SunlitZelkova

I’m skeptical this is politicization as much as it is the usual ineptness of media. Interesting tidbits about Teslas. I’ll have to look into it. EDIT- I suggest starting with those tidbits next time instead of just saying something that implies “the media is conducting a witch hunt!” It’s much more compelling than accusatory statements without evidence.

All this discussion is very interesting. It’s gone on so long though I feel like it should be split off into an Ancient History Thread in the Lounge. Unlike the 20th century, ancient history is pretty easy to discuss without getting political

Thanks for all you guys’ posts. Very cool to read about. I wasn’t able to see it from where I was (didn’t have proper viewing equipment anyways), but my grandparents saw it from Spokane. Just a little was covered, of course. When they texted me about it, my grandma mentioned it might be the last eclipse they see in their lifetimes. I remember one of the members of this forum saying life extension technology may suddenly appear one day though, so I like to have a little hope lol. Interestingly if my grandma was to live to 102, the same age my great grandpa was until he passed away two weeks ago, she might live just long enough to see the 2044 one. This, obviously, would be feasible even without any new medical advancements. Is this your picture? Regardless, it’s a great shot.

@Gargamel was there too, perhaps you guys passed by each other!

Not sure how to get better information than articles actually interviewing Tesla owners… No, I did not simply read the headline and take it as fact. It is highly unlikely this was a politicized article. I didn’t clarify in the original post, but the article stated this was happening to ALL electric cars, not just Teslas. I think the idea of any electric pickup truck- Cybertruck or any future attempts from Ford- are not going to be good ones. Cybertruck is actually different insofar as it isn’t necessarily billed as a replacement for farm equipment. For urban citizens it should be just fine. It’s only in freak weather it would have issues.

Yep. Philip K. Dick, who has been credited for coming up with the concept of "the matrix," identified strongly with Gnosticism. I don't know if there has been a serious effort by a historian to confirm that he was the first to imagine such an idea... the claim is based off of a speech he gave in 1977... but if it's true, the premise of The Matrix, the film that popularized simulation theory, literally comes from a Gnostic thinker. (Big G gnostic, PKD identified with the originals of about 2000 years ago) Proponents of simulation theory usually posit there is a true reality somewhere outside. Some think it is just a better version of our world, others, namely Philip K. Dick, believed it was actually a different mode of existence outside of time. Note that PKD's theory wasn't modern simulation theory that involves the belief we are in a computer simulation, but rather he uses computer related terms- or rather terms that at the time weren't commonly identified with computers and retained their traditional popular meanings- as metaphors for metaphysical concepts.

Good luck to all of you trying to get a good spot!

Agreed. Rear visibility looks like a nightmare and it probably wouldn’t do well in the cold. Teslas had a lot of problems in the Great Lakes and Northeast when the winter storms hit in January, IIRC. Not great for farms in the Northwest and Rockies. Not sure about the southwest and Midwest.

Not necessarily. People build computer simulations of things that don’t exist in real life all the time, namely aircraft, ships, and new nuclear weapons. —— There are many different variations of the simulation theory. Some posit we are trapped, but being contacted by an outside force to save us. Some think that there is no way out of the simulation, because if you get out you’d just be in a new layer of the simulation. This is why I say the simulation theory is not science, but philosophical and religious in nature. The simulation theory is like Zhuangzi pondering the butterfly dream, but dressed up in scientific lingo.

There are actually a lot of lower budget movies with unknown actors. They come up a lot on our Amazon suggestions. No one talks about them though (and I myself haven’t been interested enough to watch them). One reason it seems all the popular movies have only a few actors is because these movies are only popular because they have big name actors. Another possibility is that the casting people deliberately keep choosing well known people over and over again to get people who aren’t interested in a movie’s subject to watch it just for the actor. There are still actors who go from small roles to big ones. Austin Butler was in television roles hardly anyone knew about for years, and now he’s well known because of Elvis. One of the reasons I liked The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime is that it consisted of so many actors I’d never seen before. It was refreshing, and even the characters they introduced over the next few seasons were largely played by faces I’d never seen before.

There are two kinds of historians: ex post facto prophets and teachers of the immense responsibility that the power of choice requires.

Lol, imagine if someone broke into the place where NASA super computers are housed and started smashing it up, and it turned out it was just a bunch of people sitting in boxes do calculations by hand and transmitting the results to each other.

https://x.com/nasa/status/1775616356303454296?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A 3 companies are selected to improve their proposals for the Lunar Terrain Vehicle open top lunar rover. They only plan to select one in the end.

Okay, I was wondering about that. Before the politics of that era (1400s) made my alternate history where China reaches the Americas first implausible, I had no idea if there was even a reason for them to go there in the first place. I was thinking maybe they thought they could reach Europe by sailing that way, kinda like a reverse of how Columbus tried to sail west to reach India... but with China going east to reach Europe, which they would have known about. But I didn't even realize it was simply beyond the capability of non-European ships of the day to go too far east.

