A fix for lazy eyes. My left eye is the lazy one and want to fix it, so to not need such a strong eyeglass prescription. It’s been 24 years since i was diagnosed, and i’m sure there’s other people with the same problem.
Other than an existence without monday mornings, a rocket science that can improve. The same way cars or televisions have improved in the 50 years.
Even so, if you take a conventional hunting rifle- there’s not a lot of difference, at the end of the day, between a Mauser 98 and a Remington 700. Sure, the Remington might have a synthetic stock and a stainless finish with a chrome-lined heavy barrel and maybe a fancy scope, but the actual technology is still a bolt-action rifle firing a projectile from a centrefire metallic cartridge loaded with smokeless powder.
And that’s the thing I was talking about earlier: Given the technological advances in other areas, I’m really surprised that, for example, there aren’t affordable caseless-round hunting rifles.
Just wondering, what were the new developments in small arms between the end of WWII and the Vietnam war?
I mean, the assault rifle was in service by 1944 (for the Germans, anyway). What’s new since then? (Besides laser sights, for what they’re worth).
How about a digital cable box/DVR that doesn’t rival the earliest VCR’s in size/mass?
Well, there’s the AppleTV/Roku/Boxee and their ilk.
The only drawback is that they all seem hobbled in one way or another. We’re still in the dark ages for digital distribution.
Why would there be, or more to the point, what would a caseless round offer a hunter? The advantages of caseless ammunition is less ammunition weight, more simplicity in autoloading mechanisms (no extraction cycle or problems with the case sticking to a hot wall), better dimensional control in a production environment, et cetera, none of which are particular issues for a hunter or casual target shooter. The downsides are that ceaseless ammunition probably could not be produced by a handloader (the forming pressures and processing would be prohibitive), would come in a limited number of bullet configurations, and would probably be produced a lightweight or intermediate round suitable for battlefield use. Nearly all hunting arm technology was transferred from military weapons, with only refinements to adapt it for hunting applications, and then only after a long period of maturation. Even if a caseless weapon system came into use today, it would be decades before it would be seen in wide use by the hunting community.
Most of the developments have either been in manufacturing, materials, propellant chemistry, or accessories. Basic gas operated mechanisms haven’t changed very much since WWII; even direct impingement used in the AR-15-type rifles (with questionable results) harkens back to WWII. Aside from caseless ammunition, there is just isn’t a lot of room to improve internal combustion gas operation processes in rifles.
Stranger
Every once in a while, the commercial manufacturers fart around with something new. It inevitably is a resounding failure. Back in the 1970’s, Daisy (yes, the BB gun maker) marketed a caseless .22. It flopped, as in many key respects it was inferior to the conventional .22 lr cartridge.
In the late 90’s, or thereabouts, Remington marketed a line of Model 700 variants that used an electronic mechanism to detonate the cartridge. The gun took batteries and the cartridges used special primers. The shooting public greeted it with overwhelming indifference.
Remember the Gyrojet guns that fired tiny rockets? The Dardick guns and their trounds?
Conventional weapons are here to stay for a long, long time yet. The things proposed to replace them are seldom well thought out and have yet to offer notable advantages.
Listen, I was raised in the '60s, and we were promised flying cars, so I want my flying car. I don’t want to hear your scientifigistical mumbo-jumbo. Safety, schmafety. Let the skies rain smoldering debris. And where are my X-ray specs that can inexplicably see through all layers of clothing and no further, and in full color?
There may be an explanation for this that I am not aware of, but I don’t understand why I am driving my car at 70 mph on tires that are filled with AIR. I’m driving on the same basic balloons that were used in cars long ago. An RV recently had a blowout on the interstate near here and 4 people were killed. Do we not have gels and other things besides AIR to put in tires so that they can’t blow out when you roll over something sharp or maybe you didn’t check your tire pressure that particular day? Why are our sophisticated cars whizzing down the road on balloons??? Sometimes I drive home at night just fine, and the next morning when I go to get in my car, my tire is flat because of some small nail and it’s been leaking all night. And if the nail happens to go in the side of it, I am out hundreds of dollars for a new tire (happened recently)! This makes no sense with all the materials we have now!!! (Sorry, this is an old rant for me, can’t he’p myse’f.)
I ain’t missing the point, that IS my point. They want something that can’t exist until somebody invents gravity control. And since we ain’t gonna invent gravity control any time soon, we’re not going to get a flying car any time soon.
There are light planes, light helicopters, jet packs, and all sorts of flying whosises that can transport you through the air from A to B. The only problem is that they’re all some combination of varying proportions of expensive, loud, inconvenient, and insanely dangerous.
