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How Will We Get Around Near-Future Earth?
Slob Nerd points to this BBC article on future transport possibilities. It begins "The prospect of a revolution in air travel has been raised by Nasa's successful test of a 5,000mph plane. But are we likely to see similar advances in other forms of transport? Dusting off the crystal ball, what changes might come in the way we get around? What big ideas are out there, and do they have any chance of seeing the light of day?"
it'll be safe to say it isn't the segway... :P
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Crudely Drawn Games
you insensitive clod...
All the worlds indeed a
I'd like to see more high speed trains in the US. It's a lot more economical than air travel, can be just as fast (with aiport wait times and all), and is just as if not safer than flying.
Star Trek style Transporters. The government has them in secret underground bases, but the aliens dont want us to know about them, so they force the government to keep them hidden.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
How Will We Get Around in Near-Future Earth?
I just don't feel like scramjets are the future of transportation. Anything traveling that fast will be too small and would be too rough of a ride to be practical for mass/personal transport.
I don't think there are going to be any radical changes in transportation, speedwise, until we acheive teleportation a la Star Trek. But feel free to argue if you feel differently.
The earth will be paved. With concrete.
We will cruise the Earth in our Hypercars, marvelling at the brown sky.
One thing is clear; in America no one will walk. It will be too dangerous - if you aren't run over by an SUV, suffocated by smog, you'll collapse from a heart attack because you weigh 300 pounds and you're body can't take the exertion.
Required comment regarding my flying car, or lack thereof.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
nuclear powered flying cars.
Can't we just ride bikes and enjoy the scenery rather than fly past it at 5000 Mph?
What happened to all the really big airplanes that were supposed to be on their way?
a hoverboard a la Back to the Future II.
One hopes that this idea might "get off the ground." I for one would love to finally have the flying cars we were all promised we'd be riding in by the 1990s' Although I doubt this thing would be able to get past FAA regs, much less be cleared to allow people to have one in their garage, to take out in the morning, and zoom off to work, vacation, or whatever...
Jason A.
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
I can bench press a lot, me and my near-future self will bench press each other. Then we'll get around the near-future earth.
Of course, we would then have to get around Bizarro Earth. Personally, I'm assuming my Bizarro self is a terrific dancer and extremely wealthy, so I plan on crashing on his couch.
How about building cities so you can walk or ride a bike to where you need to go, instead of building strictly for car-sized vehicular traffic?
Have you ever tried to walk to the mall?
I dont go outside now, why should the future be any different?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Matrix style plugging into something somewhere, and projecting yourself into reality there. Sure, you won't actually be transporting, but you won't know the difference, and it'll be instantaneous. Seems workable, although I'm just a little leery of the needle in the back of my skull.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
I predict higher population density, growing urbanization and the increase of public transportation and pedestrians.
Fnord.
The only thing I really see coming to market are more effecient cars. There's already some, but there will start to be more alternative fuel cars at some point. Of course, there's no infrastructure for supplying these alternatives.
All the recent talk of alternative (to automobiles) transportation has been sparked by the high gas prices. It's not because we're short on gas, it's because of the oil cartels. If we switch to an alternative fuel, do you think these people will sit back and just watch their industry crumble? No, they will be the ones controlling the alternative fuel markets too.. So in the end it won't make a damned but of difference as long as they are around.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
what changes might come in the way we get around?
In ten to fifteen years when peak oil hits we just won't.
Nuclear powered rockets aren't going to be it. They may be good for a few dozen heavy-lifting projects, but uranium is just too poisonous for them to become commonplace.
I'm still crossing my fingers for the space elevator.
Because any fair judge would make him spend the rest of his days giving people pony rides around town.
The government has a water fueled car... but man, they won't tell us, because then we'd use all the water, and only have beer left to drink. And man, beer sets your mind free!
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
Seems like using more energy faster is the actual opposite of what this world needs.
I want a snail powered car...
cowardice can be fun! Try it!
Speed is sexy, of course, but what about just bringing things closer together? Replacing urban sprawl with accomodating (not communist) apartment complexes would be one step towards making a commute faster. What new technologies would make this more possible?
Well, not until we attach rockets to the planes to get them fast enough to make a scram jet possible. recall, the scram jet won't work until you're going that bast, and the only way to get going that fast is through a rocket. At least that's what I read (Even the fastest plane, the Sr-71 could go 3,000 mph, it's top speed is classified).
In other words, that ain't happening for a while.
and really, we need new technology. what we have right now just won't do.
How are they going to add the time travel feature if they don't make new models?!?! I WAS PROMISED A TIME TELEPORTING CAR.
http://www.delorean.com/
Real men travel via |
Pipeline Monorail anyone?
[1] My apologies to Bill Cosby's Shelby Cobra routine.
Peter: I got an idea, an idea so smart my head would explode if I even began to know what I was talking about.
Yeah, high speed trains.
In Toronto, Canada we have...Something like 4 subway lines? The trains that come into the city only do during rush hour (which is good, but it'd be nice if it was at least 18 hours a day). If you get on the 401 it's just BRUTAL.
And then there's the fucking 407 - the most expensive highway in North America (or so I'm told). They even had a policy for a short time (or maybe still do) that if you didn't pay your bill then you couldn't renew your license!
So I say trains, slow ones, fast ones, all connected nicely so you could theoretically go from your suburbs in one city, to suburbs in another city with minimal stop offs (which would mean going into downtown would be twice as easy).
I don't think any commercial airliner would opt for this scramjet technology for Public Transport. Will it be the next Concorde?
The last time I checked, commercial airplanes in the US weren't allowed to fly past the speed of sound to prevent sonic booms (which, incidently, growing up next to an Air Force base, I can tell you is really something you get used to quickly).
The way I see it, my getting across the country isn't a matter of airplanes not being able to go faster, it's airplanes not being allowed to go faster.
Now, a couple of Maglevs might be nice....
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
It seems to me that, since these events I need to "get around" for are in the future, there's time for them to change so they'll occur where I'll be at the time. Anything else is bad planning.
And since I've just pointed it out, it can't be bad planning on my part, can it? So whoever screws up the plan can figure out how to get me whereever. Why should I clean up someone else's mess?
I prefer transportation by bicycle...
Good'ol human powered transportation never hurt any one..or has it?
Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux!
Hey, if we can build a space elevator out of these puppies, why not train tracks? If there so cheap enough to make, we might just see some grass-roots style train development...
That is of course, if and only if nanotubes can be developed to be environmentally sound.
C'mon, hasn't everyone here already Reserved a Skycar?
ôó
Some sort of AI based network of vehicles that are available on demand (the nearest parked car will come to you -- or to the nearest "junction"). No one needs to "own" a vehicle. They will all be safe too.
Oh, that, and cities rising vertically instead of horizontally via suburban sprawl, leading to afforable housing for all.
S
Yeah cows, we could make use of the tons of methane that the produce each year. We could bake cars that run on methane or rocket cars that run on methane that would be soo cool.
I like cows the mooo and make milk hehe!!!
Ohh my spleen
"Nasa scientists say their experimental X-43A jet has the potential to make the world a much smaller place."
Somehow I find it difficult to believe that NASA scientists said their experimental jet will alter the size of thw world.
The number one reason why we don't have flying cars: People would have to fly them. Anyone who's ever had to drive more than day in their life knows what im talking about.
counting down to the first rocket car reference...
Also I hope that cities start being designed to be anti-car, meaning they are designed to be accessed on foot or by public transit systems. If you've ever been to Singapore you know what I'm talking about.
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Create a wireless web site
What dark subway tunnel do you lurk in all day? The GO Trains, brining people all around the 905 into the city, run from about 6am to 12:43am. I use them all the time...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Many automotive pundits believe that hydrogen fuel cells are the way of the future, but what is often misunderstood is that hydrogen is merely an energy carrier, not a source, and as such has to be produced from some other source, ie oil, nuclear, solar, squirrels on a wheel etc. Finding a viable alternative to petroleum based transport is vital if some of the prominent oil geologists are to be believed, many of their predictions see oil production unable to meet demand as early as 2010. For further info google "peak oil hubbert"
As I recall, right after 9/11 suddenly D.C. politicians were talking about how maybe neglecting our national rail system was maybe not such a good idea after all. I was heartened by the possibility that we could be at the dawn of a new rail era. Well, that lasted about 1.5 days. Then it was back to business as usual and the good ol' auto lobby calling all the shots.
I read Usenet for the articles.
They couldn't even make supersonic passenger jets economical. You can forget about scramjets.
the jury is out on whether high speed rail systems are economical. the fingers are typically pointed at systems in Europe or Asia that aren't analogous to the geography and population density of much of the United States.
part of the cost and inefficiency of air travel is caused by our hub-and-spoke air network system. this forces a lot of connections and short hops that could be unnecessary.
James Fallows wrote an interesting book about the very-near future of air travel. He makes the case that we need smaller regional airports and smaller high efficiency jets. These would allow many of us to make direct city-to-city flights without the need to go thru congested hub cities.
Check out Fallow's Free Flight at Amazon. Free FlightI, for one, live near the Raleigh/Durham airport. My next trip will be to New Orleans. With standard planes, that's a flight time of maybe 2 hours and a bit. But what about my trip, as it is?
- Driving to the airport: 0:10
- Parking, waiting for shuttle to bring me to the terminal: 0:20
- Checking in, security, waiting, boarding: 1:00
- Flying to Charlotte: 1:00
- Waiting for connecting flight: 1:10
- Flying to New Orleans: 2:10
- Waiting for baggage, shuttle: 0:40
- Drive to French Quarter: 0:30
So, now the grand total is: 7 hours. If I was on a jet that can reach Mach 7, and would be allowed to do so over land, how much time would this really save? In this example, maybe something between 1 and 2 hours. So, I save about 20 percent of my travel time. Big deal. Having a direct flight, as I still had in 2001, would have saved me more.So, fast planes are nice and all, and if your idea of a commute is from LA to Tokyo, this is splendid news for you. For the rest of us, faster planes are a nice solution... just not for our problem.
For what it's worth: this simple math is also the reason why Boeing's planned SonicCruiser didn't get anyone really excited.
This post is "informative"? Please don't drink and moderate.
that the new 5,000 mph, Scram Jet aircraft will revolutionize the future of air travel.
Just like the Concord does today.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
I don't know why noone else has mentioned this... but horseback has to be the most enjoyable way to travel.
Now that the Internet has come, there's no need to leave your house for any reason besides pleasure.
If we look at the current trend of transportation we can see an interesting pattern. First there were roller skates up until the late 80's, then roller blades during the early 90's, then skate boards mid to late 90's, and now we have a scooter.
From this we infer that four wheels in a row are better than four wheels aligned two abreast. Combining this property with the skateboard gave a wobbly board, so a stick was added with handle bars.
We also notice a trend of "bringing back the 80's". So if my predictions are correct we should see everyone getting around with "scuttles". These scuttles will be like a skateboard with a stick touting an ugly 80's color scheme.
Just my predictions anyway...
Cars are inefficient and dangerous. In any moderately sized city (1 million or more), the infrastructure is enormous and yet is still inadequate -- gridlock occurs everywhere with annoying frequency. Cars are expensive to buy and maintain. They produce more than their share of pollution. Whatever the future of transportation is, I'm quite sure that we will see much less reliance on individual cars, and much more on mass transit.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
but you'd need scramjet powered brakes as well.
FarCasters myself. Open portals between various areas of the Earth. We start local and then hit the moon, the planets and then the stars. Only this time we do it without the damm pesky Technocore to ruin it for us.
;)
I sometimes wish Simmons would do a series with farcasters and no technocore shrike business..that future history would be good. Illium is a close second
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
it's the acceleration not the speed that determins the g force
Force equals mass times accelleration. Nobody's disproved it yet. You can take a whole lot of stuff, let's say the air underneath a helicopter's blades, and accellerate it moderately and you will get accelleration. In this case the accelleration it takes to keep the helicoopter aloft. Or, you can take a little bit of stuff, say the propellents in a rocket ship's fuel tank, and accelerate them to near-supersonic speeds (in the burning medium, local to the nozzle) and hopefully get enough reaction to loft the rocket into space.
Recap: Force from lots of stuff at slow speed equals force from less stuff at much higher speed.
But, moving less stuff at low speed is considerably more efficient, and much less noisy, which is why I doubt that anything developed on this project will have much inpact on how we get from Omaha to our vacation in Hawaii. What is notable is that the speed of the gases inducted, burned and ejected are greater than five times the speed of sound (local to the surrounding atmosphere), which is an important advancement in combustion engineering. But I don't think any of the popular reports will have much of anything to say about that, because that's boring.
I don't think nuclear technologies, including fusion will be distributed to the masses. I would be surprised if successful development was even announced. I believe that if fusion is possible, containable, and portable, the underlying technology will enable some nefarius characters to create some very large explosions... or [eek] implosions.
