Modern Electronics Designed to Fail. Yay.

[by Mr.Hengist]

Interesting: "It is by no means uncommon" for modern IC integration design engineers to assume the fast obsolescence of the end product, and therefore IC environmental protections are not incorporated. Such devices will therefore have short lifetimes by design, and while that's not a problem in market due to fast obsolescence, it means that you're SOL if you want to keep such a device for an extended period of time.

It reminds me of the story of Henry Ford, who perused junk yards for his cars. He asked the proprietors which parts lasted longest, and then instructed his engineers to make those parts more cheaply because, by his reasoning, they were overbuilt.

Anyways, here's the relevant quote:

The traditional functions of a semiconductor device package are to protect the die from degradation by the atmosphere and fan-out the electrical interconnects to the next level. Because of the benign environment in which most modern semiconductors are used coupled with short expected life through product obsolescence, the need for the package to provide environmental protection has virtually disappeared. It is by no means uncommon to see essentially package-less chips attached to circuit boards, with just a polymer covering over the exposed bond pads.

Per Libertas Ad Astra

In the course of my journey from Big Government Liberal to libertarian-esque Conservative, one of the hardest things for me to let go of has been my hitherto-unquestioned belief that it is the business of the Federal Government to shepherd humanity into space.

It had always been an article of faith for me that only an Apollo-like Project could midwife the hatching of our species, at long last, from its primordial creche at the bottom of the Earth's gravity well, and out into the cosmos, where it belongs. The maddeningly slow progress of that momentous trek, of course, had to be due to an infuriating lack of vision at the top: If only Nixon had not killed the versatile and muscular Apollo in favor of the nifty but limited and cash-hungry (and ultimately lethal) Shuttle (and if only that program had not itself become freighted with the 'all-things-to-all-constituencies' bloat which subverted its initial purpose as a cheap, fully re-usable space truck), we could have expanded Skylab into a proper orbital village. If only Vietnam had not squandered so much of this Nation's wealth on a vain and pointless struggle against somethingorother, we could at least have had a fracking Moon Base. If only the Luddite fetishes of the 70s-era environmentalists hadn't refocused NASA into an operation bent on going around in circles, gazing at its own navel, we would have made it to Mars (and, having been an Environmentalist myself, this last came with no small quantum of cognitive dissonance!). On and on, I gritted my teeth at the absence of a Mission for the agency in charge of our Government's sacred trust to lift us to the stars.

It was only long after I had transitioned from Liberalism to a succession of species of Conservative that I had what, in retrospect, was a rather embarrassingly-belated realization: Why the blazes should mere Government be expected to oversee --let alone monopolize-- the greatest adventure on which humanity would ever embark? Why should it be the (IRS-enforced) obligation of a grain farmer in Iowa, or a Burger King manager in Virginia...or a clinical psychologist in Philadelphia to bankroll our evolution into a spacefaring species? If humans are going to hoist themselves into free space and forge a destiny in its airless reaches, why on earth (pun intentional) must it be left to the grinding Rube-Goldberg mechanism of pork-laden appropriations to make it so?

In an editorial by Iain Murphy and Rand Simberg at The American Spectator, the authors tackle this very question, and articulate the answer in devastatingly clear terms: It shouldn't:

There's something about space policy that makes conservatives forget their principles. Just one mention of NASA, and conservatives are quite happy to check their small-government instincts at the door and vote in favor of massive government programs and harsh regulations that stifle private enterprise. It's time to abort that mission. [...]

It is time for conservatives to recognize that Apollo is over. We must recognize that Apollo was a centrally planned monopolistic government program for a few government employees, in the service of Cold War propaganda and was therefore itself an affront to American values. If we want to seriously explore, and potentially exploit space, we need to harness private enterprise, and push the technologies really needed to do so.

One of the few things that the Obama Administration has gotten resoundingly and unambiguously right was the shift of NASA's priorities from old-school, Manhattan Project thinking on space access, in favor of a less-centralized, free-market approach. I know...right? Here is one area in which the Administration's singular (and in so many other ways extraordinarily dangerous and misguided) focus on a domestic policy of Transforming America ^tm  has happened to strike precisely the right note. Now, if this is simply a case of doing the correct things for the wrong reasons, then I'll take it just the same.

