u/gwenbeth

I do have a question on costs. How do the costs change if you can't charge at home (like if you live in an apartment) and have to pay for charging.

Here in Dallas we already have most of the people living in larger houses away from downtown. And house prices are expensive everywhere.

Now personally I don't think we will have anything that is close to a flying car in the near future. Now flying car is a somewhat vague term but I think it's main idea is something that can fly, can fit in a car parking space or in a garage, and is more car like than airplane like in terms of where you can operate it from , costs, and training requirements. Now here in the United States we do have a class of cheap airplanes that you can legally fly without a license, ultralights. But in a lot of ways they are worse than cars: speed is limited to about 60mph which is slower than the speed limit on the highways. They can only operate in uncontrolled airspace. They have to be flown vfr in the day only. And they can't have passengers. So even if I had one that I could roll out of the garage and take off vertically I would be limited in when and where I could fly it, and there wouldn't be much room if any for groceries.

Now that I think they did go even faster as luggage on a jet plane back in March.

The only way my gliders will go 40m/s is in the back of my mini. My flight speeds probably top out at more like 10m/s.

Oh good.

I'd be tempted to cover the wing before glueing it on

Usually I can't hear mine. And at 200m you want hear much at all. Maybe on launch there might be some noise but not much.

I would do the conversion after shooting. Back in the olden days photographers would use color filters on b&w film to change how different colors appeared on the film. A green filter would make the field very light and reds and blues dark. But a magenta filter would make the field dark and reds and blues light. This required being prepared and knowing how the filters would effect the photos. If you do the conversion after shooting then you can fiddle with how you mix the red green and blue into b&w and get the contrast you want. Once you do this for one image it would be easy to apply this in bulk.

Also wilderness search and rescue, If someone is in thick forest you could fly supplies to the nearest clearing and then drive them over to the person needing help. Another use might be for tracking wildlife. A trail cam could be placed some where that is too hard to get to by foot, and is in too much vegetation to land.

Almost all sci-fi adds in some tech/science we don't have right now. The difference is in how much and how they use it. In Expanse they are given a great drive and that is pretty much it (at least to start with) and that drive still has its limitations. Now on the other hand Star Trek has tonnes of magic tech, but the real difference is in how they use it. There are a lot of times where they solve problems with just some one off tech magic and then you never hear about that again.

But I think the biggest difference is in how we the audience react to it. Do we walk away thinking everything was completely reasonable, or do we come away wondering "if they can do A and B, then why isn't anyone doing things X and Y?" A good example is in Star Trek might be why don't we see a lot of teleporting explosives into ships once the shields are down.

Part of the problem is what type of compatibility do you need. If you just need to read documents other people made, LibreOffice and its kin will work just fine. If you just need to type up simple documents or presentations, again just fine. If you are needing to collaborate with a dozen people all making changes to the same very complicate word document where someone managed to get the auto section numbering working perfectly, someone else needs to answer that question.

If you have a function that gets passed an array and a size (like strn* functions) then use size_t. But if you have an array where the size is #define ed to only 25 items, just go ahead and use an int .

Wichita mountains near Lawton, OK, really good hiking around there and a surprisingly pretty area. Also we saw bison when we were there.

Im not sure what sense of "drone" you are using here, but for fixed wing planes its easy to get propellor driven ones over 350kph. Look up pylon racers.

It looks like it's 4 separate pieces.

Here is a link to some kits, https://jhaerospace.com/product-category/free-flight-kits/outdoor-gliders/

The real problem here is you are taking on too many things you don't know how to do. Building a plane, programming and wiring up a flight controller, etc

Part of photography is about the equipment, focal lengths, depth of field, exposure, etc. And having a good camera will help you learn that. But the other part is what you take a picture of. That is what you can learn using your phone.

And don't knock camera phones these days. One of the last times I used my old Canon 450D was taking it in a cave. My phone was doing so much better in the low light than my dslr.

There have been very few space craft that were not single use. Most space craft are designed to be highly reliable without repairs (like satellites and probes and such) or are designed to work very well only once (expendable rocket parts). The only repairability consideration is for needing to be able to fix something before flight.

I think a more interesting question is how to you design for something like a mars base. You will have people there so repairability is a must. But unlike with airplanes where a part could reach you in days, being on mars puts you at end of a two year long logistics chain. How do you design for maximum maintainability while minimizing mass?

The interesting thing about helium is that because almost all of it on earth is produced by radioactive decay, helium had the newest atoms you can buy in a store. The only way to buy newer atoms is to get a smoke detector with americium.

yes, rocket launch gliders are a thing. One issue though is that you want a slower burning motor than for a typical rocket, and that might be harder to find.

My walk around setup is usually just my fujifilm x-t30 and a 35mm prime and no battery. Its small enough to throw in my purse. For other things (like hiking) I might just take my 2 zooms.

The real question is are you going places to do photography or are you going there for other reasons and the photos are a side quest?

eventually someone would do thing that would lead to figuring out flight. like throwing a playing card, swinging around a sheet of cardboard. or dropping a comb into a bathtub (I once dropped an ace rubber comb into some water and it glided through the water)

Also despite the fact that evolution is chronically drunk, its manage to make flying or gliding at least 10 times (insects, birds, pterosaurs, bats, flying squirrels, sugar gliders, gliding lizards that spread open their ribs, gliding snakes, flying fish, maple seeds)

Get a trainer first. Learn to fly. Use a simulator. This will be cheaper in the long run. Before you design your own plane, get good at building.

I do sometimes miss tcl. I could do some interesting things like redefining built in parts of the language like 'proc' or 'return'