I was about to say the article does mention it, but I went back and reread to confirm and realized I had used my own knowledge to supplement or something because yeah, they literally don't talk about the cons of this tech in the article at all. That's bad. I guess I understand why after looking at the type of the content the site produces, but it's still disingenuous when the crux of this problem right now is figuring out whether these designs will hold up at the microscopic/atomic level under the extreme temperature and pressure forces, states, and changes they'll be routinely subject to. Besides sending them up to test, there isn't currently a nice way to ensure the performance specs.

I think the tech itself is great. I'm also really fond of the innovations they've made with sound waves at Fabrisonic--for the longest time it seemed like magic because I couldn't wrap my mind around weaving sound waves into physically-real metals. After reading a couple research papers and going through the math/physics, I finally have a handle on it and how clever it is. It reminds me of the foundations of string theory. Both generative-design techs will undoubtedly lead to innovations and spin-off techs in other industries; biomedical being a primary branch.

I'm a biophysicist by title, but I have graduate degrees in astro/computational physics as well so this is definitely something I've been keen on. I'd love to ultimately get to work with the tech via collaboration or get something in my lab for student research if that's ever a possibility. It's a really cool next step to take that I think is brilliant. We already hijack so many natural processes in the lab (gene copying/tagging, medicines, plasmid-insertions etc.), that it makes sense to use a more biological process in the scaffolding of aerospace and rocket engineering as well.

The cons are extra important to pinpoint. Especially to the engineers, researchers, and scientists who are particularly interested in generative design. Finding ways to solve those problems are the very reasons some people even exist in these industries at all. I'm actually really impressed at the time scales they have this operating at. I'd be interested in seeing exactly what changes it comes up with on average in 2-4 hours period. That's an insane turnaround time. I was expecting changes on the level of days or weeks. Thus, I'm also curious about how the system is evolving and analyzing each generation. At this point I'm just rambling though, so I'll leave it at that. I agree, they should have outlined the key issues alongside the benefits.