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Originally posted by Nyiah
A thought occurred to me. What are the odds that we today are completely over-thinking the "runways"? Perhaps those areas were originally intended for building settlements on. How long ago did the culture flourish again? Was it a wet environment at the time, as opposed to the current arid one? Flattening out the hilltops & placing your village on it makes sense if the alternative in this terrain, climate permitting, was being flooded out below.
Originally posted by wmd_2008
reply to post by Sparta
I will ask this question again on this thread why does anyone think the would need a landing strip
We can do vertical take off and landing VTOL do you not think an advanced race could
Originally posted by RationalDespair
Originally posted by wmd_2008
reply to post by Sparta
I will ask this question again on this thread why does anyone think the would need a landing strip
We can do vertical take off and landing VTOL do you not think an advanced race could
Just to end this "point" you keep making.
Yes, we have VTOL; we´ve had it for many, many years. Do we still have runways? Why?
I hope you will reflect on the questions above and answer your own question.
Originally posted by wmd_2008
Originally posted by RationalDespair
Originally posted by wmd_2008
reply to post by Sparta
I will ask this question again on this thread why does anyone think the would need a landing strip
We can do vertical take off and landing VTOL do you not think an advanced race could
Just to end this "point" you keep making.
Yes, we have VTOL; we´ve had it for many, many years. Do we still have runways? Why?
I hope you will reflect on the questions above and answer your own question.
YES but the only reason is we don't have the ability to have VTOL on all our aircraft , so these supposed advanced aliens who can fly many light years need runways
Originally posted by RationalDespair
I was hoping you would look it up yourself or at least backup your own claim, but why do we not have VTOL ability on all our aircraft? Why are there still aircraft developed and build that don´t have this ability? I´ll tell one of the reasons that goes for a lot of technology: one kind of specialisation (like VTOL) may hinder or prevent other types of specialisations that have a higher priority in serving a purpose.
In case of VTOL aircraft, they can carry less payload, have a smaller action radius and are much more maintenance intensive. On top of that, they are usually subsonic, when most non-VTOL jet fighter aircraft are supersonic. As far as I know, only the Russian YAK-141 is a supersonic VTOL jet fighter, but it wasn´t even taken into production because of costs.
Whether or not advanced aliens or humans were involved is besides the point. It´s not even what I believe or what I suggested. If only civilisations back then had our current level of technology, then they would face the same problems as we are. And even if they were a space travelling hyper-advanced alien race, the same restrictions to a VTOL might have applied to them.
Truth is, you cannot rule out the use of one thing because another thing exists. Why are people still riding bikes when we have automobiles? Ridiculous, right!?
Maybe it wasn't so difficult after all? In 1981, volunteers from the Earthwatch organization had a go at it. Evan Hadingham, author of Lines of the Mountain Gods, participated and described the process: "We selected a remote corner of the Nazca Valley for our experiment, far from any genuine ancient markings. Though the surface here was rougher than that of most parts of the pampa I had seen, consisting of coarse volcanic stones, it was easy to create the color contrast required for our line. All we had to do was peel away the crust of dark brown surface rocks to reveal the dusty yellow-white clay immediately beneath. Our reconstruction began with a simple surveying procedure: we lined up two tall poles to coincide with a cleft in the distant horizon and then stretched the string between them. This formed one border of our line. To set out the other border, we measured off another pair of poles side by side with the first. Within the avenue of string thus created, we spread ourselves out at arm's length, one behind the other. The idea was that each volunteer would squat on the ground and gather up all the stones within arm's reach into a single pile. This seemed an efficient way to collaborate on removing the surface. Moreover, it reproduced the small, regularly spaced stone heaps still visible inside many (presumably unfinished) cleared figures. The final phase was to get rid of the piles by spreading the stones out along the borders of the line. At this stage it was useful to have "Chief Priest Aveni" standing by to point out where the edges of the line still appeared ragged or crooked. Eventually the strings were removed, and the result looked remarkably like the perfectly straight avenues we were emulating."[7] They went on to add a smooth spiral to the end of the line, and Hadingham wondered whether the skills required by the Nazcans were so amazing after all? To take it one stage further, in 1982 Joe Nickell of Kentucky, USA, and some family members, successfully recreated the 440-foot-long condor in a field near their home. They took nine hours to plot and stake 165 points and connect them with twine. The resulting image (they used white lime to mark it) was an exact replica. "The method we chose was quite simple: We would establish a center line and locate points on the drawing by plotting their coordinates. That is, on the small drawing we would measure along the center line from one end (the bird's beak) to a point on the line directly opposite the point to be plotted (say a wing tip). Then we would measure the distance from the center line to the desired point. A given number of units on the small drawing would require the same number of units--larger units--on the large drawing. For this larger unit we used one gleaned by Maria Reiche from her study of the Nazca drawings and approximately equivalent to 12.68 inches. For measuring on the ground, we prepared ropes marked off with paint into these Nazca "feet," with a knot tied at each ten-"foot" interval for a total length of 100 units. To aid in accuracy in plotting on the ground, we decided to employ a "T" made of two slender strips of wood. With this we could ensure that each measurement made from the center line would be at approximate right-angles to the line."[8]