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Technological Flights Of Fancy That Fizzled
prostoalex writes "MSNBC's Alan Boyle takes a look at seven futuristic dreams for the past that never managed to materialize into anything substantial in this 21st century. At the top of the list are flying cars, with personal jetpacks, passenger airships, supersonic commercial flights, space travel and colonies, with propulsion breakthroughs completing the list."
Surprised that's not on the list anywhere ...
Where are the flying skateboards from Back to the Future?
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
Oh, and flying cars never materialized because it is the opposite of controlling increasing traffic problems.
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It was a pretty good article, but very weak on the Hindenburg details, many people seem to aggree these days that it was not the hydrogen that exploded, but the fabric.
Of course the Hindenburg is a fine example of how important a picture could be. Only thirty seven people died (97 lived), yet the burning fireball caught on film managed to kill decent method of long range travel. Of course there are a couple of other problems with airships, like they don't do too well in strong winds, and they take a lot of "man handling" at the field, but in some applications they might make good sense.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Oh yeah, like the research on that is hard. Just go dig through old issues of Popular Mechanics and you'll find all the material you could possibly need.
What a great choice for a picture :)
I remember seeing ads for flying cars (well, was it really a car) in that magasine over 15 years ago.
Interesting that all of these failed technologies are transportation based. Good thing we invented the SUV instead of personal jetpacks, or some nonsense.
...the prediction of hundreds of cable channels did come true and yet there is still nothing on.
I was playing Millennium Edition Monopoly a few weeks ago-an edition of Monopoly with various bits of sparkle, and player tokens that look like things that would forever affect our lives, change them for the better and would stand the test of time.
Bugger me sideways with a wet broomstick if Concorde wasn't one of these pieces. Gotta love that irony.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
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Haven't you seen the commercial? We don't NEED flying cars!
... is television truly that dead already that mainstream MSNBC doesn't realize the existence of informative and somewhat-funny commercial advertisements that portray the Internet and IBM as the solutions to every problem we have with data storage and transportation? What do we need flying cars for?
Jeez
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
Fast low-latency connectivity to every home, via a low-cost fiber-optic cable?
I remember Ye Olde Phone Company, back in 1995, was telling me (on a tour of the "copper racks" no less) that they planned to start installing residential fiber right into people's houses next year, and that the whole city would be wired up within 5 years...
Obviously, 5 years of Corporate Time!
So, I have my cable modem, which is nice for downloads... but still sucks for latency.
I want my monkey man!
we had just gone ahead with the whole Earth ruled by a council of scientists thing.
It's funny how when you think about the past, you seldom think about your expectations at the time for the future. This article really made me think about how no invention becomes reality simply by virtue of some sort of inevitability. Money, the market, luck, and the tides of history all play a part in determining what will make it and what won't.
Somehow I don't think I'll ever get to use a Transporter either. Dammit!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Why didn't "Windows Security" make it on the list? Oh wait, this is MSNBC...
What do you mean supersonic commercial flights never managed to materialize into anthing substantial! What about the Concorde? HUh?
Never mind...
quantum teleportation != Propulsion breakthroughs
Seriously, it has nothing to do with propulsion, Mr. Boyle. <grin>We'll have to wait another lightyear at least to see better propulsion.</grin>
Although this is sort of off topic, the most over hyped technological event ever had to have been Y2K. How did this ever get so over-hyped ? Surely tech experts could have figured out that nothing would happen. Was this hype attributed to naive tech experts, the media or what ?
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
I bought a stack of Popular Electronics magazines from the 70's on ebay a few months ago. There's some great "upcoming technologies" articles.
In the days before the magnetic strip, they predicted credit cards would have a holographic image that optically stores the credit card number. The card projects the hologram onto a sensor which reads the number into the computer for processing.
In the letters to the editor section, someone was wondering if it was worth taking a course in TV repair because with the release of the Phillips Modular design it will be easy for anyone to fix their own TV so the repair industry would become obsolete.
Jason
ProfQuotes
The saying that you can "View any movie ever created, and listen to any song ever sang." blew my skirt up. I want to be able to sit in front of my computer or tv for weeks and keep myself entertained with content.
Pretty Pictures!
Not the colonies!!!!
Damn You NASA!
Or the russian space agency or GW Bush or whoever fault it is...
Given the uproar created by the Segway, its not surprising that flying cars and jetpacks never "took off." This is not an issue of what engineers can do technologically, but an issue of what society says they can do in public.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...we have all the penis enlargers, cheap toner cartridges, and some other Chinese-looking stuff that I can't read, that money can buy!
Who would have dreamed that thirty years ago!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Oops, it was invented.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Bye!
*POOF*
... where people are slave to machine. The machines are using the humans as batteries and a group of people are looking for some One. Then they realize it's just an endless loop.
I'm sure someone will turn it into a dream sooner or later.
Fortress of Insanity
Blogzine
But how about totally revolutionary physics -- the kind of thing we see in "Star Wars" or "Star Trek"?
:)
You mean the kind of revolutionary physics that allows multi-ton objects to turn on a dime at insanely high velocities (with nothing to "push" against) without tearing themselves apart, and also without expending the energy of a small nuclear blast in order to do it?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
the hubble?
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Truthfully, this is the biggest dissapointment out of all of the things that were listed as failed. Though, I'd like to rejoice at the idea that the military's still pushing supersonic travel, it doesn't make me all that comfortable (for more reasons than a simple sonic boom). Seeing the Concorde go, seemed like seeing a portion of the future dissapear in front of us, and all because of a couple accidents. Of course, coincidences are hardly excuses, but still, I'd like to have seen these machines continue for a while.
I can just imagine that one day I'll have the ability to be connected with family across the globe in real life, like I'm connected to them virtually. I can just hope that what the military researches, at whatever cost it may be, will eventually reach the mainstream consumer.
... is it just me, or does an article like this manage to get posted every month? Can we just not talk about the damn personal jetpacks and have some actual content?
evil adrian
Oh, wait. It's medication time. And jello with dinner!
Another failed prediction...
That in 100 years, computers would be TWICE as powerful, TEN-THOUSAND times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe would be able to afford one.
(Oh, and the whole computer-matching-would-be-SO-perfect theory also didn't materialize)
In what way are space colonies a failed technology? Surely the ISS and Mir are both examples of succesful space colonies, well Mir is, ISS should be barring something major going wrong, that or someone patenting something like "a mechanism for launching humans into space using combustion" or such like. Even if you take colonies to mean Lunar/Mars bases then they really shouldnt be too long in coming. Assuming the US gov stops spending so much money on getting you lot cheaper petrol and starts funding something worthwhile.
