Your video, HOW TO LAND ON THE MOON - Smarter Every Day 250, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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Oh yes I take ITER as good news, but it still leaves us 20 - 40 years from a... well I wanted to write a commercial fusion plant, however that might be a trifle optimistic.

Lets say we are at best 20-40 years from a functional prototype of a commercialy viable plant.

ITER is very much a test, any way you bend it. DEMO is waiting for ITERs outcome. Of course ITER will work, tokamaks have operated since the 1960s, that is like claiming a rocket will almost certainly fly. Yet we still stand in awe when it does.

It took 50 years from Einsteins nearly blind-guess prediction of a physical phenomenon to fission power plants. 50 years from the Orvilles hops to jet passenger planes. 58 years from Ciolkovskys crazy drawings to a man in space. In my grandfathers lifetime we went from horse-drawn carriages to the SR-71.
In my lifetime we have gone from landing on the moon to almost maybe landing there again some time.

We are slowing down or the going is getting more difficult.

Yeah, any type of cherry picking in studies irks me badly. For instance, I recently got into an internet argument with one of the people who try to claim we didn't land on the moon.

They were using the results of a single study that tentatively said the Van Allen radiation outside of LEO possibly causes higher rates of cardio-vascular disease in astronauts. I then read the study and found out they picked 7 out of the 13 deceased astronauts vs a sample of 100 LEO astronauts, plus the general public's rates of CVD. That set off my alarm bells, so I then looked at the ages the people died at and their actual cause of death on the internet.

Three of the astronauts died at 56, 61, and 61. So basically about a decade early. The other 4 died in their 80's, basically a decade later than average. Out of those 4, they were suffering other conditions and illnesses that might have influenced the final cardiac failure. Sadly no one in the scientific community seems willing to challenge the study, so it stays valid, and the news media posted great big headlines about it when it came out.

Like I told the person I was arguing with, the median age of death of lunar astronauts is 87, even including the three that died early. Even if Van Allen radiation increases CVD likelihood, living to 80 something is pretty damn spectacular, so it really doesn't matter if you die from CVD, cancer, or a stroke.

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

Your video, The font that escaped the Nazis and landed on the moon., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I was 14 when they landed on the moon. I remember watching it live on TV. I was fascinated by the space program and I still am. I eventually moved from NJ to Cape Canaveral in 1980. Got see all but 5 space shuttle launches in person, plus many rocket launches. It was a great time.

I think these so-called unstoppable warlords that siphon off our aid is an even bigger myth. The United States of America defeated the British Empire, invaded Nazi Europe, dropped a nuclear fucking bomb on Axis Japan, sacrificed thousands of lives in Vietnam, stood head to head against the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis, landed on the moon, funded Nicaraguan revolutionaries using money from arms sales to Iran, assassinated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet we can't deal with warlords and civil wars in Africa where (at least with Rwandan civil war) weaponry is in the form of crate after crate of machetes made in China?

If all of those things are possible for the biggest super power in the world, how is it not possible to stop these warlords from siphoning our aid?

Lies.

We don't care so nothing of real consequence happens. All of those above events have one thing in common: our own goddamn self interest.

Everything sucks. May god have mercy on everyone's soul.

Yeah, I've heard this analogy about how we might be insignificant compared to god/aliens/whatever, and it is complete and utter crap.

A piece of clay cannot reason. It has no concept of self, it has not figured out even the most basic mathematical or physical principles, and we have no way of communicating with it.

Humans have achieved all those things. As Eddie Izzard said "When you [Americans] landed on the moon, that was the point when God should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures and you put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, then you fucking turn up and say, ‘Well done.’ It’s just a polite thing to do."

I'm willing to admit that there's a possibility we are just infants in our understanding of the universe. In fact, I hope that is the case, although I fear we've actually covered a lot of the basics and there may not be anything truly life-changing left to discover (i.e. it's almost certain we will never find a "warp drive").

Either way, a superior being should be able to communicate with us in a meaningful manner. Even if it is like talking to a particularly stupid child for them, *we* still manage it. We communicate with beings of lesser intelligence all the time (small children, animals, republicans).

If we are so far below god that it is unable to make us understand him, then that's his failing, not ours.

Too bad we never landed on the moon and this is just another hoax!!1!

Only 43 years after landing on the moon.

I simply don't have the words to express how stupid people are that say we never landed on the moon I mean seriously WTF is wrong with you people. I mean the evidence is still freakin' up there just look for yourself.
http://gizmodo.com/5837658/new-detailed-images-show-lunar-landing-sites-at-higher-resolution/gallery/1
>> ^spoco2:

>> ^poolcleaner:
Pre-information age.

And unfortunately post information age

What.. no first man landing on the moon or moon walk.. I could not believe at the time that we were actually going to see this live from the freakin' MOON!!! And it's not on the list.. this should be #1 of all time!

He should start with how the shadow angles show we didn't land on the moon.

Everything needs to be imagined before it can become reality, and these ideas are actually way beyond science fiction even now because they are being pursued actively with existing technology and sound scientific principles.

Surely it will be very difficult, but before dismissing these ideas, consider how much has changed in the last 100 years. Someone born in 1898 who lived 100 years would have gone from a pre-lightbulb world to seeing it in widespread use, survived two world wars, seen the development of air travel, radar, the harnessing of nuclear power, landing on the MOON (!!), regular travel to outer space via the space shuttle, the building of several space stations, the development of every modern cancer therapy, cloning, sequencing of the human genome, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Ultrasound, Xray tomography, computers going from nothing to ubiquitous use, the explosion of the internet, cell phones, and a kajillion other major advances I don't have time to list right now.

If nothing else, this series of videos serves to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers, but all indications are that the RATE of change is INCREASING. Why? Because better technology helps us do more, FASTER. Not to mention there are MORE humans able to do MORE, FASTER, thanks to new technology.

I could easily see this technology in use in 40 years, and while I wouldn't invest as a venture capitalist at this point, research funding agencies are wise to fund this research as it will spur advancements in material science, electronics, computers & AI, and engineering even if we don't have a 3D Sex Bot by 2050.

good to see this finally sift. Didn't do so well the last time.