The loss to US businesses is in the overhead of ensuring compliance. The cost of non-compliance is incredibly high; my company is currently listed as a restricted company because someone forgot to label some component specs that were covered under ITAR, and those specs then were sent to a non-US company. We now have to waste almost an hour a month on training that basically boils down to "If you're sending something outside the company, make sure to clear it with Trade Compliance first." Not to mention the huge fines and loss of business as a result of being restricted.

Interestingly (and off-topic), Lewis and Clark did design their own canoe... a folding cast-iron boat:

"In February 1803 Congress approved Jefferson's request to fund an expedition. By mid-March Lewis was on his way from Washington DC, to the US Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, in present-day West Virginia, to gather military hardware for the trip.........."

"Lewis also wanted the arsenal workers to do him a special favor. He asked them to build a collapsible iron-framed boat he designed himself. Lewis referred to this as" my darling project," but the armory workers had difficulty
executing Lewis' design for the boat, and the endeavor wound up keeping Lewis in Harpers Ferry for more than a month. When it was finished, however , Lewis was pleased. The frame weighed just 100 pounds but the completed craft would be capable of carrying about 1700 pounds!

I'd attribute the source, but I don't know it:)

That does not, however, discount the redundancy's usefulness for eliminating single-instance failures such as a gamma-ray flipping a bit in memory. These kinds of failures are extremely rare on earth, but common enough on-orbit that many space-rated single board computers used for satellites have some kind of hardware voting mechanism.

It saddens me that someone who apparently works with relational databases every day has no idea who invented them in the first place. What are they teaching kids these days, anyway?

Wow. It seems to really work. Amazing, since the root of this thread is now modded Redundant. Which way will I go?

When making the argument that someone is inferior, it generally helps to make a sound argument. Or even a coherent one.

Part of it is because of how well disciplined Obama's staff is. It doesn't leak, they don't float trial balloons; they discuss something internally until they've come up with what they feel is the best solution, and then they release it. Basically, if they say they're going to do something, they've already done the analysis and had the discussion. At that point, it's more about convincing everyone that it's a good idea. At least that was true during the campaign... as Obama's staff grows larger, it'll be interesting to see how true that continues to be.

An Estes igniter probably couldn't do it unless you dipped it in extra pyrogen. A Daveyfire electric match, on the other hand would probably be able to do it, though... they're used to ignite AP composite motors in high power rockets. Or, you could use the exhaust from a small (say a D or an E) AP motor... it has the benefit of lasting a lot longer than the match would, and doesn't need a LEP to get a hold of (Daveyfires are also used to ignite pyrotechnic displays, and other low-explosives, so IIRC, you need a permit to get them).

Seriously?