Soldato
You can barely say that Concorde was a plane of the 60s though, it wasn't introduced until 1969, and didn't enter passenger service until 1976.
Isn't progress wonderful!
- Thread starter Orionaut
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Soldato
Where is my Star Trek transporter, or Futurama Tube Transport System?
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Do we have a source for the fact it ever did have a scheudled duration of just 5 hours in a VC10?
Eastbound flights don't count.
Are you deliberately missing the point about the difference between actual advances and those visible to casual observers? What kind of 10 year old knows the details of what planes are made of?
The problem you get by trying to limit the scope to the 'average' person is that you then have to define what the average is.
Would being able to get online in the middle of an ocean count as an advance?
If you aren't going to class things as having not advanced much because planes look the same as they did 40 years ago then fair enough. But it's a very artificial place to set the bar for what counts as an advance and what doesn't.
Would being able to get online in the middle of an ocean count as an advance?
If you aren't going to class things as having not advanced much because planes look the same as they did 40 years ago then fair enough. But it's a very artificial place to set the bar for what counts as an advance and what doesn't.
I'm not questioning what is considered an advance and what isn't?
I'm saying some advances are more obvious than others. "This plane flies faster than a bullet" is a very obvious advance, "this plane uses less fuel" is much less obvious.
Technology is moving forward at an ever more rapid pace, but its doing it in less and less obvious ways and with much less spectacle. This hinders its ability to work as an inspirational tool.
I'm saying some advances are more obvious than others. "This plane flies faster than a bullet" is a very obvious advance, "this plane uses less fuel" is much less obvious.
Technology is moving forward at an ever more rapid pace, but its doing it in less and less obvious ways and with much less spectacle. This hinders its ability to work as an inspirational tool.
No/Yes!
(Yes, It was very impressive. Are you a Lawyer?? My Dad used to ask ambiguous questions too
)But I would rather have seen a Manned mission back in the 70's. A manned mission could have learned nearly as much in a week as the last 40 years of robotic missions has discovered. It would have happened too had the Russians got to the Moon first! What a shame they didn't!
But as you say, a lot of current "Wonders" seem to me to be enhancements of things that were originally developed a long time ago.
I still cannot think of anything really dramatic and novel (*)
The Bullet Train, Yes a nice 1960s concept that has been subsequently built on
The Tesla! An electric car Oh come on, there have been electric cars since the 1880's
The WWW. Something that piggy backed a cold war era survivable coms net.
* This does not mean that there have not been astonishing advancements.
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#1 Weather satellites. Weather forecasting is taken pretty much for granted these days. I however regard Weather satellites as a "Modern Wonder" No longer do Hurricanes kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. Because now we can see them coming. Weather satellites are a wonder. (BUT they are not a post 85 one!)
#2 Medical imaging. CT/MRI scans are amazing. You can see more than you would if you actually dissected somebody, but again, though the tech has improved, the concept is very much a pre-85 one)
#3 General.. There have been loads of small (but nevertheless very impressive) advances. Last year, another Girlfriend (Erm) suffered a torn retina. Her sight was saved because developments in laser tech allowed her eye to be saved by tack welding her retina back to the back of her eyeball in a quick and mostly painless procedure. It wasn't that long ago where nothing could have been done and she would have gone blind.
Do not get me wrong, there are lots of little wonders. But I still say there no longer seem to be any really big ones any more. And I find that sad.
PS
Hyperloop. Now If you could make that work it might well qualify!
(See also Bering Crossing)
Associate
Right, sorry. I see what you mean now. But I'm not sure how helpful it is.
If your aim is to increase the number of primary school children writing "aeronautical engineer" down when asked what they want to be when they grow up and then decide that this means people are being inspired then I guess expensive vanity projects are the way forward. I think future breakthroughs are going to come from people who are inquisitive by default and would have got there regardless of whether the field was making huge and obvious leaps.
Look at the Raspberry Pi - it does nothing that computers haven't been doing for a long time. It's cheap and it has easy to use IO options, but these aren't huge leaps forward. It's doing a really good job of getting kids interesting in programming.
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Man of Honour
[TW]Fox;29147526 said:
This is very true.
The only people I knew who flew abroad was a childless Aunty & Uncle who saved all year to do it.
It was around the late 80s when you could holiday abroad for nearly the same price at holidaying in Britain (this took into account that in Britain you had to arm your kids with lots of money to entertain themselves).
And on the other side of the coin, you have Bloodhound, which is almost a pure vanity project quite honest about its aim to make kids (and adults) go "wow, thats cool!".
I'm saying we need both, and that its a real shame that commercial airlines and space flight have both lost their halo projects relatively recently. Concorde and the Shuttle were really cool, I used to make my own versions of them from Lego when I was a kid (I still think that one day I'll get the old Lego Shuttle Explorer set). I just can't see kids wanting to put a poster of an EasyJet Airbus A320 on their bedroom walls...
.In my pocket is a device the size of a packet of cards that can access almost the entirety of humanity's collective knowledge (and is mostly used for looking up pictures of cats).
We're on the cusp on commercial self-driving cars.
The next time that a large asteroid passes Earth, there will almost certainly be a commercial project to mine it.
We've taken the first steps to Star Trek-style replicators. Astronauts can now print new tools on the International Space Station (which itself is a remarkable achievement).
The Large-Hadron Collider still hasn't created a black hole capable of devouring the planet but has done pretty cool science.
Losing the space shuttle wasn't a bad thing, people get bored of new tech quickly. Look at television views on lunar landings.
Shuttle had there day and has been replaced by plenty of high visibility space programs, in fact last few years we've had a gluttony of them. Curisotiy, new horizon, casini, Rosetta, spaxex landings/attempted landings. Amongst others.
Oh and the shuttle was over priced and pretty rubbish, thanks to all the changes. And sols is going to be the same, draining funds that could be used number of magnitudes more efficiently.
Shuttle had there day and has been replaced by plenty of high visibility space programs, in fact last few years we've had a gluttony of them. Curisotiy, new horizon, casini, Rosetta, spaxex landings/attempted landings. Amongst others.
Oh and the shuttle was over priced and pretty rubbish, thanks to all the changes. And sols is going to be the same, draining funds that could be used number of magnitudes more efficiently.
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Man of Honour
Where's my Tomorrow Peoples Belt that's what I want to know ? 
Soldato
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The Opportunity rover landing was pretty special too.
Soldato
Where's my Tomorrow Peoples Belt that's what I want to know ?
Forget that, Tomorrow's World promised us personal jet packs and holiday homes on the Moon 30 odd years ago and I'm still waiting for mine...
Is it? It's not something I've really looked into but it would seem most of them just end up with Kodi installed on them and plugged into a TV as cheap streaming devices.