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.'"

I would pay good money

[Anonymous Coward]

for a sci-fi device which installed in Richard Stallman a sense of shame.

OMG my eyes, teh goggles do NOTHING!! [youtube.com]

More to it that speed

[taustin]

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.

Re:More to it that speed

[91degrees]

Security theatre at a railway station would be a much harder sell. Nobody is going to fly a train into a skyscraper. They're not going to have a lot of luck hijacking it either.

"Take me to Mexico!"
"We can't. The tracks only go as far as California"

Re:

[taustin]

Imagine a fully loaded train at 300 mph crashing in to Grand Central Station in Manhattan.

Re:More to it that speed

[Amorymeltzer]

Still less likely - You know EXACTLY which route it's going to take, and can build in controls to your "Command Center." A plane in the air is all on its own while a train is bound by a number of things, least of all tracks. At the very least you could intercept it with another large object, not to mention any other mechanism built into the train/track for such an event.

It's not perfect, nor fool-proof, but it's far safer. At least you can't fall 30,000 feet.

Re:

[SuperQ]

Most high-speed trains are electric.. All you have to do is cut power to the line and have an automatic "power gone for too long? apply brakes" control into the train's automation. (yes, there is a bit of backup power on the train)

Re:More to it that speed

[Skippy_kangaroo]

Actually - they are usually failsafe. You don't need residual power.

Think about what that means - their failure mode is safe. It is a well established design and engineering principle.

For example, the brakes are held open by compressed air. If something goes wrong the compressed air supply shuts off and the brakes stop the train.

Re:

[Deadstick]

not to mention any other mechanism built into the train/track for such an event

Ummm, that would be one of these...

http://www.robl.w1.com/pix-5/C970714.jpg [w1.com]

rj

Re:

[Amorymeltzer]

Well, unless you loop it into a circle (which would be a pretty bad-ass solution, IMO) it's still gotta end up somewhere.

Re:

[mrbobjoe]

Loop a train in a circle, you say?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiAk5vqvn3A [youtube.com]

Re:

[geekoid]

Considering airplanes can now take off, fly and land all on autopilot, the real solution to hijacking is a command override.(Over ride, where is the over ride!)

Yes, you read that right they can take off and land on their own, and often do.

Re:

[tsa]

Why not just cut the electricity? Easier and faster than putting a heavy object on the rails (which has to be VERY!!!! heavy to stop a long train going very fast), and you save a lot of lives too.

Re:

[Joe U]

Imagine a fully loaded train at 300 mph crashing in to Grand Central Station in Manhattan.

Interesting, considering Grand Central Station is a post office.

Assuming you mean Grand Central Terminal, don't you think we could easily build a safety system, similar to the one in the nearly 100yr old subway running next door?

Re:

[zsau]

Most regular run-of-the-mill a-dime-a-dozen subway trains have systems in place so that if the driver metaphorically "puts his foot down" ignoring the signals, the train will stop anyway, with no way the driver could over-ride them. I think if we've got a train costing billions of dollars, they're not going to skimp on security. The most dangerous thing you can do on a train is blow it up.

Re:

[Sta7ic]

Imagine the voltage going through the electromagnetic rails steadily dropping slowly until the train car was moving at a sedate speed.
It's pretty easy to turn off the gas on a maglev train.

Re:

[xaxa]

In which case you design the signalling system and train systems to only allow the train to approach the station at a safe speed. There was an accident on the London Underground many years ago where a train hit a dead-end tunnel (I don't think they ever found out why the driver didn't stop) but because of that there's a system that cuts the power and applies the brakes to stop it happening again. The European high speed trains 'know' the maximum safe speed for the line, and will override what the driver w

Re:

[Joe U]

Oh heck, the NY subway has a very simple system.

Red light, small bar goes up on the track. If train goes over the bar, the train emergency breaks trip. Dead ends on the subway actually have a permanent metal bar in the trip position.

Re:

[hador_nyc]

The good news is that you CAN'T crash into it. Although there are tracks that go to Grand Central, AMTrack does not currently use them; only the commuter railroad Metro-North; including the Connecticut line, does. AMTrack, including the Acela, only goes into Penn Station on the other side of town. More to the point, though, in the case of both stations, the trains go UNDER the station, and not into it. There are plenty of choke points to include the tunnels from Jersey to Manhattan that would be used to

Re:

[flyingsquid]

Security theatre at a railway station would be a much harder sell. Nobody is going to fly a train into a skyscraper. They're not going to have a lot of luck hijacking it either.

