>>As in the translation from sail to steam, and the development of the battleship ending with the likes of the Missouri. People do have a magical notion of physics, but we are still building on the physics of a hundred years ago.
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Yes we are, but you can see other comments on the downsides.
Gravity is 32 f/s^2 — until about 100 years ago, it was impossible to overcome things like friction, aerodynamics, etc.
Look at the SR-71. Given current knowledge of physics and engineering, there will never be a better plane. It exactly balanced all the known forces on a razor’s edge.
I am not saying there won’t be something better someday. I am saying that we pushed the envelope as close to the edge that we need a new fundamental change to overcome the diminishing returns level we have hit.
But I agree that a lot of it is will. We sent men to the moon using 1/1000 of the computing power in your smartphone. Now, we walk away from space travel saying “it is too hard.”
I am giving credit where credit is due and pointing out the distance between, say, a B-24 and a B-52.
But it frustrates me as well that we have stopped pushing (see the political destruction of the F-35 and the political knife in the back of the F-22).
War gives urgency to things. The story of the B-29 is instructive. It went to drawing board to operational in about five years. A light year ahead of the B-17. Much the same for the P.51. The Germans leap=frogged all this with the jet. Thank God that Hitler rushed the invasion of the Soviet Union. With two more years to build up and improve his arsenal, I am pretty sure that Goering would have had had operational jets in the skies. We would have still be fighting that war in 1950.