james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2014-07-19 01:07 am

The World of the Future: Transportation

This got long

139

It may be the future but we will still have to get from place to place.

140
142

Not only will we not escape the deadly scourge of the bicycle, they will diversify into even more deadly forms.


144

This is basically a Smart Car, as seen from a decade with ugly fashions.


145

And this seems largely correct: I remember how futuristic our 1978 Honda seemed...

146

Hey, remember maglev? It was a thing. Like bell-bottoms. Only very very expensive.

148

I was *just* reading something with a gratuitous hovercraft. Not Systemic Shock, although as I recall that had all of Israel prepared to flee from Israel in a mighty hovercraft fleet.

150

With all due respect to a frequent reader of this LJ, I do not expect these to, ah, take off.

152

Or these.

154

And I expect airships will continue to be slow, fragile and expensive compared to planes.

157

The shuttle: doing the job of a dozen rockets at the cost of two dozen rockets!

160

What happened to Truax, anyway?

162

This quickly dashed off starship makes me sad.

164

And because they couldn't go an entire chapter without Woo.

[identity profile] jeriendhal.livejournal.com 2014-07-19 08:06 am (UTC)(link)
Y'know what's really sad? I'm sure that starship illo was taken from a Star Trek: TMP tie-in book that was a 'history' of starship development.
Edited 2014-07-19 08:06 (UTC)
ext_20885: (Default)

[identity profile] 4thofeleven.livejournal.com 2014-07-19 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, the picture was in the movie very briefly alongside the space shuttle and the TV series starship in a display of previous ships called Enterprise. It's based off an early design Matt Jeffries considered for the TV show.