were stupid-expensive, it would be a research project and not a product.

You're one up on me. I can't find the Start Menu...

[emphasis mine]

*sighs* yes, it produces 1600 CUBIC LITERS of it.

To explain (for the slow), liters are cubic decimeters. A cubic liter would be decimeters raised to the 27th power.

Note that we don't actually have twenty-seven spatial dimensions available to produce cubic liters in....

Corn ethanol is ridiculously inefficient. Sugar-based biofuels, by contrast, can have a quite good return and are actively used by developing countries in South America that don't have money to waste on things that don't make economic sense (but aren't used in the US because we have relatively little land able to grow sugarcane).

In short, it's more complex than either "all bio-fuels are good" or "all bio-fuels are evil". This shouldn't be a surprise -- few things are so simple.

For a few years now, it's been difficult to post anything about BlackBerry that didn't involve bad news or negative commentary.

Hmm, TFA also says the collector can produce "1600 cubic liters per day" of H2O.

So I suspect very strongly that the author hasn't a clue what he's talking about as regards this device....