However, they could detonate a bomb while it's moving at high speed, and the resulting accident would probably kill everyone on board. It's already been tried on the high speed AVE train in Spain but it was unsuccessful. Assuming Al Qaeda or a similar group does attempt to attack in the U.S. again, they will probably target mass tra

Re:

[corsec67]

So you detonate a bomb in the security line at an airport the day before Thanksgiving. If you want to kill a bunch of people with a bomb, there are plenty of ways of doing that.

Re:More to it that speed

[owlnation]

Assuming Al Qaeda or a similar group does attempt to attack in the U.S. again, they will probably target mass transit, just as they have in Spain and Britain.

Smoke and mirrors. Sure they could. But if you block that route with heightened security measures then they can just take out a major road intersection or bridge, or many other possibilities -- essentially anywhere people gather is a security risk.

If you buy the paranoia that is...

If you believe that to be true, then the terrorists have won. Air travel is already a complete nightmare. After 6+ years of security threats you'd think that they would be able to come up with better ways of moving people through controlled spaces like airports, but no... they haven't. Lame really.

The "risks" not worth the security measures. That's not freedom. That's not a society worth defending. Try living in the UK for a while, it makes you look at China and envy its liberty.

Re:

[HiThere]

Your presumption is that they are attempting to safeguard people. Why do you believe that? It looks much more like "Let's see how scared we can get people to accept being". It's an old trick, long used by many religions. Get people frightened of something that they can't check, and use that fear to manipulate their actions.

Re:

[Lars T.]

They're not going to have a lot of luck hijacking it either.

Funny, "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" was just on TV. Of course, they didn't have much luck.

Re:

[xaxa]

Chain link fence (if that) is the norm in Europe (e.g. The entrance to the Channel Tunnel, UK side [wikipedia.org] -- just a couple of fences).

Are you really that scared? If so, you'd better protect all roads too.

Personal Rapid Prototypers

[TubeSteak]

But maybe that'd be a bit too much of a disruptive technology.

Re:

[CaptainCarrot]

What's such a big deal about that? First, who'd want it? And second, what's to stop someone rich enough who wants it from having it right now? Stereolithography costs as little as five figures USD. People buy more expensive cars.

Where's the Death Star?

[angryfirelord]

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. :)

Re:Where's the Death Star?

[evanbd]

It might not fund the Iraq war for all that long, but when you focus it on a single project $1,200,000,000 is realy an awfully big number...

Re:Where's the Death Star?

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Yes, you could get a couple of days of the Olympic Games for that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7135824.stm [bbc.co.uk]

No way it only costs $70b

[potat0man]

$70 billion for a coast to coast mag lev? No way. The big dig in Boston, which was basically building a few tunnels cost $14.6b [csmonitor.com] and you're telling me you can get a coast to coast mag lev for only 5 times as much? Keep dreaming.

Re:

[Bender0x7D1]

While I agree the cost would be higher - someone will siphon off the money - you can't really compare the two projects.

The biggest difference would be that the train is above ground - so no need to reinforce the ceiling during construction, and no need to construct a ceiling at all. You also eliminate the need for ventilation, drainage and a lot of other issues you get when working underground. This would greatly increase the speed of the work and eliminate a lot of the cost. Also, you don't need to dig

Re:Where's the Death Star?

[Sponge Bath]

... Ballmer would like his new Vader costume

Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL orbital chair launcher!

Re:

[Pollardito]

i personally don't want to see the kind of damage he could cause by throwing chairs from that height

Gundum

[milsoRgen]

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.

Re:

[Quattro Vezina]

Screw the Mobile Suits, I want the space colonies. Though I am happy that "Gundam" was the first word Wired used to describe mecha :)

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:

[milsoRgen]

True that, plus as Humvees have shown us relatively simple explosives would probably be used against them with effective results.

Wish List

[Tablizer]

* 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)

Re:

[esampson]

...* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death

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?

Re:

[AK Marc]

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.

