Archive - Eli Dourado

Personal aviation is about to get interesting

FAA is getting one enormously consequential thing right

Oct 23, 2023 •

March 2023

50 years of silence

It's time to end the speed limit in US airspace

Mar 23, 2023 •

January 2023

Cargo airships could be big

A capital-intensive, high-risk way to revolutionize global commerce

Jan 30, 2023 •

Heretical thoughts on AI

Robert Solow quipped, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” What if AI is the same way? What if it changes…

Jan 19, 2023 •

February 2022

Going deep with Quaise

As we drill into the earth from the surface, we travel through layers of sedimentary cover and eventually hit basement rock. Basement rock is ancient…

Feb 8, 2022 •

July 2021

The state of next-generation geothermal energy

What would we do with abundant energy? I dream of virtually unlimited, clean, dirt-cheap energy, but lately, we have been going in the wrong direction…

Jul 6, 2021 •

January 2021

I vote for a different voting system

Can a change in the voting system save our country? Start with a simple electoral model: two strong, instrumentally rational parties; one dimension of…

Jan 12, 2021 •

December 2020

Notes on technology in the 2020s

As we start a new decade, it’s a good time to reflect on expectations for the next 10 years. Tyler thinks the Great Stagnation could be ending. Caleb…

Dec 31, 2020 •

January 2020

The Space Launch System is part of a swamp that needs to be drained

For my first post at CGO’s Benchmark blog, I chose to write about the Space Launch System, the rocket that Boeing and other military contractors are…

Jan 30, 2020 •

October 2019

2020 could be the year Bitcoin's fee market is put to the test

In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I’m sure that in 20 years there will…

Oct 2, 2019 •

September 2019

How do we move the needle on progress?

This summer, Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen called for a new science of progress. Let’s study, they say, “the combination of economic, technological…

Sep 26, 2019 •

August 2019

The dawn of the age of geoengineering

Let’s be honest. The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change. Between bickering over which country is paying the bill, the fact…

Aug 12, 2019 •

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