What became of the future?

uk 75

uk 75

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Back in the 1960s the airport of the future was going to be a dramatic place. Huge supersonic airliners would handle intercontinental travel while vertical lift jets would hop between cities. Monorails would swish you from city centre to vast airports built on estuaries or waste land. Movement within the airport would be aided by moving pavements or travelators.
Similar visions were provided for most walks of life. The future was going to be so exciting.
A lifetime ago and the future has arrived. Yes, I can type this on a device the size of Captain Kirk's communicator and share it with you instantly, but exciting is hardly the word I would use to describe for air travel in the 21st Century. The future got so dull so quickly.
 
Well, the US banned supersonic transports over the US. That severely restricted the growth of that business. Maybe if they'd put in a noise limit restriction instead, the quiet supersonic tech would have got the early boost it needed and we wouldn't have to drag our asses around at below 500 knots.
 
jeffb said:
Well, the US banned supersonic transports over the US. That severely restricted the growth of that business. Maybe if they'd put in a noise limit restriction instead, the quiet supersonic tech would have got the early boost it needed and we wouldn't have to drag our asses around at below 500 knots.
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It's a safe bet that if Boeing or Lockheed had designed an SST that passed overhead at Mach 3 and left nothing behind but a gentle "shush" and a fresh pine scent, there'd still be those in government who would regulate it out of existence. Can't have the yahoos thinking that the future would always be bigger and better and brighter, now, can we.

The last fifty to sixty years has seen the rise to dominance of those who want to not just lock technology in place but back it off. The decline in civilian nuclear power is the prime example... they were willing to set the planet on fire rather than provide cheap nuclear power for the masses.
 
Orionblamblam said:
...that passed overhead at Mach 3 and left nothing behind but a gentle "shush" and a fresh pine scent
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Huge missed opportunity...especially the fresh pine scent thing, that would have really been something.

The rest though is just capitalism in action, yes it rewards innovators, sometimes, but it really, really rewards entrenched industries with huge financial and political clout.
 
uk 75 said:
Back in the 1960s the airport of the future was going to be a dramatic place.
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Well, there's drama. Perhaps not the "Mad Men" -envisioned sleek and streamlined kind but an altogether more quirky mélange of silliness (to put it in the most benign terms possible) and awesome capabilities.

uk 75 said:
Huge supersonic airliners would handle intercontinental travel while vertical lift jets would hop between cities. Monorails would swish you from city centre to vast airports built on estuaries or waste land. Movement within the airport would be aided by moving pavements or travelators.
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The acceleration of physical travel has become increasingly redundant with the speed of information processing and our increasing capacity to work and "exist" from wherever (and I don't mean this in a puerile, haughty, retrosecondlifeish "metaverse" tech-bro context, either). I suspect this, in certain ways at least, is society finding at least local minimum equilibriums of energy and resource expenditures (and by local I don't mean geographically or societally but what minima are allowed for in the landscape of possibilities at any giver realized time, manifestly far removed from more sustainable configurations).

uk 75 said:
Similar visions were provided for most walks of life. The future was going to be so exciting.
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It seems to me that rather than losing futures that science would allow for, different areas of study have run further forward from potential commonplace actualization than before. I'm also worried that true expertise is nurtured in such small niches that, while in their ways protective, also risk losing the knowledge accumulated were even rather mundane discontinuities to occur. This might have something to do with increasing inequality in academic opportunities (and really awry efficiency standards therein with people gaming indices in pursuit of tenure and such) and it remains to be seen whether distributed online learning opportunities, for example, can in any way counter this trend.

Most of the time we're not even privy to or conscious about the largest anthropogenic forces that enable and shape our lives. Global food production alone is a gargantuan behemoth altering continents and oceans, equally amazing and terrifying in scale, its ramifications and implications. Sometimes, then, the fracturing of grand unifying visions of the few into more distributed and less interconnected (at least by risk) solutions of the minds and experiences of the many can be beneficial.

uk 75 said:
A lifetime ago and the future has arrived. Yes, I can type this on a device the size of Captain Kirk's communicator and share it with you instantly, but exciting is hardly the word I would use to describe for air travel in the 21st Century. The future got so dull so quickly.
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There's a thing or two to be said about the tedium of travel though. I kind of enjoy those moments when I'm necessarily removed from other purposes, it often sets my mind at a kind of a creative ease (well, ease at least). Therefore I don't necessarily mind if things take a while, superficial inefficiency become a luxury. Excitement might as well be reserved for recreational (and perhaps military) aviation.

But here's me being argumentative since I really should be engaged in a variety of responsibilities so I'll try and shift focus.
 