Yeah, something I always say is that the ISS is basically a Mars Transfer Vehicle without the storage and engines needed for the trip to Mars. A Mars spacecraft is basically just a space station that moves between the orbits of planets anyways and enters new ones, so my line of thinking is that a modular spacecraft (like a slightly scaled down ISS) with some solar electric engines on the back should be feasible for the 2000s. I'm actually not as bummed about it after having some time to get off the computer and take my mind off the story. A lunar base is still really cool, and the Mars mission in the 2000s is alright too. I'm happy with it.

I worked more on my alternate history about the Space Race, which is supposed to be a slightly more grounded take on For All Mankind's premise- what if Korolyov lived. So with a whole lot of luck, the Soviets land first in June 1969. Apollo is reconfigured so that the last mission will involve landing a simple LM derived base on the surface to allow for the final crew to stay for 2 weeks in the "Race for the Base" (name taken from FAM). Skylab still flies. End result is all Saturn Vs are used up and there are none to go on display in museums. Nixon funds Big Gemini so Skylab flights can keep happening, and commits to studies of a more economical and reliable replacement for Apollo, which will be used to build a future permanent lunar base. The Soviets fund the DLB, the planned lunar base that would have followed the L3 lunar excursions. There is no Salyut because focus is all on the Moon. Almaz flies four times in 1972-1974 in the original configuration that mirrored MOL- the VA capsule and the OPS living module as one single spacecraft. But it is cancelled for the same reasons it was IRL and the Soviet space station project ends there. The Soviets build in the lunar base in 1981-82. They fly missions to it throughout the 1980s. But the USSR still collapses. I haven't decided the direction of the American program yet. What I'm thinking is that the Apollo replacement project stalls in the late 1970s because of the economy, but Reagan revives it. Because his focus is more on Earthly matters though, it proceeds very slowly. It only begins to produce hardware in the late 80s, at which point the Soviets are in dire economic straits. At the 87 Iceland meeting, Gorbachev offers to let the Americans use the Soviet lunar base. Reagan takes up the offer as a sort of 1980s Apollo-Soyuz. Later after the USSR collapses, the US helps fund the now Russian-Ukrainian lunar base. The DLB reaches the end of its life around 1994-95, at which point both nations decide on a new joint project. Combining the American experience with space stations and the Soviet experience with lunar flights, an international crewed Mars expedition, intended to launch around 2006, is created. Three missions were planned to occur over the course of about a decade or so. Miraculously, these flights go smoothly. Unfortunately afterwards international tensions prevent an international successor to the Mars program being decided upon, but in America, commercial spaceflight has been born with SpaceX and Blue Origin, while China is also a rising independent space explorer. Humanity's journey into space is still just beginning at that point. --- To be honest, I'm kind of bummed about it. I wanted it to be grounded. I felt it was one thing to have the Soviets get really lucky with the N1 not failing at the exact times necessary to win the Moon Race, but the global economics really don't support anything beyond a basic lunar base the only lasts until the 90s, followed by a couple Mars missions. My dream would be Mars missions in the 80s and 90s, followed by exploration even further into the solar system. But the economics and political commitment just don't line up, even with the Soviets beating the US to the Moon. Here's hoping the 21st century doesn't end up the same way.

When JAXA called for astronauts a year ago or so, a six year old submitted an application and they actually took it. It made big news. So go ahead and give it a shot!

It's possible that that ability only works on inanimate objects, but who knows. Just because it isn't the same reality doesn't mean it isn't time travel. Although I see what your saying. My attempt to build a multiverse of all the worlds I've written about revolved around all of the major powers going back from 3268 to 2011 to fight a war over the sole remaining world that hadn't yet discovered the multiverse, and I considered such actions to be interuniversal travel rather than time travel. There are some experiments pointing to time being a substance, and not just an abstract concept, but the results are inconsistent. The idea's base of interest is mainly in Russia. The only reason I see it as not offering choices is that if one thing is predetermined, everything has to be predetermined. I just haven't really thought about a possibility in between the two extremes, but maybe I'll give it a thought some time.

That may be true about the Sarych, but he said designed to counter other ships. The Iowa class were designed to counter the Kongo class, certainly not the Pr.1144 which wouldn't exist for another forty years.

