https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LignoSat
(although that's magnolia wood, not bamboo)
> The satellite was assembled through a traditional Japanese crafts technique without screws or glue.
If you haven't read the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, go read it. It's worth it.
- umlaut
- diaeresis
- trema
A diaeresis signals you pronounce the vowel separately, a trema signals the pronunciation of the previous vowel (e.g. in the French ambiguë), an umlaut changes the sound of the vowel ( the German a sounds a bit like the English a in bat, but ä sounds like the English e in bed).
In this instance the double dot is a diaeresis.
https://thelanguagecloset.com/2023/05/27/diaresis-trema-umla...
Your idea is unfortunately naïve about current usage.
What probably happened is umlauts were used a lot in German and some lazy typesetter wasn’t going to waste a perfectly good block sitting around that he could reuse
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
This novel was published almost simultaneously with The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. Through an amazing coincidence the two novels contained many similarities. Both protagonists are engineers who have built the world's longest bridge using a machine named the "Spider", both of whom are hired to build a space elevator, and both engineers modify their Spiders to produce a crystalline fiber.
It's like the simultaneous invention of calculus. People are conduits for independently-living ideas.
Always fun to see stuff written almost 2 thousand years ago about life on other planets.
Somehow all the academics in a particular field all over the world just happen to agree on a narrow set of ideas to explore next.
Most of science happens like this, yes even the Newtons and Einsteins of the world explored ideas in this narrow frontier of next ideas. There used to be exceptions in the distant past but modern science does not tolerate exceptions.
It's not talked about it much outside of research groups, but for any field, there is a small number of people who are currently pushing the boundaries, and they all read each other's papers and have a good idea of what the next question to ask is. It can often be a race to engineer an experiment that convinces the reviewers that your article should be published first. It's a sort of cooperation/competition that moves the field forward faster. These areas often move so fast that nobody even bothers to write down the current problems, it's just sort of talked about in person.
Put another way, the successful discoverers are the ones looking for their keys at the end of the streetlight: "Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." (Chomsky). Few if anybody looking where there is no light discovers anything (even if it's sitting there in the dark), or at least, nobody believes them unless they provide significant evidence (like building a new lamp)
(1) hep-th had too many people chasing too few problems back then, or
(2) "scalar field with a mexican hat potential" is one of the simplest field theories you can write though it inspires all sorts of ideas like the Higgs Mechanism, Inflation, etc.
Maybe we will find other structure development systems from combining existing pieces of biologic systems. But that's also unlikely, because biologic systems are so incredibly entangled (to use a software concurrency/complexity term).
That said, it is an awesome research direction, just for the novel construction techniques potential.
Underground root/rhizome structures are also bio structures existing in a kind of microgravity since they are firmly supported by the surrounding soil they are packed into.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Carbon_and_nit...
Am I crazy to think that the war in Ukraine hasn't changed my understanding of modern warfare?
Maybe I'm in the wrong business.
You're absolutely right that drones have been used for awhile, but that has mainly been for reconnaissance and some extremely expensive predator drones. The idea of having thousands of small consumer grade drones mass produced cheaply to terrorize a much larger army by dropping grenades on soldiers and live streaming it on the internet is definitely a new development. There are drone swarms covering our major military ships as well and it's unknown whether it's our own military doing it as part of a black ops program (I assume it's possible, but highly unlikely) or a hostile foreign power doing recon. Russian tanks are also getting dissected by RPGs at an unexpected rate. The Ukrainians took out major Russian warships by distracting the ship with drones and then ramming it with a jet ski torpedo.
Modern militaries are scrambling to find new technology and strategies for how to handle these new capabilities.
I don't discount the impact of drones, quite the opposite. I did, and still do, put a lot of value in them. Point in fact: I worked in the commercial UAV industry (in the USA) before and during the war, though recently laid off. I feel like I was underutilized.
As a matter of fact, drones aren't being used as much as I expect them to be, nor in all the theatres that I expect them to be.
For air:
UAVs for surveillance? Yes, we've seen plenty of videos of this. But not to the extent that I expect. Color and thermal video? Yup. Ground radar? Not so much. Air radar? Nope. Radio signal extension/repeaters? Sort-of, not really. Decoys? Recently yes but not quite used for the purposes that I expect.
UAVs for dropping bombs? Yes, plenty of this. But the examples I see are typically quite crude compared to what I expect... with an emphasis on cheaply produced vehicles capable of dropping generically-attached bombs. Makes sense given the economics of the war. But these are IMO over-represented compared to what other capabilities UAVs could have. Dropping incendiaries (eg, dragon burning a forest) seems to be an evolution in kind but not really a revolution of new tech.
UAVs for suicidal destruction? Yes, we see this too, mostly against ground vehicles. These are crude, but seem to be quite effective.
UAVs for ground strafing? I see very little, if any, of it. I think this would probably be more effective than dropping grenades (let the computer do the aiming) so I'm surprised I don't see this concept used much.
UAVs for air superiority? Very little, very crude. I don't see many weapons mounted on drones shooting at other manned or unmanned air vehicles. I see more UAVs trying to ram other UAVs instead. I don't see UAVs having missiles mounted on them (though the UAV itself might be a missile...). I think there's a lot of underrepresented opportunity for UAVs to have light missiles for air-to-air capability. Conversely, I do hear a lot of complaints from both sides about the other side's use of UAVs, which tells me that UAV air-to-air capabilities aren't as well developed or deployed as I'd expect.
UAVs for logistics? Some, but it doesn't seem to be as much as I'd expect. Ammunition is too heavy for current generation UAVs to move a meaniningful amount. But I think there's plenty of opportunity for UAVs to move food parcels, medical components, limited amounts of technical components, and limited amounts of water. I suspect that UAVs are under-utilized for this purpose, but I don't have access to battlefield data to understand risk/reward tradeoffs here.
Then, for ground:
UGVs for fire suppression? Some, but not much. Small little rovers mostly and the ones I've seen in public videos seem much more mechanically complicated than a UAV. The biggest limitation here might be fuel or power. Knowing the current state of computer vision, and given that a ground vehicle can be a spectacularly stable platform from which to fire a gun, and a computer can aim quite quickly and precisely from a calibrated and stable platform, I think that unmanned ground vehicles are significantly under-utilized and/or under-developed especially in defensive capabilities.
UGVs for ground-to-air? Significantly less than I expect.
UGVs for ground logistics? Not really much at all. I suppose the amount of materiel (fairly insignificant) they can move around is not worth the cost to build/maintain.
And, for sea:
USVs for naval combat? Less in total numbers than I expect, but the ones I do see seem to have an outsized impact and are far more sophisticated than I expect when compared to other types of unmanned vehicles I see. It seems (from my perspective) that navies have invested significantly into unmanned vehicle capabilities.
And fast. So. fucking. fast.
I hate playing against Zerg.
The term "Zerg Rush", or "zerging", is now commonly used to describe sacrificing economic development in favor of using many cheap, yet weak units to overwhelm an enemy by attrition or sheer numbers.
— Wikipedia
https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Zerg
"The Zerg Swarm is a terrifying and ruthless amalgamation of biologically advanced, arthropodal aliens. [...] They are named "the Swarm" per their ability to rapidly create strains, and the relentless assaults they employ to overwhelm their foes."