Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
User avatar
By Morten
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1826012
Indeed. Mr. Clark is also credited for being the first person to posit the usefulness of geostationary orbit for telecommunication purposes - and lo!

GEO orbits not really on track for this thread tho' - sorry Ice :wink:

If we all chipped in we could do put one of these on the rails at the next fly - in, though? Our very own LEO space train
#1826036
Morten wrote:Indeed. Mr. Clark is also credited for being the first person to posit the usefulness of geostationary orbit for telecommunication purposes - and lo!


About the same time, Isaac Asimov postulated a time when everyone had a pocket calculator and forgot how to do calculations with pen(cil) and paper.
Morten liked this
#1826047
Ah, when the telephone was invented it was said that “every town will have one” !
The timber yard in Wick was - Wick 1, and I have an old receipt of my father’s, with oversigned postage stamp, with the number in the heading
#1826049
Stu B wrote:The old ideas are the best (action starts at 0:40) :wink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvm5NEUwd8k

(Similar idea seemed to work quite well in the South Atlantic!)

Damn I wuz gonna mention Fireball XL5; I must've seen every episode!! :D
There was also a live action sci fi film in the '50s called 'When Worlds Collide' (I think) which used the rail launch concept; it was something about escaping from Earth when the moon or maybe another planet was about to collide with us.
Stu B liked this
#1826185
peter272 wrote:...
Brunel was a great engineering innovator, but he often left his backers with great losses


The risk of losses has always been a significant risk for investors in pushing the boundaries of science, engineering, technology, medical research etc which cannot have the performance metrics of an established production line (or railway line). Lack of money always holds back progress.

Some innovators may spend their whole life trying to make dreams a reality and not get there as some factor is not ready, perhaps for one or more generations of the human race.

Medical research to cure disease and develop vaccines is a topical one. It can take decades of investment and still cannot cure all the cancers. The investors might be charitable or they might want some financial return one day when the big success happens. With Covid vaccines, one of them is being supplied at cost price and not for profit... in a market of under supply and high demand. If that was using the airline ticket pricing computer those market conditions would make the flight ticket price sky rocket...
kanga liked this
#1826253
The Dan Dare reference made me smile. Long long time since I read the Eagle.

The soon to be Dan Dare site already looks reasonably futuristic at the moment; it’s the giant golf ball on the headland. Picture taken just a few months ago when we did a formation tour of Shetland.
Image
#1826272
Hitch wrote:The Dan Dare reference made me smile. Long long time since I read the Eagle.

The soon to be Dan Dare site already looks reasonably futuristic at the moment; it’s the giant golf ball on the headland. Picture taken just a few months ago when we did a formation tour of Shetland.

That's the RAF air defence radar station at Saxa Vord (watching out for trade for our Typhoons so they can legally lay down a 'boom' over the mainland :thumleft: ); different headland
kanga liked this