I've read stories about some ancient Chinese constructing kites large enough to carry a man, to be used during wars, or as a form of execution. I suppose we must only count times where they sent a man into the air with the intention of bringing him back down alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite
Assuming they don't fall off a cliff, they're never that far above earth's surface, if you take the mountain's surface as being part of the earth's surface.
So looks like catapults were only invented in the late 1600s and since about the year 2000 we stopped flying with airplanes or used space rockets for inter-earth travel 🤔
And although I will forever regret that Apollo didn't proceed, I now believe the fantasy of sending humans into deep space is foolhardy. Robotic space exploration offers a thousand times more bang for the buck.
On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters (April 19, 1949 – October 6, 1993) made a 45-minute flight in a homemade aerostat made of an ordinary lawn chair and 42 helium-filled weather balloons.[2] The aircraft rose to an altitude of about 16,000 feet (4,900 m) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry_flight
They did have a computer, just not a very powerful one. We had commercially available ($100) four function calculators in 1970, so I'm sure NASA had something like that before we did.
My dad worked for NASA. They rented time from IBM- there were punch cards. They had to be in order. It was literally a like Manila colored cards with red printing on them. In stacks, of cards 3 inches by about 7 inches. They had holes punched in them. I knocked over a stack once. Dad was pissed! 😂
In 1969-73 we learned to write Fortran code using punch cards. We typed the code onto punch cards. We put our cards into a stack at the computer lab, and waited an hour for it to run. My report: "error card 3" and try again. Next time: "error card 12" and so on until it finally ran.
I believe him to be the most courageous man in history. A few tried the jump before him but no one has tried since and definitely not from that altitude. There should be a holiday in his name!
Not gonna lie, I recently learned of a duel in France involving two people in hot air balloons shooting at each other with shotguns, so I misread Balloon Flights as Balloon Fights, and thought 'oh those must have been more common then I thought.'
Curious about the increasing minimum height though. Space Station I understand (people in orbit who don't go down for months), but what about the ~10km height before that?
My guess for the increasing lower bound is people in built structures. What *really* mystifies me is starting around 1950, there is a slight *decline* in the minimum and the downward spikes. A solid floor of 200m around 1940, then a few dips down to 40m. Similar weird noise around 1850--1880.
I think the graph counts people standing on fixed structures as being on the ground. We've had multi-storey buildings for thousands of years so clearly there would always be people >10m above ground level for all of this graph.
I can’t believe you are here! My brother and I used to laugh and laugh at your what if scenarios when your website first came out and I bought your book in NYC. Core memories. Thanks for everything! 🙏🥹
There were a few high-altitude balloons in the 1930s that should be higher than any peak here :P Someone needs to read more @nealstephenson.bsky.social
Also, 61 years separates the first flight, which is likely one kilometer on the graph, from the moon landing, which is likely the highest height on the graph, at one million kilometers.
The Wright brothers achieved an altitude of 3 metres, so they were comfortable beaten by someone with a ladder, and definitely buried below balloon flights at that time (first flight in 1783).
Seems like America and humanity's "reach for the stars" crashed when America 'elected' the noted serial mass murderer, Ronald Wilson Reagan, and we are stuck in an endless rut.
Hey guys, wouldn't the first person to fly past that limit be the most innovative, smartest, endowed person to have the gifts and cash to win that space race? Man, they would sure be the best human ever! Oh, but I'm sure no human alive could possibly be THAT powerful, right? Or could they??
That plot is going to look crazy when we get a human to Mars. Plus, at that point, it will make more sense to refer to it as "distance from Earth" vice "height above Earth's surface."
The distance earth mars, *when * a landing should take place, will be well below 100E6 km. This would be a mere 2 additional major intercepts on the y axis which now ends at 1E6. Of course this would be significant new height, but the diagram would still be perfectly readable as a whole.
But, of course, the humans would stay throughout an entire orbit cycle until there was another conjunction between Earth and Mars. That means we should use the max distance of 250 million miles and 3 orders of magnitude. That's a pretty big jump! Another Apollo jump, if you will.
I am not an expert on space missions, but you suggest the plan would be leaving them on Mars for over 2 years. I doubt that this is done at the first landing, they will stay on ground for maybe a week
I really do not like that drop off after the moon. We could have kept going and maybe have space colonies by now if we had not stopped going farther and higher. Damn it sucks living in one of the bad timelines.
It's a logarithmic scale: each major tick is a factor of 10. If you add minor ticks at even intervals between the major ticks they end up bunched up near the higher end.
Mars rovers are great and all, but Randall's title was "Human altitude", so that was what I was referring to.
I can say I like the rover missions, and they definitely bring a lot of value, but they don't elicit nearly the same kind of excitement as human exploration would.
Gwynne is great! And I have lots of respect for all the SpaceX employees. But I can't help myself from thinking that its owner is somehow going to spoil it, as he seems to be headed for a mental crash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Piccard Auguste Piccard, also the inventor (though not the pilot) of the first submersible to reach the bottom of the mariana trench, and the inspiration for Professor Calculus in the Tintin books. (Probably also the inspiration for Jean-Luc Picard's name).
i don't see the confusion, but it could just be due to being american and thinking it was a theater/theatre thing. unless that's wrong too and theaters are a unit of measuring theatres?
kidding aside, merriam-webster defines metre as the "chiefly british spelling of meter".