Thinking about NASA's F-5E SSBD effort, they managed to limit sonic booms in line with simulations but the effect wasn't all that significant. Judging (very) superficially from the shape of current efforts the opportunities of shockwave mitigation haven't changed all that much.
 
'The future' was expansionist-going outward...but transportation stagnated where information turned us inward. Downsize-they tell us..rent and stream, don't own. Live in your cubicle. The mic is always hot...the red light is always on..that's what happened to the future...it was killed in its crib.
 
Orionblamblam said:
jeffb said:
The rest though is just capitalism in action, yes it rewards innovators, sometimes, but it really, really rewards entrenched industries with huge financial and political clout.
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"Government over-regulation" is not "capitalism in action."
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Case in point:

SpaceX’s Boca Chica Plans Face Serious Objections from FWS, NPS​

In short: plans to launch Starship from the Boca Chica launch site are in danger not from technical or financial issues, but from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Not only are FAA’s hands tied on the EIS front, a full Section 4(f) Evaluation is a potential nightmare. This evaluation requires the identification of a suitable alternative that is both “Feasible and Prudent.” If this Feasible and Prudent alternative site will have a lower Section 4(f) impact, the FAA is prohibited from giving the Green Light to Starbase. At all. This is outside of NEPA as well. So if, for example, the Cape Canaveral LC 39 pad that SpaceX is developing is determined to be a feasible and prudent alternative, Starbase is dead. Dead Dead.

This is bureaucracy working its hardest to protect Americans from progress. It won't, of course, prevent the ChiComs or anyone else from developing their own competitors, thus handing the future not only to non-Americans, but Americas enemies.

This is not "capitalism in action."
 
What became of the future?
Nothing because it hasn't happened yet. Dreams of SSTs and monorails you might have automatically are history the moment you dream them, they can never be the future because the future cannot exist as a tangible dimension.

But to be realistic there were two camps in the 1960s
a) speed is king and passengers only care about how long they are in the air and the market will remain largely an upper-class first-class travelling society thing - all the plebs can travel to the Algarve on a Trident or something (but then BEA says "arrgh we might run out of plebs cut my Trident in half"....).
b) plebs outnumber toffs and they actually have fair amounts of cash to splash on annual holidays and flights and actually might want to fly further afield now the Western world is open to them, so much so we're gonna need 1,000-people capacity Jumbos by 1990.
B won out.

Now the B camp has become "I need a plane that can cram in as many humans as possible and it must run on a thimble of fuel a cost less to run than a 2-watt bulb. Galley? We don't need no stinking galleys, we just dish out overpriced rock-hard bread rolls, might want 5G broadband though".

Paradoxically a 2-hour transatlantic flight barely left enough time to properly enjoy a multi-course first-class dinner. At least now the well-heeled can enjoy a bed seat and complimentary pillows - just like Imperial Airways all over again but without the icy drafts and propeller vibrations.
 
How dare you say that? I never argue because I'm always right anyway, who wants a fight?

In a return to normal service, some muzac................ Oh well, who wants tech that works?
 
Orionblamblam said:
jeffb said:
The rest though is just capitalism in action, yes it rewards innovators, sometimes, but it really, really rewards entrenched industries with huge financial and political clout.
Click to expand...
"Government over-regulation" is not "capitalism in action."
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Meh. I'll see your cynical claim of government "over-regulation" and raise you a cynical claim of "capitalism in action".

Orionblamblam said:
Case in point:

SpaceX’s Boca Chica Plans Face Serious Objections from FWS, NPS​

In short: plans to launch Starship from the Boca Chica launch site are in danger not from technical or financial issues, but from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Not only are FAA’s hands tied on the EIS front, a full Section 4(f) Evaluation is a potential nightmare. This evaluation requires the identification of a suitable alternative that is both “Feasible and Prudent.” If this Feasible and Prudent alternative site will have a lower Section 4(f) impact, the FAA is prohibited from giving the Green Light to Starbase. At all. This is outside of NEPA as well. So if, for example, the Cape Canaveral LC 39 pad that SpaceX is developing is determined to be a feasible and prudent alternative, Starbase is dead. Dead Dead.

This is bureaucracy working its hardest to protect Americans from progress. It won't, of course, prevent the ChiComs or anyone else from developing their own competitors, thus handing the future not only to non-Americans, but Americas enemies.
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These are the rules, they're the same for everyone. Trying to blame "the bureaucracy" for this failure, because someone didn't read the fine print is a "blame the gummint" cop out. I mean it's sad, Elon's doing some great work down there, maybe a little too great from the perspective of a certain business competitor if you know what I mean?

I wonder if the Fish and Wildlife Service figured out for themselves that Starbase was in contravention (after all this time) or if it was pointed out to them by some civic minded corporate entity?

