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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.'"
for a sci-fi device which installed in Richard Stallman a sense of shame.
OMG my eyes, teh goggles do NOTHING!!
a train that could beat airliners from one side of the country to the other
You'd still have to arrive at the train station three hours early and take your shoes off for the TSA goons.
Only $1.2 billion for a space hotel? Heck, Microsoft should take that $44.6 billion and invest it into a Death Star! I'm sure Ballmer would like his new Vader costume. :)
I'm totally on board for the mech, it's time to make these military conflicts entertaining enough for pay per view to help off set the costs of war.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
* 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.
wrong. They have this kind of wealth. If they build things that few others CAN do and create companies that can do high-speed maglev across the country, it would lower the transportation costs, energy usage, and build monster jobs. In fact, I would rather see a maglev be built from D.C. to NYC to Milwaukee. That would make that a true money maker. It would create a large number of jobs in there. From that point, they can shoot for Seattle and then down to LA, flowing all the way into Mexico. In addition, another branch from seattle up to alaska to the bering strait. This is doable for somebody with the kind of money that only a few have. Oh well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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!
Whoever wrote this obviously didn't do too much research for the article. They managed to get through an entire section on the feasibility and cost of a space hotel without stumbling across Bigelow Aerospace, who actually has a test bed in orbit right now.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2004131851_brodeur18m.html/
There is no way in hell any public project could get across a state, let alone the entire country, for 70 billion. Sad hunh?
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.
Perhaps with little pink hearts printed on each face of the cube?
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.
The current projected price for an LA to SF conventional high-speed train is on the order of $30billion. That's for 500 miles and only going through the fairly small mountains around San Francisco.
NY-LA is 5x as long, and has the freaking Rocky Mountains in the way. How exactly do they figure the $70bil price, even if it was a conventional high speed and not an exotic maglev?
I have no idea about maglev, but conventional high speed rail (current best is about 350kph or 220mph) claims to be about 10 times less carbon producing than the flights it replaces -- i.e. relatively short distance flights. Long haul flights are more efficient, but the train still wins. Also, the plane puts crap into the upper atmosphere (bad!) but the train can put it anywhere, since you get to choose where to site the power plant. The maglev is flexible in it's energy. The wheeled train has the advantage that if prices get really bad they can just slow down to save fuel.
> That's what the free market is for.
I suspect that if one were to run the numbers and adjust for inflation and size of the GDP, the Transcontinental Railroad was probably a project on the same scale as a Transcontinental Maglev. The government helped the railroads along with some prize money, loans, right of ways, etc. but it was not a government project to the extent the Interstate Highway system was. So yes it could be done as a mostly private sector project. And if it ever happens it will almost certainly be a private project that gets the deed done.
The problem is fighting the entrenched interests who would use the government to obstruct it. Don't ya think the railroads would like to come roaring back to the forefront of passenger transport instead of the pathetic government boondoggle called Amtrack? Coast to coast in times that compare with air for a fraction of the fuel cost would be mighty darned compelling. And very profitable. But the airlines would obviously HATE the idea just for starters.
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up? Put bluntly, either the GWOT is justified on its own merits or it isn't. Silly comarisons to what else could be done instead with the cash is retarded. If you believe we are in a war for survival against an implacable foe out to destroy Western Civilization and replace it with a Caliphate then price isn't an object, only Victory will suffice; and if you don't believe we are at war then we never should have spent the first dollar.
Democrat delenda est
Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead? That's easy. You still live. Now if someone made a copy of you and then you died, then the question becomes murky.
Who are you? Are you an immortal spirit enshrouded the flesh by God's will? Are you merely a collection of ever-replaced tissues? Are you a nothing but a collection of memories on a replaceable meat substrate?
If you develop Alzheimer's, are you still you? If you suffer brain damage that makes you mistake your wife for a hat, are you still you? If you take an antipsychotic to fight schizophrenia, are you still you? If you are captured by the military and broken under torture, are you still you? If a hypnotist attempting to bring up suppressed memories instead creates new ones for you, are you still you? If you get amnesia and have to relearn your former life through the testimony of those who knew you and your personal writings, are you still you?
Can anyone else be you? Is a copy you? Are you still you if you're the copy? Are you the person you were copied from? Are you really the same person as the child you were many years ago?
I don't present any answers. These questions are as deep as any religious question ever asked. You may find your answers to them come immediately and without need for consideration. You may find that they trouble you for years to come. You may find that it's a bunch of sophistry and blow it all off without an answer or any desire for one.
But ultimately, people who believe in digital immortality have found their answer. It's probably different from yours and probably different from mine, but it's not really that hard to imagine their answers once you start pondering the essential question of who exactly *you* are.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you are so worried about being blown up, go live in a cave!
Besides, by not waging war all over the world, the chance of being blown up, is reduced drastically. It's a win-win IMNSHO!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
I'm afraid you're the retarded one. By invading Iraq, we did not save Western civilization, since it was never in jeopardy. Your radical exaggeration is pure hysteria; there is no evidence that western civilization faced any threat from Saddam's Iraq whatsoever. At this point, even the Republicans are reduced to justifying it on humanitarian grounds (laughable as that is on its own terms).
And yes, it is not only non-retarded but necessaryto evaluate an investment by considering what else could be done with the cash instead. This is the economic concept of opportunity cost, which is one of the core concepts of basic microeconomics.
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
Put bluntly, it isn't (justified solely on the basis of it's own merits).
You're not making a lot of sense but you seem to be claiming that either the GWOT, as you call it, is so important that it supersedes absolutely everything else or it isn't important at all. This is a false dichotomy. There is no inherent reason why the GWOT can't be of middling importance. Factual observation actually suggests that the GWOT should be of low importance (i.e. a tally of actual fatalities caused by terrorism) but emotional arguments bump it up a bit more.