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Would be cool to do same for "travel speed of our meatsacks".
I realised as I was cruising down the hill at 40kmph this morning that almost no one until mid 1800s could do this effortlessly and we're taking it for granted now.
Andrei Mikoyan was killed together with a second crew member in an attempt to reach the Moon ahead of the Americans in early 1969. Due to system malfunction, they failed to get into lunar orbit and shot past the Moon.
I can't remember which author said it, but someone said that the vast majority of human history has happened between zero and twelve feet, which is the height of the tip of a lifted weapon from horseback.
It could be Terry Pratchett. It certainly sounds very Pratchett-y.
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This would be more impressive were it not on a log scale graph, although you might not be able to distinguish any of the lower altitudes from one another.
Somewhere in all that is a guy jumping to earth from space. Craziest shit I ever saw. I watch it, on youtube, once in a while. He must get tired dragging his massive nads about.
On Oct 14th 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from 38.969,4 m (127.852,4 ft) reaching speed up to 1357,6 km/h.
He said “I know the whole world is watching now. I wish you could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to be up really high to understand how small you are … I’m going home now.”
Would've been hilarious if it were "highest human-made object" and in the middle of the graph, it goes off the chart for that manhole cover. The one, launched from a nuke detonation, lol!
Privatization of space with Musk rockets is horrible. Reverse course and put NASA in charge. Disband Space Force. Just plain goofy. Sounds like a cartoon. Maybe Marvel will buy it.
I find the troughs as interesting as the peaks. Is it air mail service that had planes cruising around 24/365 in the early 20th century, at low altitudes? Can't think of a reason the troughs would get higher other than planes in the air (somewhere in the world) round the clock. Space stations later.
We can call it “distance” at the same time. Since no human has gone further than lunar orbit, that’s about the limit for now. Even if we alter it to “all spaceflight” we have a similar map with a few exceptional outliers - most notably Voyager 1 & 2 as they approach 1 light-day.
Comments
When he saw the catapult’s sling,
he took a step back,
and said, “Gracious me! What a swing!
It would be a good idea for me to have a swing on it.”
He went right up to the sling
https://www.medievalists.net/2014/01/how-young-william-marshal-was-saved-from-being-catapulted-into-a-castle/
So he drew back a little
And said: "God help me! What a swing!"
"Now it is right that I swing there!"
Near the sling he stood
Si se traist un petit ariére
E dist: "Dex aïe! kel branle!
"Or est bien dreiz que ge m'i branle!"
Lez la funde s'ert acostez,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite
- https://xkcd.com/1162/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation
This chart looks like I got a 1016 and a 1260 PCB hit!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry_flight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_Dawn
Here's a graph I had never seen.
I read ‘airplane fights’ and ‘space fights’ and when I got to the Apollo program thought, man this is dark.
But my humor be like that sometimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_Dawn
I miss getting the little added messages by mousing-over the image.
Although if you wanted to you could use alt-text and do basically the same thing.
Good opportunity for some enterprising young people to get onto!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Solar_System_probes
For an upper bound:
Juliane fell 3000 m from a plane & walked away, Mount Thor has a 1200 m cliff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_Koepcke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Thor
Just not with the currently experimental big rocket.
But log scale, and also only olds now remember that stuff.
I'll see myself out.
(I feel like there’s a real joke in there somewhere, or at least a What If submission)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl_YXbCsOak
Or is inaccuracy the point?
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Logarithmic_scale
More than 50 years since Apollo, and not a single improvement since then.
I can say I like the rover missions, and they definitely bring a lot of value, but they don't elicit nearly the same kind of excitement as human exploration would.
but they've done some pretty amazing stuff.
Gwynne Shotwell is Gene Kranz in 3" heels.
https://timeline.web.cern.ch/kolhorster-confirms-hesss-findings
Wait. 😞
Wait! He actually went up into the balloon?!? I was imagining a weather balloon with a cloud chamber attached.
Wowza! Thank you!
(Btw — the photos you took with your "little" telescope are astonishing!)
Would like to learn more about him.
kidding aside, merriam-webster defines metre as the "chiefly british spelling of meter".
"Not with that altitude, you won't."
I realised as I was cruising down the hill at 40kmph this morning that almost no one until mid 1800s could do this effortlessly and we're taking it for granted now.
It could be Terry Pratchett. It certainly sounds very Pratchett-y.
My thinking is we leave with any piece of equipment that we create and send, extissentionally (sp?) speaking
('go, Icarus, go') ... 📣
He said “I know the whole world is watching now. I wish you could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to be up really high to understand how small you are … I’m going home now.”
💙✌️🖖
(there's a conspiracy theory that human souls have been bound to the gold disks on the Voyager probes)
https://bsky.app/profile/danigmx.bsky.social/post/3lfyt6cnxhk2q