Hello jackmott and All, When speaking of the future, based on our current worldview, we humans often err.
Not that my overly optimistic views offer any better reliability …… I just enjoy new ideas and products so I am indulging in a pastime that requires an open mind. That doesn’t mean that there will not be failures …… but there will be no new successes without making attempts …. some of them appearing to be wild ass ridiculous ….. until they find a use.
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
(Written before humans went to the moon.)
Jackmott wrote ….. “In none of those above cases were there any fundamental problems of physics in the way though. Very difficult to defeat the comprehensibility [intelligible, understood] properties of a gas, with solid materials.” When reinventing the wheel fundamental physics is your friend and materials engineering is your friend – you just use them to your own ends focusing on possibilities rather than limitations.
“Someone schooled in chemistry or materials engineering might even be able to put pretty tight boundaries on what is even theoretically possible here.” I seriously doubt it. Others with excellent credentials have tried and failed in that exercise.
The light bulb: «... good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.»
British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison's light bulb, 1878.
«Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.»
Sir William Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.
«Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.»
Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.
The automobile: «The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.»
The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.
The airplane: «Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.»
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
«It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.»
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.
Others: «Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop - because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.»
TIME, 1966, in one sentence writing off e-commerce long before anyone had ever heard of it.
«They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-»
Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864.
«Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far reaching in purpose." -– Herbert Hoover, on Prohibition, 1928.
«It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.»
Margaret Thatcher, future Prime Minister, October 26th, 1969.
«Read my lips: NO NEW TAXES.»
George Bush, 1988.
«That virus is a pussycat.» -– Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988.
http://www.2spare.com/item_50221.aspx “I think it would require pretty far out technology. You won't get there with just different foams and rubbers for sure. There is one sci fi book that introduced an interesting idea of tires made of little nanomachines, that conform to the road intelligently. Maybe that!” Damned straight!! I like the nanomachines – and have seen some wonderful applications for space systems and sensing devices for the battlefield.
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Cheers, Neal
+1 mph Faster
