What happened to the future?

[TimberWolf]

When Concorde last flew, the Times remarked that it was as if a select group of people had been given mobile phones in the 1930s but had them all taken away again in 1970, and we had to wait another generation for them to reappear.

But what about this A2 thing?

Concord was a great exercise in expensive supersonic flight, but wasn't great aerodynamically. The wings were too broad for efficient hight speed flight, but were good for landing on short runways. It needed longer runways and smaller wings to compete on economy.

[DaveB]

The thing with science fiction these days it that it's pretty much done. Hard, techy, sci-fi has pretty much reached the limits now.

Stephen Baxter has done the whole near future, space/time/technology genre as far as it will go.

Ian M. Banks has pretty much covered far future civilisation and technology in his Culture books.

Most of what everyone else has written is so close top being achieved it is in the mainstream conciousness - Fusion power, Anti-Gravity, Energy weapons, Artificial Intelligence etc. we are pretty much within a generation of those things becoming reality.

[expat]

...
Ian M. Banks has pretty much covered far future civilisation and technology in his Culture books.
...

Ah yes, that's what fires my imagination now: Banks' vision of a future where people (of the Culture at any rate) can pretty well do what they want because they don't have to spend most of their waking hours scraping for sustenance. I see even our comparatively wealthy society, even in good times, as being firmly in "The Age of Scarcity", and I do wonder if it has to be so.

[voodooflux]

Bloody brilliant though, you have to admit. Don’t tell me that if they offered you a spin in an SR71 that you’d say ‘oh no, not for me, think of what it would do to the planet’.

That just reminded me of this story from an SR-71 pilot. Great reading.

[Mich the Tester]

Concord was a great exercise in expensive supersonic flight, but wasn't great aerodynamically. The wings were too broad for efficient hight speed flight, but were good for landing on short runways. It needed longer runways and smaller wings to compete on economy.

The fact that it wasn't perfect is precisely the reason to continue working on that kind of thing.
As if credit-default-derivative-obligation-whatever-the-f**k-they-ares have got us anywhere.

[TimberWolf]

The fact that it wasn't perfect is precisely the reason to continue working on that kind of thing.
As if credit-default-derivative-obligation-whatever-the-f**k-they-ares have got us anywhere.

I think the physics of flight is fairly well understood. Short hop (5000 miles) flights are probably the most efficient (long enough to take advantage of the upper atmosphere and short enough not to be using excess fuel to carry fuel). Interestingly enough flight efficiency isn't a function of weight or speed, given an efficient wing loading and design, just mass to fuel ratio. A moth could fly as far as a 747 with the same fuel ratio (at 46% fuel, each could fly 20,000 km).

[Mich the Tester]

I think the physics of flight is fairly well understood. Short hop (5000 miles) flights are probably the most efficient (long enough to take advantage of the upper atmosphere and short enough not to be using excess fuel to carry fuel). Interestingly enough flight efficiency isn't a function of weight or speed, given an efficient wing loading and design, just mass to fuel ratio. A moth could fly as far as a 747 with the same fuel ratio (at 46% fuel, each could fly 20,000 km).

747s are impressively big but boring. Nobody ever dropped the ball at a test match and looked up to gaze at a 747.

[ratewhore]

There's no exciting future for two reasons. Firstly, no one will finance it because they can't make a quick buck and secondly, no one wants to fill out the risk assessment for it...

[Mich the Tester]

There's no exciting future for two reasons. Firstly, no one will finance it because they can't make a quick buck and secondly, no one wants to fill out the risk assessment for it...

I’ll do the second bit.

Risk of accidents; Quite High
Consequence for participants; Death
Result; sod that, let’s make it fly

Do you think Christopher Columbus, Donald Campbell and Neil Armstrong wasted their lives on elf and safety and risk assessments?

[TimberWolf]

747s are impressively big but boring. Nobody ever dropped the ball at a test match and looked up to gaze at a 747.

Concord used to fly over close to where I live. People would watch it as it flew past in awe. Especially towards the end <sob>.