Sci-Fi Tech We Could Have Right Now (For a Price) 526
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.'"
Re:More to it that speed (Score:1, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/4639671.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Obviously it was a Tesco "Value" tunnel.
And that is why I think that Gates and Buffet are (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gundum (Score:3, Interesting)
We could probably build an O'Neill cylinder [wikipedia.org] (the type of colony used in Gundam) with today's techology. It would cost a fuckton of money just due to the size of the thing (the ISS is tiny in comparison), but we have the tech. All we need to do is put it together.
Re:Where's the Death Star? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7135824.stm [bbc.co.uk]
US Could Use a Big Engineering Project (Score:2, Interesting)
All the big engineering projects of the last 20-30 years have been in either Europe or Asia (such as the Chunnel, Millau Viaduct, Kansai International Airport, etc.). All the US gets is the Shuttle and the ISS, which have both become a big turkey. Bugger the cost, I want to see a maglev from NY to LA with stops in Chicago and Denver.
Carbon footprints? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I wonder what the carbon footprint looks like? A plane at 35000 feet is in much thinner air and would not be able to fly LA to NY at a much lower altitude. The train will have to work in that thick air but will be a lot longer with presumably many more passengers and is not using aerodynamic lift. The propulsion system is also more energy efficient.
So I have no idea which works out better. Anybody have numbers? One can of course argue that the maglev can use renewable energy, but that's a crock unless you have surplusses of renewable energy, which we don't.
Re:Wish List (Score:3, Interesting)
I can never quite understand how people think that making a copy of themselves means they personally will live forever. The copy is a separate individual from you and when you die, you are dead. Granted there's now a copy of you running around but that's all it is, a copy. It isn't you.
Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead?
Where are giant mirrors in space? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More to it that speed (Score:2, Interesting)
It's pretty easy to turn off the gas on a maglev train.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To hell with Sci-FI.... I want old tech (Score:4, Interesting)
NY to LA is about 4000km, an average speed of 280km/h gives 14 hours if you stop every 100 miles (25 stops -- are there 25 places important enough to stop at en-route?). Using the faster Spanish train takes that down by 8.5%, 13 hours. Overnight+a little bit, that's pretty good! Obviously you can get a bed, full meals etc.
But no
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
That's a deep philosophical question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead?
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.
Re:Wish List (Score:3, Interesting)
Much of the issue in this particular case is because of dualism, i.e. the idea of a soul. Even if we don't immediately realize it, most of us have an idea of some schmerg that makes me _me_. The idea that a clone of me is the same as me is hard to grasp, because we as individuals don't perceive other individuals as ourselves. As such, this disconnect results in the idea of, for lack of a better term, a "soul" which makes my consciousness a separate existence from another individual, even if that individual is, for all intents and purposes, the same as myself. As such, if Clone A dies and Clone B lives, it is difficult for us to say that "I" still live, since that property of separate consciousness does not exist as a continuum through all clones.
What we really need: Water & Power infrastruct (Score:3, Interesting)
Like:
Water pipelines and catch basins to help the West deal with mountain snowpack that is starting to melt too early. Part of the deal: Subsidize cisterns for new homes.
A survivable, redundant national energy grid.
Equip cities with a hardened emergency energy and communication infrastructure to keep traffic signals, police stations, hospitals, and the like going during a crisis.
Re:Wish List (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheap Nuclear power - Well, if someone finds a scalable way to retrieve uranium from sea water or harvest He-3 from the moon (and a way to use it) we're good.
Video chat - it's already cheap. Buy a webcam, find someone else with one, and pay your internet bills. What you want is for more people to buy webcams. And for your phone to be connected to your computer.
Space travel for the masses - first you need a space destination for the masses. If you build it, they will come. But not for a while, and not until you have a destination. 20-50 years if people want it.
Cure for cancer - see cure for common cold.
Cure for common cold - Why bother with *just* the cold? Why not think big - mechanical immune replacement. Just build a tiny robot with a white list of what not to kill. Shape it like some really successful predator that's been around for a hundred million years. Strap a lazer to it. Then socialize medicine, because there's no money in a magical cure-all.
Strong AI - Ten years. Well, not really. But something that passes a turning test, even if it's just simulating intelligence. Give it a few hundred terabytes or so of choices and pattern matching combined with AI a bit better then what we have now.
Voice commanded appliances - Well, it might give you something not entirely unlike tea every time... but just connect all electronics in your house to your computer. Set it up like a mainframe and clients. Does your video-chat thing too.
No more oil - see nuclear power.
3D UI - not helpful. You get full voice input and some AI to make things easier by guessing what you're doing unless you ask for a command line... but 3D UI really doesn't help. Do you need to square your desktop? Does a browser with depth help? Are you going to wear polarized glasses so a screen can *be* 3D?
Cybernetic Implants - Yea, sure. But not soon. You don't get to see one, unless they fix that death thing before... well before you die.
Energy-beam weapons - NO. Seriously, not helpful. Kinetic energy is really more useful... I don't see any advantage to lazers and the like over just pushing things really fast.... lazers are faster but you can course adjust real "objects." And pack them with explosives.