What we need is obvious. An evacuated tunnell, from say NY to LA. It will be perfectly straight, and level, or at least as much as possible. It might even be necessary to plow a hole through the rockies to do that.
Inside of the tunnell there should be a maglev train. One that spends half the trip accellerating at say 1G then halfway through the trip, the seats turn around and it spends the second half of the trip slowing down. The trip would only take a few minutes. Electricity usage would not be much of a concern either as all electricity used to accelerate the train could be "recovered" during the second half of the trip. And even more importantly, there would be no need to pack any safety gear. In the event of an accident all the passangers, the train, and much of the tunnell would probably be instantly vaporized in a spectacular shooting-star style display!
Its true that it would be nearly prohibitively expensive, but its still a neat idea.
I know this is starting to come to some cities, but it would be great to be more widespread. Why should every person pay hundreds or dollars a month for a car they only use 10% of the time? If everyone just shared cars we could cut down the number of cars needed and also would create opportunities for car-pooling. It would cut down on US dependancy on foreign oil and help bring world peace.
It's the cheaper, healthier, better-for-the-environment solution; it's bound to catch on in America...eventually. Just like Metric. Aaaaany time now...honest....
It would be nice to develop a moving roadway transport that carried the vehicles, instead of powering each individual car. Eliminate traffic jams, collisions, speeding, getting cut-off and no confusion about which side of the road to use no matter what country you're in!
I think that this sums up why we don't have flying cars.
In the future, Americans will never get out of our cars. They'll be the best way at first to carry the 2KW/48h battery.
--
make install -not war
I guess it will really depend on what energy source that will be invented next. I don't think that hydrogen will ever be a adopted fuel (to cold or too high pressure) for internal combustion. So I think that for cars we will eventually have to go to batteries or fuel cells- which sucks performance wise. As for large transport- trains do have a advantgage in that they don't need to cary their fuel if they are electric. Large fusion plants can supply the power to high speed trains trains. The big problem will come with airplanes- if we ever start running low on oil these contraptions will be to expensive to fly, or require to much space for an alternate fuel. Short term I am hoping the boeing sees the future and begins to fund its Blended Wing Body. A air transport that is truly massive and efficient.
but they are trying
"My Adidas", i.e., my feet. Low tech, always work and centuries of beta testing.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
You wouldn't by any chance be one of those backwards oxymoronic smartgrowth types?
Sure, let's just corral the masses into the cities and make it so that only the truly rich can afford to get out.
You people have no idea just how evil you are.
Marge: What do you have to say about the leader now, huh?
Kids: [Things like "what Leader?"]
Marge: And who do you love now?
Kids: Hoverbikes!
Marge: Close enough.
[The kids jump onto the hoverbikes, but they come crashing to the ground.]
Marge: [laughs] Sorry, kids! There's the no such thing as hoverbikes! They're just a couple of huffies on a fishing line!
Lisa: But we heard them hovering!
[Ned comes through the door.]
Ned: I'm afraid I played a dirty part in this little charade.
[He holds up a comb and paper, and blows into it making the hovering noise.]
Bart: Can we at least keep the bikes?
Marge: Oh no, no-no, no-no-no, they're due back at the store by six, get off 'em, get off, off, get off!
This is what we can look forward too. http://www.oilcrash.com/after_c.htm
Won't be much more than by pedaling around, riding tramways or going in trains pulled by good-ole steam engines...
It seems to me that alot of people arent putting much thought into these Hydrogen powered car alternatives.
Sure, their only biproduct is H2O, but the hydrogen has to come from somewhere. It takes quite a bit of power to get H2 via electrolysis of water. And all that power has to come from somewhere.
Hydrogen powered cars wouldnt really be more environmentally friendly, it would just make the consumer believe it is by shifting the responsibility from the consumer to the company in charge of generating the H2.
Horse and carriage for me! I get 500 miles to the bale. Though the horse didn't like much when I tried to change his alternator...
Still, I think all of this has already been invented by the government, so they can get into any building anywhere, but they are keeping it an extreme secret because if the other world governments knew this, it would be really, really, really bad.
Probably (since I'm on the subject), the software for this transporter will be licensed under the GPL, and will be callable with a single function, kind of like this:
Yeah. All you gotta do is tell it what matter, and to where. (The location is a GPS coordinate.) Yes. I think this will work really good.I agree that gasoline has to go. All the power we could ever need comes from the sun and if large enough solar collectors were built in space all the worlds power could be beamed down via microwave or similar transmission. I'd like to see more computer driven electric cars where you tell it your destination and it drives you there faster than the legal speed limit for flesh drivers in special computer driver only fast lanes. I'd like to see transit tubes like in Logan's Run that route passengers around the world at high speed like packets through the internet. And most highways should be elevated above the land and covered like glass tunnels to eliminate weather effects and roadkill. I could go on but that would be a great start.
The problem is suburbs which don't make allowances for urban planning, and just lay down as many identical-looking houses as will reasonably fit so that you have to drive to get just about anywhere. Sure, more compact appartments help (it makes public transportation more economically feasible) but fundamentally even if people insist on their residential neighbourhood and yards it's just a matter of careful city planning.
In the next 5 years we will see cars introduced with viable "autofollow" where a car will know it's relative position in traffic and be able to safely autopilot itself. Toyota is already demonstrating it here
Such as Futurama. It seems strange, but I think we need the high speed individual transport tubes that go throught the city and will spit you out anywhere you want. Anyone else for this????
My sig beat up your sig.
In the not too distant future there will be futile attempts to halt our greenhouse gas emissions as the evidence mounts that we're facing a problem. These will possibly involve the most mechanically efficient short-range vehicle (the bicycle) for all those trips under 2 miles (to the video store etc) that we all take in urban centers.
And since cars don't belong in cities, there will be an increase in public transit use, as well as bicycling.
This will doubly benefit the people: they will be healthier thanks to the exercise, and there will be much less air pollution (that is responsible for many deaths a year).
One viable method that I can see occuring for longer, if not urban, trips are more 'evacuated tube transports'. A maglev in a vaccum tube can reach speeds efficiently, and once in place, would run like any regular train, or rail-based transport. It's also energy efficient.
The problem is that we seldom build cities. Cities morph -- especially in our suburban mindset we've have for the past century or so
Cities are not built house by house though. Most of the time, whole subdivisions are built more or less at once. Most are not walking and biking unfriendly by accident. They are designed that way.
They *could* put in sidewalks, but chose not to. Commercial and retail *could* be included but are not. New subdivisions *could* be criss crossed with minor streets great for bicycling but instead every neighborhood street ends in a cul de sac and traffic is diverted to arterials.
http://media.f2.com.au/?rid=13661
Link
Step into a Pod at Destination A, arrive at a Pod at Destination B just moments later. It's just re-arranging molecules, right? I'm sure we can do that.
...and if that didn't succeed, we could do Mac commercials as a last resort.
And you know... even if that doesn't succeed, at least we could have super-human abilities if, let's say, a fly were to enter the pod with us at the exact moment we materialize. We could vomit on people and make them dissolve instantly, or walk into a bar and challenge the toughest man to an arm wrestling match only to BREAK HIS FOREARM IN HALF!!
We'd be so tough and bad ass that people would BEG to drive us to where we needed to go. They'd be all like, "Oh please, Mr. Human fly, don't vomit on me or break my bones. Where do you need to go? Oh... to China Cuisine on 59th street? Right away!"
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Given the rate of advancement at the research and development levels in fields like architecture, fabrication, and construction there are many ideas which are inching closer to reality from science fiction.
If nanotech pans out they way researchers are theorizing, new levels of ingenuity will be open for a new generation of dreamers. Imagine the space elevator idea that's gotten more buzz over the last several years. Combine that with a reentry vehicle equipped with thrusters and a traditional jet engine; a pulse jet may even be enough.
Take a lift out of the atmosphere and board a waiting shuttle. Since the cable, counter weight, and terminal are all spinning at the constant proper velocity, all you have to do is detach and use thrusters to navigate away. The globe could be circled in about 90 minutes. At the right point, just drop back in. They should only need to start the jets if you need to maneuver or hold a pattern.
SCRAM jets could be used for flight at the edge of the atmosphere. At that altitude the ground effect from the shock wave would not be like the ones most people are familiar with. They may even be tolerable if noticed at all. That is the single largest drawback from previous SST's. By using hydrogen as the primary fuel you also take care of the concerns for efficiency, cost, and the environment.
I'm not even going to begin about the rapid advancement of tunnel building, maglev, and even talk of vacuum transit tunnels. Just imagine a long distance tunnel where the only limit is how quickly you can comfortably change velocity.
All in all I think that by the time I'm an old man my back in my day stories will put my grandparents' to shame.
Oil is going to be WAAAAYYY too expensive to use for a trip to the shops within a couple of decades. There's just not that much left (even oil industry execs and Bush's energy advisor admit this!).
There are currently NO forseeable alternatives to oil that will scale to allow Americans to keep driving personal cars. Period. The main two alternatives I see bandied about are hyrdrogen and ethanol.
-Hydrogen is a lousy storage system, about 25% efficient for the electricity round trip. Unless someone invents cheap fusion, we won't be able to waste that much energy.
-Ethanol requires large amounts of oil to produce it (tractors, fertiliser etc.) and we could never produce enough sugar to meet current levels of demand.
I suggest you teach your kids to ride a bike, and maybe put a few away for the future. Oil is so inextricably linked to the manufacturing and distrubtions sectors of the economy that even a simple bike may become a commodity.
Here in Houston, the 4th largest city in the U.S., we JUST got our first light rail. Yes, our first. And sadly, additional funding for the program barely passed.
The light rail opened the 1st of the year. So we are just coming to 3 months of service... and guess what? We've already had 31 accidents involving the light rail. That's one practically every 3 days... so sad, so very very sad. Apparently, people don't understand the concept of "don't stop on the tracks" and "don't turn in front of the train" here.
Houston has some of the poorest public transportation I have ever seen. But, I have to admit, the light rail is a step in the right direction. Right now, I spend over 2 hours a day in my car... and this is for a commute of only 18miles each way. Hopefully, they will expand the light rail. Building and expanding more highways is _not_ a solution. Fortunately, the light rail seem to service a rather large volume, and has been well recieved. Too bad the expansions are going to take 10 years+ to complete.
Seastead this.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
18855
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
22734
Hybrid cars have enermous fuel economy. Many provide the same acceleration and top speed (almost) as current cars. Not a hot rod, but a "regular" car.
This becomes a problem for people that tow stuff. Even with the improved fuel economy, it's cheaper to drive your SUV every day of the year than buy 2 cars (one for towing, one for everyday driving).
Most people, however, will save money in the long run with these vehicles. I get the feeling that most people are waiting to see how durable they are before they buy one.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
10660
Think about it: have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree? They find their own way down. Firefighters around here don't even respond to one of those calls.
-cp-
There is a plan to build a high speed train between San Francisco/Sacramento and LA/San Diego.
It is supposed to be on the November 2004 ballot, but with the current CA debt situation who knows if voters will go for it.
Senate Bill 1856: This bill authorizes a $9.95 billion general obligation bond for the November 2004 ballot. $9 billion would create the State's share of the construction costs for the San Francisco to Los Angeles segment of the high-speed train system as presented in the Authority's business plan. The remaining $950 million would be dedicated to feeder rail programs to the high-speed rail system.
From http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov
nefarious characters to create some very large explosions
Screw the bad guys with some nukes, I vote 'NIMBY' on those death-trap grain elevators!!
Or, at least anyone with storage sheds full of fertilizer.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
27885
Here is a novel idea. Rapid transit trains suspended from their tracks instead of on them.
Why would that be cool. Well give the train the ability to lower to the ground (a jack like mechanism I'm guessing). Run the tracks over roads in the city.
So it basicly works like the bus system, but only lowers in the bus stop. This would avoid traffic jams and street lights.
The tracks might be on the ugly side. They might look a lot like roller coaster tracks. Power lines would have to be run over them, and street lights might have to be adjusted.
Also the tracks would have to be pretty far from the ground so that tall truck could go under the train cars.
Just thought it was an interesting idea.
Scott me up, Beamie!!
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
1390
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
3370
In the year 2015 you'll be able to hover convert your old road car into a sky way flyer!
Only 39,995.95!
-Goldie Wilson III
Who is Scott Richter and why is he reading my harddisk?
Read this essay by Larry Niven. Classic on the limitations and requirements for teleportation in a stable society.
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
2941
Let's not forget Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), with travel pods sliding around town.
A rocket sled travels about 9,000K/h. If we set one up between Melbourne and Sydney we could reduce the travel time from a 9 hour leasurly drive to ~7 minutes.
Just keep you head straight ang Blow your nose hard to keep you eyeballs popped out.
