What happened to progress?

[talltim]

Supersonic air travel was an evolutionary dead end. Air travel has still made huge progress since pre Concorde days, just in the direction of increased capacity and reduced cost.

 

[table38]

Supersonic air travel was an evolutionary dead end. Air travel has still made huge progress since pre Concorde days, just in the direction of increased capacity and reduced cost.

And much quieter which means airports can stay open longer at night, not a bad achivement for the manufacturers as you have to make the plane 10 times quieter just to reduce the noise by 1db

The Emirates A380 goes over my house about noon most days and I hardly notice! In fact the guys cutting the grass this morning are making more noise

 

[Madge Wildfire]

The 1960s was a decade of rapid scientific progress, probably because lots of weapons research was carried out during WW2 and the early 50s after the nuclear devices were exploded over Japan, and the technology suddenly spread outwards into civilian life.

The OP is right in many respects, progress has stalled. Just think of the Wright brothers first powered flight in 1903, and 66 years later man had walked on the moon.

A similar period of time elapsed between City Of Truro and the bullet train.

Why no equivalent progress in the last 40 years? I think mainly because rich philanthropists have become a very rare species; the wealthy prefer to make even more money for themselves, and governments have poured billions of taxpayers' cash into ever more complex military hardware to fight ever more unwinnable wars.

Instead of which, they should have been putting all their efforts into finding a cheap and easy way of escaping from the Earth's gravitational forces.

I realise that the purists will be horrified, but I would pile a whole shed load of the nastiest bacteria we can find and send it on a rocket programmed to land it on Mars. Then just wait and see if anything happens.

After all, there do not seem to be any other intelligent life forms in our Solar System, so we might as well experiment with the nearby planets and see if we can encourage some form of colonisation as quickly as possible. We cant do a much worse job on Mars and Venus than nature seems to have managed already.

I do not subscribe to the view that we should sort our own world out before messing up another one, because we learn more from making mistakes than just faffing around trying to look clever.

 

[BlythPower]

We are 'progressing' in many ways. Rather than being 'expansive' (i.e. into space), it's into a 'smaller' direction with things like genetics and mobile devices. The processing power of a smart phone would have needed a computer the size of a house just 20 or 40 years ago. Similarly, the interfaces we use nowadays would have been unthinkable then.

 

[thefab444]

Its funny how some people think your an idiot if you have an opinion that does not match theirs. I call that being an individual.

People think you are an idiot when you state your opinion something and then refuse to explain your reasoning behind that opinion. It makes you look as if you know your argument won't hold water, and/or is based on less than sound reasoning.

 

[SS4]

The 1960s was a decade of rapid scientific progress, probably because lots of weapons research was carried out during WW2 and the early 50s after the nuclear devices were exploded over Japan, and the technology suddenly spread outwards into civilian life.

The OP is right in many respects, progress has stalled. Just think of the Wright brothers first powered flight in 1903, and 66 years later man had walked on the moon.

A similar period of time elapsed between City Of Truro and the bullet train.

Why no equivalent progress in the last 40 years? I think mainly because rich philanthropists have become a very rare species; the wealthy prefer to make even more money for themselves, and governments have poured billions of taxpayers' cash into ever more complex military hardware to fight ever more unwinnable wars.

It's also become more expensive to innovate and the short term nature of Western politics precludes any real long term investment. The culture is "we want it and we want it now" where it is something with tangible benefits.

 

[SteveP29]

Its funny how some people think your an idiot if you have an opinion that does not match theirs. I call that being an individual.

That's because it's easier to go with the flock, with the sheep as it were, rather than research, think about and formulate your own opinion on why things happen or what you believe in.

You see it all over, newspapers tell you what they want you to hear and know, tv broadcasters also do the same, S***n C****l and the record companies tell you what music you like, want and need to listen to, rather than looking for and finding something you like yourself.

Then again, why should anyone put themselves out to find these things out when they can let others do it for them. Thank god there are people out there who are prepared to put the effort in, or else it'd be a bloody boring world!!