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Transportation Designs For a Future That Never Came
An anonymous reader writes "The recently unveiled plans for the Hyperloop have raised a lot of eyebrows, but this is not the first time someone has proposed an idea for mass transit that seemed too good to be true. Here's a look at a few other ideas over the years that never seemed to get off the ground. 'In 1930, the magazine Modern Mechanix presented a plan for a "unique bus of the future (that would) duplicate the speed of railroads. Recent developments in everything that moves has caused many flights of imagination," it wrote. "The bus between New York and San Francisco will be equipped with airplanes for (side trips). For diversion, billiard rooms, swimming pool, dancing floor and a bridle path would be available. The pilot would be 'enthroned' over his engines, with the radio above. Space for autos would be afforded by the deck." Not surprisingly, it never happened.'"
Actually, a submerged floating tunnel sounds kind of doable.
There's no technical reason why something like this can't be done. There's lots of other reasons, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We don't need boondoggles and fanciful transportation methods that don't pan out. All we need is: the power of our mind.
Close your eyes. Pretend you're surrounded by pretentious rich assholes. Bingo, you're in LA. Total cost: $0. Total time: 15 seconds.
Ok, now close your eyes. Pretend you're surrounded by hipsters and leather deviants. Bang. San Francisco. Ding Ding, you can even hear the trolley and smell the homeless guy peeing.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Has anybody come up with the rolling roads concept again? Kinda like those moving sidewalks at airports but on a gigantic scale.
At the old magazine covers from the 40's, that was awesome, we are so better than they were right?
There are plenty of great ideas - many of which are feasible from an engineering only standpoint.
But when you factor in economic viability, that's when you run into problems. And when it comes to publicly sponsored projects, then you run into the inevitable cost "overruns" and mismanagement.
That's something I never got, how is it that a company can bid on a project, win based on that bid, and end up making whatever the hell they want to in the end - See "Big Dig" in Boston and every other municipal project out there. Are things that corrupt?!
Some things progress very slowly. And with politics being such a big obstacle, not much is going to happen any time soon.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You mean like mass produced electric cars? Or maybe reusable rockets :-/
Elon Musk does his homework.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Goddard's "turbine driven by rocket blast" is essentially a jet engine, just outboard. What a genius.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Even those ideas for mass transit that did work out are not always a success.
It appears to be difficult to predict the usage of such a network.
We got a highspeed rail line but nobody is using it. Existing connections had to
be terminated before some people forcefully started using this train (at higher tariffs).
And specially built trains that were ordered for a lower priced service were a total disaster.
For those wanting a visual of the bus: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/ModernMechanix/6-1930/giant_bus.jpg
The displacement of the inexpensive, efficient and reliable urban transportation known as "street cars" by diesel-powered buses was one of the gravest errors in urban planning. How's that for a future that never came? Expanding the street car rather than replacing it would have reduced the smog so endemic in the 60's and 70's.
Quite a few of the images there includes technology that we use in transportation today...
Didn't they happen? Take out the billiard rooms, dance floors, and bridle paths, and you end up with a jumbo jet. In fact, it not only duplicates the speed of railroads, it goes much faster, and it isn't on a rail.
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I was thinking it looked a lot like a modern cruise liner.
Something similar exists
It's a little smaller than a regular bus but very fast, it can run on regular roads but is designed to run on it's own 'track': http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/transport/high-speed-superbus-debuts-in-dubai
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The funny thing about these plans is that back then they understood that people were not going to give up their car.
These days nobody bothers to try and figure out how to get the car into the mass transport system anymore, then they whine when everyone would rather drive.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
...is the seat belt the passengers are wearing, complete with little red buckle. As if only a lap belt would really protect someone (i) in a collision at 800 MPH and (ii) seated in a reclining position. Adorable.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Sounds like The Who's failed Lifehouse album.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The real joke of it all is that we have, or had, and few of the vehicles listed. They just didn't look exactly like the artists rendition on the cover of PopSci.
A nuclear powered bus built for cross country trips. The Big Bus
The Big Bus is great. But Supertrain is funny for other reasons.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
But Supertrain is funny for other reasons.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
The displacement of the inexpensive, efficient and reliable urban transportation known as "street cars" by diesel-powered buses was one of the gravest errors in urban planning.
