Of course there isn't. That's why boats float.

Seconds as a unit of Isp is nice because it tells you how many seconds of e.g. 1 lb force thrust you get for 1 lb mass of fuel. (Or conversely, how many pounds force you get from that 1 lb mass of fuel if you burn it all in one second.) It's a handy comparison number.

Granted it's kind of an odd unit if you're trying to work out trajectories and mass ratios and delta-vees and such, but hey, it's not rocket science.

Oh, wait...

Mercury delay lines FTW!

And, of course, the whole notion that we'd have a world's fair is among the inaccurate predictions.

It's only off by one year. Expo 2015 will be in Milan, Italy. There was one last year (2012) in Yeosu, S. Korea. The World's Fairs started using the term Expo with the 1967 Montreal World's Fair, Expo '67.

It's generally a good idea to know what you're talking about before you accuse someone else of inaccuracy.

By the way thank you for purchasing our exported talent.

Just repayment for all those ex-Avro aerospace engineers that helped put Apollo on the moon.

Not entirely unbelievable. A dive buddy of mine was doing some part time commercial dive work. One spring he was helping inspect the cooling water intakes for a steam plant in downtown Ottawa, near the river. Guess what he found up against one of the gratings. Yeah, a guy who'd gone through the ice on a snowmobile that winter.

Put him right off diving for a while, it did.

I would have said 60,000. ;-)

The Saturn V had a payload to Earth orbit of 260,000 lb, which happens to be the weight of a fully-fueled Atlas missile. So in theory the Saturn V could orbit a vehicle which could use rocket braking to de-orbit and land without a heat shield.

Impractical as hell, of course.

Heck, even in my fictional future T-space stories, where we have warp, fusion, but no anti-gravity*, ships tend to use aerobraking. (Given the ridiculously high power and Isp of their thrusters, they could do a retrofire to landing, but generally don't. Tradition. Also helpful if you've about run out of fuel.)

*(In theory if you can bend space for a warp drive you can unbend it for anti-grav, but my stories take place in early days when humans haven't figured out how to do that yet. The pioneer in such technology suffered a rather messy accidental death while testing.)

There's no way that any sane person would grant them patent protection on the general concept

We're not talking about sane people, we're talking about the USPTO.

I don't know of any touch screens before that even could detect angle of input

Are you seriously that ignorant of geometry?

Anything that returns more than one (x,y) coordinate pair (not even at the same time) is inherently returning an angle. In other words, every touch screen ever made.

I am a pilot.

You're wrong.

Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer.

The 1960s called, wanting their commercial flight ops back. Planes haven't had flight engineers in decades (unless the plane itself is that old). Likewise commercial jets have had autoland for decades. It's standard procedure for airports which often have low visibility (like Heathrow). Heck, the autoland is so good that -- again, decades ago -- they introduced a bit of dither into the system to avoid excessive runway wear from heavies (747 etc) always landing on the exact same spot.

They had to come up with something. Not nearly as many crosses around. ;)

Not only that, but if the airlines are sharing more than e.g. the last 4 digits of the credit card info, they're probably in violation of PCI (Payment Card Industry) regs and could have their ability to take payments that way suspended.

That would be a lovely data stream for identity thieves to intercept.

A 79-cent plastic water pistol filled with cyanide* is even more lethal, and just as easy to get past security.

Sure, the assassin will likely die from the cyanide too, but what are the odds of him surviving long with a one-shot gun anyway?

*(and sealed to prevent premature leakage; substitute other poison of your choice)