Look, 'Energy Expert', the last thing I want to do is to get in a pissing match with some random net loon who passes himself off as an expert, makes sweeping statements that can't be substantiated by simple fact checking, then wants to try to argue the issue into the ground.
My research skills are quite sufficient, thank you. Wikipedia is a fine place to start, but not finish. I commend you for digging up the piece in question, but I still point out that it is not the simplistic apocryphal story that you make it out to be. It simply cannot be read that way. Newcomb was pointing out serious technological challenges, and the technology and problems Newcomb cited were real problems.
Here is what you said:
"Zubrin is just like that astronomer, Simon Newcomb, who proved with mathematics that it was impossible for a heavier then air machine to be built, two weeks after they already did it...."
As you can clearly see in the piece you cite, Newcomb made no such claim, at all, anywhere. Instead he merely discussed the depth of the problems wiht the currently proposed technological solutions and designs: Namely weighty steel propellors, steam or electric propulsion, etc.
some interesting excerpts from TFA:
Surely our knowledge of natural laws, and that inventive genius which has enabled us to subordinate all nature to our needs, ought also to enable us to do anything that the bird can do. Therefore we must fly. If we cannot yet do it, it is only because we have not got to the bottom of the subject. Our successors of the not distant future will surely succeed.
and:
The mathematician of to-day admits
that he can neither square the circle, duplicate the cube or trisect the angle. May not our rnec!mnichms, in like mariner, be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which
man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple with it? I do not claim that this is a necessary conclusion from any past experience. But I do think that success must await progress of a different kind from that of invention.
As you can see, Newcomb offers nothing close to the mathematical proof' that you claim he made. In fact he repeatedly says the opposite. You are quite simply wrong.
Newcomb goes on to discuss the problems with weight, STEAM OR ELECTRIC PROPULSION steel propellers, what would later be discribed as airfoil 'stall' and controll surfaces. The Wright brothers used wooden propellors, a gasoline engine, and warpable wings... It was quite a long time later that steel airframes, propellors and electric prpulsion were suitable for aircraft design, so frankly Newcomb.