Space and Science BS Thread

They should bring back Pan Am just to fly starships.

 

Her books are available in audio form from Amazon. Careful you don’t get stuck in parking lots.

 

I favorited the 2 you mentioned in my Hoopla app.

 

Some of those crews were among those defending Wake Is in ‘41. Interesting that a NASA mission is named “Europa Clipper”.

 

More info please

Was one of the Pan-Am ships in 2001 named Europa Clipper?

 

Chronicling Wake Island (panam.org)

 

They had a route called the China Clipper just prior & post WWI. Back before WWII military funding was way low due to isolationism and Pan Am promoted developing trans oceanic passenger/freight service in much the same way as Spacex is now. There weren’t any of the long bomber runways built later for the war so amphibious planes were it. The Clipper name was bestowed on several models but China Clipper was understandably reserved for planes on that route. Not sure what meaning NASA intended with the name other than it falls neatly from the tongue but I like the resurrection. I guess the length of voyage recalls the days of Clipper ships connecting far flung regions with state of the art vessels.

 

All the Pan Am planes were named <x> Clipper.

Also .. this is a good article on the Space Clipper/Orion III. https://www.space.com/32258-orion-space-plane-2001-space-odyssey-photo-essay.html

 

What I meant was that it wasn’t just one model of plane but that each new version was still called “Clipper” as they were upgraded over time.

 

Yup - https://pan-american-clippers.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Aircraft

Incomplete list but there's a ton of different platforms they used.

 

Pan am went under in 1991. This is what I referenced re W.I. and the Pan Am civilians as well as military construction workers and Marines(Seabees weren’t a unit for another year)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GOZrl84OWpI

Apparently it was the only time in the pacific theater shore batteries sank ships.

 

Hypothetical question. I'm bored and thinking about Cold-fusion and the future of vehicles.
If a car manufacturer offered a car with a micro cold-fusion reactor in it, and it was all electric. Would you drive it? Forgetting about cost.
All I can think about are the cars in Fallout. Never need to fill up. The lore in the game was that you had to exchange coolant at the retro-future equivalent of a gas station.

 

Sure, if I could fit 37s without a cab chop

 

You could, just put 12" lift on it. The motors are in the hubs.

 

Bernoulli converginators, jump jacks, the works.

 

If we're going with limitless energy from a fusion reactor in a land vehicle, then why not go a step further with malmetal? That way, you can have variable geometry suspension and suspension components whenever you want. You'll just have to either tell your car's navigation computer to adjust the malfield on the malmetal if driving manually, or let it control the malmetal autonomously as it drives!

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ
One has to wonder why it seems to work sometimes and sometimes not. To me that’s where the focus should be rather than automatically assuming “it’ll never work”. We don’t know enough to make any such claim. One of the major benefits of access to space and other planets is access to materials that never formed or are exceptionally rare here on earth. We know they exist but not what can be done with them. Another is the research that goes into aerospace alloys whose unintended uses are still unknown. How would 3D printing affect the shapes and serve to focus or diffuse effects? We should avoid saying “such could never be” and repeatedly examine any exceptions to supposedly “well understood” processes.

 

I thought that kind of thinking went out with
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell

 

Excerpt from your link:
Duell has become famous for, during his tenure as United States Commissioner of Patents, purportedly saying "Everything that can be invented has been invented."[4] However, this has been debunked as apocryphal by librarian Samuel Sass[5] who traced the quote back to a 1981 book titled "The Book of Facts and Fallacies" by Chris Morgan and David Langford.[6] In fact, Duell said in 1902:

In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.[7]

Sounds to me instead that he wanted more time to see what wonders were to come. Doesn’t seem to me that only one extra lifetime would be nearly enough though. 3 just wets the whistle, 10 might not be enough.
To me true mastery comes with the ability to put things back together. We can still break a lot more than we can reassemble.

 

Just slowly migrate into an android body. Then live as long as you're able to conduct maintenance on yourself reliably.