For, so long as this Administration shows its indifference and disdain for human spaceflight by refusing to bestow upon it a Big Government Project (which, in Obama's world, is the ultimate marker of value, after all), then that endeavor stands a chance of actually getting off the ground. On the one hand you have a set of fixed-funded, results-based benchmark incentives for competing private industries' achievements in developing a viable, human-rated commercial launch and orbital operations system (from which NASA can then purchase flights, while shouldering a relatively paltry share of the R&D costs). On the other, you have the usual cost-plus shenanigans of the usual suspects drawing the usual (voluminous) booty into the usual districts. The pace of the process might not be as gratifyingly brisk as you get when you unleash the jury-rigged juggernaut of State-Sponsored Will on a problem. At least not at first. But as markets are created and exploited through a ratcheting series of entrepreneurial beach-heads, the gains are apt to be more durable (as their funding streams will not be pegged to the American election cycle), and to ramp up more steeply once established (same reason).

So, it took Bigelow and Branson and Musk to make manifest what had previously only been obvious...so that, in the end, even I got it. I've been able to redirect my geek sensibilities in a direction more in keeping with my larger politico-economic explanatory system (and thus to discover that, even at my advanced age, I am still capable of changing my mind on important matters. Again.). And all this just in time for some most unexpectedly sensible legislation from the last Administration from which I would've seen it coming. Epic win!

And, in the end, once Bigelow builds his station, and clients (including NASA) start lining up, you start to introduce modest economies of scale, which bring down costs to orbit, which opens up new markets...and suddenly the landscape seems a mite more amenable than it ever would have been under NASA to the prospect of my not shuffling off before having seen the blue-white, gracefully-curved limb of the Earth, brightly sunlit under a black sky...

Vectors

Care of the Belmont Club, comes this vid of a remotely-operated quad-rotor platform. Some truly impressive software enables it to execute maneuvers which are downright balletic in their nimbleness. Check it out.




This is some pretty extraordinary stuff, and begs the question of why the frack we don't have piloted vehicles with this sort of architecture. Their superiority over conventional high, open-rotor designs is obvious, in terms of maneuverability and range of safe operating environments. Four shrouded ducted fans could propel a vehicle, for example, through forest canopy in ways that would turn a conventional helo into a shrieking mass of falling metal and several high-velocity flying swords. Sure, you couldn't autorotate in the event of an engine failure, but you could probably compensate for the loss of one engine, and a ballistic parachute system would be simpler to implement than in a typical rotorcraft for catastrophic faults.

All that aside, the possibilities for reconnaissance and surveillance (not to mention kinetic urban engagements) are just as obvious. Armed with ordnance and/or cameras and sensors, one or ten of these little suckers would vastly increase the potential situational awareness of troops in complex areas of operation. They could scoot through windows or doors (or tunnel hatches), and scope out those pesky blind corners with the greatest of ease. Packing a grenade, they could be very effective in breaking the ice...


Of course, on that latter point, Richard Fernandez at the above-linked BC post has some things to say about the law of unintended consequences with respect to the current administration's efforts to close both prominent and clandestine facilities for the holding of captured baddies. In essence, by foreclosing on options for detention and interrogation of high-value targets, the emphasis has, perforce, moved decidedly in the direction of liquidation (everything must go!). Despite international hand-wringing on the "legality" of targeted assassinations via drone strike, there really is little alternative for dealing with those who draw breath all-but solely for the purpose of doing us harm.

Come hellfire or high-waterboarding, somebody is going to be offended by our efforts to defend ourselves against murderous miscreants. There is no simple solution to the dilemma. It is at least useful, however, to reflect on the distal implications of our decisions when it comes to fighting our  foes.

After all, as the video so clearly shows, thrust in any given direction must be balanced by opposing counter-thrust. We really don't have all that much room to maneuver.

Crucibles

Via Instapundit, and the newly-bookmarked, likely to be frequently-visited H+ Magazine, I encountered this fascinating article on the role of Israel in the formation of our technological civilization, and in its future development. It begins thusly:

Imagine this sci-fi scenario: A small tribe with unique literature, customs and myths believes they’ve been “chosen” for a glorious destiny. But they’re driven out of their native land, forced to wander the globe for aeons, persecuted and annihilated, until they’re impelled by a utopian novel to return to their homeland. They name their new city after the inspirational book and their country becomes a technological powerhouse... but still, they’re surrounded by enemies. They wage eternal war, they hover between hope and apocalypse… their contributions to humanity are astounding but they continue to fear total extinction.