Pressurized hydrogen (aka deuterium) is supposedly inflammable, and doesn't actually become flammable until it has a proper oxygen/hydrogen ratio (at which point it returns to being H).
:)
Dr. Nick: You mean inflammable means flammable? What a country!
I'll leave this one for the chemistry geeks in the crowd to chuckle over
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I've never heard that one before.
I mean come on, we still have 96 years to pull this stuff off.
Think twice before posting next time unless you want an extra large greased Yoda doll stuffed up your ass.
SlipHead.com is a cool new site following in this trend if any of you are interested. It's basically a free forum for the exchange of ideas with a methodology similar to open-source software. Take a minute to check it out!
You know what irritates me? Pres Kennedy said we're going to the moon, and 8 years later we did it. We landed Humans on the moon, we walked around, planted a flag, parked a hoopty, took some snapshots ........ and then .... We. Never. Went. Back.
WTF? Thirty friggin years later and no one has ever gone back? Instead we're pouring money into a useless space station for political feel good points.
There are enough metals, water, and WEALTH orbiting just past Mars to make every living Human a trillionaire, and we're still fighting wars over oil, diamonds and pieces of land measuring a few hundred square miles in size.
All the eggs are still in the same basket. It's only a matter of time before a great big rock flies into it and breaks every damned one of them.
Only on
First, and foremost, it is the result of a tax structure that penalizes economic activity while unburdening asset concentrations -- the very things that governments protect and should therefore tax. This creates "market failures" in technology development capitalization that government then tries to solve with socialist development programs... adding futher to the tax burden on economic activity without sharing that burden with the asset concentrations protected by government from force and fraud (due to war and/or crime). This technosocialist "solution" to the asset concentration welfare system is surely the most idiotic idea ever to infect civilization.
Whenever government gets involved in technology development, as opposed to basic (unpatentable) research, it creates a monster that finds private innovation threatening. Governments failed to foresee this poisonous incentive when the post-Manhattan-project mania for government "big science" programs took off.
The one area of space development that took off and became profitable, communications satellites, is the one area of space development that Congress, at the dawn of the space age, barred government from competing with private interests. Unfortunately, the NASA act didn't bar government from competing in space transportation. Also equally unfortunately government wasn't kept out of energy development or aeronautical technology development.
Here's an excerpt from the afore-linked net asset taxation whitepaper:
CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND RISK INVERSION
A fundamental problem with our economy at present is what might be called "risk inversion" where households with high net worth disproportionately invest in low risk instruments while households with low net worth find their savings unwisely invested at high risk by deregulated but relatively unskilled financial institutions.
New technologies and job-creating enterprises find it difficult to obtain capital because they are caught in the horns of a dilemma: The wealthy, who have the business experience needed to manage the risks of a new enterprise, have given their money to government or corporate bureaucracies to manage while small savers find their savings accounts squandered in speculative investments by institutions which are, in reality, qualified to do little more than purchase Treasury paper, which is what they should, in fact, be doing.
Even more perverse, the government finds itself stepping away from its traditional low-risk investments in mature infrastructure in order to perform functions for which it is particularly ill-suited, such as technical innovation, while private sector businesses retreat from the very technical risk it is most suited to manage.
The government then finds itself bailing out the failed investments of insured, but deregulated, financial institutions, thus creating even more government debt which is purchased by those most qualified to capitalize business enterprise.
The current hue and cry for saving the "middle class" arises from the failure of our deregulated financial institutions to focus on their original purpose, which was the creation of affordable home ownership. Instead, they speculated in the creation of large amounts of theoretically profitable commercial real estate as young families were being crushed under the weight of sky- rocketing home mortgages and declining real wages.
The "middle class" it is currently in vogue to worry about are those people, primarily people born in the 1950's (middle to late baby boomers), whose family stability and household net worth suffered greatly as a result of these housing shortages combined with lowering real incomes.
Seastead this.
Fast low-latency connectivity to every home, via a low-cost fiber-optic cable?
The gap between first demo, hyped press releases, and widespread acceptance is very very long. Consider the very long convoluted history of video telephony. Even the people that have the bandwidth for video telephony do not use it much.
Those pesky customers -- there's not enough of them, they're all waiting for others to adopt the technology, and then they don't want to pay much for the service when it gets to them.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
NT, the Unix killer! Fizzzzle
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Although we think we're advancing so slowly in interstellar travel, just think - less than 60 years after the first airplane flew, we were walking on the moon. In the long view, much of our technological advances have occurred at lightning speed. Perhaps in a few hundred years we'll have captured the secret of intrastellar space travel and colonized the solar system. Perhaps in a few thousand years we'll have captured the secret of interstellar space travel and colonized every star in the sky. Sure, that's a long time for a single human life. But in the course of human evolution? It's an eyeblink.
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
Funny, yes. Interesting, no. Slashdotters are a curious crowd.
I just read a comic about this...
The author neglects to mention another popular sci-fi dream technology: the car that floats on air. Hovercraft technology has been around for awhile, and yet we seem to get along just fine on four or two wheels.
I guess hovering and flying are not the same things.
The problem with many of those things is the same:
It takes too much energy to move something through the sky. Jetpacks, personal aircars and supersonic travel all have the same problem - it takes so much energy to do it that it would cost too much to do it for more than a stunt.
There's also the other problems:
1) Jetpacks also had the added problem of carrying all that fuel around - it's not much of a "personal jet pack" if you have to carry 500 pounds of fuel along.
2) In spite of what Moller says, you're never going to totally automate flying. Too many decisions to make. It's hard enough to get drivers to stay off the roads during a declared snow emergency, how hard do you think it would be to get a guy who'd just spent a million bucks on a sky car to not fly when the winds are strong, there are thunderstorms anywhere within 50 miles, freezing rain or hail? It's hard enough to keep general aviation pilots out of that sort of stuff, and we spend hours and hours studying weather.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Here ya go, SlashDot. Rip it apart:
SkyCar
Obviously the fine folks at popular mechanics have never watched SPIDERMAN. The Green Goblin's personal hovercraft and the military jet-pack are great examples that they simply overlooked. I'm sure once there is enough demand they will start mass producing both.
