I just don’t see any of that leading to a ‘scifi’ image. None of those steps would change the sheer time it takes to get to Mars in a practical way, and that’s just a deal breaker for manned flight.

On the flip side, we have had great advances in technology that makes unmanned science better, which in a way even more reduces the chances of scifi vision of ‘manned’ space flight to far places, because it just doesn’t make sense.

Well, we haven’t sent a crewed mission to the moon in a while, because we don’t really have any particular benefit from it, and even if that had continued, that wouldn’t have fit with the scifi vision of how things should be. A Mars trip is theoretically possible, but that’s a multi-year mission for a single trip. That’s a lot for what would mostly a vanity project of a manned mission compared to sending probes.

On the concept of a Venusian research station, the question would be… why? Staff would be in practical terms in no better position to study Venus than they would from Earth. All they could do would be supervise instruments in ways that could be done remotely.

The point is while advancements are possible, none that would even tickle the more tame sci-fi visions of expansion within the solar system. The larger impediments to a Mars mission are just “why” not technical impediments, unless a technical improvement could cut that trip down by 10-fold, but nothing even vaguely hints at that being a possibility.

I think repeatedly hitting the moon would have had the world shrugging, none of the sci fi was ‘hey we made it to the moon and… stayed there’.

A mission to the moon was a little under 2 weeks, a similar mission to mars would be well over two years. Sure, we could, but even the most adventurous human adventures in history have been measured in months, we’ve never displayed the will to commit to years for what would be a token mission.

Yes, the tech could be improved with more investment, but the sci-fi results of even settling mars is just unreasonably far out.

The rapid progress and then stalling is not caused by lack of investment, it’s the harsh reality of physics.

We cracked how to have machines fly like birds and then it’s low hanging fruit to achieve amazing things in atmosphere.

While exploring that, rocketry makes nearby space possible, and the moon is “right there”.

But then things are exponentially farther away, and many of them bigger gravity wells, making the trips too long and difficult to make two way trips.

In a very very short time we got heavier than air flight, rocketry, fission, mass production, and all sorts of robotics and computing. But reach breakthrough has a point where we scratch our heads trying to do better. A ton has been spent and will continue to be spent trying to crack controlled fusion. Someone that lived through us managing to split an atom for the first time to fairly widespread deployment naturally assumed fusion would be next and maybe not too long after something that would extract energy directly according to Einstein’s most famous formula.

For me, wire breaks happen every couple of months.

Some utility digs into the easement, maybe breaks it then, but maybe somehow nicks it so it corrodes and falls randomly later. Sometimes I’ve no idea how it would have broken after finding the break.

I have 0.2 acres with a Husqvarna auto mower.

Frankly I don’t really “manage” it, it just mows and occasionally I get a notification if it gets stuck or something.

So I haven’t really had reason to care about HA or Internet monitoring of it, though it does have a feature to park off it has internet module and forecast shows rain.

But anyway, mine requires a boundary wire and that breaks and is really annoying. I’d hope a wire free solution works well by now.

Yeah, my parents were about to throw out an oven that would keep shutting off. I pull it away from the wall and boom, wiring diagram. Take out the ohm meter, figure out that the resistance across the temperature probe went to near zero when steam intruded through a gap in the crimp. 5 dollar part and it was good to go for years to come (the new part was crimped in a simpler, more robust way).

Oh we were similarly “rudderless” when a major executive left.

Adding to the amusement of the constant panic of missing leadership, was when someone asked about simply promoting one of the interim executives to full time and just getting on with it. This was in a town hall with the CEO and the interim executive in question and in front of everyone the CEO said simply that the interim executive wasn’t competent enough to do the job.

Yeah was interesting to see Carmack and Romero go different ways.

On the Carmack side you had an excellent technical execution of a fairly bland experience.

On the Romero side you had a very shoddy execution of what could have been an interesting concept… Maybe…

Of course Doom itself was fun, but not exactly made in an era that demanded much in the way of plot. Here you are, you got guns, there’s demons from hell… Go for it. The instruction manual introduction, the titles of the levels, and visual design cues were all that was plot wise.

Trying to have a half life style plot didn’t really fit the franchise. Doom 2016 both had a bit deeper plot than old Doom, but was self aware enough to have doom guy just destroy something to make the exposition go away and get on with what needs to go on.

Yeah, Doom 3 was so mediocre that it pretty much killed the franchise for years.

The game engine enjoyed some popularity, but id didn’t really know how to make a good “game” for that era.

Was the door locked with a red, blue, or yellow key?

Yeah, that explains more big screens for lower income, it doesn’t explain so much why higher income folks would eschew the big screens.

It’s funny when a big exec leaves and other execs are rushing to reassure us they are to to the challenge of dealing with such a key person departing…

We do not care at all. We have zero confidence in any of them and do not care about any of them

Today just got an email to connect with McKinsey about something… My company likes to occasionally piss money away on McKinsey and it always just sucks…

When they want to Netflix and chill, they hire live actors to perform on stage in their house.

Forget using his phone screen, all an important CEO needs is wireless earbuds

So what if I rig my bicycle to be a rail cycle?

You are basically in a moving apartment, with bed, shower, bathroom, fridge, ability to cook…

It’s out of my price range, but I certainly could see the appeal.

The car will be way faster and more open ended in terms of where you start and finish, so it’s far more practical if you just want to get to where you are going.

And sometimes you have techbro CEO who has like a video wall for no particularly good reason.

Boss needs to get a hold of Plaza 1234 right away.