5 ms·

Cars, planes, and rockets all have optimal shapes for their environment, of course they're not going to change much once they get to that point. Cars are still

by walls 5y ago

Cars, planes, and rockets all have optimal shapes for their environment, of course they're not going to change much once they get to that point. Cars are still vastly different today than in the 80s in (at least) performance, efficiency, and safety. Planes are also getting quite a bit better, although adoption of these planes is slow as most airlines want to get as much as they can out of the old fleet.[0] SpaceX has been landing their rockets for several years now, and are about to take an even bigger step with Starship. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lapFQl6RezA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lapFQl6RezA

f6v 5y ago
I was watching the Boardwalk Empire not so long ago. When the main character was a boy, people were wearing fancy clothes, sending letters, and riding horses. As a grown man, he talked on the phone and flew a plane. Whereas my parents were flying planes when they were young. I fly almost the same planes(yes, more safe and efficient) and it takes the same time to get from A to B.
- supernovae 5y ago
  General Aviation was destroyed for many reasons, none of which were really technology or innovation problems. Commercial General Aviation was decimated by NIMBAs, Commercial Airline pressure, massive population growths, expensive to insure/maintain/own and to be honest, a lack of care of passion from aviation for the past few generations. But.. the homebuilt and sport space has innovated quite a bit - glass cockpits, auto pilots, efficient engines, electric power plants, micro jets, composite aircraft..
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    NIMBYs, not NIMBAs?
    - supernovae 5y ago
      yah, yard/area ;)
      - goodcanadian 5y ago
        My brain imagined that "A" stood for "airspace."
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  > I fly almost the same planes(yes, more safe and efficient) and it takes the same time to get from A to B. It takes even longer now while you wait in lines to get through the security parade.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Now you can contact almost anyone on earth using a pocket size computer and even see them, and share with them a very large portion of humanity’s knowledge.
  - dTal 5y ago
    >a very large portion of humanity’s knowledge. I know that's the meme, but I think it's false and a dangerous thing to tell ourselves. Walk into any university library, pull a random book off the shelf, and flip to a random page. What are the odds that the information on that page can be found in a google search? And that's just the things that are publicly documented at all. There's libraries worth of implicit industrial knowledge too, including material that is explicitly proprietary. How does Intel or AMD design a modern computer chip? How does Rolls Royce design a jet engine? How do you fabricate a mono-crystalline solar cell? How do you mine for raw materials? This is "I, Pencil" writ large. I would estimate only the smallest fraction of humanity's knowledge can be found on the internet - well under a percent, at least if you don't count "emailing an expert". If we had to rebuild society on the basis of what we could find on the internet, we'd be lucky to reach 20th century technology levels.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Fair enough. A very large portion of catalogue-able knowledge? Or orders more than was available before within a few seconds in your hands.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      > Walk into any university library, pull a random book off the shelf, and flip to a random page. What are the odds that the information on that page can be found in a google search? If you include pirating sites? Close to 100%, most books are scanned into pdf's and can be found free online. So only thing stopping this is legal and not technological.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > > Walk into any university library, pull a random book off the shelf, and flip to a random page. What are the odds that the information on that page can be found in a google search? > If you include pirating sites? Or...just Google’s own collection: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9690276?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9690276?hl=en
