I'm Here, Where Is The Future?

[SecretSquirrel]

Ok, today is the day. Where is my air cushion car, domed city, house cleaning robot and space hotel?

 

[user 13]

https://store.irobot.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=3334619&camp=Google

https://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/top-ten-flying-cars/

https://www.domeincorporated.com/

if you have $20 mil you can stay at the ISS.


Your welcome

 

[Pantherjon]

:lol: They had big dreams back then!

Well, we DO have one thing mentioned in a 490+ passenger plane in the A380...

 

[GuyNoir]

"Heart disease has been eliminated by drugs and diet".


Right. . . . .

 

[Peartree]

Frankly, it's surprising how many things they did get right.

They didn't always name the things but many descriptions that they used are easily understood as stuff we use today. Flat screen TV's, cell phones, wireless computing with touch pads, households with commonly used computers (just not centrally controlling ones, not that we can't, just that most people decided they didn't want them), houses are increasingly modular in construction just not built in a day (have you seen the current This Old House? - built, wired and plumbed off-site - yikes), climate controlled houses (though not cities), the virtual disappearance of money and the common use of credit, disposable pates and silverware, and although farming is not centrally controlled, it is remarkable computer driven with fertilization rates, planting and yields all predicted by computer as well as controlled by in cab controllers.

 

[WiK]

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The job assembling mini-dozers on p142 has me tempted...

 

[wilsotr]

Ok, today is the day. Where is my air cushion car, domed city, house cleaning robot and space hotel?

Why on "The Jetsons," of course. Don't you watch TV?

 

[Micromeister]

Yep! I've been complaining about the same thing for the last 4 or 5 years.

I was promised Flying CARS! Where are my Fly'in CARS!!!

Hybrids are a waste of time....forget the stopgaps... Lets get on with Hydrogen fuel cells...and more importantly; the delivery systems and infastructure to support them!

Nationalize all imported auto company holding within the US, turning the new production plants over to our own Auto makers, while revamping the big 3, after realigning the UAW to allow our companies to be more competitive.

But alas...it's like crying in the Woods...only the chipmunks are aware

 

[dr wogz]

i just want the 4 day work week we were promised just 20 years ago!

 

[Gillard]

i just want the 4 day work week we were promised just 20 years ago!

you've got it, it's included in the six day work week that you have at the moment.:cry:

 

[SecretSquirrel]

Why on "The Jetsons," of course. Don't you watch TV?

Gotta love The Jetsons.


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[gpoehlein]

I liked the bit about sending messages from the car while commuting - people do that now with texting. Only problem is, we don't have the intelligent cars and the fools are texting while trying to drive! :surprised:

As for the 4 day work week - I've already got that. Of course, I have to put in four 10 to 13 hour workdays plus an hour commute before and after, so by the time the 3-day weekend rolls around, all I want to do is sleep! :cry:

 

[TXFergie1]

I'm still waiting for the intelligence pill. I have plenty of coworkers who would buy stock in THAT company.....

Reading this made me think of the old cartoons about the Car or the House of the Future. They came out in the 40s and 50s, and I think some of them were either Tex Avery or Chuck Jones cartoons. Classics......

 

[CharlaineC]

I remember just a cpl of years ago they talked about the so called future houses, the production of food replicators like you see in star trek and other scifi shows. the jetpack we where suspose to beable to buy. The list goes on on what we where suspose to have by the late 90's into 2000. and some have come to pass while others are stoped by our right to vote and plan ignorence or by the simple fact that the tech is still in its infanticy.

here and now we have the personal gps, night vision, computers, cell phones computers, digital cameras, lcd and plasma tvs, water purification for the home or on the go, cars with heads up displays as an after market addition, voice, retena, fingerprint locks, cars without keys. the list goes on.

some of what has been stoped by either us, politics, price or safty. have been the intergeation of a national federaly controled transpertation system , automated path tracing cars( like the line following robots) underwater cities and many others.

still to come. The idea of domed cities has not left the thoughts of many. but more realistic might be the intergration of great domed indestry cenrers for to allow for better filteration of the air. flying cities are still an idea in infantcy cities that are based is like a great flying aircraft carrier that just roams the sky. homes on the moon it is said that this new interest in the moon is to put a working community on the surface.