 The tiny nation of Israel has had a disproportionately huge impact on the states of an astonishing variety of extremely cutting-edge technologies practically since its inception. It is still the world standard on water treatment (its drip irrigation techniques were revolutionary, and allowed it to make the desert bloom in a way which would have made Frank Herbert's mouth...well...). Its contributions to renewable energy technologies, robotics, medical tech, and a host of other highly advanced fields of knowledge have made this nation, though smaller than New Jersey, into a little laboratory for the future. Consider these data:

 The first cell phones were developed at the Israeli branch of Motorola. The majority of Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft Israel. Pentium MMX chip technology was designed at the Israeli Intel. Both the Pentium 4 and Centrino processors were designed by Israelis. Dov Moran, an Israeli, invented the flash disk. Voice mail technology? Israel. AOL Instant Messenger? Israel. Highest percentage of home computers in the world? Israel. Highest ratio of university degrees? Israel. Highest per capita number of scientists and technicians in the workplace? Israel. (145 per 10,000 — second is USA with 85). Techno-progressive President Shimon Peres recently declared, “the future is in nanotechnology.” Israeli universities advance research in cutting edge fields like cognitive neuroscience, cellomics, telomerase, etc. etc.

 Long ago, I read a short story by Theodore Sturgeon, called A Microcosmic God, in which a scientist creates a species of tiny, intelligent, short-lived organisms, and presents them with problems which they must solve, often for the sake of their own survival (for example, he introduces a mechanism which will crush them unless they come up with an impenetrable force field...so they do. After all, they see him as a kind of God figure). In the conclusion of his H+ article, author Hank Hyena links the embattled state of Israel to other fast-growing, innovative societies of the past, stating that:

In my opinion, Israel (like South Korea) will be a tiny giant in the world of the future. Both nations have risen triumphantly from near-nothingness in the last sixty years. Although Israel is miniscule and threatened by opposition, it has used this challenge as motivation for advancement. Israel’s diminutive size and gargantuan progress is reminiscent of the small vibrant city states of history, such as classical Athens (rivaled by Sparta, Thebes and Corinth), medieval Florence (opposed by Venice, Milan, Genoa, Pisa and Siena), the Warring States of China (forward leaps in philosophy, metallurgy, government, law and military strategy), Swahili seaports (Mombasa, Malindi, Kilwa, Sofala, Zanzibar, and Mogadishu competed economically as their cosmopolitan cultures blossomed), plus myriad other mighty dwarfs that performed phenomenally under pressure.

 A central tenet of evolutionary dynamics (at various scales, including genetic algorithms within computers) is the importance of selective pressures to guide the process of blind variation and selective retention which makes evolution such an immensely powerful problem-solving engine. Given such pressures, evolving systems sample the problem space in massively parallel fashion, trying and discarding myriad potential solutions before zeroing in on the one which is nearest-to-optimal.

In the case of Israel, one would be hard-pressed to envision a more demanding problem space in which to sink or swim. Of course, adversity does not invariably lead to brilliance, and the author cites some other factors (e.g., an early influx of highly-educated immigrants from Russia and Europe) which have propelled Israel to its current prominence in the advancement of human civilization. But the fact is that Israel has had to innovate at a breakneck pace in order to preserve its very existence. Operating under relentless existential threats, and with very few allies (at least initially: the US was not a significant supporter till after 1973 or so), the nation of Israel has functioned as a sort of crucible for the emergence of novel approaches to a wide variety of problems.

Say what you will about the primordial standoff between Israel and its neighbors. But this is an indispensable nation with untolled gifts for the future of humanity. Amid all the hue and cry, it is useful to remember this from time to time.

Please do read the whole thing.

David Emerges

Check out this article about a 5-axis milling rig which uses sophisticated 3-D design software to carve a helmet out of a solid block of aluminum.


Information technology meets precision robotics, and achieves something resembling kinetic poetry. Form emerges from brute matter in a gleaming spray of metal shavings, a marriage of genius and machinery which would make Michaelangelo weep (with joy? with grief?). 


Don't miss the extraordinary video. 

Belated H/T to Mr. Hengist who, I now recall, sent me the vid months ago.