Here's the actual paper by Admiral Melville, USN.[1] Melville was a naval steam engineer, the head of steam engineering in the Navy, and was responsible for many innovations in naval propulsion. There's a building at Annapolis named after him, and a statue. Not a Luddite at all.
So where did he go wrong?
First, he discusses airships. Balloons at low pressures, which maximize lift, are prone to collapse from wind gusts, he says. He dismisses rigid airships as too heavy. Writing that in 1903 is embarrassing. Count von Zeppelin had flown a prototype three years previous (it crashed), and by 1906 had a Zeppelin that worked. Within 20 years, the US Navy was a major operator of rigid airships.
For heavier than air craft, he writes: The step from the largest flying creature evolved by nature to the smallest flying machine that will meet the wants of man is, therefore, a very long one. To span that step man has, to help him, only a few mechanical contrivances and the superior strength of steel. Almost every other condition is set against him.
The first all metal airplane, the Junkers J-1 (1915), was all steel. It did fly, but was too heavy to perform well. By 1918, duralumin, an aluminum alloy, had been perfected.
Nobody did an all-steel aircraft again until the 1950s, with jet engines.
So he missed that substantial weight reduction was possible. He was familiar with steam-powered ship systems, where everything is big and heavy.
Any estimate that extrapolates known quantities of mechanisms is bound to be conservative leaving out the unlisted and unimagined changes that will dominate the needed effects.
Not necessarily. Rockets are still bound by the tyranny of the rocket equation. Rockets have only improved slightly since the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle, both designed over half a century ago. Chemical fuels maxed out a long time ago. Fission was too risky. Fusion is still stuck. Antigravity, which was seriously discussed in the 1950s, went nowhere.
Interesting they wrote 'aeroplane' there, when and why did Americans start using 'airplane' instead I wonder? Hadn't really thought about it but I suppose I assumed the difference had always existed, like 'cell' vs. 'mobile' phones say.
NYT search has 29 results for "aeroplane" between Jan 1, 1890 and Jan 1, 1903.
> TO FLY FROM PIKE'S PEAK.; W.F. Felts Tries His New Aeroplane at Different Altitudes. [Aug. 4, 1897] (followed soon by SNOWSTORM ON PIKE'S PEAK.; W. B. Felts Did Not Attempt His Aeroplane Flight Yesterday.)
If I redo the search with "airplane" then none of the 10 hits seem relevant. They deal with horse racing. (?!)
Google n-grams, with the American English corpus, shows "airplane" didn't become popular until about 1913, overtaking "aeroplane" within about 5 years.
This reminds me of the current state of fusion power generation, self driving, and AGI,.. currently we see a constant flood of hype articles claiming they are nearly here, as well as cautionary articles suggesting we are decades away.
Yes, it really isn’t difficult to find someone to take either side of a claim. That happens every day.
During the Supercollider vs Hubble debate, where the US government would only pay for one, I remember reading how unimportant Hubble would be.
As for the race to the moon, I’m not sure where that stands as an investment. I’m certainly glad we did it because we still wouldn’t have done it. However, spending that large sum over a decade (2% of government spending a year?) is usually impossible to justify.
We can’t say, for example, “Before this decade is out we will… [insert bold goal]”
But hey, even if that goal was to cure cancer(s), it wouldn’t be inspiring enough and most would say it’s impossible. In the end, we’d have to settle for simply cutting the numbers of deaths dramatically
This, along with autonomous vehicles and EVs reminds me of the theological perspective "God of the Gaps": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps It's essentially that as science progresses, God is responsible for only the bits we can't explain (e.g.: quantum mechanics today)
There is always some impossible chasm that we can't cross when it comes to new technology. For EVs for a long time it was that they were too slow, that batteries couldn't get enough range, that they were way too expensive. Now it's that we're running out of lithium and the electrical grid can't take it.
I think the lesson is that there are always people arguing new technology is impossible. That doesn't necessarily mean the tech will work out, just that there will be people saying that it won't.
It should be noted that Ford very likely never said that. It's dubiously used as a justification for PMs to ignore customer feedback at poorly run tech companies.
Pro tip: now use this info as a counter argument for things that will actually take tons of time or are totally impractical (bonus points if your claims are equivalent to "man's ingenuity can do anything" or invoke things like Alcubierre engines).
So where did he go wrong?
First, he discusses airships. Balloons at low pressures, which maximize lift, are prone to collapse from wind gusts, he says. He dismisses rigid airships as too heavy. Writing that in 1903 is embarrassing. Count von Zeppelin had flown a prototype three years previous (it crashed), and by 1906 had a Zeppelin that worked. Within 20 years, the US Navy was a major operator of rigid airships.
For heavier than air craft, he writes: The step from the largest flying creature evolved by nature to the smallest flying machine that will meet the wants of man is, therefore, a very long one. To span that step man has, to help him, only a few mechanical contrivances and the superior strength of steel. Almost every other condition is set against him.
The first all metal airplane, the Junkers J-1 (1915), was all steel. It did fly, but was too heavy to perform well. By 1918, duralumin, an aluminum alloy, had been perfected. Nobody did an all-steel aircraft again until the 1950s, with jet engines.
So he missed that substantial weight reduction was possible. He was familiar with steam-powered ship systems, where everything is big and heavy.
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25105260.pdf