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On Tue, 8/12/14, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Fogbank
 To: "xxxxxx@simplelists.com" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 7:29 AM

 On Aug
 12, 2014, at 5:21 AM, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org>
 wrote:

 > I found this
 article linked from another one, and thought it might have
 some relevance when discussing technology and development. 
 It touches on the "we did it fifty years ago with slide
 rules and vacuum tubes, we can do it today with super
 computers and iPads!"
 >
 > http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/479avvbv.asp?pg=2

 What that says to me is that
 either the original developers of the stuff were criminally
 incompetent at documenting their process, successful
 production-scale synthesis was entirely due to one line
 technician named 'Bubba' who claimed his high
 success rate was due to whanging on the production vessel
 with a baseball bat in just the right spot exactly  17.5
 minutes into the reaction, or (more likely) all of their lab
 notebooks are carefully packed away in crate OR65-91-887/A
 in Warehouse 51...next to the Ark of the Covenant :-)

 For a newer look at this kind
 of thing in action, see here <http://www.airspacemag.com/space/americas-next-spaceship-180952126/>

 Note what they're using as
 emergency radiation shielding :-)

 --
 Bruce Johnson

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I experienced this sort of thing quite a few times over the 30 years that I worked in IT.

People wouldn't adequately document things &/or would leave & take docs w/ them.

Even after all such info was supposed to be electronically recorded, it seemed that quite a lot was not.

Hence, the 'Wheel' had to be re-invented, over & over.
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