For example with devices such as this it is not hard to understand that a device such as this would provide rapid flight to any location on earth irrespective of weather conditions and I would say, appropriately insulated, it would even be able to go underwater as it would depend on electricity and not air for its propulsion. Interplanetary space flight with a propulsive method like this would also be trivial. The ideas are there they only require money and patience.
If you are a time traveler or alien disguised as human and or have
the technology to travel physically through time I need your help!
My life has been severely tampered with and cursed!!
I have suffered tremendously and am now dying!
I need to be able to:
Travel back in time.
Rewind my life including my age back to 4.
I am in very great danger and need this immediately!
I need as close to temporal reversion as possible, as safely as possible.
To be able to rewind the hands of time in such a way that the universe of
now will cease to exist.
I know that there are some very powerful people out there with alien or
government equipment capable of doing just that.
I am aware of two types of time travel one in physical form and the other
in energy form where a snapshot of your brain is taken using either the
dimensional warp or an electronic device and then sends your consciousness
back through time to part with your younger self. Please explain
how safe and what your method involves.
I have a time machine now, but it has limited abilitys and is useless
without
a vortex.
If you can provide information on how to create vortex generator or
where I can get some of the blue glowing moon crystals this would also
be helpful. I am however concerned with the high level of radiation these
crystals give off, if you could provide a shielding or other crystals
which give off a north polarized vortex field just as strong or strong
enough to make a watch stop this would be great.
Only if you have this technology and can help me exactly as mentioned
please send me a (SEPARATE) email to: laverTemiTdeenI@aol.com
Please do not reply if your an evil alien!
Thanks
I would just like to see some sort of piece in the world rather than war after war. Prehaps I'm just a dreamer
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
You got it nailed. Dozens of other hydrogen filled airships burned without anyone questioning that hydrogen ignition was the mechanism. None of them had HINDENBURG's supposedly uniquely dangerous doping compound on the fabric. All of them burned brightly because there was plenty of fabric and other materials to add brilliant color to the pale blue hydrogen flame.
It is pointless to stretch the imagination to contend that HINDENBURG was anything but a hydrogen ignition scenario.
I know it was imagined a long time ago (early 20th century I think), but I guess no one expected it to become a reality until recently. In 50 years, will people be writing about a space elevator as a Technological Flights Of Fancy That Fizzled?
If it does indeed become a relity, a space elevator would surely help space tourism and permanent space colonies to be realized as well.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
You've never been on Yahoo! Chat (or AOLIM) with a cam, have you?
Speak truth to power.
Reading the article makes you wonder about non-transportation marvels that was predicted ages ago. Off the top of my head, AI (ala Lt. Comm. Data) is the most tantalyzing of these. The year 2001 has come and gone and we have yet to witness anything resembling HAL the homocidal computer. (maybe that is a good thing?) On both the hardware and software front, we are embarassingly behind where we thought we would be many years ago. Will we be reading the same article ages hence lamenting the lack of androids?
P.S. I'm anticipating that Matrix jokes are inevitable. Go ahead - do your worst.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
We have flying cars (1). They're called "Helicopters". They're expensive because they aren't mass produced on the scale of cars, which is because fuel costs are prohibitive for wide-scale use.
We have personal jetpacks (2). Earlier attempts ran out of gas too quickly to be useful, but this appears to be a solved problem now.
We have supersonic planes (4), but the fuel costs are prohibitive for commercial travel.
We have the technology to put people and equipment in space (5 and 6), but fuel costs are prohibitive for anything other than military applications and government funded scientific research.
The aerospace breakthroughs that occured in the early 20th century were all driven by the availability of mass-produced gasoline-driven engines, which brought the cost and weight of energy down by a large margin compared to coal burning steam engines. Jet and rocket engines became practical in the 30s and 40s, producing another round of breakthroughs. Steam engines lead to a round of breakthroughs when they first became practical.
The reason we've only been seeing incremental improvements is because we're still using the same basic technologies. As soon as a new power source which allows more power for less money and less weight, we'll have flying cars, personal jetpacks, space tourism, and space colonization.
I don't think it'll be fuel cells, since there's no order-of-magnitude improvements in power density there. My money is on a breakthrough in Uninterruptable Power Supplies.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Flying cars... there's a scary idea. People have a hard enough time dealing with motion in two dimensions, now let's bump that up to six and see what kind of mess that would cause. You'd definitely have to let a computer do all the real work and sit back and enjoy the ride. Not sure how many people would go for that in their personal vehicle; relenquishing that much control to a box. It would definately have to be a lot more sophisticated and idiot proof than the autopilot in let's say a 747.
... to me would be the technological advances that no one saw coming. I think about it when I read sci-fi from the '50s and people are cruising all over the solar system in nuclear powered space ships and using slide rules to calculate their course.
Looking at the developments that were never on the radar but have had a huge impact always fascinates me.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Its a good bet that the spectacular filmed crash of the Concorde greatly accelerated the demise of that program.
Compare that to how many jumbo jets have gone down and it points out something, if its flashy, and it goes wrong, then its doomed. If its nearly a commodity people just shrug their shoulders and move on.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
8 tracks and beta max while we are at it :)
http://www.futurehorizons.net/hoverboard.htm has hoverboards for sale. But there more the size of a surf board than a skate board.
I for one am glad the flying car has never made it. Some people can barely keep their cars on the road. Imagine if a distracted individual talking on his/her cell phone, screaming at their kids, eating a meal, and watching a DVD movie slammed into a chemical storage tank.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Hey everybody! We should completely disregard all research that's been done on the topic of the explosion of the Hindenburg, because because fnj said it was hydrogen without any factual basis, but what the fuck let's believe him anyway.
evil adrian
Given the vast energy required for most of these devices, their approach really isn't that practical.
If you think that modern cars get bad milage, just imagine the fuel bill for one that takes off vertically. Likewise for the personal jetpack and for supersonic flight. Fuel cost is also a big problem in space exploration.
I'm guessing that these technologies will find a niche if, as - and when - renewable energy costs come down a couple of orders of magnitude. Only then will these extravagant methods of transportation be practical and likely only as niche markets given that there are vastly more efficient ways of getting from A to B.
But in many cases technology has already eliminated the need for many of these advances.
For instance, one of the driving forces behind supersonic flight were the "high-powered" executives who found that they could attend two board meetings on opposite sides of the atlantic on the same day - and be home again in time for dinner. But with advances in broadband teleconferencing, they don't even have to leave their home.