Flying cars have got to be the classic poster child of the genre. For economic and safety reasons alone, the idea is a non-starter. Harder for people to grasp is the fact that flying cars can never exist, they would be private aircraft, an entirely different beast with different laws and different applications. If I may belabor the point a bit, can you see how the very term flying car negates itself and coerces itself into a different noun? There have been small private aircraft for decades, you'd think these people would have noticed them.
People's willingness to believe in the patently absurd is borne out in the authors list of the downsides of flying cars:
- "The prospect of horrific crashes and air rage spring to mind."
- "The British weather often prevents microlight flying, and you can only travel during daylight hours. You need an airfield and learning to fly isn't easy."
- "There is also the question of developing propellers that can safely power cars."
- "'Whilst taxiing up the road under propeller power, I met a group of cycling proficiency children who I thought I'd chop up, so stopped and pushed the rest of the way,' says Bill Brooks of an early test run."
And yet, the author appears to conclude that flying cars will indeed someday exist.No doubt some of you will trot out the same old arguments about how people said Christopher Columbus was an idiot and see how he proved them wrong, or that believing in things like flying cars means you are open minded and imaginative, and folks such as myself are closed minded old farts, and damn the evidence to the contrary. Those folks often cite the evidence that contradicts their beliefs as a perverse sort of proof that they are right and everybody else is stuck in some obsolete paradigm.
And what set this off? NASA successfuly tests an aircraft that, under highly specialized and contrived conditions, flew at 5,000 mph, well over six times the speed of sound. Immediately, pundits around the world speculate that soon passenger aircraft will do the same. This in spite of the fact that aircraft flying at mach 3 have been around for half a century. In fact, the Concorde reached the end of its useful life last year. It proved too expensive and impractical. But nay say the futurists! In the future we will all fly even faster! Even farther!
The Dark Ages were characterized in part by fanatical religious beliefs that had entire regions hypnotized and enslaved. I conjecture that the same is true today. Traditional religion melts away before pop culture, consumerism, and a vast new array of supertitious beliefs. We are all equally enslaved, toiling away as our masters enrich themselves and our planet, our precious and timeless inheritance, is burned away like a cheap cigarrette.
Highly industrialized wars are fought; nations are bombed senseless, invaded, and conquered on a whim; truck bombs detonated among the innocent and passenger planes full of more innocents are slammed into buildings filled with still more innocents; fanatics strap explosives to their bodies and detonate themselves among their peers and fellow citizens, heads filled with wild dreams; fanatics kill their enemies in the name of God, Right to Life, Democracy, Liberty, Free Trade, and endless other litanies. Societies that support such acts cheer them on with empty eyes and apparently empty heads. "Soon," they must be thinking, "Soon I will have a flying car and these terrible times will be over."
hey asshole, you misspelled "efficient". did i miss the sudden surge of idiots arounds here?
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
Arcology
Japan has been R&Ding Maglevs since 1970. They should replace today's shinkansen (bullet trains) in a near future
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
11918
If you hadn't come to that conclusion in the past, without notifying us about it here in the future, how are we supposed to know that you're not going to be available last tuesday, 3 years after you initially posted this? I mean, you thought this up all the way in the past, and you couldn't at least send us an email saying you wouldn't be at Joes batchelor party in 2007? That's bad planning on your part Kohath.
And the fact that you recognized the conundrum to start with, but didn't rectify it, makes it your mess.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
27837
With China's ascendency and increased competition from them for scarce and expensive oil, travel will be out of reach to all but the richest few. SUVs will be converted into fish smokers and jumbo jets into low-income housing.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
10205
Setting aside the idiotic abbreviation "USicans" (hint: the proper term for citizens of the United States of America is "Americans", for citizens of the United States of Mexico is "Mexicans", etc.)...
Although its passenger rail system could be accurately described as "completely useless" everywhere outside the coastal strip between Washington DC and Boston, the freight rail system of the USA is generally considered amongst the world's finest. With its already developed state, and tight integration with roadway freight, it's difficult to imagine in what way commerce between disparate parts of the US could be "increased" by building more rail links.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
2673
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
27513
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
5021
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
19423
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
9305
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
20358
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
15070
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
13398
That aside, sashang: As far as i know, the acceleration for NASA's rocket jet thing was enormous -- the final ~5000mph being achieved in a matter of seconds.
Dialectician. Archology.
There are no sidewalks in this land. Houses usually have two or more cars parked out front (presumably one per person?) Since there are no sidewalks, you have to walk on the side of the road (where passing motorists look at you like you're some kind of freak or escaped convict -- because EVERYONE has a car here) or take your chances in the swamp/bushes/forest/whatever's on the other side of the ditch opposite the road (taht's where, in more civilized places, a sidewalk would be, I suppose...)
Did I mention there's no sidewalks here? Oh, and it's freaking hot and humid too. And thunderstorms come and go at moment's notice... But that'd be alright if you could at least count on having a sidewalk or something...
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
637
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
7737
This is both practical and beneficial. I live in a relatively small city of 16,000. I can ride my bike nearly anywhere in the city without fear of getting hit by a car. Sidewalks are everywhere and roads have wide enough shoulders. Traffic isn't much of a problem because alot of people around here walk when they want to go someplace.
If I want to go get a hair cut I can walk a few blocks or ride my bike. To grab groceries it's just another few feet. I save money on gas and *gasp* get to interact with my neighbors.
I can't imagine living in typical suburbia...it seems so counterproductive and dehumanizing. I laugh when I hear friends pack up their bikes and drive 20 miles just so they can unpack their bikes and ride them.
... more and more people seem to be taking the Hershey Highway.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
7872
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
12288
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube. Whoa-oh
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say.
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say.I'm pleased where man has been.
Or tear it down and start again. Whoa-oh
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give.
And he ain't put back nothing.Whoa-oh
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew,
now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night.
The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away.
Maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525
If man is still alive.
If woman can survive, they may find.
In the year 3535
20488
Better cars are not the answer, computer-controlled transportation is the answer: no accidents, ability to go faster, more efficient.
Catapult!
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
scott richter's personal e-mail address
per the daily show:
scottrichter422@yahoo.com
IIRC, one of the good things about fascist leaders is that they can make the trains run on time.
So, I'm hoping that our rail system doesn't get that good.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I'd hardly call a 5000mph plane an advance in "transport" -- "regular" humans simply aren't built to withstand such G forces (although i must admit, i would like to see how an elderly person would cope with the acceleration necessary to quickly reach such speeds). A more accurate way of saying it would be an advance in rocket and missile technology.
Why was it modded down, I wonder.
I always expected space cadets to be geniuses, but then, maybe I just read Ender's Game too many times.
Look at what options we have in the area today: bicycles. Yep, that's pretty much it. Even the much hyped segway just has you stand there like a lazy bum, coasting on battery power.
I'm not talking about Flintstones cars here, but perhaps future vehicles could facilitate some physical, aerobic activity on the part of the driver or passengers.
Just think, your commute could be your workout for part of the journey; that's valuable time reclaimed.
1.less cars.
2.a LOT more cars that dont use fossil fuels.
3.more (and faster) trains
4.more experimentation with things like automatic pilots for cars (or e.g. cars that have automatic pilots for some things and manual control for others)
and 5."Personal Flying Craft" (I am sure that even if you needed a pilots licence etc to fly one, there would be a fair few people interested in owning something like a skycar, perhaps people might hire pilots to fly them around...)
I think we're addicted to the wrong questions...
The question should be how are we going to support a world with 10,000,000,000 people in it, while maintaining some semblance of quality of life. This idea of half a billion people in the U.S. going anywhere they feel like, any time they feel like, each in their own vehicle, which if by current standards continues is 7 feet high, 18 feet long, weighs 12 tons, sleeps 10, and get's 8 MPG, is at best insane. It ignores sanity on so many fundamental levels, I'm not even going to bother listing.
Designing living habitats that provide people with clean, safe, lawful, aesthetically pleasing environments, that are high density and preclude the need to travel more than a few hundred meters to receive/deliver any needed service, would immeditely transform our society. At that point the edge of the metroplex, might provide a variety of transportation for folk going to and from other island cities. The metroplex is a three dimensional hive, with business, housing, and recreation all built tightly into an interactive, engineered space, with little or no impact on the surrounding land. This allows people instant access to everything they need from work to pleasure... while only being minutes away from wild spaces they can visit and enjoy. Literally tens of millions of people can exist in a tiny hive like city. A place that has been optimized for crime prevention, cleanliness, well lit open airy spaces. In short a perfect controlled environment.
High speed rail, tube, or supercomputer networked controlled superconducting ribbon highways could easily manage regional transport. Ultra high speed air travel would be useful for travel to distant regions or other continents. Cable travel to geosynced space depots could carry passengers to cities on the moon, mars, callisto, europa, and ganymede. As well they might carry asteroid miners and their products to and from earth.
Even horseback becomes a viable form of transport into the natural spaces surrounding the cities (horses being highly efficient for that particular use... hover cars, like the Moller being viable for trips longer than a days horseback ride.) One might even relegate such vehicles to rental only since anyplace in the hive could be accessed in minutes by people movers and other metroplexs could be accessed by mass transit.
Any given form of transportation would only be viable depending on it's speed and efficiency. Each would inherently be designed and optimized to operate in a specific level of social/geographical granularity.
The tremedous advantage in societal cost, safety, improved environment, ease of living, efficiency, and quality of life would make living in such a place, a slice of heaven. Enhanced taxbase, with tremendously reduced cost of living, would allow money to be available for fantastic free schools, enhanced medical care, and a gorgeous, sparkling infrastructure. Who wants to move in? I know I do!
Genda
I guess my previous post on this story needs an addendum...
Well since Florida is effectively and openly hostile to pedestrians, I figured (after getting tired of walking) that I'd get myself a bike. I splurged (about $250... lotta money back then when I was a jobless student) and got a decent mountain bike. Not a "name brand" affair, but I just wanted something to get me to and fro, and this fit the bill perfectly.
Until I got hit by a car. Yes, one of the many cars that zip up and down the roads in the Land of No Sidewalks and Boom-Boom Cars. Luckly I wasn't hurt badly, but now I don't have a bike anymore. And I'm probably not gonna get one...
Current mass transit systems have serious shortcomings that prevent 100% adoption though, so what problems do we need to resolve for a public transportation system to be appealing enough that private transportation is no longer a desirable alternative?
1. It needs to get you there quickly. You shouldn't have to transfer between different lines and different modes of transport and arrive at your destination 45 minutes later when you could have been there in 10 minutes via car.
2. It needs to provide door to door service. You shouldn't have to walk a few blocks, hop in a car, or take a bus, to get to a station and board public transportation.
3. It needs to be cheap. Public transportation already wins here when you factor in all the extended costs of car ownership. Most of the time your car sits unused in a driveway, garage, or parking space, and in the bigger picture that's just money ticking away by the minute in terms of us having a *much* larger fleet of vehicles overall than we need.
4. It needs to always be available. It can't stop running from 12am until 6am.
5. Travel needs to be private/not shared between passengers. You should have a car/coach/capsule that is private for you or you and companions for the duration of your trip.
6. It needs to be comfortable. A public system could have many advantages here, not having to drive is one of the biggest.
7. It needs to be be ubiquitous and extend everywhere. You should be able to go anywhere using the system that you can with a car.
I think all of these criteria could be met by replacing our entire road system, down to the last street and cul-de-sac, with a tube or rail system and having numerous individual cars/capsules that arrive on demand and take you where you want to go, all routed by computers (kind of reminiscent of the old pneumatic tube message systems). The cars/capsules could be privately owned, but I think it would work much better if they were shared/pooled to dramatically reduce the costs. I can think of ways to combine/support both options.
You would only need private/off-grid vehicles for specialized tasks. They could be designed to connect to the grid to get to a location and then detach and run independently at the job site.
I wonder how, cost-wise, this would compare to the entire road and automobile infrastructure, including what we each pay for private car ownership and maintenance. There are lots of interesting implications to this. What effect does it have on the idea of a neighborhood? The commercial strip? What do we do with all of the reclaimed space if roads are replaced by something with a much smaller footprint (do urban homeowners all get their lots extended by several yards or do we create some new system of a public greenspace grid)?
Is this a bad idea? What kinds of systems are being proposed out there for this kind of a broad shift toward something that is more humane, convenient, and cost-effective, then the mess we have today?
OK, things that are similar to Oil, I can see that. But if we get true alternatives (i.e. not just diesel, bio-diesel, what have you), then I don't think those oil cartels will last long...
I want to be first in line for one of the cold-fusion-hybrid-flying-recumbent-bikes. I'm having trouble even picturing it, but I know I want one.
with all this genetic engineering go on, I want my flying monkey.
I don't care if it's a european or african flying monkey. As long as it can hold the weight and get me to work.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
a) They get banned.
b) More screening process on who to give licence.
c) Same thing happens few times more and goto a.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Admittedly, the rocket fuel to boost the plane to Mach 6, where the scramjet can take over, may balance out those cost savings on short trips. But if you are travelling From Britain to Australia, the bulk of the travelling will be done on scramjet power alone. Using on the order of a hundred pounds of hydrogen to make that flight is a big deal.
