61–70 of 136 posts
> Collins, who remained in orbit on the Command Module, is behind the lens. Every other human is in front of it. This caption is so powerful.
Climb a hill and take a photo of the floor with your telephone. If there are no planes/spatial stations nearby, then you'll have the same thing.
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> Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making Roman concrete We have plenty of aircraft capable of mach 3 or faster just not for commercial purposes, and most modern concrete is superior to Roman concrete in most dimensions specifically cost (not to mention its modern mythos is completely based on a single study published in American Mineralogist).
The supersonic passenger flight thing is the one I have to really chuckle at. Nothing against the work being done in this area--hey, not my money. But effectively you have lots of folks, who probably mostly fly coach, super-excited that maybe one day CEOs and high-end lawyers will once again be able to fly from NY to London to have lunch, shake hands on a deal, and be home in time for dinner.
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That way lies a slippery slope ;) It's pretty close to the "Ruinenwerttheorie" of the German Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruin_value
From the first wikipedia paragraph, I don't see anything wrong with building things so they'll look cool a) when they're maintained and in use and b) when they're badly maintained and crumbling. I'll take 'Ruinenwerttheorie' buildings over brutalist concrete piles that look disgusting the day they're built and worse as they age. The 3rd Reich had a lot of problems, but they had some good aesthetics (Huge Boss, etc).…
IMHO a healthy society should be "above" this sort of stuff.
I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean. Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.
I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean. Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.
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I think you are suffering a bit from survivorship bias here. Way less than 0.001% of Roman buildings are still standing and the ones that remain have been continuously maintained over the centuries. If humanity will keep maintaining the White House for centuries it will look just as good in 4021 as it does today.
The White House is not a modernist / postmodernist building that was designed with planned obsolescence in mind, so I'm not entirely sure why you've used it as an example. In fact, it's a perfect example of a beautiful neoclassical landmark that was intended to inspire and last through the ages. Survivorship bias is always brought up in these discussions, but I believe it to just be a cop-out. Take a look at any well…
Growing up in a 200+ year old building you find a lot of architectural designs and modifications that don’t fit with modern usage. Pre AC maximizing summer cooling involved maximizing airflow where now we want maximum insulation. Before central heating we wanted chimney’s everywhere. And before wood stoves we wanted giant fireplaces everywhere. Even central heating has gone through several iterations, many different radiator designs for steam/water, central air, and now a zigzag of pipes underfloor.
Very old buildings may look nice, but they aren’t inherently better.
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It's called the "overview effect": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
I wonder how we could get more people to experience this effect... Something like what Stewart Brand did by pushing for and publicising the first whole earth picture (in part via the Whole Earth Catalog) but more for the internet age. I was toying with an idea of a site called "Get Some Perspective" where you'd start off with a FPS view and as you scroll you gradually zoom out, eventually to the whole observable univ…
The Vortex is now used as a torture and (in effect) killing device on the planet Frogstar B. The prospective victim of the TPV is placed within a small chamber wherein is displayed a model of the entire universe - together with a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot bearing the legend "you are here." The sense of perspective thereby conveyed destroys the victim's mind; it was stated that the TPV is the only known means of crushing a man's soul.
[0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex
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The White House is not a modernist / postmodernist building that was designed with planned obsolescence in mind, so I'm not entirely sure why you've used it as an example. In fact, it's a perfect example of a beautiful neoclassical landmark that was intended to inspire and last through the ages. Survivorship bias is always brought up in these discussions, but I believe it to just be a cop-out. Take a look at any well…
Needs changeover time. Thick stone walls can provide insulation, but their hell on WiFi etc. Growing up in a 200+ year old building you find a lot of architectural designs and modifications that don’t fit with modern usage. Pre AC maximizing summer cooling involved maximizing airflow where now we want maximum insulation. Before central heating we wanted chimney’s everywhere. And before wood stoves we wanted giant fir…
I never said they were. I only said that they were built to last and that they were infinitely more aesthetically pleasing because we actually gave a damn about these things as a society. Now we don't.
Old buildings can be upgraded (I should know, I live in one, and have both functional pipes, insulation, heating, and Wi-Fi). So let's upgrade them, and let's ALSO ensure that whatever we build today includes not only modern amenities, but are also objects we can be proud of leaving as a legacy to future generations. Just like our ancestors did for literally millennia.
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The supersonic passenger flight thing is the one I have to really chuckle at. Nothing against the work being done in this area--hey, not my money. But effectively you have lots of folks, who probably mostly fly coach, super-excited that maybe one day CEOs and high-end lawyers will once again be able to fly from NY to London to have lunch, shake hands on a deal, and be home in time for dinner.
The passenger flight thing is the one I have to really chuckle at. Nothing against the work being done in this area--hey, not my money. But effectively you have lots of folks, who probably mostly take trains, super-excited that maybe one day CEOs and high-end lawyers will be able to fly from NY to London.
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Still planning to do it again within the next decade just to reassure ourselves about it.
Actually doing it is important. “I can go to the moon anytime I want” stops being true after a solid generation of not doing it. There is institutional knowledge in doing something in the present world. Further, specs and documents are nice, but rarely sufficient. A famous example is the F-1 engine. Every one of them was made off spec and if you took the factory drawings alone you would never make a working engine. Y…
And I'd argue that's exactly why I'd argue the fundamental approach of the 60s/70s rocket engineers was fundamentally flawed. It was a vanity project and so it died after vanity was satisfied.
The assembly line and standardisation approach SpaceX takes is much superior and much more sustainable.