If you had a time machine...

Definitely an "off topic" subject, but if you had access to Mr. Peabody's "way-back" machine ( now there's a reference!)...where would you go back to? What would you like to witness first-hand?

I know most people pick major historical events: Kennedy assassination and stuff like that.

To me, those historical events are not "real life". Thier very nature as a huge singular event in history is surely significant, but not indicative of how everday "real life" was at any given time.

I think I would choose to see a lot of mundane, meaningless stuff...insignificant details when compared to the big events in history.

As a kid, growing up in "Space City" ( Houston) in the 60's, I was all but obsessed with the space program. My dream then was to see a live rocket launch. I built and launch a ton of those cardboard-&-balsa wood "Estes" model rockets back then. Pretty cool, but hardly the same as witnessing an actual rocket launch.

Today, my family and I live in Cocoa Beach primarily because I want to be close to the NASA launch complex.

I have witnessed several as-close-as-allowed shuttle launches, and to me it is awesome. Raw power...no finesse, just brute force pounding away at gravity. I love it.

Yet...that pales in comparison to a Saturn-V launch from the lates 60's. That still holds the record for the most powerful machine ever built by man in history.

Now THAT is something I would go back to witness live...a Saturn V launch.

And I would also like to see a 60s-70s era auto assembly line in action...all manual, human-achieved labor. Products with real human soul built right in to every component. That would be cool to.

I'd like to go back and visit ancient civilizations like the Incas, and see first hand, how they accomplished so much without electricity.

I would like to see Chiggis and Kublai Khan then visit my Ancestor Marco Polo to see if he really did make his famous journey. Or just walk around a major city of any of histories great civilisation. I would love to see Atahualpa's vampire bat skin cloak a truly opulent garment if every there was one. It would be a huge list for me, travel with Alexandra the great in the Indus valley and along the Oxus River, Visit a Pictish,celtic,viking village find out who built Great Zimbabwe or the reclining budda in afganastan and the stele in Axum. Spend time with the Templars what was their secret. is the arch of the covenant in that tiny church in Addis Abba and about 20 thousand more things

As a kid in the 60’s my memories tell me it was much more exciting time to be around than anything since. Complete agreement about watching the space program. I ended up spending most of my career working with space craft payloads (somewhere I have a letter form MASA recognizing my contribution to an almost aborted shuttle launch). I’d love to live through the 60’s again but as someone who was 15 years older than I am. I'll take the whole decade not just a singel event. I like most of that era except for the risk of being sent to Viet Nam. I appreciate the sacrifices of all who went but as I watched that war. I grew up thinking I’d go if I had to but I did not plan to volunteer. I also recognize that for women and minorities those days were not the best.

Yesterday I was just mentioning to my wife how different gasoline smelled when we stated driving. She said she remembered that it was strung but not unpleasant back then. The best things in life cost thirty-five cents.

True about the gasoline, sicndhed. I've mentioned that many times myself.

Growing up here in Pittsburgh, I have always felt a connection to the area in turn of the century times. The industrial age... steel, factories, trains, coal... My grandparents all worked in these industries, but they were already started on its way out in the mid 50's. By the time I was old enough in the mid-'70's to care, the mines were all but closed and short line rail companies were being pulled up and scrapped. Coal fired power plants were being mothballed. The original Alcoa factory, birthplace of aluminum, is slowly being torn down even today. You can't even tell where the giant steel mills once were, the dirt is either fenced off or supports faceless shopping malls. There's hardly a day that goes by when I don't want to illegally enter some old coal mine (there's one that I could get into that goes right under my house), ride a speeder down some unused overgrown rail service line (there's a few left) or sit in a rusty overhead crane inside an old mill.

I have always envisioned actually being in this place from the '20's to the '60's... money and jobs everywhere, the noise, stench, huge mechanical "things" at every turn. Sure, it was no cakewalk of a life for most, but the amount of soul that eeked out of every facet of this place just had to be something else to witness.