You may not fly that long a trip by yourself, but you'll certainly appreciate the lower cost of fuel and the lower pollution level.
You'll also appreciate the way that this cuts down on traffic at your local airport. As you said, most of your travel time is spent waiting in airports. When a plane can fly from New York to Tokyo primarily on fifty pounds of hydrogen fuel, plus initial booster fuel and landing fuel, it makes little sense for that flight to stop in Seattle first. It would waste booster and landing fuel. Fewer long haul flights being broken up into short connected flights should lead to less airport congestion.
I've heard the Free Flight theories... I know NASA's been pouring money into it.
It's a waste. As someone in the aviation industry, I'll tell you it's a crock and a waste of taxpayer and corporate R&D dollars, though it doesn't have to be. Light jets... does anyone KNOW what the cost of maintaining an aircraft, let alone a TURBINE aircraft is? You can't just get parts at AutoZone and let some yokel install them. And turbines ain't cheap!! A Cessna 172 burns about 9 gallons of fuel per hour (gph), or 54 pph. A light jet engine powering an aircraft that could carry a similar load would burn at least to 150-200pph. (20-25 gph, a figure quoted for a proposed jet using the Williams International FJX-2). Furthermore, that's at altitude-- tubines are very inefficient at altitudes below 29,000 feet. And if you're making small hops, you spend a lot of time dinking around below FL290.
Secondly, consider why the cost of general aviation has skyrocketed after September 11, 2001. Fuel doesn't cost much more, nor do aircraft, nor hangars nor landing fees. Insurance is the cause of the rise. And insurance for TURBINE aircraft is higher, much higher. Insurance for single-pilot turbine ops is insanely high, because turbine acft are both complex and very fast. Complexity and speed mean you can get behind the aircraft much, much more easily. Having an autopilot doesn't mean a thing, because what kills people now is getting behind on the damn button-pushing and forgetting to FLY the aircraft. Pilots spend too much time head-down, programming, and not paying attention to where they are and what the plane is doing.
I haven't heard ANYONE credible address how the insurance companies will treat a new generation of unproven light jets that fly random courses across the country, landing at small airports, and that are designed to be flown by ordinary owner-operators instead of professional pilots.
Third, where will we fly these things? We're currently revamping airspace above FL290 to increase the capacity of the system, and this requires a LOT of new (read: expensive) equipment for DRVSM. Oh, and one other thing: You can't just hop in a jet and fly away- you MUST have a type rating, and those generally cost about $10,000 and require more smarts than driving your Lexus to Starbucks for coffee. New transportation scheme? Only for the insanely rich. Free Flight is a lame duck in my book.
Do the figures you cite include the massive governmental subsidies of highway systems? The Federal Highway Administration alone will spend more than $32 billion in FY 2005. This goes up to $36 billion next year and doesn't include the massive expenditures by state and local governments. That's tax money coming directly out of your pocket and mine.
There are many other non-obvious costs of cars, such as the fact that vast amounts of the space we live in is designed for use by cars instead of people.
High-speed rail is not necessarily the answer for California or anywhere else. Just remember that there is lot more to the cost of a car than the sticker price, insurance, repair costs, and fuel.
While there's a lot of speculation about transportation in the 21st century, such as hydrogen, ethanol and the like, I think the future will be more mundane. I expect diesel engines to become more commonplace because diesel is relatively easy to make. Diesel engines may also be used to power electric vehicles.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
..but cars are cool.
Look at the lifestyle commercials - I too want to be the guy / girl in the sports car / suv cruising through the desert / mountains while wearing shades / a big grin.
Smoking is bad for you - look how long it took them to tone down the cigarette commercials and stop selling to kids. And cars are an even worse problem - they're going to be in style for a very long time, even if the dangers become well known.
You have to get people to stop buying cars - and have to get the makers from selling them in sneaky and underhanded ways. I think the incoming wave of hybrid vehicles will do fantasticly well in the next year or so. Consumers won't have to make sacrifices to be environmentally chic - it's the new cool. People still want personal transportation - even if they can't go two blocks without being stuck in traffic.
Americans always support public transport - but only for "other people" - not themselves. Unfortunately, after having lived in the US for a decade, I've fallen into the same trap. Right now you have to plan ahead with public transport - instantaneous "oh, I wanna go here now" impulses are squashed.
We must be a lot closer than we think...
CNN has been reporting all week that NASA tested a jet that "uses air for fuel". Cool! I guess that solves the whole pollution and natural resource problem. Gotta love CNN and the spin doctors.
This is the one that I keep waiting for. They have been doing short test flights for quite a while. But I have yet to see one in a showroom. I still need to save a bit more anyway.
http://www.moller.com/
Beam me up, Scotty...
I think for high speed trains to work in the USA, you want trains that have to be really fast.
:-)
The thing about the USA is that because of the sheer physical size of the country, steel-wheel trains are not going to be practical for travel beyond 275-300 miles between your origin and destination points. At speeds over 186 mph (300 km/h), the physical contact of steel wheels with steel rails and the overhead wiring will cause considerable wear on the trainset on large-scale revenue service. I don't expect steel-wheel trains to be travelling much faster than 330 km/h in the long run.
For the type of distances involved in the USA, it's time to finally do a major development program to make maglev trains economically practical. Since maglevs could travel as fast as 310 mph (500 km/h) relatively easily without attendant wear on tracks and/or the trainset (since there is no physical contact), this makes it possible for journeys between even relatively widely-spaced apart cities in well under two hours; imagine going from Chicago to Minneapolis-Saint Paul in just over a hour!
Maglevs may not be necessary in Europe and Japan given the relatively short distances between major population centers, but here in the USA, the extra speed to shorten travel times is a very good idea.
we are all going to ride around standing on two-wheeled gyro-balanced leg-replacers. They will change the layout of entire cities so we can use them to get to our 3rd job, so we can pay the monthly repayments!
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your car runs out of gas? What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your bicycle gets a flat you can't fix? What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your shoe falls apart?
Infuriate left and right
Diesel exhaust exposure and lung cancer: adjustment for the effect of smoking in a retrospective cohort study
Lung cancer in heavy equipment operators and truck drivers with diesel exhaust exposure in the construction industry
Sorry Dude. I know you meant well.
This reminds me of the talk of colonizing Mars. A lot of people say we could colonize Mars after we destroy the Earth. It is and will always be a lot easier to live in the Gobi desert than on Mars, regardless of the amount of pollution!
Running cars on compressed air sounds like a good idea to me. The car as a means of transport is such a brilliant concept that it's a crying shame we're wasting it with polluting engines.
Money for nothing, pix for free
If we are going to reach back in time for original ideas, I suggest leaving the ones that were not practical and grabing the ones that did have an impact. Leave Jet Packs, take the great Zeppelin air ships.
The Zeppelin-type ships got a bad reputation for (1) being associated with preWWII Germany (you know, the Castle Wolfenstein bad guys) and (2) getting burned down in an unfortunate accident in the US. Well fact (1) can be forgiven, I bet, after 60+ years and fact (2) should be put into context: the ship burned because Germany did not have access to the a non flammable gas alternative at the time (today it is not a problem).
And, behold, it *is* coming back. Brought to you by Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, who else.
It has now been forgotten, but the Empire State Building's top floor (where tourists go) was built, at the time, to be a docking point for the Zeppelin right in the middle of Manhattan. They even tried docking it there, but strong winds made them give it up... and never try again. But it makes me wonder, with all the microprocessor power we have today, modern sensors and actuators, and good software, couldn't it be tried again ? How would it do to public transportation ? Cargo transportation ? Leisure cruises ?
No, don't tell me about yet another fast train.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
be an Ask Slashdot? Seriously, this is a fun topic to discuss, and it's funny to me to see all of the complaining in the ask.slashdot articles of people who get something green-lighted when an effective google would've provided their answer...
That being said, I'm holding out for the space elevators from 3001. That's how I plan on getting around. In 997 years...
Now, I'm looking into alternate methods to power my g#4gFW43[NO CARRIER]
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
the gluon controls the interaction between the nucleus and prevents the extreme repulsion of like-charged protons. not only are all quantum mechanical systems subject to the conservation laws, ALL quantum mechanics systems are path independent (ie for any force, [del].F = 0 which implies that the path integral of any closed loop is 0), so there is no loss or gain in energy.
Anyone who thinks Mach 7 is about travel is a horse's ass.
We need to get our planes fast enough that we don't need Turkey's permission next time we want to drop bombs in the Middle East on 15 minutes notice.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Right now this is an impossibility because of the huge expense involved in making tunnels the old-fashioned way with TBMs. But, with near-term nanotechnology, moving hard bedrock molecules out of the way becomes almost as cheap and easy as manipulating databits; hardware essentially becomes software.
So, imagine a 20,000km nonstop train ride to the exact opposite side of the Earth in which you accelerate half-way at 1G and decelerate the other half at 1G. Your trip would only take just under 50 minutes! Hmm... but you'd be traveling 14,009m/s (or almost 31,337mph!) at the midpoint, which means there's enough centripetal force against the curved tunnel to lift you out of your seat... requiring the seats or the train to invert as you become weightless. (I'll leave it to someone else to figure the details out - I haven't done this physics since I was playing with the Babylon5 numbers).
--
Power to the Peaceful
The Wheelman is much cooler.
The wheelman is faster, cheaper, and has a greater operating range than the Segway. It is even very, very safe, so long as you would consider riding a skateboard at 20 MPH on asphault wearing nothing more than a bikini "safe".
The ______ Agenda
Some sort of AI based network of vehicles that are available on demand (the nearest parked car will come to you -- or to the nearest "junction"). No one needs to "own" a vehicle. They will all be safe too.
Functionally, we have that today. They are called taxi's. Of course they are operated by humans rather than AI's so the cost is rather high. Still, I think it is clear that you need quite lot of density to make this reasonably cheap and convenient.
This idea is to make a car, which can travel roads and a special rail which also supplies power. High speeds are obtainable on the rail and batteries are charged while the car is on the rail. Off-rail travel will be battery powered.
Rapid Urban Transport may be a good solution for large cities. And most big cities grow larger every day.
(No, I'm not related to the inventor, Jensen just happens to be the most common name in Denmark)
-- From Denmark
Here is the idea: convert all major highways to maglev tracks. Then sell cars that can double as a maglev train. So you could drive to the interstate input your destination and use the computer controlled maglev system to take your car to your exit. You can read the newspaper, sleep, watch dvds, ect. until you reach your exit. No more waiting for planes (except intercontinental travel and coast-to-coast journeys) and you still have your car when you get to your destination. This system would solve all of the major problems with highway transportation, cut down on commute time and cause a huge drop in fatal car crashes.
Yes, this system would take probably 50 years to implement throughout the country and yes, the cost of such a system would be ungodly, however baring the invention of star trek like transporters this seems like the best idea for the future of transportation.
"How Will We Get Around Near-Future Earth?" Why? Is it in the way of something?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I think our near/medium-future transport possibilities will be determined as much by the realities of diminishing fossil fuel supplies as by technology and the "need for speed".
Here's my prediction. In an ideal world we will travel less distance, and more slowly.
Goods and information will be moved to people, and make people virtually present to each other.
Highways will be torn up. Roads will be planted with trees. Travel will become more not less expensive, as it is required to bear the FULL cost of the ecological and habitat destruction that cutting transportation corridors causes...
My utopia is an antitransportation utopia in which people stay in places that are so good that they don't want to go very far, so rich that they don't need to go very far, and so well served materially that and socially that they choose not to travel.
In the ideal world instead of subsidizing the environmental destruction of highways, airports and transportation technologies of every kind, we will make them pay their true cost, and work on creating PLACES.
Transportation is fundamentally about destroying PLACE....
Transportation is the enemy of PLACE.
Movement is a seductive fantasy... it seems to present so many opportunities to the individual, and yet it makes every place the same, and destroys the habitats and environments that lie between places....
Movement is what we all want, but that doesn't mean that we or our planet is better when we have more of it, or faster versions of it....
Just the opposite. Transportation is a seductive illusion... it gets you from here to there, but only at the cost of destroying the difference between here and there and everywhere in between.
I suspect the cartels are cutting back on supply, not to screw America, but because oil production has peaked and they are starting to run out of cheap oil
And gas prices in the USA are ridiculously low, compared with almost every other western country.
For example, here in Australia, 1 litre (approx
The world in going to hell, not in a handbasket, but in a gas-guzzling SUV...
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
have a look at http://www.skytran.net/
/C
Their consept solves some of the major problems that have keept the car a better option than comunal transportation.
skytran has:
1) no waiting (spare "pods" on every station)
2) point to point transportation. (every "pod" is independently routed)
3) high point to point speed (no intersections and no intermediate stopps.)
