I'd hardly've said that that 100+ years after the Montgolfiers had already done it.
The physics of flight had been understood since Newton; powered flight (which I suspect is what you're getting at, though again that had been done in 1901) was just a matter of making a light enough engine to combine with existing flying technology. There were a long series of incremental steps along the way, e.g. a powered but tethered aeroplane had been flown in something like 1850.
A better analogy for saying you can solve all human ageing would be saying you had a way to cure all diseases before the germ theory had been invented, or claiming you knew how to make a child inherit the best traits of both parents before Mendelev.
I don't think preventing ageing will always be impossible. But it's a pointlessly distant goal to have at the moment.
The physics of flight had been understood since Newton; powered flight (which I suspect is what you're getting at, though again that had been done in 1901) was just a matter of making a light enough engine to combine with existing flying technology. There were a long series of incremental steps along the way, e.g. a powered but tethered aeroplane had been flown in something like 1850.
A better analogy for saying you can solve all human ageing would be saying you had a way to cure all diseases before the germ theory had been invented, or claiming you knew how to make a child inherit the best traits of both parents before Mendelev.
I don't think preventing ageing will always be impossible. But it's a pointlessly distant goal to have at the moment.