Easy-to-maintain PC's - Define "maintain." Ah fine, why not. Get redundant hard drives and processors, make full RAM+ROM backups and get a *serious* "undo" button. Shouldn't be that hard. Then rewrite your OS from the ground up so you can't screw it up. I'm talking make it so that you could click a button to fix anything wrong, because there's a list of every option and what value it has. Verify all relevant options are correct, and then fix anything that differs from the "standard" install.
Keyless cars - Already have them. Fingerprint and so on.
Non-lethal weapons for cops - they have those. They don't really help. What you need is more training and accountability.
Tires that don't blow out or go flat overnight - Full rubber tires or auto-resealing tires. You can already get the kind that you can drive to a mechanic after what would have been a blowout... they have some kind of goo that driving fast plasters to the walls and is thick enough that it keeps air in but thin enough that it closes over holes. Solid rubber tires also exist for government officials... don't know if they're street legal, though.
Reliable Car Batteries - you follow recommendations on lifetime and get a car that turns the lights off 10 minutes after you take the keys out and modern batteries are as reliable as they get. Unless you get solar panels to charge them or something, but honestly if a battery goes dead these days it's probably your fault... and it's getting harder to make such mistake
Re:Maglev is expensive? Look at interstates! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure China would love to keep the cost of it's maglev down, but they can't. That's why they've already cancelled future extensions in favor of conventional high-speed rail. Apparently they couldn't get the cost below $70m/km. Not only that, but roads allow you to skip that extra step of changing modes of transportatino to get to and from the train station.
The maglev near Shanghai goes from the airport to the outskirts of the city. For a fraction of the cost, both in terms of money and time, you can take a taxi directly from the airport to the city center. And that's with the government heavily subsidizing the train. It's not practical mass transportation - it's a ride. A vanity project.
I agree trains can be more efficient than road traffic in certain situations, but we're not starting with empty land. Building out a high-speed rail system only makes sense if you're looking out generations into the future, because the building costs for the road network are sunk already.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
I want my Quasi-Universal Translator (Score:3, Interesting)
OCR exists. It would need its accuracy significantly improved, but then, most things you are going to want to use it on will be in one several commonly-used typefaces, especially if you're using it on computer text. Speech recognition exists, but by and large isn't good enough yet. Eventually it will be to the point where it either won't need training, or it will be feasible to precompute a database of hundreds of voices and brute force it.
That leaves machine translation. Unlike Star Trek (where the 'universal translators' can deal with even unknown languages, except when required by the plot), you are pretty much never going to get machine translation to deal with unknown languages. But that's OK, you don't really NEED that. Being able to build a new translator database for new languages as needed is enough. The way I figure, by the time machine translation is good enough, the other three prongs will have advanced far enough that you should be able to make a magic box that takes an AV feed in, and spits a new one out at 60 FPS. There you go, and beam me up Scotty, because I want one of those now!
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [bbc.co.uk] - Please read that. Lets have the Russians invade and over throw the American system of government.
Re:More to it that speed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
While I think it would be great to invest heavily in alternative energy (Scientific American has a plan for solar energy [sciam.com]), I don't necessarily think that it make us ignore the Middle East. (The U.S. military is not ignoring Africa, by the way, since the United States Africa Command [wikipedia.org] was recently established.) The threat of terrorism (real or imagined) will probably keep us in the Middle East for a long time to come.
Re:To hell with Sci-FI.... I want old tech (Score:3, Interesting)
- You don't have to be there more than 15 minutes in advance.
- The train takes you to the center of the city.
- You can have a train every 5 or 6 minutes, if there are a lot of passengers.
- Much more fuel efficient. CO2 emissions are about 10-20% of what you have when using a plane.
- Fuel efficiency will be improved when improving the national power grid efficiency, you can get an almost zero emissions train.
The key part is the time saving. If you compare the flight with the train, the time is similar, but if you include being at the airport 2 hours in advance, plus going to the airport (usually far from the city), plus going to your final destination from the airport, you save a lot of time.
A NY-LA train is stupid, because the time wasted at the airports, etc, is little compared to the total travel time. But in distances from 200 km to 1000 km the high speed train is king.
But it does not come cheap. The Madrid-Valladolid line includes a 25 km tunnel, plus another 9 km tunnel, and it costed around 4bn EUR. That is about 20 million EUR per km. The cost of the works is not recovered with the fares, but it is a project that makes sense economically, but not financially. There is a lot of saved time, a lot of saved costs in planes and cars, and it opens the possibility of commuting between those two cities. You can do a cost benefit analysis, and it is definitely worth it.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
People were brainwashed by DECADES of Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews, Focus on the Family, The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, (etc. ad nauseum).
This is the consequence of living in a Free and Open society - where money talks, and concentrated money talks LOUDLY.
The elimination of the media Fairness Doctrine, and ownership rules, under Ronald Reagan in the 1980's played a big role, but this process was already well under way in this country.
I don't know what the solution is, because the obvious alternatives involve the curtailment of free speech, and free commerce. Maybe there are some un-obvious alternatives out there.