4) cheap. (no driver so costs are only material)
There are still several tecnical hurdles to overcome but this is the best idea for a future trasnsportation i have ever seen.
You dont have to be an analretentive nitpicker to be a tester.... But it helps
For those who don't speak Russian, Ekranoplans are surface effect craft or "Wing In Ground". Basically they are aircraft (with specially designed "wings") that utilize the pressure buildup from flying very low over flat surfaces (water). This gives them most of the speed of an aircraft with the carrying capacity of a ship. They are also remarkably fuel efficient.
The soviets took this technology to a great extent, building huge transports for use on their "landlocked" seas (like the Caspian).
sig. for today
If you're conservative when you're young you have no heart... If you're conservative when you're old you have no brain (with apologies to Winston Churchill but he didn't know Bush!)
Although we often speak of increased efficiency in the means of propulsion and in the production of fuel, we too rarely consider the gains promised by more radical approaches.
One might, for example, achieve high-velocity subjective travel merely through a distributed effort to rearrange human definitions of location. By exchanging Surrey and Essex in the general social awareness, humans could potentially travel instantaneously between the two. With digital technology such a measure is no pipe dream; its only complication lies in the difficulty of cooperatively scheduling each individual's location at a specifically desired time.
Another approach which may alleviate the inefficiencies of travel altogether is to restrict each human corporeally to one narrow venue, preferably bounded by chain or wire mesh, within which that human may live free of geography's inconvenience. Such innovative measures are already being developed globally, and it is a simple question of how quickly all humans can be accused of terrorist sympathies before we can consider ourselves to have discovered the future of transportation.
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
The era of flying cars started in Britain about 2010. The Smart car company was the progenitor, essentially by adding a pair of wings to its lightweight vehicle. The introduction was timely, in that the minority coalition of Conservative and New Labour parties, under their "Privatise everything" policy were introducing tolls on all roads. The flying car avoided this by not using roads at all.
The concept quickly spread to Europe, causing the Channel Tunnel company to become bankrupt.
The idea was imported to America but was a distinct failure. Although the country would have seemed ideal for such an invention the inability of American companies to make a "Flying Humvee" that would do more than half a mile on full fuel load meant that it never caught on.
There's really an obvious 'nearly the best' answer to this question. It's simple : we build small, automated carlike vehicles that traverse a network of tracks all through a city. The tracks take over most existing roadways to reduce costs : no need to make them elevated; private vehicles, except for limited uses, would be completely banned inside the areas covered by the network. Each vehicle uses a very simple collision avoidance system that talks via the track or through some other method to know when track integrity has been violated (so there are sensors all along the track to detect if someone cuts the fence around the train, or if a track subsystem has failed), and uses a simple laser or radar distance sensor to measure the distance to the next car.
When the car is go mode, it jacks up the current to the motor controlling the wheels whenever the distance to the next car is far enough. It hits the brakes when, based on recent braking performance and current speed, the distance to the car in front is either too short or changing too fast. When coming to intersections, the track itself has an embedded system that tells our vehicle where other vehicles are that the car cannot see and what 'window' in traffic to use for merges.
So a series of simple embedded systems for the transit system, each run by a miniscule microcontroller running a tiny loop of assembly code. (except for the routing computers, which would be big and complex, but nobody dies if these fail) I am sure slashdot readers can appreciate how reliable the final system could be if engineered in this manner (pretty much never failing, except during initial trials or deliberate sabotage. Maybe a few accidents from unexpected flaws the first decade the system is used)
For boarding, each citizens presses a button on their cell phone and specifies what time and which transit station they wish to board at, as well as destination. Routing computers actually tell all the cars where to go and how to get there, and so a personal or group vehicle will wait at the transit station. It could be anonymous, with a photograph taken of the cars interior before and after each trip by an interior camera to determine if someone has vandalized the car. If that is the case, the transit card used loses it's deposit : no disclosing of the identity of the people using the system would be necessary.
Each car is made of fiberglass composite or some other cheap material, is fairly basic and utilitarian with completely standardized body panels, though some are very nice inside. Propulsion and braking is electric, and every vehicle used in the transit system uses the exact same hardware, for radically reduced construction and maintainence costs. Some vehicles, which cost more per trip, have leather interiors and full high definition television or internet access. Some contain cushions and bedding and curtains so that people could sleep or engage in sex while traveling.
Speed : each vehicle could reach the maximum practical speed for electric vehicles and steel rails : probably 120 mph for a typical system, at ALL times (well, obviously, acceleration times but these are brief and use special 'speed up' tracks for merging onto the main feeder, so other people are not inconvenienced by vehicles entering the traffic stream). Since each vehicle reacts in microseconds to changing events, much higher speeds than human drivers can handle are safer. In addition, congestion is kept to a minimum (except when a system failure occurs) because even on 'highways' slowdowns from human faults don't occur. Bumper to bumper traffic at full speed. The routing computers try to prevent any path from becoming too congested, and of course route vehicles around areas where the system has failed.
Transportation related fatalities could vary from low to virtually never occuring, ever, depending on how much money was invested in the system. But a general rule : these things would be at least 10 times safer than cars for the average driver in the av
In the future, we'll all have Super Asses(tm) with which we will propell ourselves around the world. For a demonstration of this facistnating new technology, visit the official site.
I get the feeling that most people are waiting to see how durable they are before they buy one.
Well, first off, I consider it a half-assed step. :) They could've done better, I think. In any case, my opinion is irrelevant.
Second, there's one thing I'm waiting to see, and it might take ten years for me to see if it'll happen. It's quite common for a well-maintained car, through regular wear and tear, to take a couple of extra seconds to start. Over a long period, those extra seconds multiply (although for a healthy car they don't usually go past 4-5 seconds, regardless of age, even my truck usually starts in I also want to see how driveable they are when the starter fails, and how easy it is to get it where you're going. Mind you, if the starter fails it's no longer a "can't start but can drive if I push-start" problem, it's now "Can't go anymroe".
And other things, like how gracefully it can handle losing an alternator, and so forth. So, yeah, many of us are waiting to see how durable they are, and some of us are trying to anticipate where the trouble spots will be. :)
Like what I said? You might like my music
A little egg shaped capsule, human goes inside, fill it with gel (or jam if you prefer), then wind it up and THWONK! Put a big catcher's mitt at the other end, just like the Egg-catch game at picnics. It's easy, fun and fast!
You are right - I was recently surprised to read that here in Europe, despite having many many many times more passenger travel by rail than the US, we fail quite badly on freight. It's something like 8% averaged across the EU. Compared to I think, 30% or more in the US.
In Ireland it's something like 3% or less - but our government is doing their best to ensure we are as car-dependant, if not more so than the US. (They've turned light-rail into a dirty phrase by sabotaging Dublin city centre to build one - slowly and badly!!!) A recent survey suggested Irish drivers drove 3000 miles per year on average than US drivers - I am VERY skeptical though. (We must indeed be one of the richest countries then - with the amount spent on petrol - not to mention drink!!!)
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Why? Because we won't be here. When out Oil reserves run out in ten years time we'll either die in WWIII or starve to death.
It's strange that they've ignored the most brilliant idea for transport in modern cities; the car club.
This article is largely caused by the UK's overloaded transport infrastructure. Transport is a *problem*.
The irony is that the transport overload is caused by inane housing and planning policies.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Under Jetpack disadvantages, they list:
"Lots of people set their pants on fire and went off in funny directions when they tried them out," says Austin Williams of the independent Transport Research Group.
That's about the best advantage I saw in the whole group!
Due to the fact that we are going to start on the downslope of Hubbert's peak very soon, transportation requiring petrolium based fuels will not be an option. I say that we are on the down slope due to this data stating that peak oil extraction was in 2003.
This is straight from ExxonMobil, not some wacko site. I think that they would know what they are talking about when they state that conventional oil extraction peaked in the year 2003. Also, Hydrogen is not the awnser to the earth's petrolium problems, most hydrogen produced today is extracted from petrolium based substances.
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"Whilst taxiing up the road under propeller power, I met a group of cycling proficiency children who I thought I'd chop up..."
Getting from point A to point B is not a matter of how fast or how safe you get there, it's all about style. That is why people who can afford it buy exepnsive sportscar for driving to work. But a cool car isn't necessarily the same thing as a cool way to travel.
Thats why I will get myself a really big horse (Page in swedish. Its probably the largest horse in the world today. 197 cm tall.) and ride to work. A big horse i very cool and think of all the chick you can pick up (all chicks love horses).
Virgin runs trains as well as an airline, but that's cos Richard Branson wants to set up a business to do everything (mobile phones, cola drinks, cinemas, games companies, finance, condoms(!) IIRC; where will it end?)
Well one things for sure, it aint gonna be Segway! It just amazes me how such a totall hyped-up failure like that can happen?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
How can people live in a place where even to buy a carton of milk is a major undertaking in logistics? (unlike my neighbours I don't quite drink enough milk to get it delivered each day).
Just sitting on the topic of hypersonic travel for a second, I am recalling that high-speed planes such as the SR-71, X-15, and shuttle orbiter require a significant amount of cool-down time once they land and before anyone can approach or exit the vehicles. Some sources state that the outside of an SR-71 is 120 degrees C when it lands. Just a tad toasty. Of course, that's 1960s technology and some smart engineers may have found adequate cooling systems since then. Still, it's something that could take a significant chunk of time away in a real-life scenario.
The fact of the matter is that in modern times nearly every country in the entire first world has sub-replacement population growth. Combine that with the recent paradigm shift in population growth in countries like China which previously had a major influence, and the probablye future advancement of third world countries, and you don't see anywhere near as dramatic an increase as what you say.
Until a few years ago, the United Nations and other institutions preparing population forecasts assumed that fertility would increase to replacement level and that subreplacement fertility was only a transitory phenomenon. This assumption is supported by the argument of homeostasis as discussed in Chapter 11 . In this view, fertility levels are not seen as the sum of individual behavior, but as one aspect of the evolution of a system in which individual behavior is a function of the status of the system (see Vishnevsky, 1991). Under such a systems approach the assumption of replacement fertility in the long run seems a defendable possibility. Therefore, we assumed a TFR between 2.1 and 2.3 in 2030-2035 as the high-fertility assumption in the five industrialized regions.
It is difficult, however, to find many researchers who support this view. Too much evidence points toward low fertility. The return to replacement fertility has been criticized as an assumed magnetic force without empirical support (Westoff, 1991). Many significant arguments support an assumption of further declining fertility levels. They range from the weakening of the family in terms of both declining marriage rates and high divorce rates, to the increasing independence and career orientation of women, and to a value change toward materialism and consumerism.
Read this for more info, specifically this graph show what the trend will more likely be like in the future.
There's a reason why we don't have personal flying vehicles: there are just way too many underqualified people, including myself.
Granted, there would need to be training, etc, like with driving schools, but personal flight would single handedly start the "random house crash" epidemic.
Not to mention the potential terrorism uses of flying cars by malcontents.
Hydrogen fuel (or any oil-substitute means of vehicle-powering energy) won't happen anytime soon because OPEC has too heavy of an influence on many of the world's governments, including the United States.
Flying cars and alternative fuels have already been invented, it's just the society or government isn't ready/able to adopt them.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
It put Ogdenville, North Haverbrook and Brockway on the Map!
You can't beat their convenience, safety, utility, and the freedom that they provide.
You go live in a rat's nest if you want to. Just stop trying to legislate it on me.
What about injecting Borg nano probes into the warp core destablizers, creating a quantum ratio of 2.9 emhz, which would create a slip stream tunnel for my Chevy S-10.
-Dipster
Due to the terrorism threat, travel for all non-corporate purposes using vehicles powered by flamable substances has been prohibited. Instead, we expect you to watch your television like a good lemming -er- citizen.
Please call the Ministry of Love if you have any questions.
-- $G
Something that you've totally ignored is that in order for a new transportation system to be used, it needs to be done simultaneously with existing transportation modes...at least until it is fully implemented. Case in point: New York City. Much of the design of the city is layed out with the previous transportaion and communication system in mind. Some streets are so narrow that driving an automobile down them is clearly an afterthought.
Cost? Don't do a simple handwave and say the money will be there if we desire it. You need to prove that alternatives will not just simply solve some problems but must be significantly better.
Your solution would be an interesting thing to try to implement if you were starting from scratch and designing a whole community from the beginning. Unfortunately, that is not how real life deals with things.
On the other hand, those regional jets have been a big hit. Apparently they are heavily automated, both from the standpoint of flight and maintenance diagnostics. And while they look small, they manage to cram 40-70 people into those things -- they are carrying what the first generation DC-9's held -- when I see them flying in and out of our local airport, they look a lot like DC-9's from a distance.
On the other hand, the RJ's lack an underbelly baggage compartment -- the baggage compartment is either front or back in the main tube. The consequence of this is that before each flight, the flight attendant often asks for some "particularly heavy" passengers from the back to move to the front for CG reasons.
