Department of Overlooked Technologies, Unusual Effects, and Forgotten Weapons

[Magniac]

To be fair, what he said is that Bill Gates, et al, are doing everything they can to reduce the death rate, while doing nothing to (improve living standards, and therefore) reduce the birth rate. Whereas, these "neo-Malthusian green nitwits", whoever they are, apparently want to

[snip confusing argument from pacifichistorian]

I'm... somewhat confused by this

You're telling me.

Something about a lack of population control in Africa by people who misinterpret Malthus as not being in favour of population control, or people who are too much in favour of population control, or anyway Bill and Melinda are foolishly trying to eradicate malaria because they are ignorant about population control influencing/not influencing Africa's 'hell hole-ishness'...

 

[tallwingedgoat]

I really have to wonder why you'd switch to IC after pulsejets, rather than simply fit pulsejets, or RATO, in drop pods for takeoff, then switch to ramjets (simpler still) for flight.

Ramjet is a big step from pulsejet. It's hard to see internal combustion engines and propellers not being a major part of aviation. After all they are still popular today and still ramjets are not in wide spread use. Pulsejets themselves are not ideal aircraft engines. But they are simple enough that people could fly with them much earlier than the Wrights.

 

[pacifichistorian]

Ramjet is a big step from pulsejet.

Really? Are we talking about the same thing? Ramjets aren't much more than sophisticated stovepipes with no moving parts.

 

[perfectgeneral]

Really? Are we talking about the same thing? Ramjets aren't much more than sophisticated stovepipes with no moving parts.

They need a head of speed to get started though. More than a typical pulse jet can produce.

 

[Jomazi]

TNT would not be useful before petrochemistry could supply adequate quantities of toluene.

The Malthusian "collapse" theories would only work on a secular and educated population willing to give up parenthood, and that barely existed anywhere before WW2.

Rockets are a favorite WI of mine. Sugar-saltpeter fueled rocket would be easy to build yet have an improved Isp over black powder from around 80 to 120, which would improve range by more than 100%. Ammonium nitrate - asphalt mixes would improve this a further bit.

Also, liquid fuel rockets could've been built before 1900 - both hydrogen peroxide and methanol, the simplest to use liquid fuels were known early, hydrogen perioxide was first prepared in 1818. It would be a harder to make that actually happen though, as solid fueled rockets as opposed to liquid-fueled ones have been known for centuries.

 

[WatsonLadd]

Antibiotic resistance. Had it been discovered earlier we might not feed antibiotics to cattle, and so still have penicillin as a useful drug.

 

[alt_historian]

Antibiotic resistance. Had it been discovered earlier we might not feed antibiotics to cattle, and so still have penicillin as a useful drug.

... is that the reason for all these antibiotic-resistant diseases I've been hearing about?

 

[the_lyniezian]

Can 819-line TV count? Early high-definition TV system used in Fance from 1949 until around '86, also in Italy and Monaco and in a cut-down version (to save on bandwidth) in a few other nations as well. But not adopted elsewhere, and was even stopped by France in favour of a "normal" 625-line system. Suppose it suffered from eating up twice a much bandwidth as other stations, which in the VHF analoge terrestrial days was, I'd wager, very much A Bad Thing (if you wanted a range of TV stations, that is).