- johncearls 5y ago
  While your parents have been flying in the same planes, they payed twice as much (inflation adjusted) and a lot less often. I too wish I was vacationing in Luna City tovarich, but things have gotten better by quite a bit. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    I think appropriate comparison would be, what would equivalent travel cost, in money an time, to the parents of your parents. The argument is not that nothing is getting better, but that the rate of improvement has slowed. So the frequently touted 'exponential progress' is a myth.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"SpaceX has been landing their rockets for several years now, and are about to take an even bigger step with Starship." From 1940s, in 20 years we invented jet planes and rockets, and since then for the next 60 years we are fiddling with the same basic rocket design. Are you seriously pretending that taking 3 generation to learn to land them is as big of an achievement? If we kept up the pace of progress, we would have skyhooks in service, nuclear thermal rockers, nuclear electric propultion, fission fragment rocket and dozens of others. We have arguably regressed, as starship will just take us to where we were before, being able to reach the moon.
- lopis 5y ago
  In any field, you will have lower fruit to pick. > We have arguably regressed, as starship will just take us to where we were before, being able to reach the moon. How good were we ever at reaching the moon, though?
- ativzzz 5y ago
  Turns out we dedicate tons of resources to advanced technology when we are at war (WW2/cold war). Sounds like we need another good war with a power who is actually a threat to rapidly innovate.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  I think you're making a flawed extrapolation here, because the space race and the cold war overly inflated the pace of progress in space at the time. With the meagre funding that has remained since the end of that there has been pretty good progress so far.
- supernovae 5y ago
  Starship is designed for mars. They built a new space craft that will be re-usable, at a cost efficiency never seen before that uses technology specially designed because of Mars. It's engines will use Methane - something no other manufacturer was able to master because of specific issues with those styles of engines and they did it in with the purpose of generating methane on mars to be able to fly back. The methane can be synthesized on mars from CO2 in atmosphere and Hydrogen in Ice. They had to invent the largest re-usable rocket platform, the first re-usable and working methane engine and the first flight computer that could take off and land... Not only that, but they invented or invested in massive technology for manufacturing all of this such that the engines are often 3d printed and designed with precision only dreamed of before.
moffkalast 5y ago
And you could make the same case for other inventions. Hammers in 1860 looked like hammers. In 1880? Same thing. In 1900? Same old hammers. 1920? 2020? Yep you guessed it, still a hammer. Some things are invented and then perfected to a point where you can't really improve them much in a cost effective way. That doesn't mean that new stuff isn't being discovered and worked on at the same or faster rate.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  But now we can buy plans to build our own hammer factory factory factories. https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2005-09-30-smith-whyihateframeworks.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2005-09-30-smith-whyihateframe...
dredmorbius 5y ago
Powered landing was definitively proved technology in 1969. Applying it to booster reuse on Earth waited a bit longer.