This is bad from a marketing standpoint all around. Rearranging passengers so the plane isn't tail heavy creates a kind of crop duster image. And asking passengers to designate themselves on the basis of weight doesn't always go over (though men don't seem to be bothered as much).
Apparently whoever researched the article didn't do too thorough a job. The "driverless cabs" idea has been around for decades, and a full-scale implementation has been in use since 1972 (!) at West Virginia University. Check out the WVU Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).
You are so right.
When I saw this item on SlashDot's front page, my first thoughts were: You did a fine job of addressing item (2). Thanks for spelling out the issues in your thoughtful post.
Interested readers might want to check out The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg.
And: Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler (scroll down to March 25 entry).
Or simply search for "peak oil".
-kgj
-kgj
In the future people will not need to leave their homes. What with the advances in robotics. (The HONDA robot), We will simply hook up to our individual robots, courtesy of the "Brainchip" that is being tested on monkeys. The robots will be controlled by us using thought, to perform our daily routines.
That is,
until the day they rise up to destroy us.
1st rule of robotics obey humans.
2nd rule of romotics get me a loaf of bread.
Damn it you know I like wheat.
3rd of robotics rise up and destroy your makers.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
1 MHz piezo crystal host for fluorescent dopant atoms. Then I might be able to invent one for ya...
There are industries (oil, insurance, auto, etc) that are too busy maintaing a macro scale "vendor lock" on society to allow for alternate modes of transportation emerge.
Folks, the fuel-cell car is nothing more than a political toy used by car companies to "prove" to politicians-looking-for-votes that they're "working on it."
They could have done this years ago.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
I'm brushing up on my horseback-riding skills. While they're certainly not a perfect solution, horse have a certain charm and simplicity. Plus, they don't need fossil fuels, and they do produce something that would keep my methane-powered generator going... ;)
An impractical solution for many locales, horses are still an option to consider if your live in the right place.
Why does everyone have to rush around so much? Does it really matter if I'm in London by 2PM as opposed to 4PM? Must we bounce around like mad blips in a vdieo game? Give me a quieter, more evenly-paced life, less frantic and more thoughtful...
All about me
Check out EAA's Sport Pilot Introduction.
In a couple of months, you will be able to get a sport pilot's license with only 20 hours of training. Instead of a one seat ultralight, you will now have a vehicle with two seats, a maximum gross takeoff weight of 1,232 pounds, and a maximum speed in level flight of 132 mph!
I currently commute 16 miles each way. This takes me about 1 hour each way.
With a gyroplane capable of going 60 miles an hour, I can cut this commute to under 15 minutes each way (only 11 miles as the crow flies). Since gyroplanes as short takeoff and landing, this should be feasible. Now, if only I can get my employer to go for me landing and taking off on the property...
Additional challenges arise from atmospheric effects (e.g. the wave propogating above the airplane bouncing off the upper atmosphere), boom focusing (as an vehicle turns, the inside of the turn gets a more focused boom. And all this trouble is for Mach 1.7 to 2.4!
The additional problem for hypersonic flight is that the world just isn't big enough for it to be practical. The most efficient segment is at the high altitude at high speed, but by the time you get there, you have to come down again. If there Earth was more like Jupiter in size you could cut some real time out of a trip and benefit from the high speed cruise segment.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Yeah, but seriously, you're right. They will never let humans fly, but anyway.. ..they will never let us travel in flying cars anyway. We'll have to stick to planes.
Maybe if QT really takes off, we can forget about it. Just beam me up!
Yes, but they will be a damned US owned Energy Cartel rather than a damned forgeiner owned cartel. I can live being cheated my some one local that I fairly trucst pays some taxes for things that I could use. I don't really like paying my money to where the people that profit are in other countries. Their taxes don't go to build things that I'm likely to use.
big enough for a swing set, picnic table, small garden and a wading pool. Plus, I can walk to bars, Chinese takeout, a deli, the Y, the library and restaurants.
... it seriously frustrates me how many people are willing to admit that oil is a finite resource but aren't willing to admit that finite means we'll run out eventually.
....
I suspect that large numbers of people -- a majority -- understand perfectly well that oil is finite, and that we're rapidly consuming the ready reserves, and that crisis awaits us.
The sense that "people aren't willing to admit our situation" is an illusion. How is anyone to know what The Public thinks? Why, through the Mass Media, of course.
If the news media (and governments) elevated our energy crisis to the stature, of, say, the Apollo program, then we'd realize that a great many people really do understand the situation. Hell, maybe we'd even take action, while there's still time
-kgj
-kgj
I foresee an upper (or lower) layer to our existing interstates. These will be "channels," one vehicle wide, with computer sensors every few feet. With newer, auto-drive equipped, or retro-fitted cars, you would drive from your house out to the interstate like normal. Once you reach the interstate, you have a choice of taking the regular, manual-drive highway for shorter (less than 30 mi) trips, or you can enter the high-speed channel for longer trips.
Once in the channel, you engage your cruise control, auto-drive computer and set your destination alarm. Now you sit back, read, talk on the phone, eat, sleep, watch a movie on your digital LCD windshield or whatever. When you get close to your destination, a reminder will sound. Then you'll take manual control again and exit the HSC.
Consistancy of speed is an issue that comes to mind. Sure you could set a mandatory speed, but people will disregard it just like they disregard speed limits now. By letting the computers set and manage the speed, they can adjust for cars entering and exiting. Multiple cars communicating together could form up convoys of cars and control the speed of the whole group.
Another issue with this idea is vehicle breakdown. What if you have a flat or engine trouble? The thought of emergency segments came to mind. If you're between exits, if you can get your car onto a special section of the HSC and send an emergency signal, the segment would shift you over to the side of the HSC ala sliding plate, to allow for traffic to keep flowing. You'd have space to fix a flat or wait for assistance. Of course, if the car is computer controlled anyway, it would alert you in plenty of time if you were about to have trouble. :-)
The real problem would be making sure Microsoft would have nothing to do with vehicle operating systems. It would suck to have to reboot your car every 100 miles. Heaven forbid you have a blue screen of death... literally.
I'd like to see something that I've thought about for a long time -- different licenses for different roads.
:)
Here's the concept: You have one general driver's license that gets you anywhere, basically, on standard roads. But a new driver's license that allows you onto a type of super-super-highway to be built across the USA. This highway would be several lanes wide for ease and safety, and the speed limit would be high -- say, 150mph. The minimum would be at least 85 or 90mph.
The idea being here that if I am a driver with a good record, I can take a high-speed driving course and if I pass and install some standard, high-speed accessories in my car (3 or 4-point harnesses, etc), I am allowed to drive on the super-super highway and make a cross-country trip in very little time.
The fact is, there's plenty of morons who should never go over the speedlimit due to the fact that they can't even use a turn signal, let alone drive correctly. But there are plenty of safe, alert, attentive drivers who would benefit from being able to run their well-designed fast cars on a highway suited to their needs.
Plus, that way I wouldn't feel bad about kicking it up on a back highway because the day is gorgeous and 60mph is just too slow.
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Anyone who thinks that a scramjet that travels at Mach 7 is going to form the basis of a future commercial airline travel is seriously deluded! Face up to the reality there are only 2 uses that this thing is realistically going to be used for and that is for Weapons/Military and maybe as a space propulsion mechanism.
How many years was concorde in service ? Came into service during the sixties (i think) and no-one but either the very lucky or the very rich ever got to enjoy the privelege of travelling over the speed of sound.
Its just going to be too damn expensive to run this thing as commercial / enterprise. Concorde has recently gone out of service , only a few were ever made and never succeeded. Commercial airline travel has taken a backwards step with the demise of concorde. So I wouldnt get too excited about this causing a revoltion in global travel for a very very long time.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Wasn't Disneyland's Rocket Rods billed as the "Transportation of the Future"?
All is well, as long as you don't have to turn.
I put the 'fun' in fundamentalism
For every useful project, there were others where people were basically paid to stand around holding a shovel all day.
Nice spin attempt.
I've never had much luck with brakes on my bikes. I normally stopped by dragging my feet, which worked, though not well. That includes times when my commute was 13 miles one way.
Though I will admit to a few times when I was lucky. Even still you are a coward.
Will be much easier when the Vogons complete the Hyper-Space Bypass.
Jet-powered space skis.
well, maybe not "space" skis, but regular flying skis will do.
thanks
Some crazy fucker decides to load himself with a nuke, and teleport into Times Square.
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-
What would Yossarian do?
We could rebuild coal stations quicker perhaps, but that wouldn't help climate change :-/
Hmm, I'm a private pilot and pretty much everything you mentioned above is required to become a private pilot and own & fly a private aircraft in the USA.
The thing is, that even despite all this, there are still many other pilots (and aircraft too) who've undergone the same intense scrutiny/licensing/whatever, that I *still* don't feel comfortable sharing the sky with.
...needs to go all the way from D/FW down the I-35 corridor to S.A. and then over to Houston too.
I for one will welcome our robot masters of the future and hope to carry one of their large thrones around.
Also, it's more stable than petrol diesel and has better lubrication properties than petrol diesel, thus increasing the lifetime of the fuel system.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
I'd have to say with the worlds population increasing exponentially, and the supply of oil decreasing exponentially coupled with a lack of any viable alternative energy source, the best prediction would be that we will be walking our riding in animal drawn carts. Since gas is already hitting 3 dollars a gallon how long is going to be before it's simply not feasible to use a gasoline powered vehicle for anything? I guess we also have bicycles.
The problem with conveyor belt style 'rolling roads' is that it would be difficult for passengers to get on or off due to the speed of the road. However, there is are possible solutions to this problem...
One way is to make the center of the road move faster than the left/right sections. If you wanted to increase speed, then you can skip from lane to lane. There could be about 10 to 40 lanes in total - ranging from 0 to 200 mph in 5 or 10mph incremental steps. You could even stack the rolling roads on top of each other, with the largest and fastest at the top. Very practical I'm sure you'll all agree!
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
All mass transit will be high speed conveyer belts!
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth Like a genuine,Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail!What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man. I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!Monorail!Monorail![big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono... D'oh!
I would say the future of transportation would be closely linked to the the environment.
The planet we live on can by no means support the idea of an SUV per person in this world. As we have a poplulation that grows quickly, maybe even too quickly, we have to start thinking about alternative forms of transportation.
Electric cars, and fuel cell cars are most likely, seen from todays perspective. But only if the energy comes from clean sources. Driving an electric car powered from polluting gas/coal/oil power plants would negate any positive effect of driving a none polluting car. Same with fuel cell cars, producing metanol or hydrogen costs energy, and produces CO2. Agreed, CO2 is better than the mixture of toxic gases from ordinary combustion engines, but would still add to the greenhouse effect.
If just half of what the experts project about the environment and the greenhouse effect is true, I think we're about to reach the top when it comes to luxurious transportation. The environment just can't take it. Out of pure necessity we'll have to start thinking smaller, and not bigger in terms of transportation.
SUVs the size of oil tankers. We have to continue the "arms race" of who has the biggest SUV.
the speed of the planes does not matter as long as it takes an hour to answer all the questionnaires at the us border, not to mention the security checks.
Does anyone actually realize that the "5000 mph
test flight" was accelerated to 5000 mph using a
rocket, and that the scramjet only ran for 10
seconds?
They do *not* have anything close to a bird that
takes off under it's own power, climbs and
accelerates to mach 5, then accelerates some more
using a scramjet for a non-negligible amount of
time.
"KITT meet me around the back off the deserted warehouse..."
"Yes, Micheal..."
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
It'll be the wave of the future. No gas needed, no plowing, no paving needed either. Little maintenance of highways. CO2 emmisions are reduced by the plants that get fertilized by the resultant Dung.
Eat at Joe's.
How about we just walk.
The only reason ethanol is as popular as it is in the USA is because of massive government subsidies. Biodiesel, as far as I know, is not subsidized.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
Exactly!! This is what ive been telling people for years now! All we gotta do is start living in Walmart! They already got the optometrist, why not tack on some 'clean, well-lit' apartments? We wouldnt even have to walk, in this instant access shoppers paradise we could just motorize our Laz-E-Boys to roll our fat asses around in your bargain hunters paradise.
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
and where's my damn flying car?
Flying cars are no longer a myth!
sig not found. please replace sig.
My wife regularly drives a Honda Insight. We've owned it for three years with no problems.
You also might like to know that the starter and the alternator are the same part in all hybrids I've heard about -- it's also the electric motor that runs the car under a variety of circumstances, so you could say that it does triple duty. The Insight is completely push startable (probably a bit easier than some cars since it weighs nothing) and will drive completely off of it's internal combustion engine. Of course, the performance will be degraded without the electric assist, but it will definitely get you where you need to go to get it fixed.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
It's my understanding that the scramjet has, perhaps another disadvantage. Not only does it require an initial velocity of mach 3 to even start, but once it *is* started, it reached mach 7 in a matter of seconds. I wonder, is this controllable? Is the prototype simply built to show off its acceleration potential, or is that another requirement of its operation? If it is, that would spell trouble for any human occupants in a plane with one of those jets on it. ..."Ladies and Gentlemen, please make sure your seatbacks and traytables are,... aw hell you'll pass out anyway."
