• stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 days ago

    Or what an AI in the 2020s thought people in the 1900s would think life would be like in the year 2000

  • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Now I’m wondering why we don’t attach giant balloons to ships to reduce water resistance by cutting down how much of the ship needs to be underwater. Perhaps it’s because you would need more size for the balloon, and maybe the air resistance and water resistance needs to even out due to physical laws that I’m too lazy to think about?

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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      8 days ago

      Sounds like you’re vaguely describing a ground effect vehicle, basically a plane which coasts along the water. They’re more efficient than actually flying due to exploiting the ground effect on the lift surfaces, but ultimately it’s closer to a plane than a boat

    • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Any amount of water contact introduces a fair amount of drag. There may be an ideal point somewhere in the middle, but I think if you take this to it’s natural conclusion you get a zeppelin.

      I did a little bit of math and I think that to lift the payload capacity (including fuel and crew) of a modern day Panama canal ship you would need about a tenth of the peak U.S. helium reserve (a cube about half a kilometer long on each edge, about 1.3x longer than the long dimension of the ship)

      I don’t think you’d get the best fuel efficiency going upwind lol

      Anything smaller would come with proportionally less downsides and at least proportionally less benefits. I doubt it could ever be a net positive in any useful metric.

      • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        Hydrogen for sure. Partial lift for a boat has a lot of applications. Much more cargo than an airship, with no complications in flying empty. A fairly flat triangular “balloon” can be used as a solar platform, a sail, and be put in neutral wind mode down to the deck.

    • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      The boat already floats. What is the point of making it lighter? Boats are handy for transporting extreme weights because water weighs more than air.

      If it should fly then get a Zepplin

    • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 days ago

      The rich do have flying cars. They just call them private jets. The rich own mansions (huge houses) all over the world, private islands, mega yachts that contain smaller yachts, their own submarines, and now they even have their own rocket ships

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      They’re on a carriage that’s like pontooned at the bottom, being pulled by the horse and driver who each have their own balloons.

      edit oh wait d’you mean the ones in the back right my bad dk about them

      • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Back right?

        I see two in the back left and two more in the back middle without balloons. The two in the back right are the carriage passengers.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      And you don’t have an issue with the carriage, with three people on it, where the only balloon is on the horse?

      Whoever made this was an artist and sucked at physics

      • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
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        9 days ago

        The carriage could be on a barge and is just being pulled by the horse. How is the horse getting traction? And why is that man using a cane on water! The small balloons could just be artistic license for the drawing.

    • angrystego@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I’d be ok with splashing. I want this!

      Edit: Perhaps the shoes have keels or fins at the bottom and they use a skating-like motion to move around.

  • MNByChoice@midwest.social
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    9 days ago

    I love that the balloons are far too small. Like they didn’t understand the elements and buoyancy well enough to know the balloons have to be much larger. Not like we have negative mass particles.

    • sroos@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      Well, I guess they figured it’d take another 100 years to calculate that correctly, so they just winged it for the picture.

    • Noobnarski@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I’m pretty sure scientists back then could have told you that these balloons are too small. The person(s) who drew that picture most likely wasn’t a scientist, which is why it looks how it looks.

    • wizzor@sopuli.xyz
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      9 days ago

      Obviously they were assuming balloons were filled with supervacuum. We have had 100 years and not invented even that.

      Truly we have failed our ancestors.

          • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Well, air weighs a little bit more than 1 kilogram per cubic meter, and those balloons look a little bit smaller than a cubic meter

            • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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              8 days ago

              What about hydrogen plasma as hot as the surface of the sun, contained in a weightless force field? The 'balloon is simply a decorative wrapper? Remember, it’s the future year 2025!

  • nectar45@lemmy.zip
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    9 days ago

    I actually went to that timeline! And its more complex than you think because well yes, there technology is far cooler and more whimsical, abd yes there world is more socialistic, has more free time, better prices and less of a late stage capitalism nightmare…

    But you should just see how many racial slurs those people used just this morning and half of those women cant vote and have polio.

    Also I am pretty sure left-handed people got hunted to extinction for some reason

    Timeline hopping is a mixed bag

        • nectar45@lemmy.zip
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          9 days ago

          Yeah I will NOT be staying here, the fallout-like timeline was better which is saying something

      • nectar45@lemmy.zip
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        9 days ago

        Well I went to a timeline where Reddit managed to organize a nuclear attack against Russia and it backfired HARD, a timeline where we never moved on from the 90s which sounds awesome and it was but the uncriticized ultra-consumption of those times eventually laid waste to the world, a world where JK Rowling succeded at making TERFs the mainstream feminism wave, a timeline where X is the ONLY major website left in the world and its as awful as it sounds, a timeline where being a CIS man was illegal, a timeline where Musk is president, a timeline where pernanently horny sentient sex-robots rule over humanity and a timeline where the soviet union defeated the United States during the cold war so “President” Putin is the most powerful man in the world.

        So yeah…I think there is a problem with my dimensional hopper, it only sends me to “dark” timelines