BFF Census Poll

[norseman]

4 hours ago, WSA said:

I think we get carried away with our own techno-grandiosity.

 

A cell phone is still, basically, a phone. You dial a number and somebody picks it up and talks to you.

 

It is the same digital device we've know about for a long time, just made really small, and faster. A refinement, not a new technology. It is a very small television...a much better version of a cathode ray display, but the same 2-D picture nonetheless.

 

The idea of the internet is as old as telegraph wires and Thomas Edison's Repeater, only now it is packet switching, microwaves and fiber. Still, just a pipe, with capacity/bandwidth limitations, hardware dependent and prone to entropic gremlins.

 

Your cell phone key pad is basically an Underwood. Heck, there is a setting that even makes it click like one.

 

 Most every car on the road today, explosions in a cylinder pushing a piston still. EVs? How long have THEY been around? A century?

 

All of these wonderful things were invented years ago, sometimes decades ago. We just are refining them. This process should not be confused with a truly new technology that would have the ability to truly transform human life.  I'm not talking about Apple's eventual 30.00 iPhone.   What would be a technology that would truly be a game-changer? The same ones that have been ten years in the future for the last 50 years. Fusion or any other new energy source tops the list, but don't hold your breath.  

 

And I think people take technology for granted BIG TIME.

 

A cell phone is anything but “just” a phone in the way Bell understood it. Which was two handset wired together with a copper wire. His contraption had more in common with smoke signals than a modern cell phone.

 

The object pictured is Pluto. And while we have been taking photographs since the Civil war? That is about where the similarities end.

New Horizon is NOT just a camera either.... 

 

Beaming photographs 4.6 BILLION miles......no copper wire required. What you call refinement? I call invention!

 

Anyhow we are way way off topic! Ill leave it alone.

 

 

 

[Twist]

I’m glad many folks from the older generations had bigger dreams and more ambition than some folks on here!  

 

I also hope that my generation and future generations continue to push the envelope and not sit back on their heels because it sounds hard or impossible.    

 

 

 Here’s to the Wright brothers, the Aldrins, the Glenn’s, and Musks of the world.   

 

[WSA]

Hunster, yes! Sasquatch funding instead of Mars missions! I knew there was an OT point to all of this discussion.

 

I think the baby boomers (and I am card-carrying) were sold the myth of progress harder than any others. I grew up with the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions, and we never doubted it was one stepping stone to the another, and BAM-O! Alpha Centauri. Dreams die hard, I get that.  There is a lot of value in having your reach exceed your grasp, I get that too.  

 

And saying we are already "there" because we hurled a really cool transmitter out into interstellar space? Well, that is sort of like me saying I've flown because I fired a round up into the sky. It just ain't the same thing, and doing one is no way  close to  the idea of even interplanetary space, let alone building and manning a starship.

 

So Gene Rodenberry predicted pocket communicators and unfortunate lycra spandex clothing? I'm assuming this means the warp-drive and tele-transporter are in development as we speak?  Umm, no.  Nor will they be. Unfortunately, there are those who see technology like that, despite the known laws of physics, will be happening soon.  Stick to BF studies, and terrestrial issues, I'd tell them. That is where the real mind-blowing developments will happen. 

  

Edited September 27, 2018 by WSA

[Huntster]

32 minutes ago, WSA said:

........And saying we are already "there" because we hurled a really cool transmitter out into interstellar space? ........

 

Voyager 1 (or “Vger”, for you Trekkies out there) is the farthest away man made object in history. It was launched in 1977, and took 35 years to leave the solar system. 

 

Does anybody here really expect to be around 550 billion years from now when it gets to the next station?

 

Edited September 27, 2018 by gigantor
Sorry. No pics in this thread. It changes the slider image....

[gigantor]

Please do not post pictures in this thread. It changes the slider image.

[Huntster]

Whoops.......

[norseman]

24 minutes ago, gigantor said:

Please do not post pictures in this thread. It changes the slider image.

 

Oh man! Pluto is red, white and blue! Merica!

[NatFoot]

So many science deniers who want science to get involved in the hunt for BF.

[Huntster]

8 minutes ago, NatFoot said:

So many science deniers who want science to get involved in the hunt for BF.

 

Actually, it’s not them I want. It’s the money they get from us I want back for sasquatch research.

[Twist]

^^^ more advances in space exploration in 50 yrs than there is in BF research since the PGF!  Lol

[Huntster]

28 minutes ago, Twist said:

^^^ more advances in space exploration in 50 yrs than there is in BF research since the PGF!  Lol

 

No kidding? How many $ billions in tax dollars have been spent on “space exploration”? Over $601 billion.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

 

How much did USFS, USFWS, and/or California FW spend investigating the PG film? $0. Not a single dime. Moreover, their silence was and remains deafening.