If you want a flying car, yet you have never actually flown a real-life aircraft, then I contend you have no business even fantasizing about a flying car. Why not just wish you could fly like Superman?
Because there will never ever ever be a flying vehicle that behaves enough like a car while in the air that it will deserve the name “flying car”. Because flying is not driving. Even WITH antigravity.
About thatflying car…
As Lemur866 says, it’s really a light VFR plane that you can drive from your house to the airport.
This is utter pedantry. When people speak of a “flying car”, they want something that provides a similar level of accessibility as an automobile, but capable of being operated by an average person unschooled in the nuances of aviation. That this is well beyond the current state of technological maturity in both propulsive capability and automated controls is not in question, but the concept of such a vehicle–one that can be stored in a garage, take off and land vertically, operated in an automated flight control network, and being sufficiently failsafe that it poses no greater overall likelihood of hazard than current ground transportation–is not beyond conception. We won’t be going down to the Ford dealership and buying a Pegasus 300 aircar any time soon, but it doesn’t mean that such a device is impossible to conceive of or exist, merely that the energy source and propulsion technology would have to undergo revolutionary development.
Stranger
Air is a highly elastic, relatively stable, low mass, and (most importantly) practically free compressible medium. It actually serves as the primary high frequency attenuation member in your suspension, isolating the car from noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) impulses from road contact. A gel or other liquid or solid medium would have a much higher mass, which would contribute to both the unsprung weight (the inertia that has to be damped out by the struts) and rotational inertia (braking force required to slow the tires).
It is not widely appreciated that the modern automotive tire is one of the most sophisticated single mechanism products ever designed and manufactured by mankind. Far from being “the same basic balloons”, modern radial tires are constructed from a dozen or more different materials which are put together in a fashion to provide a series of seemingly contradictory characteristics, including radial compliance, lateral stiffness, tread wear resistance, high static friction, low rolling friction, well defined spring and damping characteristics across a wide range of operating temperatures, et cetera. The design and analysis of modern tire material formulation and mechanical properties uses simulation tools (nonlinear hyperelastic finite element analysis, high flow coupled computational fluid dynamics) that are still on the bleeding edge of technology. And the testing of tire performance and wear is as sophisticated as anything in the aerospace or biomedical industry. Far from decrying the handful of incidents in which the failure of a tire resulted in accident or death, you should be amazed by the fact that despite the hundreds of trillions of miles placed upon tires every year, catastrophic failures are so rare as to be notable, and are typically the result of gross negligence in maintenance rather than manufacturing defects or inherent flaws.
And as for someone who can’t “maybe you didn’t check your tire pressure that particular day?” the technology has existed for at least the last ten years for remote pressure monitoring of tires, and will probably be mandatory for new automobiles within the next decade. Of course, there will always be the yahoos who ignore the idiot light and fail to properly inflate their car tires. Fortunately, most tires can run for thousands of miles on half the rated pressure without sidewall failure, which is really pretty amazing, about the equivalent of tap-dancing from Phoenix to Toledo without a rest.
Stranger
It is easier to build a completely automated aircraft than a automobile. I want a aircar I get into and set my destination and it contact a central control computer that assigns the car an altitude that lets you fly to your destination in a straight line or at least a dog leg. Drone aircraft are already close to that.
The biggest problem is we don’t have a way to deal with bad weather other than staying on the ground.
I’m not disappointed about fusion power. When you understand how fusion works, then you will realize we won’t see a practical fusion reactor in this century. The trouble is that a working fusion power plant will be so complicated that it will make a fission power plant look about as complicated as a bathtub. This means the capital costs of building a fusion plant will be so high that it won’t be cost effective for the forseeable future.
http://metamodern.com/2010/01/20/why-fusion-won%E2%80%99t-provide-power/
What disappoints me is that most of our electricity isn’t generated by nuclear fission instead of coal and natural gas. With breeder reactors, we have enough uranium and thorium to provide power for thousands of years. By then, we should have figured out how to build cheap fusion plants or solar power.
I’m also disappointed that we don’t have a permanent base on the Moon. It is like Jerry Pournelle said, “I knew I would see the first man on the moon, but I never imagined I would see the last man on the moon.”.
What I want is an Anti-Grav type car, no wheels, hovers over the ground 24" or so.
No more getting stuck in the snow, hitting potholes, listening to the rumble strips, blow-outs, changing tires in the snow/muck.
Screw all that muching about BETWEEN points A and B, I want my transporter. 