All in all many of the promised items here or in the planing stages. While some have become just what they started as, a great idea.

 

[Peartree]

This just in!!!


Intelligence pills invented 20 years ago.





The politicians killed the project and covered it up because then no one would vote for them.:surprised:

 

[adrian]

No, the real reason intelligence pills haven't gone on sale is that due to health and safety regulations, they have to be made idiot-proof.

 

[graylensman]

I've got a four-hour workday!

...after I yak with co-workers, check my favorite web comics, and surf the Rocketry Forum...

 

[WillCarney]

The biggest reason why we don't have flying cars and easy access to space
is simple. The government has kept the alien UFO's secret and not allowed
anyone to mass produce the propulsion types for us all to use.

William

 

[Stefan_Jones]

To hell with jetpacks. Where the hell is my SOYLENT GREEN?

Some friends and I went to Disneyworld about twelve years back. Actually, we were down there for the World Science Fiction Convention, and had a few days to kill beforehand.

We went to Epcot of course. A lot of the exhibits still had this Future Past stuff. It was really kind of embarrassing . . . tacky and hokey rather than inspiring. Like, the same old 1950s way of life with flashier stuff.

Dig this, from eighty years ago:

"Modern science has imposed upon humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure. The very benefit of wandering is that it is dangerous and needs skill to avert evils. We must expect, therefore, that the future will disclose dangers. It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. The prosperous middle classes, who ruled the nineteenth century, placed an excessive value upon the placidity of existence. They refused to face the necessities for social reform imposed by the new industrial system, and they are now refusing to face the necessities for intellectual reform imposed by the new knowledge. The middle class pessimism over the future of the world comes from a confusion between civilization and security. In the immediate future there will be less security than in the immediate past, less stability. It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages."

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1925.​

 

[graylensman]

To hell with jetpacks. Where the hell is my SOYLENT GREEN?

Fry: Maybe Slurm is... made of people!!!
Leela: No, there's already a drink like that; Soylent Cola.
Fry: Really? How is it?
Leela: It varies from person to person.

 

[2muchstuff]

....Nationalize all imported auto company holding within the US, turning the new production plants over to our own Auto makers, while revamping the big 3, after realigning the UAW to allow our companies to be more competitive. ...

WHAT?!? Why would the companies need to be more competitive? You just nationalized their competition.

What a great plan. Driving our own auto industry into the ground isn't enough. Take it away from the guys that are doing it right and then let Detroit destroy that as well. That would be like saying let's close all the high-performing schools and let them be run by the admins at poor performing ones. That'll fix things.


tms

 

[SecretSquirrel]

https://store.irobot.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=3334619&camp=Google

A vacuum cleaner with bump-n-go action

https://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/top-ten-flying-cars/

And these are available where?

https://www.domeincorporated.com/

Not a city

if you have $20 mil you can stay at the ISS.

Not a hotel

Your welcome

No, you're welcome

 

[luke strawalker]

Yep! I've been complaining about the same thing for the last 4 or 5 years.

I was promised Flying CARS! Where are my Fly'in CARS!!!

Hybrids are a waste of time....forget the stopgaps... Lets get on with Hydrogen fuel cells...and more importantly; the delivery systems and infastructure to support them!

Nationalize all imported auto company holding within the US, turning the new production plants over to our own Auto makers, while revamping the big 3, after realigning the UAW to allow our companies to be more competitive.

