>From elsewhere.
Some thoughts on 'lateral thinking' which may be of interest 
to some.

The original post, largely irrelevant to the general gist of 
this post,  related to means of implementing a SCRAM-Jet, 
which so far at least is a near impossible feat.
_________________________

People who like to come up with new and practical ideas may
even find this worth reading.
For the long short version read Edward De Bono's "Lateral
Thinking".

> However, I don't think it is impossible for the idea
> as originally stated to be implemented, if you just
> thought about possible ways of doing it without
> assuming it is impossible.

It almost certainly is. Or so close to it that with our
current levels of engineering it is 'indistinguishable from
magic'.

HOWEVER

> In case anyone wants to engage in the mental exercise ...

The value of exercises like this usually lies not in their
possibility but, as suggested, in not assuming it is
impossible and in the pursuing of mental exercises. In fact,
pursuing really really really silly mental exercises. Lest
this sound just downright silly (which it is) let me hasten
to add that it is related to a process which has
acknowledged worth and which tends to work for me sometimes,
and sometimes not.

I am not a slavering Edward De Bono fan, and I suspect that
amongst his greatest abilities may have been the ability to
sell himself as a purveyor of great ideas and the ability to
repackage old ideas and common sense in new attractive
wrappers. But there is no doubting that some of his material
is useful. He created the term "lateral thinking" and almost
everyone nowadays pays at least tip of the hat homage to the
general concept of 'thinking outside the box' and getting
practical and productive ideas by using utterly improbable
resource material. Fewer people have actually read what De
Bono wrote on this and fewer still probably remember it.
Part of his process was basically to proactively embrace
utter lunacy - to postulate ideas which were silly, known
not to work, liable to be badly broken by the laws of
physics and which were generally unworkable, impractical and
probably downright annoying. Out of such, with a certain
amount of applied rigour (and sometimes no rigour at all)
can come new and real ideas. Even though most of the time,
if useful ideas do come they will bear only nodding
acquaintance to the lunatic idea which sponsored them. This
is because, when it does happen, of how the human brain
works. It does help if those involved in the process have
some idea of a practical solution when/if it does emerge, or
are able and willing to test ideas which may have merit.
Otherwise if becomes an ongoing talk fest with no way of
knowing when to leave De Bono world with a real product.

Chances are that an open list dedicated mainly to practical
aspects of any activity is not the sort of place to pursue
this at any length. It may be a place to start the process
off but if one wishes to suggest Scramjets packed with
cotton wool, walled with spandex, filled with ultra
compressing vortices  and more then one is going to annoy
most people fairly quickly and those involved really need to
go and practice the exercise in a padded list dedicated to
the task, or to a number of similar tasks.

I know close to utterly nothing about the subject matter
except for what I've acquired by osmosis from others input
here plus a bit of creative Gargoyling, but I'd not be
surprised if Jim's assessment of "... impossibly naive."
isn't reasonably correct. I'm not suggesting that the list
be filled with heaps of technical impossible naivety on an
ongoing basis (we have almost enough of that now on a wide
range of
subjects :-) ) and I think Jim's response was a reasonable
enough one. But we also want to be prepared to keep our
mental filters open to new ideas which the brain presents by
processes which really are still 'indistinguishable from
magic'. If we completely eliminate the ability or right to
postulate really really silly solutions to utterly
impossible problems then they will surely remain utterly
impossible. One danger of allowing such freedom is that we
end up at FTL, warp drives, Di Lithium crystals and worse in
no time flat, and it does help to stamp such out aborning
(probably). But some careful balance is in order. And maybe
the ability to easily spin off a new sublist of those
interested mind storming a given subject in a controversial
way. It does help if such sublists have some people with a
degree of genuine expertise in the subject matter at hand,
and the more expert are often less likely to want to spend
the effort. That's not a problem I'll try and suggest a
solution to, but a subgroup may wish to brainstorm it :-).

For those interested in De Bono's comments on the subject -
there's 68 copies available on ABE books, starting at $US
(the postage costs more than the book)


        http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=bono&sts=t&tn=lateral+thinking&x=0&y=0



            Russell McMahon




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