Either the way back machine or Emmett Brown's Delorean would work for me, thanks. Dial that thing back to any stop in that timeframe and I'll be the first one in line for a ride with some Mr. Fusion fuel in hand.

Great subject matter here, Kit. Thanks!

Go back to the 50ies and 60ies and load that machine full of brand new Fender and Gibson guitars, then come back, make a stop about 6 years ago and sell them on the vintage market and retire.

Oh, stash some classic muscle cars during that stop in 1971, when you could get the likes of a 68 Charger RT for pocket change.

There was this one night in college with a certain hot girl....oh wait, never mind.

Must not have been as memorable for her as it was for you, otherwise it wouldn't have been just one night! 8

Ouch. Err, hold on, let me ask her when she gets out of the shower.

Take my savings and go back to when apple first went public and invest it all. I could be a zillionaire and then I would buy every last Mach 1 I could find for sale!!! I would also do important things like warn certain historical figures of their death and major events that have taken place in American history (9/11 for example). Just a few ideas...

Would any of you go back and tell your younger selves not to do some stupid thing you did?

No I wouldn't listen anyway.

Would any of you go back and tell your younger selves not to do some stupid thing you did?

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Hi Kit,

What you mention here throws a whole different light on things as such. If i'm correct, your original approach was to go back in time and only be an observer, which means you have no control or power to affect any thing that had already happened in the past. You could observe, but would be invisible at the same time.

However, if you could participate in life at any time in the past,and not be invisible, that throws open a whole new can of worms to the equasion.You then have the power to change the future matrix.For example, the first thing i think of, was that scene out of the movie Back To The Future (MOVIE ONE). Remember when Biff gets to look at the sports Almanac giving the winning results of the sports matches. You go back in time, and give yourself the lotto winning numbers many times over, and you end up turning into a squillionaire.

The possibilities are endless. Interesting is it not?

Greg.

Would any of you go back and tell your younger selves not to do some stupid thing you did?

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I probably wouldn't do anything that might alter my current state. If I did go buy apple stock right at the beginning, I would make it to where I wouldn't be able to access it until October 1 of this year. This would almost ensure that I would end up with my wife and son in my life, which wouldn't be worth changing a thing!

I'm going to go back to 1941 and fly fighters in WW2.

As a kid in the 60’s my memories tell me it was much more exciting time to be around than anything since. Complete agreement about watching the space program. I ended up spending most of my career working with space craft payloads (somewhere I have a letter form MASA recognizing my contribution to an almost aborted shuttle launch). I’d love to live through the 60’s again but as someone who was 15 years older than I am. I'll take the whole decade not just a singel event. I like most of that era except for the risk of being sent to Viet Nam. I appreciate the sacrifices of all who went but as I watched that war. I grew up thinking I’d go if I had to but I did not plan to volunteer. I also recognize that for women and minorities those days were not the best.

Yesterday I was just mentioning to my wife how different gasoline smelled when we stated driving. She said she remembered that it was strung but not unpleasant back then. The best things in life cost thirty-five cents.

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Not only was the smell different but the lead in the fuel (I guess) made your tail pipe a clean chalky white which is how you knew it was tuned just right.

I suppose for me...technology (cell phones, computer, HD TV, and the internet) are much too valuable for me to do without, but I sure would like to go back and kick my own ass a few time in the past to make me a lot better off now.

"Plug chop"...I don't even bother to try to read plugs with today's gas but I like using a wide band O2 meter better anyway.

100LL Avgas still smells like old gas.

In our version of the universe Time Machines do not exist. At least ones that will send you 'back' in time. If they do exist, or it is possible, humans and their machines do not survive the trip.

If they did exist, there would be time travelers among us.

BTW, if you like 'time travel' movies check out 'Primer'. Super low budget, no special effects and it starts out kind of slow but it is really interesting.