Re:Metrecal
by aptwebapps on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @11:19PM
(#6247966)
Well, to be picky, no one has made a wing suit that does what the Reichelt hoped to do. The current version just lets you have some fun before you open your parachute. Unless you want to count stuff like hang gliders.
Re:Metrecal
by Wingman4l7 on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @11:57PM
(#6248069)
If you mean a wingsuit that can let you fly all the way to the ground at a speed low enough to land and survive -- then no one ever will. A wing that's big enough to have those low speeds will tear off your arms.
Re:Metrecal
by mtdewcmu on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @10:26PM
(#6247808)
You could almost certainly live indefinitely on Boost or Ensure, because they are essentially flavored versions of the same products used medically in tube feeds. You could also simply drink tube feed, with or without flavoring. Liquid nutrition is not a new idea in the medical field, and there are numerous medical conditions that can make a person dependent on liquid feeding. Clinical nutritionists are professionally trained in the management of these regimens, and this makes up a lot of what they do daily in various health care settings.
The accumulated knowledge about liquid diets in the context of health care is undoubtedly vast.
> You could almost certainly live indefinitely on Boost or Ensure, because they are essentially flavored versions of the same products used medically in tube feeds.
I'm not sure you can claim that. Patients live off enteral diets for long periods but in very controlled environments, and even then it's still hard to get right. For a fully functional person, going to work, going to gym, being exposed to environmental stresses, and so on, to only live off Ensure might not be feasible.
Re:Metrecal
by mtdewcmu on Wednesday August 21, 2013 @01:41AM
(#6248423)
Certainly no doctor or nutritionist would advise it for a healthy person. If it's not safe to live off of carefully formulated enteral diets, then you would definitely not want to try it with Soylent.
Still, people have survived poor diets and near-starvation throughout history. If the body was that fussy about nutrition, we'd be extinct.
Soylent isn't a "diet" product. Therefore it contains 2400 calories, and doesn't compromise on any macronutrients (fats, protein, carbs) for the sake of creating a "diet" product. If you're looking for existing commercial analogues, it's much closer to Ensure (for example).
That said, it's attracted quite a crowd of haters--who, it seems, would like nothing more than for Rhinehart et al. to be repeating mistakes that would be obvious to anyone who had done an hour of research on the history of nutritional drinks...
The original computer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine
The original steam engine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
Just because something similar has been tried before doesn't mean the basics are wrong.
Popular Science had an article in 2003 examining wingsuits and the futile effort towards using them to land without a parachute, and they had a great diagram illustrating the problem: http://web.archive.org/web/20030623234930/http://www.popsci....
I think most people would agree with me when I say that doesn't really count. =P
The accumulated knowledge about liquid diets in the context of health care is undoubtedly vast.
I'm not sure you can claim that. Patients live off enteral diets for long periods but in very controlled environments, and even then it's still hard to get right. For a fully functional person, going to work, going to gym, being exposed to environmental stresses, and so on, to only live off Ensure might not be feasible.
Still, people have survived poor diets and near-starvation throughout history. If the body was that fussy about nutrition, we'd be extinct.
That said, it's attracted quite a crowd of haters--who, it seems, would like nothing more than for Rhinehart et al. to be repeating mistakes that would be obvious to anyone who had done an hour of research on the history of nutritional drinks...