We may never know. :)
 
Hood said:
What became of the future?
Nothing because it hasn't happened yet. Dreams of SSTs and monorails you might have automatically are history the moment you dream them, they can never be the future because the future cannot exist as a tangible dimension.

But to be realistic there were two camps in the 1960s
a) speed is king and passengers only care about how long they are in the air and the market will remain largely an upper-class first-class travelling society thing - all the plebs can travel to the Algarve on a Trident or something (but then BEA says "arrgh we might run out of plebs cut my Trident in half"....).
b) plebs outnumber toffs and they actually have fair amounts of cash to splash on annual holidays and flights and actually might want to fly further afield now the Western world is open to them, so much so we're gonna need 1,000-people capacity Jumbos by 1990.
B won out.

Now the B camp has become "I need a plane that can cram in as many humans as possible and it must run on a thimble of fuel a cost less to run than a 2-watt bulb. Galley? We don't need no stinking galleys, we just dish out overpriced rock-hard bread rolls, might want 5G broadband though".

Paradoxically a 2-hour transatlantic flight barely left enough time to properly enjoy a multi-course first-class dinner. At least now the well-heeled can enjoy a bed seat and complimentary pillows - just like Imperial Airways all over again but without the icy drafts and propeller vibrations.
Click to expand...
Perhaps the uber-rich are flying around in corporate jets. Aside from their point-to-point advantage, biz jets also avoid many of the security delays.
 
I have a theory that can solve some of these issues: the Cold War cost many trillions of dollars and now we are reaching the impact of debt.
 

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The 1960s represented as many ideas as could be thought of. Strangely, the early 1970s saw the scaling back of the experimental aircraft sector and space missions. The Vietnam War was drawing to a close. Men were being rotated back to the States and expenditures for equipment dropped. The possibility of fielding new weapon technology in actual combat conditions dropped.

As far as monorails and such, private companies like Disney actually built them. In the not too distant past, rail lines in Detroit were mostly ripped up and replaced by busses built by General Motors. A new rail line has appeared on Woodward Avenue that features a vehicle referred to as the QLine. It has 20 stops and runs on electricity. Aside from the many abandoned and closed buildings along the way, a turn down any street will reveal an area that looks like it was carpet-bombed or just in the advanced stages of decay. Or empty fields.

The Cold War was a matter of survival for the U.S., and it was top priority. Money has shifted to developing laser weapons and directed energy weapons like microwaves. To defend against hypersonic glide vehicles, an electronic fence had to be put into place. Here, science fiction has become reality. See the episode titled Soldier from the Original Outer Limits TV show. We only need man-portable laser rifles. Or plasma pulse rifles.
 
The Cold War was a first attrition war without major battles. A series of peripheral wars served to relieve tension without the Third World War, winning the richest country but not without losses. And now the time has come to distribute the enormous debt among all humanity. No one will escape the tax collectors.
 
Nothing became of the future envisioned, because the future is not something that one day will magically replace our boring mundane archaic Stone Age tech with new exciting gadgets. The future is now, people! Not in 25, 50 or 100 years. Constantly evolving and changing everyday. People are sad because we still don't have flying cars, and floating megacities, claiming that "you can't change physics"but there are many things thought impossible like manned flying or traveling faster than 30mph, and many others they couldn't foresee. And despite buildings getting taller and cities growing larger, guess what? artists keep making rehearsals of the very same concepts, only now they moved their dates to a "few hundred of years in the future", so hopefully by 2500 we'll finally have km tall skyscrapers!

ra1.jpg

a56165c2a66c0049e01b51531894030e.jpg


Aside that nearly everything is completely different compared to 50 years ago, well, almost. The only items that have withstood unchanged the passage of time are pincers and tweezers:

320px-Kneifzange_HH-Harburg.jpg


You also have to take into account every prediction made assumes aesthetics and fashion would stay the same relative to the year of conception, and that no revolutionary changes will take place, Remember Charles Holland Duel said"Everything that can be invented has been invented"? Or that quote by certain MIT Engineer "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home"?Well, here we are, using computers in our everyday life. What about stuff they got right??? Self driving cars and videocalls are a thing now. And it finally looks like flying cars and supersonic planes will become viable. Now future isn't looking so bad, is it?

quietbird4-640x457.png

An-F-22A-Raptor-ready-to-go-photo-by-USAF-A-single-seat-twin-engine_Q320.jpg

iconic-cities-evolution005.jpg
 
jeffb said:
These are the rules, they're the same for everyone.
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Arguable. The rules for building and operating a gigawatt nuclear powerplant are not the same rules for building and operating a gigawatt solar power plant. But even when things are "equal," the rules are often criminally stupid.

jeffb said:
I wonder if the Fish and Wildlife Service figured out for themselves that Starbase was in contravention (after all this time) ...
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Of *what?* Of the roads being closed from time to time in order to support a project of vital national importance and occasionally causing delays to visit a Civil War site that people don't really visit anyway?