No. Warship classes simply have predecessors and successors. The reason "generations" of fighter aircraft came about was mainly because of the bird [lol, this is getting auto moderated and changed to bird] for tat development of aircraft during the Cold War. US develops F-100 to counter MiG-15, Soviets develop MiG-19 and 21 to counter F-100 (although bomber interceptor was the primary role), Americans develop F-4 to counter MiG-21, Soviets develop MiG-23 to counter F-4, Americans develop Teen Series to counter MiG-23, Soviets develop MiG-29 and Su-27 to counter Teen Series. (If the Cold War had not ended, perhaps we would be seeing sixth gen fighters entering service now, having gone through the F-22 vs. MiG-29/Su-27 and then MiG-1.44 or Su-57 vs. F-22 in the 2010s) A similar dynamic existed with tanks, which is why the M1 Abrams is a 3rd generation MBT. The Americans develop the M60 to counter the T-54, the Soviets upgun the T-62 from 100 to 115mm to counter the M60, the Americans develop the M1 to counter the T-62... later upgraded to counter the T-72. It kinda ended there though, which is why the Abrams' design dates to the 1970s. The Soviets had a 152mm upgunned T-80 in development called the Object 292, which perhaps might have kicked off the race for a 4th gen MBT in the 90s had it entered service, but it didn't escape the collapse of the USSR. Tanks like the Type 10 and K2 have been called 4th gen, but it is questionable because they are just better versions of third gen designs (namely the Type 90 and K1). In contrast, ships have not been designed to specifically counter other nation's ships since the 1930s. Since the end of WWII, new ship classes are mainly designed around carrying new technology for countering all ships, not just one specific class. Ships also vary greatly between nations, for example, with Russian ships focusing on the anti-surface warfare mission, American vessels on land attack and ballistic missile defence, and Japanese ships on ASW.

More like STS just came way too early. As I said in another thread, STS was the definition of something "ahead of its time." Rapid reusability wasn't lost back then because of lack of funding, it was lost because of technological limitations. No amount of funding would have made it work. Now is the time.

The way it is supposed to work is this: Tony is from Universe A (let's call it Track A). They journeyed to Tracks B, C, and D to get the stones. They use them in Track A to fix everything. Steve goes back to Tracks B, C, and D to return them. No paradox. There is a big "upset" but it is only in the form of the events past Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 1 (Track D) never taking place, because Thanos and his army from Track D have been snapped out of existence. But that doesn't prevent them from traveling back to B, C, and D to return to the Infinity Stones. It wouldn't have worked to "freeze" Thanos- which I assume refers to putting him in a time loop like he did to Dormammu. Yes everyone could live, but they'd be stuck reliving the same few moments over and over again. Dr. Strange said he looked ahead at all the possibilities of the coming battle, and probably realized Thanos' will was too strong and he would never give in. Thus the only way was the way he chose (let everyone die and then fix it with time travel). The first method you speak of involves something called the Novikov self-consistency principal. As you say, whatever you want to do in the past, you either already did or failed to do. The problem is this would mean not only is there no free will for sentient beings, it would mean everything in the natural world is "on clock work" too, by virtue of sentient beings being part of the universe. That means not only are you destined to say, go back in time but do nothing significant that causes anyone to notice in the historical record, it also means things like the exact moment leaves fall, when solar flares occur, the exact day winter occurs, etc., are all predetermined and cannot be altered. Put simply, there is nothing random in the world. Such a theory would be very depressing, as it means nothing you do has any consequence and there is no real choice. It would be mind boggling to think about and would lead to the erosion of morals and society. It does nonetheless have numerous proponents. The second method is sometimes said to invoke the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The problem of Schrodinger's cat is solved. Rather than having to deal with the question of how a cat could be both dead and alive due to a particle being in two different states until observed, there is simply one "world"- again, I shall call it a Track- in which the cat is dead, and one in which it is alive. The problem with this for me is it implies everyday life in the normal flow of time is also akin to time travel. When you decide whether you want to have Coke or Pepsi, you "journey" into a different Track depending on what choice you make. This then raises the question of whether it is actually feasible to "journey" backwards at all. Because natural time travel, which goes forward, does not involve you physically travelling to another Track, you remain in your own body and outwardly experience nothing. So what would travelling backward even be like? Would you even truly be going backwards, or would time simply take a U-Turn for you and continue to go forwards, but outwardly appear as if you were travelling backwards? "Suppose... time is round."- a line from A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, 1977.

"Comrades, we can not allow a cereal gap!"

The company my dad works for has inventory at the Port of Baltimore. Their business will be impacted by the collapse of the bridge… it will be pretty bad

I think the designs were certainly feasible, they just would have been super expensive and at a total disadvantage compared to expendable rockets of the era. Zero point in reusability. When I was researching my “The Quest For Rapid Reusability” thread I found that the fly back booster for the DC-3 was planned to use the same TPS as the Shuttle. The booster was huge, if the IRL Shuttle took months to service to be ready to fly again, the booster would take even longer. So even with dangerous testing set aside, such proposals would not be economical. As I said in another thread; the discussion about how the Soviets could never have landed on the Moon ahead of the US, I believe that both in the USSR and US spaceflight proposals were completely out of touch with the economics of the time. Despite being the world’s two superpowers, they were still not developed enough to be able to support extensive, sustained space exploration. Maybe reusable spacecraft that actually are competitive with or better than expendable rockets could have been achieved by the 1980s, for example using my proposal in the Quest thread: just build so many vehicles you can have one ready to fly every week even if that means 20 are in processing at all times. But to support and sustain that architecture you’d need to somehow take the national economy from the 1970s into 21st century levels in the span of a decade. Otherwise there would not be enough to build and maintain so many spacecraft.