If someone makes a copy of me and I'm either me or the copy, then I'm still me. If I take my install disk for Starcraft, copy it, then destroy the original, it will still install and run just as well on any computer. It's

Re:

[Knara]

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 individu

That's a deep philosophical question.

[Valdrax]

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?

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.

Re:

[Reemi]

* A wife?

Nah

[tknd]

* Two chicks at the same time.

Re:

[olman]

* Cheap Nuclear Power

At the very least you can reuse nuclear fuel..

* Safe, Effective Diet Pill

One way or another this is going to involve making pretty harsh changes to either your metabolism or instincts. Latter we can hack already if you don't mind the schizophrenia from amphetamines.

* Cheap TV Phone (nevermind, I don't look so hot in the morning)

Uh already here? I already got one. Never used video calls thought.

* Appliances that Accept Voice Commands

See above. Also another feature I've never used.

* Cyber

Re:

[Grishnakh]

* Cybernetic Implants

See above. Depends on what you mean by cybernetic exactly, thought. Sure you can't have minigun but instead you can have crappy eyesight or acceptable hearing with implants.

That's a start, but it's not really "sci-fi tech" until we have implants which significantly exceed human capabilities: better than human eyesight and hearing, strength, etc. Think of the Six Million Dollar Man.

Re:

[Wildclaw]

My wish list:

* Wireless extremly high bandwidth long range communication unit.
* Replicator, with lots of item blueprints (including all other items on my wishlist) downloadable via the communication unit
* Energy device to power the replicator.

Those are the three main ones. Add this one as a bonus:

* Automatic doctor unit that can fix any injuries. Bonus if it can extend life.

Re:Wish List

[sssssss27]

Reliable Tires (or that fail gradually) - Tires are still based on air-filled balloon technology, making them problematic.

Michelin is working on that, they call it a Tweel [wikipedia.org] and it should be on production vehicles by 2016.

Re:Wish List

[PieSquared]

Flying Car - you don't actually want this, you want quick easy transportation.

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:

[FooAtWFU]

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.

Right. Because sharks are widely known for their successes at destroying viruses, bacteria, cancer, and other dangerous oceanic life forms.

I did a robot project once, a little one. It was supposed to follow a dark black printed line around a racetrack, run three laps (the start/finish line marked by a line perpendicular to the track) and then stop. The hardest part of the darned project was getting it to recognize when to stop; it only had two little infrared sensors.

Your little nano-robot toy is going

I want my Quasi-Universal Translator

[LrdDimwit]

All you need to make an automatic translation machine are four pieces of technology, three of which by and large already exist. Speech recognition, OCR (for signs, etc), image editing (add subtitles on the fly), and machine translation software. Image editing already exists, and it's not even that hard to do to get something that can autogenerate subtitles -- if all else fails, shrink the picture and add subtitles in the now-empty space at the bottom.

OCR exists. It would need its accuracy significantly

Re:

[hcdejong]

* Safe, Effective Diet Pill

Already there, albeit not in pill form. It's called the "Don't eat more than you need, dumbass" diet and is available free of charge anywhere in the world.
Also, I'd say a diet pill is one of the hardest problems on the list, along with AI and cheating death. You'd have to find a way to cheat on the laws of thermodynamics.

And that is why I think that Gates and Buffet are

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:And that is why I think that Gates and Buffet a

[aztektum]

it would lower the transportation costs, energy usage, and build monster jobs.

But see all three of those things reduce income for the invested Powers that Be. No way one or two billionaires, in our current state of affairs, would do something so drastic to fuck another member of the "Rich ass mother fucker" club.

US Could Use a Big Engineering Project

[hardburn]

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.

Not too much research

[Telvin_3d]

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 [wikipedia.org], who actually has a test bed in orbit right now.

Re:

[ishmaelflood]

Well that's a start. Then they'll need a test wardrobe, and a test kitchen, and a test bathroom. But yes, a test bed is a start.

Arcology

[Experiment 626]

While the floating city mentioned in the article is nice, it's interesting to contemplate the more general class of which it is an example of: Arcologies [wikipedia.org]. Huge megastructures that are cities unto themselves. Arcologies are a common thing in sci-fi, but how cool of one could we build if we were limited only by technology and engineering, and money was not the limiting factor?