The streetcar wasn't all that efficient, cheap or reliable.
The humble Ford Model T cost about 1 cent a mile to operate --- in an era when a streetcar ticket cost 5 cents. The Ford provided portal to portal service for a family of five plus dog and cargo.
You could shop the big downtown department stores, take in a movie, buy your groceries at the new A&P. Unless you were shopping for something like a piano or a sofa you would never again see a surcharge for merchant home delivery. The savings added up quickly.
The streetcar lines had tracks, cars and overheads to maintain. Most were in deep financial trouble before World War I.
Historical notions were forced to brute force through the 2 main barriers, air resistance and friction. What is being focused on now is purely about removing those barriers, a vacuum eliminating air resistance and magnetic levitation eliminating friction. For the first time ever material science is starting to make the idea look viable. Maybe not yet, but soon hopefully.
New York's first subway, built in 1870s, and long forgotten until a part of it was discovered during excavation, about a decade ago, was the Beach Pneumatic Transit. Created by Alfred Ely Beach, people sat in capsules which were driven through underground tubes via air pressure. A variety of circumstances prevented it from ever being extended beyond its initial demonstration length.
These days nobody bothers to try and figure out how to get the car into the mass transport system anymore, then they whine when everyone would rather drive.
The problem is that today we have such a broad variety of cars. If we mandated them down to a smaller size with uniform attachment points we might load them onto trains. Or, the problem is that we don't have room for lots of parking in the places where we'd need it. Etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's a symptom of your political system being busted. The congressman should be worried about not being reelected.
And having worked in the private sector and moved up quite a bit over the years, it's just as bad there if not worse. I've watched companies waste billions just so nobody has to admit they wasted billions (e.g. not take the write off).
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As a 'civilization' we squandered our future on war and prisons.
The entire Earth is less than 1% of the mass of the solar system. The recoverable resources of the earth are less than 1% of the planet's mass.
We've spent decades murdering eachother for scraps instead of developing the rest of the solar system.
Why?
Because every new frontier brings a loss of control for existing governments and power structures.
The way this post was presented is totally idiotic. The fact that some of these ideas have been around for a very long time means only that technical feasibility was not there yet. Remember Jules Verne or DaVinci for that matter. Many of their ideas have become normal part of our lives, while many others were just product of a fertile imagination.
What I really like about the hyperloop is that the idea is old, but it's been re-thought from the perspective of the 21st century, by someone who has the credibility to make things that everyone else said were impossible a fact.
I, for one, think Elon Musk is one of the greatest minds of our generation, and not only because of the ideas, but because of his attitude of "why not" and "build it and they will come". I'd trust him with my tax dollars any day when I see what he has accomplished, vs. the bozos in the State Government.
"In 1930, the magazine Modern Mechanix presented a plan for a "unique bus of the future (that would) duplicate the speed of railroads"
Oh yeah, I remember that one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNixDlRoMvA
It is in general not very difficult to predict these sorts of networks at a gross level (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law). Most networks scale in value, to the first order approximation, with the number of connected nodes. Simply put, if you have a network with very few nodes (aka stops on a rail line) it costs a lot and/or no one uses it. If you have a network with a lot of nodes, it cost more sure, but it gets used a lot more. Each successive node's value is scales roughly by N squared, where N is the number of nodes. The biggest wonder is that once a viable network is established, that is ever stops being expanded. Of course, not every network is analogous to a telecommunications network, and there are lots of other effects to consider in practice.
He makes it sound like none of that is possible and all of those ideas failed. Ick!
When you read an idea like that, consider the scale and infrastructure of the Interstate Highway System. That is successful and works. (Even though it needs some work occasionally)
And before that, the railroads were a huge infrastructure project. And they finally got built, a little at a time.
To discount all of those ideas is not smart... but then, the writer is being a bit of a troll.
Those 1930 people were just ripping off the Amtrak Wars series of books!!!! How unoriginal!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
With modern and future technology you don't need to go anywhere you can teleprescence yourself and it becomes sillier and sillier to transport objects when you can just communicate the plans and create them on site.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.