But alas...it's like crying in the Woods...only the chipmunks are aware

:lol::rotflol::lol::lol:

Oh man this cracks me up... "nationalize all imported auto company holdings in the US and turn it over to our own automakers"... That's the funniest thing I've heard in a LONG time!! WHY?? So the "Big Three" can screw them up royally as well?? Like this Big Three Bailout, which is probably the STUPIDEST idea I've ever heard of, the Big Three are the authors of their own problems... New US vehicles are overpriced and the quality is not what it should be; not for what UAW wages cost. UAW wages and associated costs are one of the main reasons the Big Three aren't competitive (and I'm NOT anti-union by a LONGSHOT, but the UAW and AFL-CIO have just gone bananas with their excesses and are cutting off their nose to spite their face, cuz when the Big Three go under there won't be many US UAW workers left. The only reason the foreign companies are locating to the US is because our NON-UNION labor is cheaper than theirs (in Japan and Germany). Notice most of the 'foreign' auto plants in the US are as far away as they can get from the 'rust belt'... The Toyota truck plant they've built near San Antonio, TX, and the Talladega, AL Mercedes plant, and even the Columbia, TN Saturn plant spring to mind. The Toyota plant was specifically placed in TX near San Antonio to tap cheap non-union Hispanic labor market.

Get used to it, that's just how it is... If the Big Three want to be competitive, UAW and AFL-CIO has to come to grips with reality and quit killing the golden goose, and Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler has to get on the ball and join the 21st Century-- update their products, methods, and business model, and improve their quality.

Besides, Chevrolet is making WAY more money off their Chinese operations, making and selling cars in China for the Chinese market, than they are off their US operations anyway. Ford and Chrysler are scrambling for the Chinese market as well, as THAT'S where the big money and big market is. I was recently talking with a guy about the auto business (he came to look at an antique parts car I was selling a couple months ago) and we had a nice long talk about a lot of different subjects. Interestingly enough he was telling me about all the banks that are projected to go under next year (this was a month or more before the Fannie/Freddie mess, the AIG, etc. mess walloped Wall Street, and was the first I'd heard of it) and I was a bit surprised, and he was telling me that from what he's read he fully expects the Big Three to pretty much pull out of the US and produce the vehicles for the US market in Chinese factories, to get around the unions, the environmental regs governing the factories, and to streamline their operations and increase profits. I thought it an odd statement at the time, but now I think he may be dead on right, in the long term anyway...

JMHO! OL JR

 

[luke strawalker]

Ohhh... I forgot...

HYDROGEN.... Right... that'll solve all the world's problems...

Hmmmm.... just two small problems with Hydrogen... There are two main ways to obtain it... from NATURAL GAS which of course comes from those nasty oil and gas wells which are destroying the natural world with those ugly drilling rigs everywhere and the other is by ELECTROLYSIS OF WATER, which, ummm... requires electricity!!! Of course ELECTRICITY is primarily coming from TWO sources which account for the lion's share of all power generation in the US-- COAL and NATURAL GAS power plants. Both of which are 'carbon polluters' and on the evil/bad/nasty list....

Now as far as electricity is concerned, we have more than enough COAL to last for at least another century, probably more. Even with the projected growth in expected electrical usage. But of course it's on the evil/bad/nasty list and our beloved new leader has said he will "bankrupt any new coal plants by taxing/regulating them so heavily they'll never make their investors the first dollar back". We have a lot of natural gas too, but it's use has grown SO MUCH (almost ALL new generating capacity brought online in the last 30 years has been natural gas fired plants) that it's starting to be fought over by it's myriad users (home heating, electric generation, petrochemical/refining industries, and agricultural fertilizers {virtually all agricultural nitrogen fertilizer is made by catalyzing natural gas into ammonia}) and of course increasing supply requires that nasty ugly DRILLING again, and bulldozing the landscape to build more new pipelines.

