Space Elevator

A beautifully executed project here, I bought Neal a coffee.

What evolutionary advantage, I wonder, is there to Ruppell's griffon vulture flying at 11400 meters?

edit: units

Not every behavior has an evolutionary advantage.

If anything, "evolution" filters out disadvantages (eg: can't survive because your neck's too short and that pesky giraffe is eating all the leaves you could reach).

Evolution kills what doesn't work.

Feets are actually just fine in anything related to aviation.

I prefer to call them "footsies" or, sometimes "feet".

but every behaviour has a cost. In cast of flight altitude its energy and distance to food, water, mating zones.

Having a cost and being too costly aren't the same thing though.

Darwin started with survival of the "fit". It changed to "fittest" in later editions.

Going up there's currents, going down... gravity. Sure it costs energy, but there's bound to be a tradeoff. Travel distance? Sight range?

> Feets are actually just fine

Non-SI legacy units have been grandfathered in and 'accepted for common use', but ICAO recommends that SI units should be used[1] (eventually). China and quite the majority of the ex-USSR, for instance, use metre flight levels[2].

There have been at least two aviation accidents and incidents relating to unit mis-conversions. This is two too many. As an SI absolutist, everyone should switch to SI or units purely derived from SI (so domain-specific stuff like parsecs, electronvolts, and binary prefixes, if appropriately symbolled are OK). It is an internationally-recognised, and nearly universal standard that permeates every aspect of human lives.

[1]: https://aerosavvy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/an05_cons.p...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level#People's_Republic...

I think you've accidentally invented the antidote to the Imperial system: using diminutive/silly synonyms for units, and speaking in baby talk to people who insist on using it.

Unironically oughtta work better than that stuff with the barleycorns and fortnights.

Great idea! I’m for it. Be the change you want to see in the workplace!

People focus on the wrong issue so most quotes about evolution are highly misleading: the keyword should be about reproducing. Survival is almost irrelevant. Darwin awards in particular should never be given to anyone with kids (unless they kill their kids too).

"Most grandkids" is good but not catchy.

Or Idiocracy "evolution began to favor those who reproduced the most".

I agree to some extent but I don't think you can really separate the two. You have to survive long enough to reproduce enough. For almost all species, reproduction implies a non trivial amount of survival.

Edit: actually, "almost all species" is not right. Maybe "almost all interesting species"... which is admittedly too subjective a take.

Wikipedia [1] implies it's to give them an incredibly large field of vision to spot prey, though the source it cites [2] seems less certain about that

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_height...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20131011012320/http://blogs.bu.e...

It costs something metabolically to be able to survive that high up.