Physicsgenius, is that you?
Concorde died because it was not economical enough. Even at upteen thousand a round-trip ticket, the fuel costs were too high. Add in increasing maintenance of aging airframes and a depressed travel market, and you have death for that design.
But aerospace engineering has advanced since Concorde first took to the skies. Better, lighter materials, and computer-aided design mean a better, most efficient airframe. Supersonic cruise engines (derived from military jet fighters) would improve fuel efficiency.
The problem is convincing Boeing or Airbus that airlines want to order at least $10-20 billion or more in some next-gen supersonic passenger liner. Even if the next Concorde is fuel efficient, designing a new passenger jet is not cheap.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The 21st century is only 3 years old, give it a little time.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Tesla and many scientists who furthered his work kept announcing that the fantastic technology advances seen in their time were just the beginning. Think about it: in a few decades we got phones, radio, generalised air traffic, television, nuclear power, premices of computers, and then ... it stopped.
What common appliance do you use everyday, that is not just an incremental improvement of the some invention, or mix of two+ inventions, discovered before the end of WW2 ? What happened to inventions since then ? There are no general public usage of supraconductors, of the technologies that put a man on the Moon... Even the Internet is just an improvement of commuted networks, though it is binary instead of analogic.
The only major breakthrough that could plausibly make its way into our day-to-day lives is hydrogen fuel cells. Where are all the other Breakthroughs ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
...is that "There is no funding available for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project".
NASA
One bad monkey spoils the whole barrel.
In the letters to the editor section, someone was wondering if it was worth taking a course in TV repair because with the release of the Phillips Modular design it will be easy for anyone to fix their own TV so the repair industry would become obsolete.
My dad was a computer technician, in the days when computers (and computer terminals in stores etc.) would actually get fixed, like in hardware. They'd get refurbished, bad solders would get fixed, radio tubes would get switched, replace a bad transistor, that kind of thing. Now, SOP is to cycle through the cards with replacements, or more and more often just swap the entire box for a duplicate. It's basicly gone from being a real technical profession to being a mindnumbing job with hardly any skill requirements. He's retired now, got out at early retirement with 55(!), just in time.
Judging by the cost of having anything repaired compared to new electronics, I think less and less gets repaired outside of warranty. Even warranty claims are often replaced, not repaired. There's simply no money in having a $$$ specialist going over a device, finding defects, getting replacement parts, replacing them and put it back together again. That is if they're not so damn small and integrated you simply couldn't fix them except with highly specalized tools.
In particular not when the cost is the same or even higher than the costs of industrial robots producing one more unit somewhere in Asia. Then you even get a completely new device, not an old device where something else is probably going to break soon. So yes, the repair business really has died down - but not in the way the letter-writer thought it would be.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's a good article covering things that were once thought likely to become practical that have not yet done so. But there are also lots of things that were known by almost everyone to be impossible that have come to pass.
Three examples off the top of my head:
1) Imaging a single atom
2) Imaging the disk of a star other than the sun
3) Detecting extra-solar planets
There are many more examples, especially if you look at the economic predictions of biologists. For example, it was once widely believed that oil and base metals were going to become much more expensive in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Instead, they fell to record low prices.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
1. Solotrek is no longer developing their Solotrek XFV. They auctioned off the existing prototype(s) after burning through their capital. At this point they're just a shell company making money licensing their vehicle for movie use. Mr. Boyle mentions the licensing, but not the near defunct status of SoloTrek.
2. The Breakthrough Physics Project always had tenuous status budgetarily, and it was finally killed off. Mr. Boyle doesn't mention the defunct status of this either. It's a shame the bean counters killed it, since it was mostly "thought experiments" performed by some of NASA's brightest and most forward-thinking scientists.
The information I mentioned above is right off the websites of Solotrek and the BPP, repectively.
A 1/3 chance of surviving a jet crash? Nope.
m .h tm
The new airships like the Zeppelin NT and the ATG machines can use vectored thrust to reduce the number of ground crew required, the power/size ratio and construction methodology is also enough to allow flight in much stronger winds than the first generation machines at the start of the 20th century. They can operate within similar weather conditions to other aircraft like helicopters and light aeroplanes.
http://www.zeppelin-nt.com/pages/D/bilder_u_thu
The airship wasn't killed from long range travel just by the film of the Hindenberg disaster, though it certainly didn't help. The much higher speed and lower cost of the aeroplanes did more damage and I don't see that changing for A->B travel in the near future.
I think however there's a niche similar to the one cruise liners operate within which I believe airships could fill. A world cruise on something like the Hindenberg would be absolutely fantastic. Then there's the obvious military/police patrol and observation platforms.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Do you recall an airline company called "Pan Am", the biggest one of their time?
They were the victim of this little incident above and in Lockerbie. You may want to check out the results for Pan Am shortly afterwards, to see how well this turned out.
A couple of key considerations:
Yeh, it has advanced so much... that aircraft are only now getting some of the tech that concorde had.
A lot of people spent a lot of time and effort making sure that things didn't go wrong. If we had all decided that it was hype and nobody had done anything, then there really would have been a problem.
I spent 1998/99 updating computer systems at the hospital where I work. I can assure you that if we had done nothing about it, we would have had some nasty results in early 2000!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Maybe not as passenger-carrying vessels, but as a way of transporting freight faster, cheaper and in greater quantities than trucks, and being pretty environmentally friendly to boot, since it uses very little fuel compared to the admittedly faster traditional method of heavier-than-air flight.
A couple of years ago in the New Scientist there was an article about new designs of airship. As I remember, rather than the old-fashioned blimp, these things stayed in the air partly through light weight and partly through aerodynamic lift. The advantage of this is that they could take off and land in a sensible manner, instead of needing to be tethered to the ground and have people disembark by rope ladders or whatever it was they used to do. Something like 30% of the lift came from the wing-like shape of the balloon. Anyway, these things were being designed to carry absolutely massive payloads - they were talking about a thousand tons. Think how many trucks that could take off the road, and it can move twice as fast.
Of course, the catch was that they'd be a bit expensive. And who were they targetting as the people with deep enough pockets to shell out for a thousand-ton airship? Why, the military, of course. I mean, just think how many tanks you could get in one of those babies. Balls to alleviating traffic congestion, easing pollution and generally making the world a better place - let's flatten stuff!
