The World of the Future: Transportation

[james_davis_nicoll]

This got long



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




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




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




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



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



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.



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



Or these.



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



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



What happened to Truax, anyway?



This quickly dashed off starship makes me sad.



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

Comments

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

"First we assume a limitless energy source..."

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

"Implant spherical cows with He₃ fusion reactors..."

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

So the cows are spherical because they're inflated with He3? It's all beginning to make sense now...

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's the secret. It only comes out as methane because it's being fused to carbon in the ⁴₂He afterburner reactor (popularly known as a "rectum").