101–110 of 111 posts
1. For instance, the backdrop of trees and green at the railway station. The intensity of urbanisation over the century sees every piece of land getting built over.
2. The mass availability of high technology. For instance, we were shown imaginings of servants bringing musical pieces for the phonograph.
3. An unpredictable technology - the age of electronics - totally transforms machines.
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Well, there was this time when I was two and I was sitting on the pilot's lap.... I've spent a lot of time as a passenger in small planes and I have a good idea of what's involved in a preflight. I'm not against safety in general, but I think lawsuits and government oversight have really held back general aviation. A plane should be more reliable and therefore expensive than a car with a similar level of sophisticati…
People often underestimate how important regular car maintenance is for safety. Just because it statically holds on ground or casual speed doesn't mean it'll grip in a quick wet corner or handle safely in an emergency situation. Hence (partly) car death+accident rate is abysmal compared to flying vehicles. In addition to weekly maintenance checks, I personally always run quick pre+post drive checklists on my car, but…
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Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss. I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane. A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulatio…
Fly an ultralight instead? Then you don't have to deal with regulations and all that. I think if people really wanted to fly, there would be mass-market ultralights. But the reality is that driving is just as good and feels safer and easier to understand. (What do you if you get lost flying? You can't just pull over and ask for directions.)
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Fly an ultralight instead? Then you don't have to deal with regulations and all that. I think if people really wanted to fly, there would be mass-market ultralights. But the reality is that driving is just as good and feels safer and easier to understand. (What do you if you get lost flying? You can't just pull over and ask for directions.)
Ultralights aren't very practical due to the government limitations placed upon them. There are few situations in which there's an advantage to flying an aircraft with a cruise speed lower than a freeway speed limit cross-country rather than driving.
Instead, cars and commercial airlines are where Society Has Decided that their limits are. Everyone can understand paying $500 a month for a car, and everyone can understand paying $159 to sit in a chair and be levitated to Phoenix for the weekend. So that's where the land / air tradeoff currently is.
(Do I like this? Nope. I fly 100,000 miles a year and am willing to pay $10,000 to $20,000 to become a private pilot, with the expected benefit of saying "I'll rent a plane and fly us to Door County this weekend" to some girl I like. Economically sensible? Absolutely not. Hence, not very many people do it. Flying is magic. The general public is not ready to harness magic in the form of throttle, elevator, aileron, and rudder.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fly an ultralight instead? Then you don't have to deal with regulations and all that. I think if people really wanted to fly, there would be mass-market ultralights. But the reality is that driving is just as good and feels safer and easier to understand. (What do you if you get lost flying? You can't just pull over and ask for directions.)
if you need directions you're kinda missing the point of flying...
When flying, not only are you responsible for getting yourself where you want to go, you are also responsible for not running out of fuel and crashing onto a family of four having a nice barbecue. This is beyond the risk that most people are willing to take. Learning about VORs and DMEs and NDBs and GPSes are not worth the ability to travel across the country 2x to 4x faster than driving, especially when the distances people want to cover are in th 2-6 hour range. 6 hours is not much time. Neither is 3h time. So why not drive the same vehicle you use every day to get to work? There is no risk involved and what are you going to do with the 3 hours flying you own plane got you? Drink beer? Meh. Much better than not accidentally murdering anyone.
(Not saying I'm happy with this, but it's the reality. If you want to fly an airplane, You Are Weird. I Am Weird, but I can't expect everyone else to be weird...)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People often underestimate how important regular car maintenance is for safety. Just because it statically holds on ground or casual speed doesn't mean it'll grip in a quick wet corner or handle safely in an emergency situation. Hence (partly) car death+accident rate is abysmal compared to flying vehicles. In addition to weekly maintenance checks, I personally always run quick pre+post drive checklists on my car, but…
Care to share your pre+post drive checklists?
Well, not "so wrong". For example pic 10. Today we call it skype with webcamera. And it doesn't even need a footpedal. :)
They had airports, bikes with farings, tanks, videophones, wireless news all down. Apparently fashions weren't ever going to change!
>Apparently fashions weren't ever going to change! It is very sensible of them not to attempt to predict fashion IMO, because it is by its very nature unpredictable, and possibly irrational and random, depending on how you look at it. Imagine how much more ridiculous these would have been were all the people depicted in one-piece silver jumpsuits or something.
Paleofuture has – as always – at least some context: http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/9/10/french-prints-show... I wonder to what extent these prints are just jokes. Will someone in a thousand years look back at Futurama and think it was a serious prediction of the future?
Yeah I'm not sure they were really predicting that police would fly around in hang-glider suits. The image was probably just comical then, as it is now.
Well, no hang-gliders yet, but have you seen those cops on their segways? Just saying...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss. I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane. A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulatio…
with all this modern priority of safety over everything else, man on the Moon is impossible. Heck, even bringing an open fire into a cold dump cave full of people would be a grave safety violation.