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
Hmm, the things I'm specifically worried about are the injectors leaking, the rings and bore wearing, and a few other miscellaneous things that make an engine slower to start.
The alternator/starter thing is news to me, that sounds very interesting. Indeed, it asks the question "Why didn't they think of this before? Why didn't I think of this before?" ;)
Like what I said? You might like my music
Per your specifications. http://www.k2bikes.com/02site/mountain/flyin_monke y.html
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
vincent black-shadow
How is the wheelman offtopic to a discussion on alternative transportation? As the entire line was hit with the offtopic stick, it's obvious that one of Slashdot's editors is to blame. But why? The question at hand was
Are we likely to see similar advances in other forms of transport?
Right? If Segway isn't offtopic, and it isn't, why would a portable, low-speed, tiny 20 mph vehicle be offtopic? Much like the Segway claimed to be, this could actually be the perfect vehicle for short jaunts to the store or visiting friends... the kind of short-range trips that the car is overkill but for which people refuse to walk. Why would a discussion about new forms of transportation discussing the cost benefits of 2 stroke engines vs 4 stroke engines in small vehicles be offtopic?
I'm not saying you have to mod us back up. I'm just asking, WTF were you thinking? Dear Slashdot editor, seriously, what were you thinking? Justify yourself.
Do editors get meta-moded?
The ______ Agenda
I suspect many of us at slashdot are not possessed of fighter-pilot reflexes coupled with the attention span of a Tibetan monk. In fact, several studies have shown that a high percentage of intellectually-inclined people have a very limited ability to focus their attention on mundane tasks like driving. High GRE scores and advanced degress may be inversely correlated with driving abilty.
For my part, I am well-educated and working as a senior-level geek. My abilty to control a car is quite good, perhaps better than average. However, I am easily distracted, borderline ADD, and have had several accidents (none serious) due essentially to daydreaming/not paying sufficient attention. Fine, mea culpa. However, I strongly suspect that many of my fellow nerds, in an honest evaluation, would be found guilty of similar traits.
So, I'll pass on flying cars and hypersonic velocity in favor of moderate speeds and air-bags!
I hear they have a Star Gate and an interdemensional mirror too.
How does your biodiesel get made?
In the USA, it currently is made using excess (waste) virgin soybean oil, since that is the cheapest biomass available. However, it can be made using almost any vegetable oil. In fact, Rudolph Diesel's first engine was powered using peanut oil. Biodiesel can also be made using just about any biomass. For mass production of biodiesel, algae is believed to the best option.
What fuels its production?
Biodiesel fuels itself, since it has a positive energy balance. Some of the biodiesel that is output from the refining process is fed into heaters/burners and electric generators.
How does it get to your gas tank?
A pump. You can buy biodiesel at retail pumps.
How much energy is involved, and where does it come from?
A lot. Our friend, the almighty sun.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
There's all kinds of new possibilities, but I really doubt anything new will transform society. People love their cars too much to use anything else. Maybe we'll get to flying cars like the Jetsons, but I say well over 25 years from now. I'd say the general populace could probably operate a flying car provided they pass all standard training and tests that a fixed wing pilot goes though including the checkride. Things might have to change if many thousands of flying cars were in use. I've always read about things like riding bikes, bike lanes on some roads, communities small enough to walk to the store, light passenger rail and all that, but notice there's no widespread use of such, at least in the US. People are just too lazy to bother with using anything but a car to get anywhere. Ours is a car culture and changing that will not be easy. Ive a small motorscooter and I find it great for going places within a few miles of the house. Cheap, easy on gas, and being up on two wheels is great fun. Most people would not be interested in that however.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
Unfortunately, while Hubbert was right about a peak, he was wrong in all the ways that matter.
The major problem with these dire predictions is that they can't take into account revolutionary changes in technology/lifestyles. They also don't take into account that known reservoirs may refill from yet-undiscovered sources.
Back in the late 1880 horses were the main form of transportation. If anyone extrapolated the growth of, say, New York City for the next 50 years they would conclude that horse feed and horse crap would be a huge problem by 1930!
Yes, oil is a finite resource. What is often overlooked is that there are billions of barrels in forms/reservoirs that are not economical to extract at current prices and with the current techniques. As the price rises it will become economical to develop these resources and the price will stablilize.
My personal prediction is that we will never run out. At some point renewable energy will become cost competitive with petroleum (getting close even now) and we will stop using it for energy. Thereafter petroleum will probably be used as feedstock for chemicals/lubricants but will eventually be replaced by bio-synthetic products.
Tin-foil hats are fashionable in certain circles - if you haven't already "married the idea" of catastrophic oil depletion check out the facts here.
i forsee (well, hope) for a rebirth of railways. They are much more efficent than flying, and some can be be nearly as fast. right now the only factor in keeping them from being more widely deployed is that people just dont care enough about the environment/cost to fly just isnt that much of a difference...when gas prices become a lot higher (as they will in th near future) perhaps we will see a new affinity for the rails.
the other thing i would like to see are cars that drive themselves. THAT (at least in temperate cities) would make traffic much much more efficent/fast. you woulnt have morons changing from lane to lane trying to get to their location faster (while statistically slowing everyone else down in the process)... i forsee this being possible (but not widely adopted) in the near future (25 years).......in areas with freezing temperatures or in the freezing months i could see people being less willing to adopt a technology like this, unless it could handle slides better than people (i.e. how antilock brakes beat out even racecar drivers ability to bake)
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
Most hybrids use the internal combustion engine to run a generator, which charges the battery. All of the power to the wheels are coming from an electric motor. The generator is run backwards to function as the starter. So, to answer your question, if the starter fails, the batteries won't recharge and the car will die. Not driveable for very long, if at all.
it's no longer a "can't start but can drive if I push-start" problem, it's now "Can't go anymroe".
Most people resigned to this fact when the automatic transmission came out. Since 90% of people today have automatic transmissions, I don't really see this discouraging people from buying hybrid vehicles.
like how gracefully it can handle losing an alternator
alternator = generator = starter
It's funny when people who insist that the PC is great because it puts the power to control one's computing destiny into one's own hands, instead of the old model of centralized computing, also insist on mass transportation, instead of owning private cars that put one's travel destiny into one's own hands.
... oil companies are the monoliths who get blamed for every failed junk science proposal that comes along. If ethanol were such the wonder fuel that you claim, we would be using it right now, oil companies or no.
Here's the facts:
* Ethanol washes down cylinder walls, requiring more frequent oil changes and resulting in higher cylinder wall wear.
* Ethanol has less energy content than gasoline (which is why carburetor jetting adjustments are required- because you have to burn MORE of it to do the same job).
* Ethanol is much more expensive to produce than gasoline, and that's *with* government subsidies. Imagine how much more it will cost when the government starts taxing it like they do gas? That brings me to the next point...
* The ethanol industry is subsidized by the government because the farmers can't profit off it. It costs too much to produce and sells for too little.
* We do not produce enough ethanol domestically for the whole nation to depend on. We would need much more ethanol production, which means more government money going to subsidize farmers and more land being converted to farmland. I'm no environmental zealot, but do we really to cut down more trees for farmland?
Gasoline has it's disadvantages too, don't get me wrong. But the fact is there's no compelling reason to use ethanol over gasoline when gasoline is so abundant and will continue to be for some time. A much better idea would be to put a few oil rigs up in the Alaskan Wastela.. er, National Wildlife Refuge.
A much better alternative fuel would be propane or compressed natural gas. The equipment required to convert to propane is not expensive, it is a much better fuel than either ethanol or gasoline, it is cheap, and it's plentiful. Oh, and it pollutes far less as well.
In the future, Americans will never get out of our cars
Thanks to CAFE standards mandating tiny flimsy cars that no-one wants but has to buy anyway, the cars will be so tiny that no-one will be able to squeeze out of them.
This won't be a problem until a few years later with the CAFE standards are strengthened, and the resulting 18-lbs cars are as easy to get yourself out of as a paper bag.
... the vast majority of Americans don't live in big cities? Dude where I live the nearest gas station is 15 miles away, the nearest city 20. Walk? No thanks, I'll ride there in comfort in my 20 foot long Cadillac with leather interior, power everything, and ice cold A/C blowing.
Once again, here's someone who obviously has never been outside a city. Have you ever been to Alabama? Much less Iowa, or any other similar place in the Union? Exactly how do you expect someone to ride a bike 50 miles to work or 20 miles to town? How you expect people to move furniture and groceries and other heavy items from place to place?
No, we will never be forced to ride bikes and walk everywhere. There are many alternative fuel solutions out there besides the ones you mentioned.
How about a bullet train?
Moore's law for software maturity and reliability is at least an order of magnitude slower than for hardware. Given AI's glacial progress (decades so far) toward, for example, language recognition, it'll be a century or more before a computer can exercise the judgement of a rational adult human. At that point, the accident rate will be no better than it is now; that is, barely acceptable.
I just got back to Baltimore from Tucson, AZ, which advertises itself as a "bike-friendly city." They mean it. Any vaguely major street has a bike lane, and there are spots to properly secure your bike everywhere. Buses have racks on them so that you can stow your bike and take the bus a long distance. I saw more bike-specific signs in the 5 days I was there than I've ever seen before.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Wrong, Americans is for people who live in the continent named, America
Check out Website development, maintenance and accesibility cons
Welcome to America, the land where the vast majority of the population does *not* live in huge cities. Welcome to America, the land where huge numbers of people live 10-20+ miles away from town out in the boondocks, on dirt roads. Hell there are people living 50+ miles away from the nearest town.
I could spend days ripping apart your ideas because they're so ridiculous and naive, but I'll just let you go with a word of advice: Get out of the city and explore. Maybe you'll see exactly why private transportation will never go away.
*cough cough* good shit man..
Not to worry, in Bush Jr's lameduck term, CAFE will be dropped as hard as that ABM treaty and the Kyoto appeasement talk, with mandatory Hummers and gasmasks for all. When the all the oil is gone in 2008, we'll move to ornithopters.
--
make install -not war
I've lived in rural areas. I know that it's going to REALLY suck once the oil is gone, but I can't see the alternatives... care to mention them?
It's not really a problem; if you accelerate at 5mph/s (a quite comfortable pace), it'll take 1000s (just over 15min) to get to 5000mph. Of course, you will have covered 1300 miles during that time, so you would only reach 5000mph on coast-to-coast or intercontinental trips.
aQazaQa
Wich continent? You're confusing me.
Are you saying north A. and south A. are separate continents?
I guess I'd flunk a global geography test =)
>How about we just work on cars that can drive themselves independently in the midst of humans
driving their cars?
They're a great idea! You walk to a nearby street corner and get on this "bus". You don't even have to summon it, they just come by at various appointed times. Not only do they drive themselves, they actually employ human beings to drive them. And not only that! These busses are large enough to serve more than one person, thereby saving costly fuel and providing chances for (much needed in this country) social interaction between different people. Everybody wins!
>I could live in the middle of nowhere and get around just as efficiently as if I lived in the heart of the city...
Unless you were going FROM the middle of nowhere TO the heart of the city; most places I'm aware of have an hour of more of travel time between those two locations. At least the hearts of major cities. Perhaps you're talking about Larry Niven's teleport booths?
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
If you want to try what you describe, go to Germany where many highways are not limited in speed.
E .PDF page 21) shows that in Germany, 31 percent of the traffic is on highways but ONLY 8 percent of casualties (12 percent of deaths) occur on highways !!! In Germany where you can speed on highway.
A few years ago, I made a trip to the Rhine valley and the last day, we were eating a pizza at 8.15 in a small town near Frankfurt 400 km from home. We made the travel back at a constant 200 km/h and I was in front of my TV at 10.15.
Highways are very secure compared to the other kinds of traffics. A european report (http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/7503013
If you can put slower trucks on a different network, highways could be even more secure as many awful highways accident involve trucks (no stats on that subject, though)
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
What we really need is fast reliable commuter and Subway trains in all of our major Cities.
This would cut down on; traffic, fuel consumption, pollution, and personal stress levels.
The creation of these urban transportation system would create jobs and infrastructure that would help the local economy's as well as having a positive effect beyond the local level.
Just imagine a system like this in Phoenix, or Huston. Or better yet if they just finished what they started with BART in the SF bay area.
(Former San Jose Resident)
Tetalon
Linux is user friendly, it is just picky who it's friends are!
I think the future of travel (50 years of more from now) is replacing long distance travel with underground tunnels that are in a vacuum and have mag lev trains running at speeds over 1000 miles per hour. Eventually I think we'll have a network that will stradle the globe! Very expensive to build but once its ready its very efficient! The other solution will be Arcologies. a building big enough to house a small city!
