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starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Still fucks with me that someone could have written an essay about the impossibility of heavier than air flight at the age of 20, and lived to see the moon landing. That speed of technological progress is absolutely unheard of in human history. It would be like growing up believing the earth to be the center of the universe, and then living to see the discovery of other galaxies. It would be like growing up a hunter-gatherer and buying a pizza in a grocery store.

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Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
funny thing is that there are a pretty decent amount of hunter-gatherers who wear tshirts and shit, honestly seems like an amazing lifestyle.

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Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You know, before Trump and the rise of neo-nazism into the mainstream I used to be huge into interwar media (early talkies, silent films, radio, etc) and one thing I found was a sci-fi radio show (I am not sure if it was Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon or something else) that seemed to treat the very concept of making into space in the 20th century as an impossible concept.

But a little over 20 years after that broadcast Sputnik happened. So many listeners and writers of the time absolutely were eating their own words afterward.

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wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
To be fair, Newton was suggesting the feasibility of using chemical propellants to create stable orbits in space as far back as the 1600s with his cannonball example.

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