Anyway, the GWOT is one of many things that the US government could spend money on and it is entirely appropriate to analyze the costs and benefits relative to other possible expenditures.
IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11
You can't take the sky from me...
- Concorde was profitable right up to the end, even including the massive overhaul costs; in its final year, 7 relatively low-capacity aircraft made £90m, whilst BA as a whole was making a loss.
- The only reason BA stopped flying them was that the French wouldn't let them - the agreement under which they were originally built stated that both countries had to to keep flying their concordes and the French didn't want to keep flying theirs because THEIRS were unprofitable (because they operated them badly)
- Also, the French hold the type certificate on the plane, so BA couldn't go even build new ones.
- The original agreement also stated that BOAC, later BA, had to operate the British concordes; so even if Beardy Branson had purchased them, they'd still have been operated by BA staff, and if BA were going to be operating them, they'd damn well still be doing it with the planes in their own colours. Except they couldn't - see above. It was a publicity stunt and Branson knew it.
So, to conclude, the reason that the only supersonic airliner is sitting rotting on the tarmac is because the French killed it, not BA. Also, the Paris crash was caused by Air France putting too much luggage on board and then overfilling the fuel tanks to give it enough to get across the Atlantic. (The tanks were supposed to be 97% full, the French filled them to 100%.)FGD 135
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up?
You could always build it underground like the UK-France channel tunnel. Avoid the problems associated with bad weather, storms, snow, the wrong kind of leaves on the tracks, people following sat-nav systems and driving onto the tracks.
Unfortunately, you would still have the same "no-land-access-unless-we-are-put-on-the-map" politices from small towns that affected California. They wanted to build a high-speed train from San-Francisco to Los-Angeles through San Jose. They got state permission to start the project, but it was the getting land access rights from every small-town city mayor that killed the project. They would only grant permission if the trains would stop at a station in their city. For every city, this would involve an extra ten minute delay added onto the journey, which would defeat the purpose of being faster than air travel.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Most people who are bright enough to see how much money is being wasted, aren't US Citizens so they don't mind at all.
Oh we see it and we mind, but you seem to think that we are actually in a position to do anything about it. Protests don't do anything when they are made from a First Amendment Zone. We voted our sorry excuse for an opposition party into power and they didn't stop the war. We have attempted to legally address the the deception that paved the way for this war in the first place (see my sig) but that hasn't even appeared in our evening news on a slow news day. None of our viable candidates for the next presidency are willing to pull the troops out. You seem to suffer from the misconception that Americans actually have any control or accountability from our government.
How many million a day is it? I cant figure out where the money is going.
It's going to interests owned by the like of The Carlyle Group and Halliburton
We are all just people.
No sig for you!!
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?
And for the poster above who gives the usual slashdot antiwar rant... of what use is a Maglev is some asshat blows it the hell up? Put bluntly, either the GWOT is justified on its own merits or it isn't. Silly comarisons to what else could be done instead with the cash is retarded. If you believe we are in a war for survival against an implacable foe out to destroy Western Civilization and replace it with a Caliphate then price isn't an object, only Victory will suffice; and if you don't believe we are at war then we never should have spent the first dollar.
That's a fine false dichotomy you've got there. What if I believe that Islamic terrorists are likely to cause trouble but that they lack the ability to even approach destroying western civiliation and that for every X people they might kill, we can save 10X people by spending the money on something besides war?
Of course, as it is, I don't believe Iraq was at all relevant to terrorism. By diverting our resources there we actually reduced our chances of catching a known terrorist. Further, a few simple and inexpensive precautions and procedure changes would have given us just as much (or more) security as the TSA and all the new metal detectors and xray machines have.
The reletively modest expendatures for hunting Osama down were probably justifiable.
Where is this evidence that Iraq was trying to establish a Caliphate and destroy western civilization? Do not switch the point. Weapons of mass destruction was only ONE of the reasons for the invasion? Really? What was the primary reason then? the others? Revenge? Oil? Preventing the establishment of a Caliphate that would destroy Western Civilization?
Many believe WMDs were shipped to Syria on the even of war? That statement is so full of holes it's ridiculous. That is a vague unsubstantiated statement. Many believe that psychics can be clairvoyant. What's your point? If anyone of any significance really BELIEVED that Syria had Iraq's WMDs, we'd fighting with Syria.
Saddam was paying for the families of Suicide Bombers? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm - Please read that. Lets have the Russians invade and over throw the American system of government.
- Tempestdata
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.
Yes it is infested with Jihadis right now.. Who is to blame for it becoming that way? Who is responsible for its army, police and other infrastructure getting bombed to rubble? What kind of circular logic are you using to justify the enormous loss in lives and money?
- Tempestdata
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'.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Osama lives in a cave and despite the billions being spent by Bush and co, they haven't managed to blow him up. Guess living in a cave really is a safe place to be.
The belief that Saddam still (remember, he USED them in the past so there is zero doubt he once had WMD) possessed some or all of his WMD stockpiles was universal in the Clinton administration, Congress, the US intelligence community, the French, British and German intelligence communities, etc. both before and during Bush's reign." And here you conveniently completely forget about those UN-weapon inspectors, who were very succesfull at ratting out Saddam's last factories and stashes (despite the American non-cooperation). When these inspectors declared Iraq (almost) clean, they were spot on (it turned out later). And the French, German, and Russian leadership didn't conveniently ignore or ridicule the inspectors, as the Bushies did.
So, was Bush misled? I don't think so, I think it's Bush who misled.
Realpolitic isn't pretty and sometimes it can come back to bite ya on the ass. Aren't you a man of the world? Anyway, so does going to war on lies.