There is a good argument that agriculture, which requires setting aside land to grow things and domesticate animals, also meant defending that land--which is what war is all about. The Wright Brothers cut a deal with the defense department about two years after their first flight. By WWI, bombers and air-to-air combat had prompted huge advances in aircraft. The personal car was quickly followed by the development of the tracked tank, and so on. Steam powered battleships preceded commercial cargo carriers. Medical? Penicillin was first mass-produced in !943. Infection from war wounds was huge. Battlefields and the monstrous results of war prompted much of medical research.
Another unpopular opinion
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Re: Another unpopular opinion
There is a good argument that agriculture, which requires setting aside land to grow things and domesticate animals, also meant defending that land--which is what war is all about. The Wright Brothers cut a deal with the defense department about two years after their first flight. By WWI, bombers and air-to-air combat had prompted huge advances in aircraft. The personal car was quickly followed by the development of the tracked tank, and so on. Steam powered battleships preceded commercial cargo carriers. Medical? Penicillin was first mass-produced in !943. Infection from war wounds was huge. Battlefields and the monstrous results of war prompted much of medical research. -
Re: Another unpopular opinion
...Which feels right.
Andy"In case of fire ring Fellside 75..."Comment
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Re: Another unpopular opinion
It certainly was the main (maybe the only) way to commercialize aviation. The Wrights were demonstrating their invention when it killed a US Army lieutenant--the first fatality from a powered plane crash.Comment
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Re: Another unpopular opinion
How do all the naysayers feel about using google earth, instead of travelling away from home on vacation. It's so much more cost effective, and you still get to see everything, right? And you can just pop down to your local ethnic restaurant for a taste of your virtual destination. Even Joe was surprised that his pizza in Florence was EXACTLY the same as at his local SoCal gourmet pizza joint, I mean, why travel all that way?
Nah, it's just not the same, is it!
Spam in the can will see, hear, feel and experience things that no silicon pea-brain ever will, and as fellow travellers we can relate to that. It's absolutely not all about the science.
And let's be brutally honest, figuring out the age of Mars, or whether it once had life, or a thousand other scientific things we might discover has zero bearing or practical application to our life on earth. It's science for the sake of science and curiosity, and arguably a complete waste of money in its own right - interesting, but useless. JWST is the pinacle of this - ooh look, three billion years ago the upsilon antares cluster blew up, and we made this really pretty picture. And there was water there!!
That's probably an unpopular opinion too.
Edit - we've probably gained more useful knowledge, materials science, electronics etc, from figuring out how to put these things onto other planets, than we've learned from actually putting there.
PeteLast edited by epoxyboy; 08-24-2022, 05:40 AM.The Ignore feature, lowering blood pressure since 1862. Ahhhhhhh.Comment
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Re: Another unpopular opinion
We are in the middle of a second space race...
For the first time in 50 years, NASA is on the precipice of launching a rocket that is designed to fly astronauts all the way to the moon. But instead of leaving just flags and footprints in a mad dash to beat the Soviet Union, NASA has a new rival and new goals as it races to establish a permanent human presence on the moon."Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe. " - ThoreauComment
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Re: Another unpopular opinion
We are in the middle of a second space race...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/24/world...scn/index.html
The first three flights of the NASA's SLS rocket will cost $4.1 billion each, according to NASA's inspector general, who told the US Congress in March that the price tag was "unsustainable."
Unlike Elon Musk's SpaceX which is developing a fully reusable moon rocket called Starship, NASA's SLS rocket is fully expendable, meaning it can only be used once. The ability to reuse rockets brings down the cost per launch dramatically, and China is considering developing a fully reusable heavy-lift rocket for future projects to the moon and beyond, according to SpaceNews.Comment
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Re: Another unpopular opinion
Conclusion: Not such an unpopular opinion after all. There’s a lot more work to do here before even thinking about exporting our brand of greed to space. I think most informed people realize that at this stage of development we’re better served by correcting our abuses here than abandoning a perfectly good planet for one entirely unsuited to habitation. Now tell that to “the Space Farce” that Pence so proudly hailed as the American future.One of the most enduring qualities of an old wooden boat is the smell it imparts to your clothing.Comment
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