Our own history of Jetpacks and why they kinda went nowhere...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Answer: they're all dangerous. It is easily conceived how someone will hurt themselves/get killed with any of these great futuristic technologies. Flying cars? Would you trust the average driver with a flying car? People haven't mastered the left-right blinkers, so you think if you add two more 'up-down' blinkers people will be able to figure that out and use it properly in addition to the blinkers they already can't figure out? Flying hoverboards? Kids would fall off of those even moreso than wheeled skateboards. Supersonic travel? We had the concorde and it crashed and it is no longer in service. Too dangerous. So what do all these technologies have in common? The liability for huge lawsuits is far greater than the social need. Thus, we do not have these technologies, and as long as compensation for wrongful death, pain, and suffering exist, we will never have these technologies. No, i'm not saying we should never have such lawsuits, but as long as we do have them, don't expect flying cars or hoverboards. It's a social tradeoff.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Today, the economics, convenience and safety of traditional air travel are hard to beat.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA...
I'm sorry, but when a magazine gives such obvious pandering to an industry so NOT reflective of whatever they are talking about, I have change my pants.
Safe... definitely more so than driving but safety is OVER played these days and I don't care how safe it is, I might have a heart attack from the stress of dealing with the "convenience" and "economy" of flying.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
They were talking about technological flights of fancy, not fairytales.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But the "breakthrough propulsion" project is surely one that didn't even fizzle. It didn't light in the first place. Surely nobody really believed that NASA was going to come up with the anti-gravity or warp drive? That space should have been reserved for household robots. Finally, in the 21st century, we are seeing some crude robots on the carpet or lawn, but they've been promised for years and are only being used for the most trivial of tasks - no surprise that lawn mowing and vacuuming both consist of nothing more than traversing an area.
And I'd add an eighth - fusion power. That really does fizzle out on a regular basis.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
- Make more efficient use of our leisure time, or
- Save us money or work time (which would increase leisure time).
For example... flying car? Uses a ton of gas, and you're still going to have trouble finding a place to park when you get there.Jet pack? How are you going to gab with your friends and buddies on the way to the Yankees game?
Moon colony? Oh yeah, that's going to give you lots of time to goof off... not that there'd be anything to do when you weren't working anyway.
Super-sonic flight? The amount it adds to the monetary cost of your trip exceeds the time it saves you.
Now, compare that to something like... an MP3 player. Now I can have all of my CD's with me in an iPod the size of a pack of cards. Now I can listen to them anywhere. It has extended either the quality or quantity of my leisure time. But also notice how they've stopped at the point where they get inefficient to use. They could make an MP3 player (okay... not an iPod) the size of a fingernail and have it powered by a little hearing-aid battery. In fact, they could probably make a hearing-aid mp3 player... but it would be harder to use than a normal player. So, at that point, they're making it just for the "gee whiz" factor... to get mentioned in Slashdot and to have everyone go "Wow... the wonders of technology..." but nobody would ever buy one.
Now, flying cars, jetpacks, moon colonies.... those all fall into that "wonders of technology" bit... where they're really being done not to make our lives more efficient, but to make ourselves more impressed with our own cleverness and ingenuity.
The only really futuristic notion I can think of (on the order of flying cars and jetpacks) that would grand huge quality-of-life payoffs would be auto-piloted personal transportation. Most people pronounce this "Self-driving cars", but it could be a variety of things. But, like I said, it's one of the few things where the time/money saved in our personal lives would easily exceed the time/money spent as a society to convert to it.
It's long past time to knuckle down and get seriously pragmatic and practical about moving into space. No more billion dollar carnival shows, please. I *know* it would cool and neat and gollygeewhiz, but we need to move past that.
Why do some think it is so important to follow up the Apollo boondoggle with a Mars boondoggle? No thanks. These big time, one shot spectaculars just so a few folks in portable ecosystems can galavant around another world are what got us into this rut in the first place. It actually winds up making space look distant and elitist, like space is only for the chosen few astronauts. Trust me, I've had the oppurtunity to talk to the public in general about space, and that's the underlying attitude. A big Mars shot would only please a handful of fanatics. Many of you also overlook a lot of the difficulties in a Mars trip. Some of you act like it's not much more than a quick trip up to LEO.
We need to build solid steps into space. A good orbital space station actually IS the proper step right now.
Build a large, solid, modular, easily expandable platform in LEO. Then start placing things at MEO and move out to LaGrange points with zero-g industries- including, eventually, tourism. Leave GEO to the commsats unless someone grows the balls and obtains the funding to build a space elevator.
Unfortunately, and I agree with the Mars crowd on this, the ISS ain't it. :-( There was a guy many years back, when the ISS was still in planning, who proposed a modular approach to space stations. The modules could be mass manufactured on the ground, and then shipped up to space with big dumb boosters and basically just bolted together. It was almost like Tinker Toys, but was a brilliant idea. We'd have an enormous platform up there now, with shuttle *bays* instead of just docking ports.
Ah, it's depressing. :(
--- Ban humanity.
Seeing the Concorde go, seemed like seeing a portion of the future dissapear in front of us, and all because of a couple accidents.
The WTC towers attack killed it. While the other airliners took a serious hit, Concorde's market were mostly people who could afford to fly it, but that didn't really have to. So while the other companies got by on people that "had" to fly, like businessmen and people going away on holidays, the typical Concorde-passenger remained in their luxurious homes, feeling safer there.
It didn't help that their only line was a "sensitive" one, for some reason US people didn't like to travel internationally after that (well moreso than domestic), even though all the hijacked flights were domestic airlines. Most other companies had flight lines inside either Europe or USA to rely on, while Concorde had nothing. The accident was just the final blow.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There's your flying car. I think a couple of the early prototypes *were* converted cars.
The autogyro was cool. If you've ever seen the old archival footage of them, they were almost crash proof. Your engine could drop out of the vehicle, and you could still pull off a safe landing.
--- Ban humanity.
Come on, everybody knows that like several other companies, PanAM fell to the BladeRunner curse:
Someone once noticed that a number of the companies whose logos appeared in BR had financial difficulties after the film was released. Atari had 70% of the home console market in 1982, but faced losses of over $2 million in the first quarter of 1991. Bell lost it's monopoly in 1982. Pan-Am filed for bankruptcy protection in 1991. Soon after Blade Runner was released, Coca-Cola released their "new formula", resulting in losses of millions of dollars. It is interesting to note that since then, the Coca-Cola company has seen the biggest growth of any American company in history. Cusinart filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1989.