by walls 5y ago

f6v 5y ago

I was watching the Boardwalk Empire not so long ago. When the main character was a boy, people were wearing fancy clothes, sending letters, and riding horses. As a grown man, he talked on the phone and flew a plane. Whereas my parents were flying planes when they were young. I fly almost the same planes(yes, more safe and efficient) and it takes the same time to get from A to B.

supernovae 5y ago
General Aviation was destroyed for many reasons, none of which were really technology or innovation problems. Commercial General Aviation was decimated by NIMBAs, Commercial Airline pressure, massive population growths, expensive to insure/maintain/own and to be honest, a lack of care of passion from aviation for the past few generations. But.. the homebuilt and sport space has innovated quite a bit - glass cockpits, auto pilots, efficient engines, electric power plants, micro jets, composite aircraft..
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  NIMBYs, not NIMBAs?
  - supernovae 5y ago
    yah, yard/area ;)
    - goodcanadian 5y ago
      My brain imagined that "A" stood for "airspace."
InitialLastName 5y ago
> I fly almost the same planes(yes, more safe and efficient) and it takes the same time to get from A to B. It takes even longer now while you wait in lines to get through the security parade.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Now you can contact almost anyone on earth using a pocket size computer and even see them, and share with them a very large portion of humanity’s knowledge.
- dTal 5y ago
  >a very large portion of humanity’s knowledge. I know that's the meme, but I think it's false and a dangerous thing to tell ourselves. Walk into any university library, pull a random book off the shelf, and flip to a random page. What are the odds that the information on that page can be found in a google search? And that's just the things that are publicly documented at all. There's libraries worth of implicit industrial knowledge too, including material that is explicitly proprietary. How does Intel or AMD design a modern computer chip? How does Rolls Royce design a jet engine? How do you fabricate a mono-crystalline solar cell? How do you mine for raw materials? This is "I, Pencil" writ large. I would estimate only the smallest fraction of humanity's knowledge can be found on the internet - well under a percent, at least if you don't count "emailing an expert". If we had to rebuild society on the basis of what we could find on the internet, we'd be lucky to reach 20th century technology levels.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Fair enough. A very large portion of catalogue-able knowledge? Or orders more than was available before within a few seconds in your hands.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > Walk into any university library, pull a random book off the shelf, and flip to a random page. What are the odds that the information on that page can be found in a google search? If you include pirating sites? Close to 100%, most books are scanned into pdf's and can be found free online. So only thing stopping this is legal and not technological.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > > Walk into any university library, pull a random book off the shelf, and flip to a random page. What are the odds that the information on that page can be found in a google search? > If you include pirating sites? Or...just Google’s own collection: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9690276?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9690276?hl=en
johncearls 5y ago
While your parents have been flying in the same planes, they payed twice as much (inflation adjusted) and a lot less often. I too wish I was vacationing in Luna City tovarich, but things have gotten better by quite a bit. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  I think appropriate comparison would be, what would equivalent travel cost, in money an time, to the parents of your parents. The argument is not that nothing is getting better, but that the rate of improvement has slowed. So the frequently touted 'exponential progress' is a myth.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"SpaceX has been landing their rockets for several years now, and are about to take an even bigger step with Starship." From 1940s, in 20 years we invented jet planes and rockets, and since then for the next 60 years we are fiddling with the same basic rocket design. Are you seriously pretending that taking 3 generation to learn to land them is as big of an achievement? If we kept up the pace of progress, we would have skyhooks in service, nuclear thermal rockers, nuclear electric propultion, fission fragment rocket and dozens of others. We have arguably regressed, as starship will just take us to where we were before, being able to reach the moon.

lopis 5y ago
In any field, you will have lower fruit to pick. > We have arguably regressed, as starship will just take us to where we were before, being able to reach the moon. How good were we ever at reaching the moon, though?
ativzzz 5y ago
Turns out we dedicate tons of resources to advanced technology when we are at war (WW2/cold war). Sounds like we need another good war with a power who is actually a threat to rapidly innovate.
moffkalast 5y ago
I think you're making a flawed extrapolation here, because the space race and the cold war overly inflated the pace of progress in space at the time. With the meagre funding that has remained since the end of that there has been pretty good progress so far.
supernovae 5y ago
Starship is designed for mars. They built a new space craft that will be re-usable, at a cost efficiency never seen before that uses technology specially designed because of Mars. It's engines will use Methane - something no other manufacturer was able to master because of specific issues with those styles of engines and they did it in with the purpose of generating methane on mars to be able to fly back. The methane can be synthesized on mars from CO2 in atmosphere and Hydrogen in Ice. They had to invent the largest re-usable rocket platform, the first re-usable and working methane engine and the first flight computer that could take off and land... Not only that, but they invented or invested in massive technology for manufacturing all of this such that the engines are often 3d printed and designed with precision only dreamed of before.

moffkalast 5y ago

And you could make the same case for other inventions. Hammers in 1860 looked like hammers. In 1880? Same thing. In 1900? Same old hammers. 1920? 2020? Yep you guessed it, still a hammer. Some things are invented and then perfected to a point where you can't really improve them much in a cost effective way. That doesn't mean that new stuff isn't being discovered and worked on at the same or faster rate.

sdenton4 5y ago
But now we can buy plans to build our own hammer factory factory factories. https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2005-09-30-smith-whyihateframeworks.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2005-09-30-smith-whyihateframe...

dredmorbius 5y ago

Powered landing was definitively proved technology in 1969. Applying it to booster reuse on Earth waited a bit longer.