imagine airbus flying across the atlantic ocean. the idea is to begin with the rich people and as it becomes more repeatable, reusable, more affordable, more seats becoming available, it becomes more accessible to a larger group of people. that s an exciting prospect. good point. good historical comparison there. over what time period does that happen, though? does that happen over a few years or over decades? reporter: it s interesting. i did the math yesterday. 17 years after lindbergh flew, it was 1944. we had the b-29. we were on the cusp of flying supersonically. 17 years since the x prize, which ushered in the era of civilian space and this technology that branson is using, we re just getting to this. so, it s taken much, much longer. space is not the same as aviation in the sense that there was a built-in reason for aviation for commerce and for
The U.S. tried to win World War II with a bat bomb
What it’s about: Holy ordinance, Batman! During World War II, American scientists raced to develop crucial technology that would win the war: The B-29 bomber. Radar. The atomic bomb. And, a somewhat less crucial technology, the bat bomb: a bomb canister that contained live bats, each of which would carry an incendiary device and (in theory) start devastating fires across Japanese cities.
Advertisement
Biggest controversy: The part where we tried to defeat Imperial Japan with an army of bats. The idea came from a dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams. An acquaintance of Eleanor Roosevelt, he wrote to the White House a month after Pearl Harbor suggesting the idea, which came to him during a trip to Carlsbad Caverns. Adams was “intrigued by the strength of bats” and believed they could carry an incendiary device, which could do serious damage to Japan’s largely wooden architecture.