From the BladeRunner Faq (one of many copies)
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
There's also the liability question, of course. Might just have to take it all to "no fault" insurance.
--- Ban humanity.
How's 'bout the re-breather from Real Genius? I'd like to have seen that by now. Girl-watching at the beach will never be the same again.
(insert obligatory nude beach comments here)
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
we call it nuclear power.
we all know where that is...
...the battery.
Flying jetpacks may be sexy (in a geeky sort of way), but were always fanciful at best. The real travesty is the lack of development for one of the oldest technologies: the battery. It's a core technology that hasn't kept up with curve. Bemoaning the lack of ridiculous aircars is a waste of time. Give us something really useful like a laptop that runs for weeks on end with a single charge.
Don't forget tiny nuclear reactors in trains, cars, appliances, and toothbrushes. That ideal is shown in a lot of '50s consumer media, but never got anywhere. Imagine the shitfit that would cause in antinuke types.
Sure, Trekky Warp Drives aren't a happnin' deal, but then neither is Artificial Intelligence. Minky and Kurzweil and that bunch have been selling that snake oil for decades and yet my Windoze box still goes goofy if it wakes up with a blank floppy in its mouth.
So yeah: thinking machines are another one of those dorky myths that haven't happened, and probably never will.
What other nonsense of THE FUTURE ! (tm) have we been sold over the years?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Forget flying cars and colonies on the Moon! I'm still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever!
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
Hovercraft technology has been around for awhile, and yet we seem to get along just fine on four or two wheels.
The question of why this is so is pretty easily answered as soon as you attempts to drive a hovercraft.
They require a lot more skill to drive properly (especially in a crowded area) than something with wheels.
Think about skidding - take your car to a skating rink, and drive it around.. bring it up to about 15 miles an hour, and try to drive a slalom.
A hovercraft is like that all the time.
Believe me - constant contact with the ground is a good thing.
Not to mention that "personal sized" passenger airships could be incredibly useful (yeah, it was in some Hardy Boys or other).
Such airships are one of the few cases where the size to efficiency ratio might be good for a hybrid/solar or all-solar onboard power generator, which would make for killer range.
Solar or not, I can't figure out why someone hasn't started trying to market these - is it safety? If I were wealthy, I'd rather have one than a helicopter - it would be almost certainly safer, it would be quieter, and it would be just flat-out cooler to go drifting over a city or wilderness. What gives?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Foundation notwithstanding, nuclear power plants are currently a little too big for personal jetpacks and flying cars. It might be the solution for supersonic jets and space travel, but there are significant unsolved engineering problems, legitimate safety concerns, and uninformed paranoia that must be overcome first.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Computers are more than capable of piloting (takeoff, cruise, and landing) and navigating (planning routes, following tower commands) planes. Have been for a long time. Bring on my flyin' car that says "Destination?", listens to me say "Work" or "Home" or "Las Vegas", goes there at 200 MPH, and wakes me when we land. Hell, for that matter, bring on my regular car that does that (albeit probably not at 200 MPH, but still).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
After all, they have mass similar to a 747, but move considerably slower....no 700+ MPH collisions! Also, that much Hydrogen may go up spectacularly, but it burns very fast, cool, and clean. [Hydrogen is not nearly as powerful as jet fuel!] The damage to any modern fire-proof, crash-proof buildings surrounding any accidents would be reletively minor even in a crowded city like NYC. Maybe we can get Homeland Security to chip in a dime for some of these too!
So it's not a lack of technology, but a lack of energy ? Hey, if we had the technology to tap into all the energy around us, all this could very well be a reality. It all comes down to the lack of good energy tech.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Why do we need landing on Mars and building colony?
Did You think about this?
If we cannot manage to get off all of Mao Ces and Husseins, why are we so sure about colonizing any other planet?
In fact, if we control another planet, the another 'independece war' will start and after all we get even more 'regions' on the world.
So, until we get a sunstainable civilization on earth, is there any reason to go beyond? Technology is one point, but what about the social system of the earth?
We are not mature enough, I think... It's not matter of technology...
What's up with americans and flying cars? You all seem so obsessed...damn motorist society. Always with the oil and the flying cars. I'd rather have a time machine, an item cloner or a teleportation device than a flying car.
Will code a sig generator for food
If you haven't seen it already, watch The Flying Car immediately. From director Kevin Smith starring everyones favorites Dante and Randal
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
When I was a wee boy in the early '60s I had a set of Childcraft encyclopedias (from World Book). In the grip of boomer nostalgia, I recently bought the same set - the 1964 edition - for my 4-yr old boy.
The Childcraft books are full of this kind of idealistic futurism. For example, the article about helicopters states that "Maybe one day you will be flying your own helicopter to work..."
Over a 3 year span following the first moon landing the US *did* go back a few (5) times:
Apollo Lunar Missions (w/successful landings):
Apollo 11
Launched 16 July 1969
Landed on Moon 20 July 1969
Sea of Tranquility
Returned to Earth 24 July 1969
Apollo 12
Launched 14 November 1969
Landed on Moon 19 November 1969
Ocean of Storms
Returned to Earth 24 November 1969
Apollo 14
Launched 31 January 1971
Landed on Moon 5 February 1971
Fra Mauro
Returned to Earth 9 February 1971
Apollo 15
Launched 26 July 1971
Landed on Moon 30 July 1971
Hadley Rille
Returned to Earth 7 August 1971
Apollo 16
Launched 16 April 1972
Landed on Moon 20 April 1972
Descartes
Returned to Earth 27 April 1972
Apollo 17
Launched 07 December 1972
Landed on Moon 11 December 1972
Taurus-Littrow
Returned to Earth 19 December 1972
Granted, it's been a while; but I wouldn't say "Never. Went. Back."
Any spoon would be too big.
we got 2 and 3 on that list Minolta color laser printer, great quality 1100 bucks, cheap consumables. At least in my state you can make your cable company only sell you the channels you want, and it cant be more expensive than the "packages."
Sleep is for the weak.
Combine the jetpack pictured that transforms from a motorcyle... Its easy to see, the fan blades, as wheels. Ride a motorcyle on the ground, or if you gotta go flying, you're set with a jetpack.
