TYPE I / COMPLETELY FAIRED NOSE, COCKPIT ABOVE MAIN FLOOR.
TYPE II / COMPLETELY FAIRED NOSE, COCKPIT BELOW MAIN FLOOR.
TYPE III / DUAL “BUG-EYE” TYPE.
TYPE IV / SINGLE WIDE “BUG-EYE”
TYPE V / CONVENTIONAL “VEE” WINDSHIELD.
TYPE VI / FINAL SINGLE CURVATURE CONICAL TYPE NOW USED.
ABOVE: A post-war document shows the different nose and windscreen designs considered for the Constellation. HInts of the Boeing 307, B-29 and the Douglas “Mixmaster” can be seen. The ‘Type VI’ design that was eventually chosen was the most practical, but not the best for visibility. John Stroud Collection/The Aviation Picture Library.
@nyrath
it has a distinctly retro look to it, but it just seems like it’s aerodynamically superior and would give better visibility—so there’s got to be a reason it was abandoned, right?
(I hate having no explanation for something...) @cjshearwood
Y'know...I really used to think that the weight of being wrong in light of bulletproof evidence would change people's minds about pretty much anything.
It doesn't. It really doesn't.
And I think that's because on some level people identify so deeply with the things that they belive that to change their mind in light of new evidence feels like some sort of betrayal instead of a logical step.
@ttpphd
We so easily forget, too, that nonsense like scientific racism, nationalism, social darwinism, etc., 100% won out in the marketplace of ideas back in the day—and we are still dealing with the fallout. @Adam_Cadmon1
Just accidentally read a whole mess of replies to a couple bad posts, in agreement with/filling in the thesis of the bad posts, and hoo boy there are some bad takes on here
@elysegrasso
Something I’m never quite sure how to handle, if writing in a tight third-person with only one POV character, is how to describe that MC’s appearance—unless there are noteworthy things that the character is notably either vain or insecure about, such that it would show up in their inner voice.
Author says: "Architect of Worlds is what happens when the guy who wrote three different solar system/planetary generation systems for GURPS is told he doesn't have a word count and spends 7 years tracking every paper on exoplanet systems he can find."
[ I have a copy and am impressed by the detail. More importantly author includes citations of original scientific papers ]
@nyrath
It’s hands-down the best I’ve seen. I don’t think you can do much better without running fairly advanced simulations, or at least doing math that’s more complicated than will fit in a book like this.
Google translate between Icelandic and English has gone from 75% useful, 25% laughable nonsense to mostly unusable in the space of a year. You used to be able to use it effectively as a dictionary. Enter a single word and you'd get the most common dictionary translation
I need some new science fiction to read, who has some suggestions? I don't like military sci-fi. For reference, my favorite series is the Expanse, I also enjoyed Scalzi's Collapsing Empire, I love Robert Charles Wilson's books. I mostly enjoy space operas and unique stories about technology, for example I really liked the recent book Mountain in the Sea about AI and intelligent octopus. Suggestions from the awesome Bookstodon community? @bookstodon#Bookstodon#Scifi#ScienceFiction
@Jennifer
If you enjoy space opera, then I have to suggest Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice books if you haven’t read them yet. The focus is more on culture (and language and gender) than on tech as such, but there’s some really interesting tech stuff as well (and I’ll be a bit vague because the start of the first book is much cooler if you don’t know where she’s going with things). @bookstodon
@Jennifer
(incidentally, I really don’t think of Ancillary Justice as military SF, but like the Expanse there’s a lot of armed conflict going on and ex-military characters...) @bookstodon
@Jennifer
AnnaLinden Weller, who write it under her penname Arkady Martine, is trained as a Byzantine historian, and I think it shows in how she the thinks about culture and empire... @Cara@bookstodon