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Victorians who flew as high as jumbo jets
- funkyy 11y agoGreat article, its amazing how back in the days so many aristocrats and rich people were actually conquering the world, breaking the limits and sponsoring life saving experiments. It was much different than we have today - get as much money, give %% of them to charity, hands clean.
- morgante 11y agoPlenty of modern innovation and experiments are funded by billionaires today. Most relevant to HN, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Elon Musk are all ready examples.
- funkyy 11y agoWell not many of them get their hands dirty though, do they? Helping with money is one thing, but actually as a person diving in to the project and work on it without dozens of cameras and security guards is different thing.
- morgante 11y agoAll evidence points to the people I mentioned getting deeply engaged in many of the experiments they're funding. Friends who work at Space X have confirmed that Elon at least is intimately involved in the projects.
- funkyy 11y agoI agree, but that is just handful of them, isnt it?
- morgante 11y agoPerhaps, but I think there's only ever been a few.
- capote 11y agoIt's always just been a handful. That goes for any good-doers of the world. Out of a pool of X people who are fortunate enough to have the capacity to do Y good thing, only a handful actually do it. Works well enough.
- fizx 11y agoHistory tends to distort things. The present is an era. The 1990's is an era. The 1800's is a era. The renaissance is an era. The stone age is an era. Of course accomplishments per era could decrease when we're judging the last few years against much larger time spans of the past.
- forgotpwagain 11y agoGetting one's hands dirty at a technical level is incredibly difficult. Bill Gates's training and experience is in computer science and business; to develop the background needed to understand the details of treatment for Malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc would take many many years of intense, focused effort. Someone like Bill Gates could hire someone with the technical expertise while spending his own time on more productive things that are likely to yield more good for the world--networking with other billionaires to convince them to donate money, working to manage the overall structure of the B&M Gates Foundation, etc. Complex systems are complex. 200 years ago, the amount that we knew was significantly smaller; one could get to the edge of human knowledge with just a few years of intense work. In contrast, it takes significantly longer to get to a level of expertise at which one can productively contribute.
- cpncrunch 11y ago>actually conquering the world, breaking the limits and sponsoring life saving experiments. Richard Branson and Elon Musk are doing that today.
- throwaway_exer 11y agoWell ... Richard Branson sponsored balloon flights primarily as a cheap form of SEO for his young companies. He rode as a passenger with a qualified pilot.
- leonroy 11y agoBranson has had more than one near death experience over his 30 years of ballooning. He might be a great marketeer but don't confuse him for someone who lets others do the crazy stuff. See here for just one of many stories. His biography has more than a few: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/04/world/2-trans-atlantic-balloonists-saved-after-jump-into-sea-off-scotland.html http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/04/world/2-trans-atlantic-bal...
- zipwitch 11y agoGreat piece! It's a nice reminder that the real world was a lot more fantastic and steampunk-like than a conventional presentation of history would lead one to believe.
- chaostheory 11y agoOn a related note, here's my page on the evolution of hot air balloons: http://www.theymadethat.com/things/hot-air-balloon http://www.theymadethat.com/things/hot-air-balloon If you like what you see, please upvote and comment on my Apply HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11523675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11523675
- mkhpalm 11y agoI will admit. I have a hard time believing victorian ballooners achieved 37k feet without dying.
- mizzao 11y agoConsidering that some have climbed Mount Everest (29k feet, and requiring much more physical exertion) without supplementary oxygen, it doesn't seem too far-fetched.
- curun1r 11y agoPeople who climb Everest carefully (and slowly) acclimatize prior to any summit attempt. Expeditions can spend 40-60 days going up (and down) to help the body adjust to harsh conditions. Also, the 8k feet difference between Everest summit and 37k isn't nothing. There will be ~30% less oxygen at 37k feet than there is at 29k feet and, according to the Wikipedia entry for Mt Everest, someone accustomed to sea level air pressure would pass out within 2-3 minutes at 29k. So even if they made it to 29k and were still awake, they wouldn't be when they reached 37k without going upwards in a hurry (3000 ft/min is over 30 mph). I have to agree with the poster you're replying to...37k seems like an exaggeration. Somewhere in the mid-20ks seems more likely.
- mizzao 11y agoThe "cold and lack of oxygen"? How about just altitude sickness? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_sickness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_sickness
- coldtea 11y agoHow is that different from "lack of oxygen"? Altitude sickness is just a name for its symptoms...
- esaym 11y agoReminds me of lawn chair larry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters
- lawnchair 11y agomy hero
- shirro 11y agoIn an article from April 2016 they mention Felix Baumgartner but not Alan Eustace? Don't the BBC have google and wikipedia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace
- flexie 11y agoI didn't know either. I bet Alan Eustace didn't have the PR of an energy drink company.
- pyrale 11y agoProbably because Baumgartner did something new, not Eustace. When you talk about the Everest, Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay deserve a word for their performance, not the flock of execs which climb it each year.
- roywiggins 11y agoI wonder if Victorian balloonists experienced an analogue to the Overview Effect astronauts experience. I can't imagine what being the first people to see from high above would have been like.
- rogerspace 11y agoThink about how we view the ocean today, versus how people viewed the ocean hundreds of years ago. The same phenomena meant really different things to different groups of people in different cultural contexts and historical moments. The same is true with the view of the earth from space. "The Overview Effect" is the product of cold war total-system thinking; a combination of the gaia hypothsis, the blue marble, and "spaceship earth". Here is a really good paper--Bimm, "Rethinking The Overview Effect" (2014)--about the historical specificity of "overview" an how it is a cultural, rather than natural, product. https://www.academia.edu/5995107/Rethinking_the_Overview_Effect https://www.academia.edu/5995107/Rethinking_the_Overview_Eff...
- roywiggins 11y agoI will give that a read. I've never been comfortable with the "physical effect" argument, but I've only ever seen it presented in pop media as a fait accompli, so it's a relief that there's serious consideration of other explanations.
- upofadown 11y agoThis is a relevant and good read: * https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/861 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/861 A relevant Gutenberg search: * https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=s.balloon https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=s.balloon
- rwmj 11y agoHow did they estimate their height?
- jzwinck 11y agoThey likely had a barometer. The very same method we use today to supplement the rather unsteady altitude reading from GPS. If they did this, the next question would be how accurate their calibration was. Barometric altimetry was only about 20 to 50 years old at that time.
- rwmj 11y agoI guess that raises another question: how do they calibrate the barometer at all? I assume by taking one up a mountain. (And how do they know the height of the mountain? Using a sextant and simple trigonometry).
- jzwinck 11y agoThey could use a mountain. They could equally use a balloon (just not to 20k feet). British scientists by that time were knowledgable enough to extrapolate. You can read about the height of Everest and other Himalayas. There are some interesting stories about the lengths people (mostly British and Europeans) went to precisely determine their heights from ground stations. Once, they thought Everest was exactly 29,000 feet but thought this figure lacked gravitas so added two feet to make it sound precise. So you can imagine the British ballooners might have played with the truth a bit too.
- chrisseaton 11y agoWhy is altitude from GPS unsteady? Do you mean unsteady compared to latitude and longitude? Why would one dimension be less precise than the others? Something to do with the position of the satellites being in a kind of domed plane rather than all around you? My tactical GPS has a separate digital barometer to help it establish a GPS location more quickly. I've always wondered why.
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