God spoke to me
I would love to see somebody go through at least the concept exercise of defining a next generation SST. One design element that lots of the critics of the SST don't take into account is that the Concordes pushed the state of the art when they were designed in the 1960s. Nothing that big had ever been made to go that fast and definitely not on a regular schedule. The closest military predecessors were the B-58 (small, very uneconomical) and the XB-70 (never made it to production). It wasn't until the B-1 that there was something in military service that even came close.
I don't expect anyone to rush something like this into production but it could be an interesting aerospace engineering exercise to define a strawman Concorde replacement using currently available technology. About the only "push the state of the art" item I would want to see included would be technologies to limit the sonic boom. I just wonder what the operational break-even point (ticket price * load factor) would be if such a Concorde replacement were built.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Getting out of the plane from Florida (22 C) and landing in Indianapolis (Blizzard ... - 20 C)
Also, much more painfull...
the next morning, getting out early, and late, directly from shower (+40c) to outside (-27C), half dressed 8(
I was feeling my brain cristalizing...Ever saw "Rasta Rockets", when they get out of the airport ? I was worse 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Hehe.. parasites of the galaxy.
tsia
Airbus is winning contracts because they're getting subsidies from the EU and selling their planes cheaper.... not because of some crash.
No sig for you.
takes a look at seven futuristic dreams for the past that never managed to materialize into anything substantial in this 21st century.
like windows...
Helicopters are inherently complicated and difficult to fly. Even after 50+ years of mass production, they are still very expensive to buy and operate. They also have a bad habit of crashing when a part fails.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The future ain't what it used to be. Alas we have no paper clothes, moving sidewalks, flying cars, or orgasmatrons. Yet no one could have predicted the spork. Look at how it revolutionized our fast food industry. NOT a day goes by when I think about all those sporks I got at Kentucky Fried Chicken (before they changed their name to KFC). Truly a failure of imagination on the part of our futurists and science fiction writers.
If there is one unpredicted technological gadget that we must all worship and bow before it is the beer widget. A miracle! Of the widgeted stouts I've had both Beamish and Guiness. And Boddington's is pretty tasty too.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
...overstuffed pickup truck, right?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Right. It's one thing to have drunken loons and morons commiting mayhem on the raods, but it's quite another to have them flying over my house. At least no soccer mom in her SUV is going to crash through my roof.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Both the hydrogen and the thermite/electroprotective paint burned, but the hydrogen burned upwards, and the thermite-encrusted cloth fell down and on the victims.
Do you recall an airline company called "Pan Am", the biggest one of their time?
They were the victim of this little incident above and in Lockerbie. You may want to check out the results for Pan Am shortly afterwards, to see how well this turned out.
We're getting off topic here, but PanAm filed for bankruptcy because of airline deregulation.
In the 1980s the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was shut down. It was the federal regulatory body that regulated airlines. The CAB was not the modern FAA, but instead regulated such aspects of the airline industries as prices, routes, and destinations. PanAm was the greatest beneficiary of the CAB, considering it was the largest US airline during the 50s through the 70s. PanAm basically didn't have to compete with rivals because the CAB's regulations basically guaranteed it profits.
In the past the only way an airline differentiated itself was with service. Only a few people could actually afford to fly, and as a result airlines were sort of a "luxury" form of travel with full service (throughout the cabin) and amenities.
The the CAB was dissolved airlines realized that they didn't have to compete with service, but could do so with prices. For a while, it seemed like airlines were popping out like wildflowers (remember TrumpAir?). Again, as a consequence of deregulation consumers had more choice in their airlines, more choice in routes, and more choice in prices.
When the things change, usually the largest and most entrenched entities are slowest to react. PanAm basically didn't know how to compete in this new environment. Airlines lowered prices to the point where anyone could fly. Today flying is not reserved for the privileged few but to most everyone in the US. In the early 90s, PanAm basically found itself barraged with "new" lower cost airlines and went out of business.
Some big airlines managed to survive thanks to smart management. American Airlines today is the one of the world's largest carrier. Some other big airlines wound up dying but not dead. TWA is a shell of its former self. The big winner in the industry is Southwest, whose low cost model is replicated with other airlines such as JetBlue.
Many of the airlines that sprung up thanks to deregulation no longer exist. Trump's airline is one example. When all the cards fell into place only about ten major airline remained in the 90s. But even so air travel demand kept going up, and prices still went down. Every major airline today has filled for bankruptcy in some for or another (United, American, Continental, US Air, Delta) or bought out by another airline (US Air, TWA). Ironically Southwest, although a "discount" airline is 1) the most successful 2) posts profits even post Sept. 11th.
Many people have complained that airline deregulation ruined air-travel. I don't believe this is true. Complaints are usually about travel delays, long lines at terminals, passengers being treated like cattle, and that was before Sept. 11th! [With airport security a big buzzword today it's probably even worse.] But keep in mind what has happened thanks to deregulation. Airlines are flying to more destinations, especially those with large markets. Airline prices have dropped to almost nothing compared to the past. Passenger ridership has increased significantly in the last twenty years. I would contend that most of the problems seen today with air-travel (not a result of security measures) are a result of the "old" regulated mentality that some management still have.
they turned the camera around, no one wants a picture of themselfs, but the picture cell phone is now a hot item.
I also have a Flying Car.
I'm also President of the Eastern Seaboard.
Now I AM the Eastern Seaboard.
Sigh.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
Not sure they were ripped apart instead of running out of lift. If you are in convective weather (updrafts and downdrafts), you fight the downdraft by dropping ballast, fight the updraft by venting gas, and at some point you run out of ballast and gas.
In fact burning fuel to run the engines requires you to vent gas -- something that is expensive if you are using helium. Late model airships had condensors on the engine exhausts so you could take on ballast water to balance to lost weight of burnt fuel -- don't know if they had some way of saving helium by recompressing it or liquifying it.
Convective weather is a problem for fixed-wing aircraft too. Thunderstorms can have downdrafts in excess of 2000 ft/min -- I believe a passenger jet can climb at 2000 ft/min under optimum conditions so it can barely hang on -- airliners put a lot of effort into thunderstorm avoidance, listening to the ATC channel on the entertainment system we (and everyone else) were taking a detour the width of Ohio to stay out of thunderstorms.
In many cases they do send a tech to look at your failed in warranty device. He figgures out what it wrong, and then tosses it. Sure he could fix it, but that isn't a good idea, most electronics are too sensitive to things like heat (from the sodering iron), and noise (electrical - from a trace that was lengthened just slightly). He may test his theory by fixing it, but it will be tossed not returned to you. This way there is no need to worry about quality control off the assembly line, and assembly line quality is a lot easier to deal with.