 

Okay, divide $601 billion by 50 ( for each year from 1968-2018, which is the history of our space program, unadjusted for but including ingpflation during those years); an average of $12 billion per year. Give sasquatchery 1/2 of 1 percent of just one year’s average space cost to create a ready response research effort to investigate the next several good reports: $ 60 mllion. 

 

Hell, for a scant $60 million, we can fund hominid searches around the globe for eons.......

 

 

Edited September 27, 2018 by Huntster

[Will]

The younger generation proving itself once again! Lol

 

We are so screwed!

 

 

[Squatchy McSquatch]

37 minutes ago, Huntster said:

 

No kidding? How many $ billions in tax dollars have been spent on “space exploration”? Over $601 billion.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

 

How much did USFS, USFWS, and/or California FW spend investigating the PG film? $0. Not a single dime. Moreover, their silence was and remains deafening.

 

Okay, divide $601 billion by 50 ( for each year from 1968-2018, which is the history of our space program, unadjusted for but including ingpflation during those years); an average of $12 billion per year. Give sasquatchery 1/2 of 1 percent of just one year’s average space cost to create a ready response research effort to investigate the next several good reports: $ 60 mllion. 

 

Hell, for a scant $60 million, we can fund hominid searches around the globe for eons.......

 

 

 

For a scant $60 million you still won't find Bigfoot. Pretty sure you know this, deep down inside...

 

Fine. I'm a scofftic lol

[Huntster]

1 minute ago, Squatchy McSquatch said:

For a scant $60 million you still won't find Bigfoot. Pretty sure you know this, deep down inside.......

 

Actually, I don’t know, but my bet is that for $60 million, I could orchestrate it myself within 10 years.

 

........Fine. I'm a scofftic lol

 

Your word, not mine. I never really thought that “scofftic” was accurately descriptive enough. I prefer “denialist”. 

 

And yeah, that’s what you are, and we both know that deep down inside.

[Catmandoo]

I am not a science denier. I use science everyday. As a baby boomer, I have heard and read a lot of BS over the years, Pledges, promises, plans.  Contrary to what some believe, we have not gone from "Cave to Cosmos". We have gone from 'Cave to Man Cave' ( Febreeze now more than ever ).  There is no money in Sasquatch. Simple. The team approach does not work. Sasquatch hate us and avoid us. We zig, they zag.

Progress is a grey area. Progress is suppressed in the US over profit. In 1903, the Ford Model A could top out at 45mph. 1908 and the Ford Model T could get 25 miles per gallon. The 2nd generation Model A in 1927 could get over 40 miles per gallon and do about 60mph. It had a 4 cyl., L-head engine and size of 200 in³.  So where is the progress in something as common as our motor vehicles? No progress, only profits.

 

Norseman, are you sure that is an image of Pluto? It is not an 'in camera' image. It is streaming ones and zeros through space and assembled on earth by signal processing. It is a pretty image, with adjusted texture and color for a pleasant presentation on a graphic user interface---GUI. Voyager 1 and voyager 2 have done well. JPL and NASA are great at sending probes on 'fly-by' missions. VGER ( Go VGER ) and Voyager 2 are not 'landers'. Landing on an inhospitable planet is costly and dangerous. Look at the ratio of crashes to landings on the Moon and Mars. NASA knows how to land on Mars now. Robotic equipment is the least costly and safest to fly through space and put on a rock.

 

More on signal processing. The scans for water beneath the ice caps on Mars had some erratic readings.  Pesky signal processing here on Earth. Similar to Greenland and Antarctica, there are lake(s) under the Martian polar ice caps. Probably salty. If you want to go to Mars, go to the ice caps. Lake Barsoom could be fun. Keep in mind that the temperature at the dirt-ice interface is warmer. Elon Musk said that the first group travelling to Mars should be prepared to die. Refund on the round trip ticket? The gravity is a lot lower than Earth's. Who do you send? Golfers! With the lower gravity and thin atmosphere, they could hit the ball for a mile  ( kilometer ). Monitor the news. I think that the SEC wants to send Musk to Mars.

 

The Star Trek analogies are getting old. In the 23rd century, they had silver painted 55 gallon barrels in the cargo bay. Control room was push buttons, sliders, toggles and a 'Hurst' shifter' to jump to warp. In the original 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' movie, Klaatu & Gort waved their hands over proximity sensors for function control. Cost effective set construction. When the first episode of Star Trek aired, Gene Roddenberry's father went up and down his neighborhood and apologized to his neighbors. I wonder if he used the sidewalks or walked across the lawns? The new Star Trek franchise pulled in something from the past. The noise from Kirk's motorcycle when he is in Iowa travelling to the shuttle for new recruits, is the noise of George Jetson's  vehicle. Had enough of the Hollywood 'future-isms'?

 

Artificial Intelligence. I have been using AI for a long time................whenever I put my key in the front door........................