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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.
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.
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.
Can't we just ride bikes and enjoy the scenery rather than fly past it at 5000 Mph?
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. -
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?
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 |
Asphalt, not concrete. Concrete requires expansion joints, which can cause problems at 300+mph, even in hypercars. Read the FAQ.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
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.
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."
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!
They require completely new airports - out of the question in most large cities, where the cities grew around the airport and there is no possibility of expansion.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
it's the acceleration not the speed that determins the g force
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.
No, no, the title is correct. In the original draft, the author speculated about the effects that time-travel would have on the travel industry, and the possibility of accidentally sending the entire planet earth back in time. If that happens then before it happens we'll see an earth from the future appear in our orbit. We'll of course our earth gravitationally attracted to the earth from the future, thus "How Will We Get Around Near-Future Earth". Later editing made the submitter's title seem oddly un-proofread. Uh... I'm assuming.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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-
They require completely new airports - out of the question in most large cities, where the cities grew around the airport and there is no possibility of expansion.
Apparently, LAX can already handle the new Airbus A380... at least, to the same extent it can handle existing aircraft. (For years now, the space between the jetways has been inadequate for two planes to pull out side by side... they have to dovetail them carefully.)
Where the problem really lies is not in the physical size of the runways and terminals, but the people-carrying capacity of the big hub airports. They already run most of them on a pulse system, where all the flights come in at the same time to make transfers easier. This means you're handling all your traffic at once, and have to hire enough people, open enough gates, etc. to handle all those passengers simultaneously (while those employees sit around with pretty much nothing to do for hours at a time between pulses). By increasing the number of people that can arrive on each plane, you stress the baggage claim, security checkpoints, vendors, etc. *inside* the airport a great deal.
But for an airport like LAX, this isn't an issue. Flights are constantly arriving and departing, and 86% of the passenger traffic is beginning or ending their journey... very little transfer traffic, so not much pulsing. They're not overly concerned about the A380s. I think the Department of Transportation is more worried about the added street traffic they might generate.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
How big do you want 'em?
Actually, there is a strong movement towards smaller, more efficient jets to supplement the hub and spoke airliner infrastructure here in America. But the new Airbus A380 is going to be as big as anybody (who doesn't want to build new airports) is likely to need in the next several years.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Arcology
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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???
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Excelent post. Excelent ideas.
As my PHB would say: "When can you have it finished?"
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Well, passenger capacity for the A380-900 Single Class will be a maximum of 986.
Howerver, normal 3-Class configuration will have a capacity off 555 (A380-800) or 656 (A380-900) passengers.
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
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).
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.
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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.
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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).
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
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.
You did a fine job of addressing item (2). Thanks for spelling out the issues in your thoughtful post.
No, thank you. :) I'm actually surprised by this post, because when I wrote it I thought people would read it and say "Oh, here's just another nut screaming about oil". Turns out this is the fastest I've ever seen one of my posts modded up to +5 Anything.
But 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. The thing about the peak oil that I had never considered, though, is that the economic problems associated with using too much oil and depending on it too much happen long before we run out, and in fact we may never run out of oil. We'll be bankrupt long before then, and maybe civilization will collapse. ;) (Civilization collapsing is the worst-case scenario, therefore the most unlikely, but the scenario we should be targetting with our solutions)
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... 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'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.
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The same network could be used for product delivery, mail, etc... It's a well-known (and hopefully true!) statistic that half of the world's GDP is taken up with inefficient transportation and associated industries (e.g. oil, shipping, cars, airlines) so a global underground subway could save a vast amount of resources and energy.
All mass transit will be high speed conveyer belts!
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Pilots usually refer to "surface effect" as "ground effect". While a wing is within half a wingspan of a surface (such as the ground or water) it can produce much more lift with less induced drag.
The only problem is that ground and water aren't exactly flat. While a ground effect craft can temporarily climb above an obstacle, this requires a lot of pilot skill. In addition, ocean rogue waves can be upwards of twice the height of surrounding swells and can appear and disappear in seconds (they're waves of constructive interference). With this in mind, a ground-effect craft would need to be very large (at least 747 large) to fly high enough to be safe. The noise from such a large vehicle operating so closely to the ground would limit such a craft to oversea routes.
In my opinion, we could find limited use for a ground-effect craft if we had to, but we wouldn't like it.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"