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What were the order of magnitude speed developments in seafaring before 1800? I'm not familiar with the topic.

Navigation techniques improved substantially. While not inherently a speed improvement it increased the effective range of mariners by a ton resulting in effectively the same thing.

Navigation is irrelevant to the space flight argument though, we know how to navigate between planets and stars (in theory). Speed is the limiting factor.

> While not inherently a speed improvement it increased the effective range of mariners by a ton resulting in effectively the same thing.

There were loads of innovations around the shape and profiling of ship hulls depending on conditions in which they operated. Same for sails and stuff, not to mention doing away with rowers. This improved speed quite a lot on top of range.

Thanks, that's more insightful!

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