Some of them held up pretty well, and some of them didn’t really happen until the twenty-first century, and some haven’t panned out at all (like using electric currents to encourage plant growth, and the quiet cities). Slightly subsonic electric ships don’t seem likely to happen any time soon, and pneumatics came and went, being used only for niche applications. Still an interesting set of prognostications for the time.
[Update a few minutes later]
D’oh!
As Paul Dietz points out in comments, they’re only calling for ships that go a mile a minute. I was somehow thinking ten miles a minute (close to sonic velocity). Don’t ask why I was thinking that–I don’t know. Yes, sixty miles an hour is theoretically possible, but it’s high power consumption.
I hadn’t previously paid much attention to Senator Voinovich until his lachrimose performance on the Senate floor over John Bolton. Now I think that he’s one of the most asinine members of the Senate (which is to say, he still has lots of competition among his colleagues). Apparently, some of his constituents in the Buckeye state think so too. Send him a hankie.
Denounced a decade ago as a misguided effort to find “little green men” and cut off from government funding, SETI, which stands for search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has found a new following among Silicon Valley titans and techies elsewhere who are interested in space. They have infused the institute with money and unconventional technical ideas, bringing a new respect and energy to the organization. Some argue that being cast away by the federal government was the best thing that could have happened to SETI, that it has become stronger and more innovative in the private sector than it ever could have as part of a public bureaucracy.
More of this, please, particularly for human spaceflight.
Denounced a decade ago as a misguided effort to find “little green men” and cut off from government funding, SETI, which stands for search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has found a new following among Silicon Valley titans and techies elsewhere who are interested in space. They have infused the institute with money and unconventional technical ideas, bringing a new respect and energy to the organization. Some argue that being cast away by the federal government was the best thing that could have happened to SETI, that it has become stronger and more innovative in the private sector than it ever could have as part of a public bureaucracy.
More of this, please, particularly for human spaceflight.
Denounced a decade ago as a misguided effort to find “little green men” and cut off from government funding, SETI, which stands for search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has found a new following among Silicon Valley titans and techies elsewhere who are interested in space. They have infused the institute with money and unconventional technical ideas, bringing a new respect and energy to the organization. Some argue that being cast away by the federal government was the best thing that could have happened to SETI, that it has become stronger and more innovative in the private sector than it ever could have as part of a public bureaucracy.
More of this, please, particularly for human spaceflight.
One fears for the future if these students are typical of today’s crop:
Once again, I explained how to answer the question, and once again the student was pleased. The error was just a trivial difference of opinion. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. “I was just thinking of it differently.” You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
No, I wanted to say, you weren’t thinking of it differently, you had it completely wrong; you didn’t understand it at all. But like her many compatriots, she was unlikely to acknowledge that, or admit to a mistake even when she created a version of reality never seen on a map, or in the actions of a blackbird.
Students have always deluded themselves, of course, and hope has always sprung eternal, or at least until final grades appear. And at least some in my classes really do eventually master the material. But confident placidity in the face of error seems to be on the rise.
Maybe it’s all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as youngsters, or maybe it’s the emphasis on respecting everyone else’s opinion, to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong because that might offend the one who gave it.
One fears for the future if these students are typical of today’s crop:
Once again, I explained how to answer the question, and once again the student was pleased. The error was just a trivial difference of opinion. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. “I was just thinking of it differently.” You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
No, I wanted to say, you weren’t thinking of it differently, you had it completely wrong; you didn’t understand it at all. But like her many compatriots, she was unlikely to acknowledge that, or admit to a mistake even when she created a version of reality never seen on a map, or in the actions of a blackbird.
Students have always deluded themselves, of course, and hope has always sprung eternal, or at least until final grades appear. And at least some in my classes really do eventually master the material. But confident placidity in the face of error seems to be on the rise.
Maybe it’s all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as youngsters, or maybe it’s the emphasis on respecting everyone else’s opinion, to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong because that might offend the one who gave it.
One fears for the future if these students are typical of today’s crop:
Once again, I explained how to answer the question, and once again the student was pleased. The error was just a trivial difference of opinion. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. “I was just thinking of it differently.” You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
No, I wanted to say, you weren’t thinking of it differently, you had it completely wrong; you didn’t understand it at all. But like her many compatriots, she was unlikely to acknowledge that, or admit to a mistake even when she created a version of reality never seen on a map, or in the actions of a blackbird.
Students have always deluded themselves, of course, and hope has always sprung eternal, or at least until final grades appear. And at least some in my classes really do eventually master the material. But confident placidity in the face of error seems to be on the rise.
Maybe it’s all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as youngsters, or maybe it’s the emphasis on respecting everyone else’s opinion, to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong because that might offend the one who gave it.