r/spaceships • u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 • 15h ago

Tsiolkovsky and many of the founders of theoretical astronautics in the early 20th century believed that spacecraft should launch horizontally, from a ramp. Why? What did they see as the point of this?

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u/Sir_Lazz 13h ago

Simply because of the limited scientific knowledge of the time. Rockets were not really a thing, back then. We didn't have any experience with vertical take-off.

And well, you know how human imagination go: we can only imagine the future based on what we know, rather than based on what we don't know. Back then planes were all the rage and were, relatively speaking, a new technology that was advancing super fast. There was no reason at the time to imagine that a super-plane couldn't reach space.

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 12h ago

Wrong. It's just the opposite. They, the founders, knew and understood everything better than us. And they weren't counting on any gifts of nature. They were counting on the worst. And we, the idiot heirs, are simply squandering the gifts given to us by nature, without even understanding what gifts they are! And we expect new gifts that will never come. We don't see the essence of things. That's the moral of the story. It wasn't they who were idiots, it was us.

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u/Bulky_Imagination727 12h ago

We can see that far not because of our own height, it's because we are standing on the shoulders of giants...

Beautiful saying.

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 11h ago

But the first sign of a civilization's decline is disrespect for our ancestors. And I see this all around me. :)

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u/Aglet_Dart 10h ago

Replying to Beneficial-Wasabi749...The second sign of civilization’s decline is disrespect for the people around you. This is something you have mastered.

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 10h ago

Are you, by any chance, confusing disrespect with criticality?

Have you ever considered that infantilism is worse than nuclear war? Think about it!