No way you could do it for 70billion

[MrSteve007]

The city of Seattle couldn't even do a monorail from downtown Seattle to the airport for 11 billion dollars . . . and the airport is only 14 miles away. The tax payers are still paying off that debacle.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2004131851_brodeur18m.html/ [nwsource.com]

There is no way in hell any public project could get across a state, let alone the entire country, for 70 billion. Sad hunh?

To hell with Sci-FI.... I want old tech

[Lumpy]

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.

Go the other way...

[meringuoid]

... Why a maglev from NY to LA? We can do BETTER THAN THAT.

Build a vacuum tube from NY to LA. Then maximum speed is limited by, well... not much, actually. Accelerate to orbital velocity, go weightless for a few minutes while still on the ground, arrive. The technology exists; the cost is even more ludicrous, but while we're dreaming, eh?

In fact, hell, it's a vacuum tube. Damn thing's buoyant. Build it from London to LA.

Re:

[Darth_brooks]

No elevated trains in Detroit? You mean except for the people mover, which at least covers downtown, right?

Granted, it's about the least useful form of public transportation imaginable (it doesn't connect to the actual train station or bus stations), but it does come in handy on game day.

Re:To hell with Sci-FI.... I want old tech

[xaxa]

From Wiki: since the opening of the LGV Est [a new rail link in France], a TGV covers the 104¾ miles (167.6 km) from Lorraine TGV station to Champagne-Ardenne TGV station in 36 minutes, at an average speed of 174.5 mph (279.3 km/h)[4]. This service calls at both stations and so is representative of a high-speed service with 100 mile stopping frequency. Moreover, the TGV that achieves these timings is only capable of 198 mph (320 km/h) ("only" because Spain just opened a line using trains capable of 350km/h).

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 :-( your government wants everyone to drive or fly. (Mine -- the UK -- currently isn't that much better outside of London. The current big transport issue is the expansion of Heathrow Airport, it's already the largest in the world but the government wants to make it 50% larger, to take 700000 flights (a year?). I'd rather see faster rail connections to mainland Europe from the rest of the UK, the reduced demand for short flights would free up space. It's still quicker to fly if you're going further than about Paris/Belgium, especially if you don't live very close to London since all the international trains can't go further north than London.)

Re:

[Slashidiot]

I happen to live just beside the LGV Est, and I have been working on the Spanish Madrid-Valladolid line. These are two amazing pieces of engineering, the new spanish line makes Madrid to Valladolid (211 km driving) in less than one hour, with one stop. The big advantages over flying are:

- 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 emiss

Carbon footprints?

[Tired and Emotional]

$70bn really is not that much money - less than the Iraq war is costing us every year.

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:Carbon footprints?

[xaxa]

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.

Where are giant mirrors in space?

[Randym]

Really. Giant mirrors in space beaming solar energy down via microwaves to the Sahara [Africa], Gobi [Mongolia], Empty Quarter {Saudi Arabia] or Sonoran [Arizona, USA] deserts (chosen for their lack of people and access to nearby large populations) instantly solves the energy crisis. And they [google.com] wouldn't be *that* expensive.

Maglev price is a joke

[Rufus211]

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?

What we really need: Water & Power infrastruct

[StefanJ]

A maglev would be nice, but the kind of big money projects that intrigue me are semi-public works projects to make the country more disaster proof and help it adapt to global warming.

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.

Concorde

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I heard a terrific series of lectures by an ex concorde pilot this past summer. There were a few points about its demise that he made that I'd like to pass on:

• 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%.)

NOT informative

[aepervius]

The OP would have been informative if he had provided checkable reference. He did not. And what I find on the web is the contrary to what the OP said (hinting that he was either spitting BS, or that he repeated somebody BS and it was modded informative) : concord crash caused by burst tyre [guardian.co.uk]

There are also hint that BOTH airline decided at the same time to STOP concorde due to a significant increase onf maintenance cost by airbus : BA and AF decision to stop concorde due to maintenance money increase and dow [cnn.com]

New York - Washington would be better

[Loke the Dog]

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.

Re:

[Loke the Dog]

A very good point. But consider this: For something as expensive as maglev, tunneling is relatively cheap. Where as regular railroad might become 10 times more expensive if you do it underground, maglev might only becomes twice as expensive. And because of the great speed, the average number of passengers going through that tunnel will be many times higher than ordinary subway, so it might actually be economically feasible.