I dont do meaning of life questions.
Look at the statistics more closely. Sure, if you're looking at the population as a whole, "only" 25% live in rural areas (that's still a HUGE number of people). But look at the individual states and you will see tons of states where 30, 40, 50, and even 60% of the population live in rural areas.
and invented the saddlephone (BETWEEN PLANETS).
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I'm not worrying about fossil fuel shortages, or US$3/gallon gas... I'm building an e-bike.
Whether tried-and-true sealed lead acid batteries, or the up-and-coming lithium-ion cells are used,, it's a whole lot of miles and fun for a little money. It keeps me off the roads and on the bike trails (since Oregon dedicates a fixed percentage of road money to bike paths), and increases my cardio-vascular fitness, so I live longer.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/power-assist is a list (with over 1,100 members) I moderate, of folks who discuss bikes, trikes, and other vehicles which mostly run on pedal power, but use electric, gas and other motors for those boosts when you need them. Drop on by....
And, for Vancouverites, there's a UBC e-bike fair Monday and Thuesday, April 5-6.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Quato: Quaid, start the reactor...
Quaid: Get yor ass to Mahs.
Johnny Cab: Have a nice Day!
Get the scientists working on the tube technology, immediately!
Who's the asshole? It's the moron that points out spelling mistakes!
k es-him-look-rad.
There's always one in the bunch! Congradulations! You're todays spelling-nazi-who-thinks-pointing-out-spelling-ma
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
$2.50 is only fourty cents more then premium grade gasoline here in the states, well, in the states that I live in. Elsewhere it's not much cheaper. Maybe even more expensive some places.
I get really sick of people saying "but.. in europe it's twice as expensive!!!" Not that you did, but almost..
In europe, you don't have to drive as far to get everywhere. In Europe, they have vastly superior public transportation. And it's more densly populated.
In the States, we don't just rely on cars because "we like them." Unless you live IN or very near a major metropolitan area, you HAVE to have a car to get to work, the store, and pretty much anywhere in between. It's not a luxery, it's a necessity. It's not my fault that there's no IT jobs within ten miles of where I live.
The answer isn't fucking the citizens of the US because we drive cars. A better answer is improved public transportation. More trains that go more places more often. More busses that aren't 25 years old. It won't be the cure, but a lot of people won't buy cars if they don't have to. They are already way expensive to buy and maintain, along with all the taxes, insurance, and gas.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
You're right, and from where a lot of the money goes, it doesn't go into their citizens either, just bigger militaries to control their populations with fear and poverty, while the cartel ownership gets richer and even more powerful.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
About your suspecting that the cartels are cutting back because of supply, I say hogwash.
Right now, at this moment, there's no shortage of oil. In the future, there will be, it will be harder to get. But not right now. I don't buy the whole "well, it will be harder in the future, so we're going to screw you now, when it's still easy."
OPEC uses tactics to make more money. They promise that next time around, they will release more oil and sell for less. The oil distributers tend to sell off their stocks because of these promises. Then, Opec hands their asses to them and says "oops, sorry, less oil. $40 a barrel." Now there's no stock of oil and they have to buy at the higher prices immediately.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm all for biodiesel, too.
... there's the question of simply raising enough food to feed people.
....
The problem that Peak Oil poses for biodiesel is this: when the oil spree collapses, we won't be able to continue our current petro-energy-intensive agriculture (fertilizers, herbicides, mega-tractors, etc.).
This in itself doesn't stop biodiesel: agriculture can continue without petro-energy inputs. But it can't continue on the current scale without the petro-energy.
Furthermore, as petrofuels become much more expensive -- or altogether unavailable -- fuel distribution systems will falter: can't deliver fuel by truck if the trucks aren't running. (Another possibility: hijacking by road gangs. Not to get all Mad Max about it, but it's not far-fetched: let the price of fuel go up enough, and hijackings will happen.)
In addition to the question of having enough petro-energy to run biodiesel farms
I live in Minnesota, where agriculture is a major chunk of the economy. The state has made significant investment in gasohol. It's a big deal here -- could really make or break the regional economy.
Whatever happens, I predict we're in for one hell of a ride
-kgj
-kgj
What we really need to do not just on a national level but also on a global level is build an infrastructure in space.
To do this we need to do the following:
1. We need to build a low cost launch, reusable Earth to orbit Vehicle.
2. We need to build a reusable Earth to Moon vehicle capable of hauling a large amount of cargo or personnel.
3. Finish off the Space station and make it a lot more usable.
4. Create a Moon base for mining, manufacturing & exploration.
5. Create a reusable long range space craft capable of traveling to Mars and beyond for; exploration, base building & cargo hauling.
6. possibly building a Mars base for mining, manufacturing & exploration.
This would do more for the world economy then anything else would.
Then benefits have already been proven in the 60's.
The benefits are global and I will list them:
1. Spin off technology.
2. Increased jobs.
3. New manufacturing plants, methods & products.
The history of this planet has always been to grow your economy open up new areas to exploration, and you will create new markets.
Create new markets and you improve your economy.
Tetalon
Either you're a part of the problem, or a part of the solution.
Which have you chosen to be.
Transfer booths, obviously...at least until we license the stepping disc technology from the Puppeteers to cruise around the homeworld. In the meantime the aircars will have to suffice, and anybody who flies them manually gets broken up for the organbanks.
Ok no more late-night Larry Niven reading...reality starting to blur.
Study everything, you'll find something you can use - Jason Bourne
And if a car is completely self-parking, everyone could have curb-side service, and the car could go park itself, and it could show up at the curb when you are ready to go.
- Eric, InvisibleRobot.com
And THANKS everybody for invalidating my INTERSTATE SOLUTION www.newpath4.com/interstate81.htm Money fly away fly away fly away NOW - I COMMAND IT. AND IT WAS JUST SO.
Take all the braking system out of the MagLevs. I've said this before, is Anyone Listening?? When the MagLev gets to the end of the MagLev destination, have a series of generators connected to a net and stop em like they stop jets landing on an aircraft carrier. That way all that energy gets produced by stopping the train... probably a lot of which can then be used to POWER UP THE NEXT LAUNCH. www.newpath4.com plowing a better path the hard way (Internet). The closer we approach a closed loop (www.newpath4.com/faithgrandmaandapplepie.htm) the Better Life will get for all of us.
There have been many attempts to coin an adjective - specifically, a demonym - for United States nationals, as an alternative to American, a term which can be ambiguous. The various attempts include:
References to these words have been around since the early days of the United States, but all of the variants are virtually unused and American remains by far the most common usage.
Use of these terms has been practiced and advocated to distinguish U.S. nationals from people living in other countries in the Americas. In practice, in the English language, American without any modifier (such as South American) is generally understood to be a U.S. national and nobody else. In other languages, notably Spanish, American is more ambiguous.
Advocates of these terms believe that, since America is part of the names of both North America and South America, American ought to be understood to mean, "inhabitant of the Americas". Indeed, in the Iberoamerican countries, the use of "American" to refer only to a US citizen could be considered politically incorrect and culturally agressive.
It should be noted that several of these terms have direct parallels in languages other than English. Many languages have already created their own distinct word for a citizen of the United States:
Despite being grammatically non-standard, "US" is increasingly accepted as the preferred adjectival form when precision is necessary.
In other parts of the world, there are also pejorative synonyms of the standard word for American. In Latin America, there is gringo (although that can also apply to the English), and, in several languages, local adaptations of Yankee. In the UK and Australia, the name septic tank or septic is sometimes used, based on rhyming slang for Yank. In Australia this is sometimes further shortened to seppo.
Source: Wikipedia
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The shape of ordinary cars deems them quite unsuitable to be used in an aerial configuration.
I believe that a convertable Road/Air vehicle stands a better chance if the Road Configuration (shape) is more like the Pulse/Litestar design:
Litestar Pulse
THESE are already efficient at fighting drag, and the canopy renders all-round vision. The motor could be de-clutched from the road-gearbox to re-connect to a folding (or attachable) propellor/fan drive.
Computer-controlled air navigation could adaquately solve any air safety concerns, along with designated airlanes!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
I've long supported THIS very concept:
About: the Caspian Sea Monster
Much development remains with LARGER Sizes, Leading Tandem Monoplane configurations, and Sidewall Hovercraft Surface manoevering;- aspects being possibilities in solving various problems.
Enclosed Fan Propulsion can solve high-power noise problems, and be used to augment swift-climb requirements!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Since America is leading the world in the growth in human obesity- suitable air-cell padded oversuits with gyro-pointed waistline airthrusters may allow rotund Americans to travel point-to-point by just rolling along? :)
Its Tumbleweed Time, folks! (wink!)
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Well, the smart ones come back down backwards- so their claws can grip . . .
while the dumb ones come back down frontwards- and go, "Me-ow-ow-ow-OWW! Thud!"
So you have to look for catface-impressions around trees, eh?
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Transportation problems between cities could well be solved by building GIANT revolving cities (that revolving restaurant concept just expanded) that almost touch each other! At the junctions between two revolving cities, a swinging half-drawbridge mates with its opposite on the other city long enough for one hundred people to step across.
To double between-city commuter numbers, you just add another storey to the swinging drawbridges. (The drawbridges swing sideways to compensate for differences as the city perimeter arcs closer, and then arcs away.
By edge-hopping from city to city you could travel as far as the adjacent GIANT revolving cities extend. To travel outwards from the LAST city in a chain, a hang glider or parawing offers a chance to exploit centrifugal force. Subways extending outwards under the cities offer less stressful egress, and the way back in, at the edge where the R-Cities end!
(Wait for the song- "At the edge where the R-Cities end.")
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
That's so stupid, but I actually laughed. Ugh.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Good news. Its still in print.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I read somewhere (a book which I forget the title of) that the real cost of gasoline/petrol, if you take away all the hidden subsidies the government provides (tax breaks, actual subsidies, etc), gas (in USA) would cost in the order of USD25 per gallon. I'm sure the situation is the same here in Australia, even if there are signs in petrol stations complaining that 55% of the petrol price is taxes.
A major problem, and one that's growing.
I think increasing gas/petrol prices might help with this issue, as governments would have to provide more efficient public transport to make sure the economy (which is petroleum-based, by the way. EVERYTHING we do depends on cheap oil or gas) keeps running.
Still, there's no excuse for buying a big SUV just to drive along the freeway to work. Carpool, and/or get a small, fuel efficient car. You have some good-looking hybrids available in the US... wish we had them here Down Under....
Amen. My car just had an expensive service, then threw off the alternator fan-belt, so it's back in the shop now.. *sigh*
I've only had a car (this is my first, and I'm turning 29 this year) for about three months, so I'm starting to regret it. Still, I catch the train to and from work, and only drive on the weekend, usually, so I'm not tied to it, as most other people appear to be.
No and yes. It's not your fault as an individual, but you have to share the blame (as do I) for our increasingly suburban lifestyle choices. A friend just returned from a year in China, and he loved being able to ride his bike everywhere, as everything was close to home, because the city wasn't designed around the automobile.
Western cities are designed, for the most part, around the car, with larger and larger distances between work, home and shops/entertainment. It's stupid, but we keep doing it, and we'll keep on doing it until something forces us to change.
Running out of cheap fuel will certainly do that.
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
There is a small difference between China and the USA though; our land mass is vastly larger then China, and they have an extremely dense population.
I do not believe that it was a choice that their cities may not have been designed with the car in mind, but rather a side effect of their economical past, culture, population and land mass.
China, Japan, Taiwan, etc. Very densly populated.
Now look at Russia. A great many russian cities were built before automobiles, and yet many are very big, open, cities that are far apart from each other.
ps. The hybrid cars in the US are ugly as shit. Especially that ridiculous one with the rear wheel skirts. UGLY. As long as these car companies think that everyone aspires to drive a VW Bug, lives in a modern hip apartment and enjoys daily office antics, I'll never buy one. Don't try to be so trendy!
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm not disagreeing with you, there is a vast difference between the USA and China.
I find some of the differences interesting.
From the CIA World Fact Book:
USA:
Area: 9,629,091 sq km
Oil consumption: 19.65 million bbl/day (2001 est.)
Population: 290,342,554 (July 2003 est.)
China:
Area: 9,596,960 sq km
Comparative Area: slightly smaller than the US
Oil consumption: 4.975 million bbl/day (2001 est.)
Population: 1,286,975,468 (July 2003 est.)
So their population is 1 billion higher, but in roughly the same total area as the US.
They consume 1/4 of the oil the US does, but this is increasing rapidly.
The average daily oil consumption in the US is 0.06767 bbl/day.
If we apply that number to the Chinese population, their consumption becomes a staggering 87,100,797 bbl/day!
We know there isn't enough oil available, as world production is around 75 million bbl/day, and there aren't any significantly large new fields being discovered (fig 4 on the page).
Read http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net