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JPL's article: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-curiosity-rover-detects-...
Trying to convince now & near-future f(o)unders that Curiosity can be dual-use XD?*

Didn't realize PNAS paywalled, supplement says they had to add silicon to the petroleum in order to do GCMS, which is interesting enough

*in the firmaments

TIL; it seems like a common protocol:

> MtBSTFA derivatives are 104 times more stable to hydrolysis than their corresponding TMS derivatives and produce easily interpreted mass spectra for GC/MS.

https://www.registech.com/derivatizing-reagents/silylation-r...

EDIT: Derek Lowe: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alkanes-mars

(thx to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43548673 )

Right, right, I'd put MS into my Blind Spot because there has got to be a much cheaper, more reliable, more scaleable/generalizable, less prone to over-engineering/misinterpretation option for detecting trace compounds, yes? (Our noses do it, at a speed faster than n per decade!!*)

[Seems JPL are more courageous^W patient^W adaptive than MMAANG!]

Follows (p3) the actually interesting phrase: what'd they mean by that? What provoked the peer reviewers?

"It is INTERNALLY ACCEPTED by the SAM team that a signal can be assessed from a S/N of 2 and the quantification is tentatively made from any detected m/z"

On reflection on the list I gave of DARPA-likes..

[Where might our intuitions diverge?]

Couple clues for it not being simply nostalgia:

1. The right question is closer to : why do breakthroughs announced by/awarded to MAANG these past decades not pass the optimal curiosity-agency smell test? Too teleological? Cheap conspiratorial answer is that they focused on investigations too expensive for academics to disprove/replicate. Less cheap answer is SV unwittingly replicated the structural issues of pre-lost-decade Japan (shareholder-supremacy? Overoptimistic metrics?)

2. Which brings me to: cultural premiums being nolonger affordable by gradstudents/good faith middle managers across the board

(Is it related to "supervision debt"? Or "moderation-technik debt")

*Related to the information bottleneck worked upon by my undersung hero Bialek?