I wonder what people are going to choose in the end-- sitting in the dark with only a candle, building more new coal plants and coal mines to provide the fuel, or drilling more natural gas wells and building pipelines for more new gas-fired generating plants, or building nuclear plants... Nuclear plants are the ONLY source of power, that, with the proper breeder reactor design, are capable of producing more fuel than they use and producing power as well... but I digress...

As far as hydrogen, I wouldn't hold my breath. It can only be liquified under EXTREME pressure and EXTREMELY LOW temperatures, and it's horribly inefficient to transport because of it's low density, even as a liquid. Any practical 'home or industrial' use will have to use it as a gas, which is even worse. It has to be stored in extremely high-pressure 'welding gas' type cylinders, (which is well-understood and CAN be done safely, but IS a risk nevertheless) Mostly because of the storage/handling difficulties and low density, the power density is pretty awful too, meaning it takes a LOT of it do perform the same amount of work as say a full gas tank in a car... It's pretty similar to CNG (compressed natural gas) fuelled vehicles used by many industrial/city vehicles now... CNG is EXTREMELY compressed methane (city gas) burned in vehicles. CNG has many of the same problems as hydrogen, just not QUITE as bad. Methane (natural gas/city gas) is easily obtainable from the gas main distribution networks, but for all practical purposes CANNOT be liquified, requiring it to be highly compressed into cylinders mounted under the truck, up to 3000 PSI or so. Kinda dangerous. LPG (LIQUIFIED petroleum gas, IE propane or butane) is easily compressed until it liquifies, but must be kept under pressure or it boils off cryogenically. It's far easier to handle and being a liquid far easier to have a tank to hold enough to do some good, but still as a low cryogenic pressurized liquid still presents SOME safety concerns (we used to have LP powered farm tractors, and I've handled the stuff myself... got some interesting stories) The fuel power density is better than CNG but not as good as room temperature liquid fuels like gasoline, kerosene, and of course diesel fuel, which is heavier yet.

I learned it like this... if it takes ROUGHLY 3 gallons of diesel to do a job, it will take about 4 gallons of gasoline, or 5 gallons of LPG, or 6 'gallons' (equivalent cubic feet) of CNG, simply because of lighter fuels being less 'energy dense' than heavier fuels.

Besides, with Hydrogen, we don't have either A) enough electric generating capacity to power electrolysis units to produce hydrogen, or B)enough 'spare' natural gas to catalyze it into hydrogen in refineries... new electric generating capacity has 'soaked up' all the extra natural gas out there, to the point that new natural gas plants are less and less profitable, and competing uses like home heating and agricultural fertilizer prices have SKYROCKETED both the price and need for natural gas and are competing heavily for it in the marketplace.

I've even ignored the fact that burning natural gas to produce electricity, to crack hydrogen from water using electrolysis, to either burn in a car engine, or send through an electrical fuel cell to electrically power a car, multiplies the inefficiencies of ALL these power transformations (laws of thermodynamics-- losses caused by inefficiencies at each stage of transformation) It would have been more efficient to burn the natural gas in a car engine than suffer all the cumulative inefficiencies multiplies along this convoluted power path.

SO, I wouldn't bet the farm on hydrogen either... as a niche fuel, sure... but widespread "solve all our problems" stuff... Nah... won't happen. JMHO! OL JR

BTW... good article in Nat Geo awhile back on this very subject... and if you want to talk about a GOOD START to 'alternative fuels' then SUGAR CANE (NOT CORN) ETHANOL would be an excellent starting point... Corn ethanol is horribly inefficient, as it takes 4 quarts of crude oil (in all forms, whether hydrocarbon derived farm fertilizers, pesticides and ag chemicals, diesel fuel for tractors, harvesters, grain drying, storage, and transport) to create only 5 quarts of corn ethanol.... in other words, to convert ALL our imported gasoline use to corn ethanol, we'd have to QUADRUPLE our oil imports to grow, harvest, and process enough corn to make the ethanol in the first place. No win situation. On the other hand, SUGAR CANE ETHANOL produces THREE TIMES the amount input in crude oil (and equivalent). That means for every gallon of crude oil used to grow sugarcane, you can get THREE gallons of ethanol back... a win-win scenario... but alas, sugarcane production in the US is almost gone... except for a few spots in Louisiana and Florida it's nearly a dead industry... though it COULD revive if the gov't would help farmers do it... the western 'suburb' of Houston is called Sugarland because it used to be one of the largest sugar companies (Imperial Sugar) in the US, and almost all the cane was grown in the area just west of Houston, back in the early part of the 20th century... now it's all gone... hasn't been grown here in 50 years... it's a shame, and wasteful... Brazil knows better, and GROWS their own fuel because of it... OL JR