The tech looks at the failure only to gather statistics. If any problem seems like it is happening too often they will investigate why, perhaps changing the design, or manufacturing. Statitions are paid to figgure out when something is a problem.
Well well well, it seems Mr. Moller just trashed the flying car barrier .
Did any of my fellow dyslexics keep reading "Barenaked" every time they mentioned the historian "Bednarek"?
- I am made of meat.
The B-58, SR-71 and Concorde are the only Western aircraft that were designed for supersonic cruise and that were produced in quantity. The B-1B was capable of supersonic flight, but was not intended for supersonic cruise.
The Lockheed SST proposal was based in a small way on the experience with the SR-71, and not taking the hit in performance due to the stealth features on the SR-71.
Instead of a 2003 version of the Concorde, it would be very interesting to see what could be done with a scale-up of the F-22, which is capable of Mach 1.3-1.4 without afterburners. Careful design, coupled with liquid methane fuel and we might get transpacific range - Mach 1.4 for L.A. to Sydney would be quite a time saver.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
the us hired carl sagan and a bunch of other scientists to figure out how big of a nuclear reaction it would take to make a mushroom cloud explosion off the face of the moon visible from earth.
I heard it was its major advantage above "your average jet", expensive, very fast travel for the hurried and rich? ;)
And it was certainly very substantial... until it died
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Actually, all those technologies sank on the rocks of hardy-enough materials being too expensive to mass produce.
That's not going to change for quite a while, but when it does, there's every reason to believe that dozens of advanced transport technnologies will get a huge shot in the arm. Nanotechnology is where the hopes are pinned for this at the moment, for the very good reason that materials 50 times stronger than current ones seem to pop out of nanotech research almost without trying, and very light ones at that.
It's very early days in this area though. Don't expect mass production of atomically precise structural materials for at least a decade or two, and that's assuming no major hiccups along the road.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The article says that the Bell jet packs could only last for 20 seconds. I don't know ... seemed longer to me. When I was a kid I went to the Easter Show in Sydney Australia and there was a demonstration by NASA of the Bell jet pack.
So there I was sitting in a stadium and the NASA guy is in the centre of the field and he takes off, zooms off over the audience and flew about 10-15 metres right over my head. And I can tell you that right then and there I knew these things had NO future. They were the loudest things I had ever heard ... outside of an airport tarmac. They were bulky, had a really dodgy mixture (pure hydrogen peroxide) and were so loud you just knew they would be banned if they were ever feasible.
But it did LOOK cool. Yeah.
Bitter and proud of it.
Why do people call helocopters helios? Is it from a European term or something? Doesn't the term "helio" originate from a greek word for the Sun?
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
I dont think any writer predicted that every house would have dozens of computers (cars, appliance, personal). Manywrters predicted artificial intelligence coups (Dick's terminator). Asimov predicted mind-withering dependence on PDAs.
Many people anticipated smart supercomputers like HAL in 2001 or robots. Will these ever occur?
I had to snicker when he mentioned the Casimir effect, too. Hmmm... attractive force between two parallel plates that are closer than sufficiently small wavelengths of light... yeah, that's a propulsion system.
-T
Airbus is winning contracts because they're getting subsidies from the EU and selling their planes cheaper.... not because of some crash.
Just to clear this up:
There was an agreement made betweeen the EU and US in 1992 over government subsidies to aircraft manufacturers. The US accused the EU of breaking this agreement, after certain issues with bananas. The EU refuted those allegations and accused the US of illegal subsidies to Boeing.
Since then, differences have been hammered out, and there is no evidence at present that the either Boeing or Airbus have subsidies which exceed the agreement.
Any increase in sales of Airbuses can be put down to technology, perception and prices determined by manufacturing.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Where are the guys like your dad? I'd like to give them some business, but they seem to have packed up their bags and gone home.
My wife's iBook has a bad firewire PHY, a widely-reported problem with that model.
Apple wants $550 or so for a new mobo; the thing needs a $5 PHY.
I'd gladly pay somebody for an hour's worth of work at $50/hr to de-solder the old one and stick on a new one. I should be able to get out of there for $55, and he should make a nice living.
But apparently nobody wants to anymore (I hear there might be 1 place left in NYC...).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Everyone's asking where all the promised inventions and breakthroughs have gone. How about all the people waiting for the breakthroughs instead of building them...just a thought...
I have my own crackpot theory on the reason that Concorde stopped flying, whether it's true or not is debatable..
There was a glimmer of hope for Concorde, in that Richard Branson wanted to purchase them for his Virgin airline. Reportedly, British Airways refused. But what would they have to lose, if Concorde was losing as much money for them as they said it was?
I believe the issue really boils down to the Certificate of Airworthyness. This was granted to British Airways by..guess who? Airbus. Virgin Atlantic are already a large buyer of Airbus planes, perhaps Airbus have a design in the offing (eg the "superjumbo") that Virgin might not buy, if they had Concorde?
That was the curse of Philip K. Dick's IV Methamphetamines.
My definition of nasty results in a hospital includes - dead people, people not getting their opertions because the computer screwed up the date, courses of medicine being wrongly calculated because of incorrect time intervals and huge queues in A&E because the staff are unable to look up their details.
Funny??
Not if it's you trying to figure out when to go for that op and the letter says to come in on 03 January 1901!!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
For one thing, they broke down with marvellous regularity, and typically in the same way. Often you could guess what was wrong without board-level diagnosis.
But also, you could show up at the house, tell them they can buy a refurb board for $75, or we can fix their one and return it for $60. Eventually.
Of course they'd always go for the refurb. The convenience factor was just too much. Then, when we had accumulated enough busted boards and there was a quiet time, somebody would sit down and fix them all at once...
I only considered multi-seat. B-58 had a crew of three IIRC; XB70 about the same. There was a two seat trainer version of the Blackbird but that was the only version that wasn't single seat.
My bet is that something like your proposal is what will eventually get built as an executive jet (think Gulfstream IV size). Actually the availability of subsonic executive jets with intercontinental range is also a factor in the demise of the Concorde: you can come and go on your own schedule and the extra flight time is offset by both the scheduling flexibility and that you can land the thing at the nearest airstrip instead of being stuck flying in or out of New York, London or Paris only.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben