RE: Bloodhound LSR back on track

RE: Bloodhound LSR back on track

Author
Discussion

Turbobanana

6,160 posts

200 months

Thursday 11th July 2019
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RumbleOfThunder said:
Turbobanana said:
RacerMike said:
But what would there be for the teachers to inspire children with if there weren't follies like land speed records, space exploration and motorsport?
My son is 11. His aspiration since the age of 8 has been to find a cure for cancer. - is that a folly? He loves old or fast cars (especially Ferraris and CanAm racers) and watched much of the Le Mans 24hr with me, but cannot understand why so much is being spent on a Land Speed Record.
Why should land speed record attempts have to pay for themselves in educational value?
Did I say they have to?

RacerMike

4,192 posts

210 months

Thursday 11th July 2019
quotequote all
Turbobanana said:
RacerMike said:
But what would there be for the teachers to inspire children with if there weren't follies like land speed records, space exploration and motorsport?
My son is 11. His aspiration since the age of 8 has been to find a cure for cancer. - is that a folly? He loves old or fast cars (especially Ferraris and CanAm racers) and watched much of the Le Mans 24hr with me, but cannot understand why so much is being spent on a Land Speed Record.
I think that gets to the crux of this debate though. Many people perceive short term (relatively) and personal things (like cancer) as more important than longer term aspirational and harder to quantify things like space exploration and land speed records which may or may not yield advancements in humanity as a species. We've evolved to be only really consider the short term (there's quite a lot of behavioural research on this), and it's understandable that people perceive obvious and palpable things as being 'worth' spending more time/money/effort on than things that may not directly affect them in obvious ways.

Of course cancer research is important. And it's great that your son has such a drive to be involved. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't encourage other children to also want to do things like work for engineering projects that push the boundaries of science and exploration in other ways.

And if you really want to look at the educational route, look at what happens to many astronauts/rocket scientists/land speed record drivers after they finish their career....they go into teaching and/or lecturing/tv presenting etc. People like Mark Rober (YouTube 'inventor' and ex JPL employee), Brian Cox (Astro Physicist), Tim Peak, Andy Green, and Chris Hadfield are all real inspirations to future generations. It's people like them who really ignite the spark of science, critical thinking and education in kids.

Cambs_Stuart

2,833 posts

83 months

Thursday 11th July 2019
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Interestingly, the Nammo rocket engine they're going to use is potentially the design for the ESA next generation lauchers.

http://www.bloodhoundeducation.com/project/car/eng...

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 12th July 2019
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Best of luck to all - great to see it back on track. Oh, and fk the begrudgers.

wc98

10,334 posts

139 months

Monday 15th July 2019
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tommy1973s said:
Best of luck to all - great to see it back on track. Oh, and fk the begrudgers.
+1. great news it is back on track.

NDT

1,753 posts

262 months

Monday 15th July 2019
quotequote all
RacerMike said:
Turbobanana said:
RacerMike said:
But what would there be for the teachers to inspire children with if there weren't follies like land speed records, space exploration and motorsport?
My son is 11. His aspiration since the age of 8 has been to find a cure for cancer. - is that a folly? He loves old or fast cars (especially Ferraris and CanAm racers) and watched much of the Le Mans 24hr with me, but cannot understand why so much is being spent on a Land Speed Record.
I think that gets to the crux of this debate though. Many people perceive short term (relatively) and personal things (like cancer) as more important than longer term aspirational and harder to quantify things like space exploration and land speed records which may or may not yield advancements in humanity as a species. We've evolved to be only really consider the short term (there's quite a lot of behavioural research on this), and it's understandable that people perceive obvious and palpable things as being 'worth' spending more time/money/effort on than things that may not directly affect them in obvious ways.

Of course cancer research is important. And it's great that your son has such a drive to be involved. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't encourage other children to also want to do things like work for engineering projects that push the boundaries of science and exploration in other ways.

And if you really want to look at the educational route, look at what happens to many astronauts/rocket scientists/land speed record drivers after they finish their career....they go into teaching and/or lecturing/tv presenting etc. People like Mark Rober (YouTube 'inventor' and ex JPL employee), Brian Cox (Astro Physicist), Tim Peak, Andy Green, and Chris Hadfield are all real inspirations to future generations. It's people like them who really ignite the spark of science, critical thinking and education in kids.
The thing is though, this is only an incremental step. Thrust SSC had a big hairy audacious goal - supersonic, on wheels. Bloodhound is just... well, a bit more supersonic plus a bit. If some companies want to sponsor it and can justify that to themselves and their shareholders, then jolly good.
Most other "groundbreaking" endeavours have a very obvious point to them in terms of an end goal or genuinely pushing the frontiers of usable science. Compare it to the following:
Breaking the sound barrier - obvious benefit of flying faster
All airspeed / distance attempts over the last century - see above
The moon landings - obvious...

I wouldn't criticise anyone for getting excited about Bloodhound, a lot of us just don't share their enthusiasm and it's a bit galling to be labelled as some kind of philistine for not getting all revved up about it.

NDT

1,753 posts

262 months

Monday 15th July 2019
quotequote all
it's not as bad as XH558 though - what a load of bullst, pretending that keeping an ancient aircraft aloft was supposed to inspire kids to go into engineering...
Far more honest to just say (in both Bloodhound and XH558's case) - this is loud, it's big, it's powerful and we think it's cool!