 

[graylensman]

Gee whiz. You guys take all the fun outta the future.

 

[JRThro]

Ohhh... I forgot...

HYDROGEN.... Right... that'll solve all the world's problems...

Besides, with Hydrogen, we don't have either A) enough electric generating capacity to power electrolysis units to produce hydrogen, or B)enough 'spare' natural gas to catalyze it into hydrogen in refineries... new electric generating capacity has 'soaked up' all the extra natural gas out there, to the point that new natural gas plants are less and less profitable, and competing uses like home heating and agricultural fertilizer prices have SKYROCKETED both the price and need for natural gas and are competing heavily for it in the marketplace.

(major snippage)

I've even ignored the fact that burning natural gas to produce electricity, to crack hydrogen from water using electrolysis, to either burn in a car engine, or send through an electrical fuel cell to electrically power a car, multiplies the inefficiencies of ALL these power transformations (laws of thermodynamics-- losses caused by inefficiencies at each stage of transformation) It would have been more efficient to burn the natural gas in a car engine than suffer all the cumulative inefficiencies multiplies along this convoluted power path.

SO, I wouldn't bet the farm on hydrogen either... as a niche fuel, sure... but widespread "solve all our problems" stuff... Nah... won't happen. JMHO! OL JR

Thank you, Jeff!

Using hydrogen has never made sense to me, since you have to use electricity and/or natural gas to make the hydrogen, and then you turn about and burn the hydrogen to make electricity again. That's a no-win situation.

 

[luke strawalker]

Thank you, Jeff!

Using hydrogen has never made sense to me, since you have to use electricity and/or natural gas to make the hydrogen, and then you turn about and burn the hydrogen to make electricity again. That's a no-win situation.

You're welcome...

I've been reading about this stuff for a LONG time...

As a smart someone once said... "There is NO free lunch"... (unless you're a Democrat)LOL (and those lunches will run out too one day, perhaps sooner than we think)

The closest thing to a 'free lunch' is breeder nuclear power. Breeder reactors though are even less popular and more demanding (risky) than "standard" reactors though... though LLNL among others have come up with some truly outstanding experimental prototype reactors that could be commercialized... we're stuck with 1950 pressurized water reactor designs for the time being, and haven't built a new nuclear plant in 30 years.

There will be some hard choices in the future... so far we've had the luxury of cheap abundant hydrocarbon energy, but that's starting to wind down... I wonder how many people will enjoy reverting to the 18th century, or will they get over their fears of nuclear power to keep the lights on?? Or decide having electricity and hot water is important enough that they can stomach more coal generated electricity??

The future is going to be very interesting... OL JR

 

[billspad]

Amazon must be looking over my shoulder at what I'm reading because I got an email recommending these two books:

Where Is My Jetpack and Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of Our Fantastic Future

 

[user 13]

A vacuum cleaner with bump-n-go action



And these are available where?



Not a city



Not a hotel





No, you're welcome

Hey it was the best I could do!

there are a few areo cars still around, so one out of 4 is not that bad.

Mark

 

[MarkII]

All I can say is, the future sure ain't what it used to be...

Great thread, Don! And thanks, WiK, for that great video link! It's going right to the top of my favorites list!

Mark \\.