In our last article we talked about how Elon Musk uses “First Principles Thinking” (FPT) and about the “Idiot Factor,” Elon’s super-sensitive way of describing lazy engineering and, as examples, the massive impact of the Idiot Factor on the cost of rockets and batteries. How does the Idiot Factor apply to drones? Well, the materials…
I have to confess. Elon Musk is one of my heroes so I shamelessly copy a lot of his thinking. One of my favorite things that he does is use FPT (i.e., First Principles Thinking) to analyze and explain problems. Using FPT, Elon asks and thinks about the essence of the problem to its essential…
In a previous post entitled, “The Problem with Skinny Propellers,” we talked about how the vast majority of drone manufacturers have made the most unhappy trade-off with their propellers and electric motors: (i) propellers can only spin so fast before there is “boundary layer separation” (i.e., the propeller stops producing lift) but (ii) electric motors…
The Ancient Romans. Over several centuries they went from a small collection of villages along the banks of the River Tiber to conquering all of the Mediterranean basin. For sure many a doctoral dissertation has been written on how and why that happened. But I think all of those well-heeled scholarly types have all missed…
Let’s go back to the dark ages of the computer. 1970s. This is when companies like Data General, Wang, and others ruled the world with “microcomputers” (which were anything but micro). Funny thing about computers back then was that if you wanted a new application you more likely than not needed to buy another computer.…
Toilets are in many ways unsung heroes of the modern world. Yes, it’s true that antibiotics, vaccines, and other medical technology have saved millions of lives but, by separating sewage from your drinking water, the humble toilet has arguably saved many more – and even launched modern statistics and data visualization. Quick history geek out.…
“I’m a commercial drone pilot myself and it was frustrating to me that flight time was so low for all the drones I was using. I wanted something that would give me at least an hour of flight with any payload. But your options are limited. If you want that kind of flight time performance,…
There are three important conditions here for this blog post. First, we think any fart qualifies for this. Silent-but-deadly. Loud-and-proud. Rhythmic. Dry. Wet. You get the idea. Second, we are assuming that the non-farting person is a person who isn’t attracted to farting persons. That’s just gross. Third, we are also assuming that there is…