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Sci-Fi Tech We Could Have Right Now (For a Price)
PlainBlack writes "Possibility isn't limited by technology. And it's certainly not limited by human imagination. What makes something impossible is the lack of cold, hard, cash. Wired blog takes a look at 10 science fiction technologies we could build, if they weren't so expensive. 'New York-L.A. Maglev Express - Cost: $70bn (Based on established construction costs). At $70bn, it's tantalizingly affordable by the standards of this roundup: a train that could beat airliners from one side of the country to the other. Many agree that Maglev has enormous potential. Bite-sized examples are in operation all over the world. Birmingham, England, had the first in the 1980s, though the promise of airliner-like speeds on land is still unrealized. The British system sped along at a pathetic 26MPH and was designed to get air travelers to the planes, not to outrun them.'"
Security theatre at a railway station would be a much harder sell. Nobody is going to fly a train into a skyscraper. They're not going to have a lot of luck hijacking it either.
"Take me to Mexico!"
"We can't. The tracks only go as far as California"
* Flying car
* Cheap Nuclear Power
* Safe, Effective Diet Pill
* Cheap TV Phone (nevermind, I don't look so hot in the morning)
* Space Travel for the Mass
* Cure for Cancer
* Cure for the Common Cold
* Artificial Intelligence approaching at least Dog Level
* Appliances that Accept Voice Commands
* Independence from Oil
* 3D User Interface
* Cybernetic Implants
* Energy-beam Weapons
* Easy-to-Maintain Personal Computers
* Car Key Alternative - I hate looking for lost keys.
* Non-Lethal Weaponry for Cops
* Reliable Tires (or that fail gradually) - Tires are still based on air-filled balloon technology, making them problematic.
* Reliable Car Battery
* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death
(Yes, I stole some from a wiki, but then again I added most of them to begin with)
Table-ized A.I.
It might not fund the Iraq war for all that long, but when you focus it on a single project $1,200,000,000 is realy an awfully big number...
Still less likely - You know EXACTLY which route it's going to take, and can build in controls to your "Command Center." A plane in the air is all on its own while a train is bound by a number of things, least of all tracks. At the very least you could intercept it with another large object, not to mention any other mechanism built into the train/track for such an event.
It's not perfect, nor fool-proof, but it's far safer. At least you can't fall 30,000 feet.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Consider, we could have built seven of those NY to LA maglev trains for what Bush has spent so far blowing stuff up in Iraq. Put another way, we could have built a national long-haul maglev infrastructure and had enough left over to roll out fibre to the curb nationwide.
Nahhh, let's just kill people!
How about silly things like real working public transportation?
Passenger trains between cities, silly crap like that.
For some reason here in the USA public transportation is considered evil.
Great example? Detroit, why there are no elevated trains for transportation is insane. and Most cities in the USA has far to little public transportation.
Also why a maglev from ny to LA? There are supertrains that haul ass pretty damn good. 24-36 hours from NY to LA is something that people would certianly pay for, and that's only a average of 90mph.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
C'mon...In today's political climate, you know spending taxes on anything other than war makes you a Commie! That's what the free market is for.
It continues astonishes me just how many people confuse Islamic fundamentalist terrorism with the war in Iraq. It just goes to prove how successfully Bush's government has managed to brainwash such a large portion of the american populace. Saddam's government was in no way connected to Al Qaeda or any similar terrorist organization. Bush declared war based on his accusations that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain, or already had Weapons of Mass destruction. Obviously, Bush was either misled, or was lying because they have found nothing to prove his accusations. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Pakistan has significantly more Islamic fundamentalism than Iraq does, it is also run by a dictator and was infact one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan. It is also a declared Nuclear power. If this was a war against Islamic fundamentalism, or to prevent WMDs from getting into the hands of Islamic terrorist organizations, we'd be at war with Iran and Pakistan instead.
No. I think it is a very valid comparison to make. The fact that Bush has led the US into a $2 trillion war ( *sarcasm* Who cares about lives right? Its the money we've lost that we REALLY care about *sarcasm*) with a country that didn't have WMDs, puts him on the list of either one of the most evil men on this planet, or one of the biggest morons. Either he knew he was lying and did it anyway, or he wasted away thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on his idiotic false accusations.
You cant blame anyone, when s/he wonders what all could have been possible with $2 trillion had we instead decided we wanted to spend it constructively. Had the American people elected someone with atleast average intelligence into the office of President, what could s/he have done with those $2 trillion? Built a transcontinental mag-lev perhaps? Lowered Taxes maybe? Paid off a good chunk of the national debt? Paid for the research of alternative energy? we'll never know. Because we've made a $2 trillion bonfire , and thrown a few thousand people in it for good measure... just to spice it up.
- Tempestdata
How the hell was this moderated up? Wake up, the US is not any safer now against terrorism than it was before attacking Iraq. As far as I am concerned, this war is little more than a generous gift from a corrupt politician elected in a dubious manner to his friends in the military industrial complex. Besides, I'm sure a very good argument could be made that investing in high speed trains would make the US citizens safer, since there would be less planes around to hijack and throw into skyscrapers. Geez, are you going to stop building anything for fear someone may blow it up?
New York - LA is not a good idea. The thing is, a Maglev could support a very large number of passengers per year, but its also very expensive, so it needs those passengers. To get so many passengers, you can't cater primarily to travellers, you need to cater to commuters, who will only start appearing if the travel time is less than one hour or something like that.
But a maglev from Washington to New York via Baltimore and Philadelphia would be just over 200 miles, so a maglev going at 300 mph could easily do that in one hour. This would effectively tie these cities together and going between them could become an every day habit for millions. It would make the region the largest metropolitan area in the world and completely transform it.
Ahem. Saddam Hussein's government was secular, not an Islamic theocracy. He only started pulling the religion card when Bush launched the second Gulf war. And, in case you weren't aware, the Ba'athists were supported by (possibly bankrolled by), the US, until Hussein started sabre-rattling and threatening to sell oil in Euros instead of USD. Just sayin'.
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Troll? Yikes. :(
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