(Note: the SS America and SS United States shared the same designer - William Francis Gibbs). Not sure about the SS America, but at least on the SS United States, what wasn’t metal was heavily asbestos - which is the primary reason they had to completely strip the interior fittings on it. It’s mostly an empty shell now. That lack of interior decoration could be considered a significant reason it won’t likely be adapted/reused, which is a shame; it’s a beautiful ship.
A violist I knew had a viola from the 1500’s that was originally a viola da gamba that had been cut down a couple hundred years ago (somewhat; was still pretty large for a viola). Had purfling hearts on the bouts. Beautiful instrument.
Tesla allows you to send an address from the Maps app to your car (via the share menu). It’s one of my favorite features. I have no idea why other manufacturers wouldn’t replicate that experience.
There were actually aircraft designed by the US to match the Tu-160
At the risk of “arguing with someone on the internet”, I think you may have your chronology backwards, since it seems the Tu-160 was designed to match the US aircraft you mention.
The Valkyrie was a late 1950’s to early 1960’s design with physical prototypes existing and flying by 1964.
The B-1A design began in 1965, with the first flight in 1974. This would have been the closest western analog to the Tu-160, since the B-1B derivative had a different focus - low-altitude terrain following - since it was believed that the high-altitude/high speed designs like the B-1A were vulnerable to newer Soviet missile designs. Stealth was also becoming increasingly important to US command due to the same concerns about missiles.
The design competition that begat the Tu-160 began in 1972, with a first flight in 1981. I’m not saying it’s not a great plane - by all accounts it is very capable - but US designs were not done in response to it.
In many ways I like TablePlus, but at least on MySQL, I'm not fond that it single-quotes all data types in the "Copy Rows As > SQL Import Statement", including decimals and integers. I don't want to introduce potential data type casting errors into my export. Sequel Pro, while less advanced in other ways, doesn't do this; it properly only quotes the data types that should be quoted.
Imagine you tried to subject your computer to extreme physical conditions - every combination of humidity, heat, cold, pressure, submergence in liquid, dropped, bent, etc, for 18 hours a day for years. How long do you think it would last? Not very long, I’d suspect. I’m amazed phones last as long as they do for as hard as they’re used - harder and for longer hours than almost any consumer-level computers.
So, a friend of mine who’s a pharmacologist explained that one to me. When drug test subjects take medication, they’re expected to note any side-effects they suffer from, and that often includes what they’re taking the drug to fix in the first place. So for example, someone might take headache medication to mitigate it, but might still be suffering from that headache after taking the pill. Cause and effect get turned around.
You pose an interesting question - one you'd think a god would be able to answer, especially if that god supposedly created us. In fact, if he can't answer it, I would question whether he is a god.
I believe it will be important in the architectural and 3D design fields, particularly when interacting with lay people. In the architecture industry, for example, the most common refrain I hear is that clients, who might be spending hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars on a building, can't understand the plans they're looking at; can't visualize their unbuilt structures. This technology changes that; enables them to walk through and fully immerse themselves in their building before it's ever built. It's a visualization game changer.
One might further theorize that the design profession itself might be fundamentally changed by it. When you think about it, the mouse and keyboard isn't an ideal medium for this type of design; it's a crude interaction. Why look at a scaled wireframe of a structure when you might be able to virtually build a structure while being inside it - using your hands and eyes, like clay. You could use your arms to gesture, saying "I want this wall here, and to be this high"; "I want a 3'x5' window on this wall, here", etc. You could mold structures with your hands with this type of virtual reality and some type of motion tracking. It would be ground-breaking.
Very cool museum; they have some incredible stuff. However, the "Blackbird" you mention isn't actually an SR-71, it's an M-21 - a variant of one of the CIA's A-12's (the SR-71's predecessor).
If you're in Seattle and have an opportunity, visit the Museum's restoration facility at Paine Field in Everett (at the opposite end of the runway for the 747/widebody factory.) It's a nondescript warehouse manned mostly by super kind volunteer retirees. Unlike the roped-off museum experience, at the restoration facility you can touch and pick up things. The last time I was there I held a Merlin piston in my hands. So cool.
(Note: the SS America and SS United States shared the same designer - William Francis Gibbs). Not sure about the SS America, but at least on the SS United States, what wasn’t metal was heavily asbestos - which is the primary reason they had to completely strip the interior fittings on it. It’s mostly an empty shell now. That lack of interior decoration could be considered a significant reason it won’t likely be adapted/reused, which is a shame; it’s a beautiful ship.