Top 10 Lost Technologies We Really Could Use Today
4. Apollo/Gemini Space Program Technology
Not all lost technology dates back to antiquity—sometimes it’s just become so obsolete that it’s no longer compatible. The Apollo and Gemini space programs of the 50s, 60s, and 70s were responsible for NASA’s biggest successes, including some of the first manned space flights and the first trip to the moon. Gemini, which ran from 1965-66, was responsible for the much of the early research and development into the mechanics of human space flight. Apollo, which followed shortly thereafter, was launched with the goal of landing a crew on the surface of the moon, which it succeeded in doing in July of 1969.
How was it Lost?
The Apollo and Gemini programs aren’t truly lost. There are still one or two Saturn V rockets lying around, and there are plenty of parts from the spacecraft capsules still available. But just because modern scientists have the parts doesn’t mean they have the knowledge to understand how or why they worked the way they did. In fact, very few schematics or records from the original programs are still around. This lack of record keeping is a byproduct of the frenetic pace at which the American space program progressed. Because NASA was in a space race with the USSR, the planning, design, and building process of the Apollo and Gemini programs was always rushed. Not only that, but in most cases private contractors were brought in to work on every individual part of the spacecraft. Once the programs ended, these engineers—along with all their records—moved on. None of this would be a problem, but now that NASA is planning a return trip to the moon, a lot of the information about how the engineers of the 1960s made the voyages work is invaluable. Amazingly, the records remain so disorganized and incomplete that NASA has resorted to reverse engineering existing spacecraft parts that they have lying around in junkyards as a way of understanding just how the Gemini and Apollo programs managed to work so well.
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Ibon wrote:giving rise to an opposition movement with a sense of the sacred or a religiosity in terms of how we treat our biosphere.
KaiserJeep wrote:ennui2, No knowledge was lost during the Dark Ages, or the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance, or the Industrial Revolution.
KaiserJeep wrote:Nor do I care what Henry Ford or the ancestral Bushes or the Roosevelts did in the 1930s. Henry Ford produced tanks, Jeeps, and airplanes among many other weapons, for the Allies. GHW Bush flew 58 combat missions against the Japanese in WW2.
KaiserJeep wrote:I'll remind everyone that the Democrats control the White House and have pretty well stuffed the Supreme Court with Liberals.
KaiserJeep wrote:Nor have I noticed any rightward slant to US politics. Just the opposite, in fact.
KaiserJeep wrote:As for just about everyone's musings on the nature of Fascism, it's all just words. I'll remind everyone that the Democrats control the White House and have pretty well stuffed the Supreme Court with Liberals.
Concrete is a composite material composed mainly of water, aggregate, and cement. Often, additives and reinforcements (such as rebar) are included in the mixture to achieve the desired physical properties of the finished material. When these ingredients are mixed together, they form a fluid mass that is easily molded into shape. Over time, the cement forms a hard matrix which binds the rest of the ingredients together into a durable stone-like material with many uses.[2]
Famous concrete structures include the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal and the Roman Pantheon. The earliest large-scale users of concrete technology were the ancient Romans, and concrete was widely used in the Roman Empire. The Colosseum in Rome was built largely of concrete, and the concrete dome of the Pantheon is the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.[3]
After the Roman Empire collapsed, use of concrete became rare until the technology was re-pioneered in the mid-18th century. Today, concrete is the most widely used man-made material (measured by tonnage).
Ibon wrote:The deeper philosophical question of free will is the domain that philosophers can mentally masturbate over while caffeinated.
There are many facets to this question. On a species level humans have to balance dominion over nature (free will of sorts to exploit) with being subservient to the laws of ecology as in staying within carrying capacity.
As most of us would agree, consequences of human overshoot will undermine human free will and the havoc will be great enough to even sweep away those Viennese philosophers sipping their coffees while contemplating free will.
ennui2 wrote:This is such a stupid thing to say, man. Come on. Look at the antikythera mechanism. Outside of advancements in the field of armor and weaponry maybe, knowledge took a big hit in western/northern europe and the only forward movement during that whole period was in the middle-east (or in asia I guess, which was on its own trajectory).
ennui2 wrote:If you want to show that not all the GOP are treasonous elites, then drop the hyperbole that democrats are cardboard cutout villains and we can get back to reality.
ennui2 wrote:You must have missed the "Tea Party Wave" of the 2010 mid-terms which ushered in the "party of NO" and constant grid-lock and government shut-downs.
The main problem with the right is they can't win national presidential elections because the right-wing is mostly aging white males and the biggest growing demographic are minorities who are turned off by the GOP's xenophobia, bigotry, and anti-entitlement policies.
Also, the right has been a victim of the transition of news from news to entertainment. Fox and AM talk turned News into "outrage spectacle". Why? Because constant outrage = ratings. You see this now with click-bait headlines "SHOCKING news about ____". The only way to really get people's attention is to hit them in the fight-or-flight brain-stem. As a result, people turn their brains off, grab hold onto a slogan like "Obama is destroying america!" and really there's no way to have any sort of reasonable policy debate. It is basically fundamentalist thinking.
The manufacturing industry of the future will not need oil because data will become the world's largest source of energy, says Alibaba founder and executive chair Jack Ma.
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