Also, since maglev requires a very, very straight path to go fast, you will almost ne

Re:Well...

[sjames]

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!

Re:Well...

[htnprm]

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.

Re:Well...

[jmorris42]

> 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.

Re:Well...

[IdleTime]

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!

Re:

[James McGuigan]

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.

Re:Well...

[Pendersempai]

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.

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 [wikipedia.org], which is one of the core concepts of basic microeconomics.

Re:

[Serious Callers Only]

You don't believe we are at war, ok. And if you read what I wrote you will see that I acknowledge that if one doesn't believe we are at war then spending ANY blood or treasure is a bad idea. It isn't a position I agree with, but if one starts from the position that we aren't in fact in a clash of civilizations, that spending anything on a 'false war' is a bad idea is a quite logical conclusion based on it.

The parent didn't assert that the US is not at war, they merely questioned the justifications and frami

Re:Well...

[tempestdata]

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.

Re:

[jafac]

Bush's Government didn't brainwash people.

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 k

Re:Well...

[tempestdata]

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 [bbc.co.uk] - Please read that. Lets have the Russians invade and over throw the American system of government.

Re:Well...

[m.ducharme]

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'.

Re:Well...

[VON-MAN]

Google can provide you with the actual speech Bush gave. (emphasis mine)

And here I should have stopped reading, this is such an obvious rewrite of history it's not even funny. It is not about this the actual speech that you can find on Google (and that pro-Iraq-war people like to talk about), it's about all these other speeches that Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney gave all over America. Those speeches that warmed America for war. Don't you remember those? Or do you only remember that one speech, that you can "find on Google"?

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.

Re:Times change

[tempestdata]

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?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Put bluntly, either the GWOT is justified on its own merits or it isn't.

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 impor

two easy-to-verify facts

[Scrameustache]

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?

IRAQ HAS NEVER ATTACKED THE UNITED STATES
IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Well...

[mikael]

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.

Re:Well...

[Chryana]

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?

Re:Well...

[sjames]

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.

Re:

[sjames]

I really doubt the terrorists we're talking about have the ability to make an entire city go FOOM!. The only power that has EVER done that is the U.S. (and we did it TWICE for good measure).

Until the U.S. invaded, there were no terrorists of consequence in Iraq (Saddam didn't like the idea of having people who could depose him around). Terrorists thrive on chaos and anger and we turned Iraq into a fertile field filled with both.

As for terrorists bringing down western civilization, the U.K. survived ove

MOD PARENT UP

[jdjbuffalo]

We could have had the Maglev Train (several), National FTTH and poured money into researching real alternative energy policy (including paying for the American automakers to design and deploy all electric and hybrid cars by this year). Just shows how we've wasted our money...

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[sjames]

Considering the big lies Bush and his cronies used to sell the war, I would like to see the costs of the war declared an odious debt and taken out of their personal accounts (along with the 'lucky' hand picked recipiants of no bid contracts in Iraq). I'm only half kidding here.

If anything, the war in Iraq has been against the interests of the U.S. citizens. We have a big bill, more Arabs than ever hate us (for even better reasons than ever), no end in sight. DHS informs us that we must be more vigillent

Re:Well...

[Original Replica]

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. [aclu.org] We voted our sorry excuse for an opposition party into power and they didn't stop the war. [go.com] 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. [sfgate.com] 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 [wikipedia.org] and Halliburton [wikipedia.org]

We could have 5 iraqs for entitlements.

[tjstork]

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.

The war in Iraq is pricey, but look at all the dough we waste on social security and medicare. That's almost a trillion dollars a year and would allow us to have a couple of Iraqs, a moonbase, and maglev trains, but oh no, we have to have e

Re:Clarke's data cube!

[kevintron]

No mention of Arthur C. Clarke's data cube, as posited in 3001! Imagine the entirety of a person's biological makeup, memories, and experiences over a lifetime, all captured in a portable storage device.

Perhaps with little pink hearts printed on each face of the cube?

Re:

[Kuukai]

Wasn't that thing's capacity measured in petabytes? That's not too far off...

Re:

[tsotha]

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