Talk:2452: Aviation Firsts

Someone got into editing just as I thought I'd start, so I'll leave it in case there's population of explanation afoot. But I'm waiting for both uncontrolled powered flight (I don't mean retrothrusted landing procedure) and controlled unpowered flight (ditto, not for parachute descents, at least until they make the subsonic ones full parasails). 141.101.98.192 01:56, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Is there a well-defined distinction between circumnavigation and orbit? 172.69.33.249 04:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

given that the Wikipedia entry for “circumnavigation” includes a section for orbital circumnavigation, and that there exists a book with the title “Round About the Earth: circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit” I think that there is not a well-defined distinction. Intuition is that circumnavigations could be split into two disjoint sets, those done at orbital speed, and those done slower, and that would provide a distinction most could agree with, but I found nothing official to support such a bifurcation.162.158.63.122 04:35, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I'd instinctively suggest that a true circumnavigation would need to be bookended by touching the surface at the same point (or trivially near - different dock of the same port, hard-landed on a companion runway to that taken off from), or beyond and over its starting track before it finishes (like obviously hard to 'navigate' circumnavigating balloons - and not allowed to be too circumpolar). If a future orbit-inserted Mars-flier eventually 'lands' beyond the point it first started to achieve level flight below Mars's equivalent Karmen-line, having travelled all round the planet in the interim, I might accept that as a special case.

So far nothing (but Ingenuity) has taken off from Mars, never mind (ditto) landed again, so all the orbiters clearly cannot be counted by this metric, and no rover has driven far enough to have attempted a surface-bound circumnavigation. A long-endurance rover with an advanced version of Ingy for look-ahead might jointly earn the benchmark as first surface and first (punctuated) flown circumnavigations.

A suborbital semi-ballistic non-stip circumnavigation might be achievable while trying out sample-return technology (though wouldn't be useful, probably only a failure mode of an orbital insertion attempt).

A surface-launched 'Martian weather balloon' might actually be the first success, though. It might be one designed to touch down, at least daily, for opportunistic sampling, but at the the risk of damage due to dragging/snagging. Or a non-stop trip, until it cannot maintain height/bumps into Olympus Mons. The engineering risks of a free-drifting balloon (capable of Martian flight) are probably being looked at by several teams right now for a future lander payload. 141.101.99.109 12:06, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

where in the comic is the mile high club referenced???? 108.162.219.69 13:35, 20 April 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

In the title text, along eith Amelia Earhart and the Hudson River. Barmar (talk) 14:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

In my new favorite sci-fi series, DB Cooper, who got to know the local bigfoot tribe as a kid, and who is called in adulthood Falls-From-Sky, moves to the planet the sasquatch came from to live with the Starfoot and grow garlic with his grandson Charlie. Jerry Boyd's Bob & Nikki series. And their story is a *subplot*.Seebert (talk) 12:57, 20 April 2021 (UTC)