What would you say, if 10 year ago someone would have told you about Tesla's on the streets, serial production of autonomous vehicles, commercial space flights or robotics from Boston Dynamics?
"-Duh!" or "-Huh?"
Perhaps we can share those news which has made you "WOW!" in a pleasant and surprising way, and at the same time made you feel a little bit uncomfortable because who would have expected sci-fi in the real life right?
All cutting-edge, innovations which impressed you.

One request, please verify your source first. Let's use only those good ones, those reliable and let's try to avoid sharing hoaxes and conclusions made (up?) by very sad narrators of unknown origin and supported by the yellow subtitles..
Yea I mean conspiracy theories and this kind of stuff.


To me, a personal-jetpack from UK Gravity Industries was the nicest surprise of the recent weeks.
The real life tests were on the sea and on the land.
The Royal Marines were testing out a jet pack to see how useful they are in the onboarding operations.So helicopter and ropes are no longer a must. Secondly, jetpack can be used by paramedics and will significantly shorten the time needed in rescue actions.
Probably they can also fly to the continent, pick-up a new watch and fly back without any importation tax, though this concept is yet to be proven..in publics.

 

looks absolutely awesome

 

As mentioned before in another thread, totally useless for military operations. The personnel would be easy defenseless targets for small arms fire.

 

Great innovation for some purposes, but I would rather climb that ladder. Makes me wonder how long flight time you got, before running out of fuel

 

How about drones delivering mail? https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-isles-by-drone-in-first-uk-trial-of-its-kind

Just imagine, your new LE Speedmaster being delivered remotely

 

If via USPS, their drone would drop it on your roof, list it as delivered, then deny any responsibility.

 

This...is still just jaw dropping to watch! 10 launches, 10 stuck landings.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-27-10th-falcon-9-rocket-launch-landing-success

 

This is also interesting topic where airspace meets legal.
More than 5 year ago Amazon planned similar service for US market. As far as I know they still need a respective update in the air navigation regulations - how would commercial flight of autonomous drones fit inbetween the "manned" flights.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Air/b?ie=UTF8&node=8037720011

 

Not even close, as of today.

 

Harkening back to the Dick Tracy comics of my youth, and the wrist radios that Chester Gould (the writer) foresaw all those decades ago. And here we are. Computers in the temple of your spectacles. Microscopic cameras that can travel through the circulatory system and broadcast what it sees.

 

Something like this, right?

 

I generally have great respect for the USPS. However, a couple years ago I ordered a cell phone. It came in a medium priority mail box. The box had been flattened, and there was a truck tire track running across it. The phone was toast. The post office had affixed a label to the outside of the box: "Contents inspected, OK."

 

A little story: I was diving with friends off the Farallon Islands (California). I had a wetsuit, the others had drysuits. One of them managed to get upside-down in his drysuit. This caused all the air in the suit to rise to his feet, and he could not right himself. A couple of us managed to get him upright. The point: If I tried one of these jetpacks, I'm pretty sure I would immediately point my arms straight up and plummet to earth at 150 mph, being unable to move my arms down. They do look like fun, though, for brave, coordinated people.

 

My friends always joke that I need children’s safety scissors....sadly, it’s not a joke.

 

Technological, and scientific innovations have moved on with such a pace, within the last century, that our ability to manifest, and capitalise on our understanding is often greeted with indifference, e.g., quantum physics, nanosurgery, flavour-changing gobstoppers…

All too often, the inventions that I find the most compelling are the ones that nobody asked for.

I mean what the fk is all this about?



This is a product for people who consider microwaving a frozen meal to be a chore. Who eats this st?

 

When I was a youngster there were still public pools locally. My nieces and nephews, not much younger than I was, came along. My youngest niece, who was tiny and very slender, put on a small life ring type float around her chest and dived in head first in the shallow end . The ring was forced up towards her knees and she was touching the bottom with her hands but the ring was preventing her from righting herself, panicking she just kept kicking her legs but couldn't figure out how to free her legs from the ring. I jumped in and got her. She was very upset and sobbed "all I could see was water".

 

“I’ve seen the future, baby, and it’s murder” - Leonard Cohen

The Future. Kinda dark (okay, very dark), but a brilliant song.

 

@Professor and @wsfarrell those are both very scary stories. Glad you were each there in those situations to help out. I am dry-suit trained and an uncontrolled feet first ascent is very dangerous, and arguably the new number one priority to avoid. Assuming I was doing no-decompression diving, I would rather run out of air. At least then you can do a controlled ascent and drop your weight belt at the top.

 

Good enough for the Blues Brothers associates.....
(379) CheeseWhizBoy.avi - YouTube

 

Not 30 seconds ago a guy went screaming down my street standing on a gyro electric wheel. There are a lot of guys using gyro skateboards here, not to mention traditional skateboards (i live in Portland Oregon on top of a hill next to a public park; perfect skateboarding territory.)

This guy had a helmet on and looked like a dude on a paddle board, leaned back and comfortable. I thought of this thread. It is completely futuristic but at the same time becoming more normal to see people zipping about on gyros.

Couldn't see what watch he was wearing though, too fast.