Hartree's Constant

[watervole]

 Douglas Hartree (who designed Hartree's Differential Analyzer) is also responsible for Hartree's Law

 

lHartree’s Law

 

–The time to completion of any project, as estimated by the project leader, is a constant (Hartree’s constant) regardless of the state of the project

–eg. A project is 90% complete 90% of the time

The classic example of a Hartree Constant is Fusion power, which is always a decade away from generating excess power.

 

Comments

[damerell]

I remember seeing a presentation at an Eastercon (Illustrious, I think) where someone from JET outlined a 40-year programme to commercial fusion power. As an exercise for the reader, plot peak oil on the same graph and conclude we are all fucked.

[watervole]

I agree - though the oil companies would have you believe that time until peak oil is also a Hartree constant.

[damerell]

I suppose that's true to a degree with increasingly awful extraction techniques.

[undyingking]

Absolutely. And as scarcity forces the sale price to rise, those techniques become more affordable and also more politically acceptable. Presumably it'll have to become asymptotic at some point, but we've got quite a few more decades of straightforward climbing prices and environmental degradation to look forward to before that.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

Artificial Intelligence had been 50 years away for the last 60 years at least.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the other law (forget whose, if it was ever really anyone's), that says 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, and the other 10% of the project takes the other 90% of the time.