The Water Engine

[cthulu2016]

44. We do not disagree on that

If we had not made the political decision to go to the moon we would not have created the new context of all that research and certain things may not have been invented.

Before the telegraph nobody asked themselves whether those same wires could carry a voice, and so on.

My problem with the water engine idea is that we are to presume that it was invented in the context of 1930s, or 1950s, or 1970s (or whatever the story is) theory and technology, and without any billion dollar expenditures to invent it.

If everything was in place, culturally, for for one guy in his garage to make a water engine fifty years ago then it would have been invented many times since then.

The claim that is was invented, for real, speaks to the likelihood of it being reinvented. Not just that it was possible, but that it was possible for someone then, without many resources, etc..

But I agree that there are all sorts of things that are possible that are not invented, for one reason or another.

If someone says, "A car can run on water, but nobody has figured out how to do it," that would be very unlikely, but would not have the logical defects of claiming that somebody working alone many years ago did, in fact, make a water engine in the context of the technology of his era, and that nobody else ever did.