I'd personally bulldoze the Alamo and curbstomp some spotted owls if it meant that a launch site would be built there to support the colonization of Mars.
 
There you go wanting to colonize Mars again. Still not getting the why.

catching-rays-on-mars.jpg
 
jeffb said:
There you go wanting to colonize Mars again. Still not getting the why.
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Because it's there. Same reason I want to colonize the moon, Ceres, Europa, Titan, Pluto, Detroit, Alpha Centauri: it's available real estate with no life there now. Right now it's literally worthless; nothing and nobody lives there or makes use of it. But it could be terraformed and brought to life with a modicum of effort, spreading not just humanity but western civilization *and* terrestrial flora and fauna.
 
Orionblamblam said:
jeffb said:
There you go wanting to colonize Mars again. Still not getting the why.
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Because it's there. Same reason I want to colonize the moon, Ceres, Europa, Titan, Pluto, Detroit, Alpha Centauri: it's available real estate with no life there now. Right now it's literally worthless; nothing and nobody lives there or makes use of it. But it could be terraformed and brought to life with a modicum of effort, spreading not just humanity but western civilization *and* terrestrial flora and fauna.
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Detroit? Really? Have you been to Detroit in the last 30 days? Have you seen the uh... what's the word... neighborhood devastation?
 
Orionblamblam said:
But it could be terraformed and brought to life with a modicum of effort, spreading not just humanity but western civilization *and* terrestrial flora and fauna.
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Hmmm. Don't mean to burst your bubble but...

View: https://youtu.be/vb0UnogKQeo


To return to the subject, maybe this is what really happened to the future, it ran smack into reality.
 
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Tangential, another answer to 'Where Are They' ??

We're in the middle of 'Local Bubble', which is now much better mapped...
phys.org

1,000-light-year wide bubble surrounding Earth is source of all nearby, young stars

The Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars—but how did those stars form?
phys.org phys.org

1,000-light-year wide bubble surrounding Earth is source of all nearby, young stars. The rim seems a rather nasty environment. Sun's galactic orbit came through that into 'sparse' interior about 5 million years ago, bringing a load of supernova 'debris' to sediments etc...

By curious coincidence, that's about the same time as early hominids began a rapid evolution...

Perhaps, per Asimov's 'Currents of Space', any interstellar culture faced with that looming fire-front simply fled...

And, looked at side-ways, no sane ET has been able to get near us for ~5 million years...
 
jeffb said:
Hmmm. Don't mean to bust your bubble but...
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That burst no bubbles. I suspect that the video was an attempt at snark, but it succeeds at showing that the terraforming of Mars is *entirely* feasible for a spacefaring civilization with a reasonable extrapolation of current energy capability. the video makes some howler errors though... the constant harping on a partially terraformed Mars having an average temperature of minus fifty degrees misses the simple fact that on much of Mars it's warmer than that *now.* The *average* might be cold... but the Sahara and the Antarctic average out to a pretty nice place. Additionally: if you set up an atmosphere without a magnetic field, the air will trickle away... over geological timespans. If you added an atmosphere once, topping it up a few megatons every century or three will be no biggie. And neither will be building that magnetic field.

The video barely touched on asteroid mining for Mars, when in fact the planet would get heavily pummeled, including by ice-bearing comets and icebergs. We can do that on Mars but can barely tinker with Earth, because there are no borders or regulators on Mars (yet). It might well be the best idea in all human history to dam up the straights of Gibraltar, but if you try several nations are going wander up to you with weapons and make you stop. Build a 50,000 kilometer diameter solar sail and hover it at the Mars-Sol L1 point, beaming added sunlight at the night side of Mars to speed up warming? Sure, whatever, ain't nobody to complain. But build a launch pad at one of the southernmost points in the country, and you'll have lawyers jumping you.
 
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Impressive optimism, Scott. Will be great if it works out.
 
jeffb said:
Impressive optimism, Scott. Will be great if it works out.
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Not really optimism, just reasonable extrapolation of trends. The optimism isn't in what Mankind is physically capable of, but what Mankind is *politically* capable of. Entirely possible we'll screw up bad enough to end modern industrialized civilization before we get off this rock. If so, it'll be a tragedy, it'll be criminal, and it'll be our own damned fault. And we will have earned the mockery of the more advanced species out there.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Build a 50,000 kilometer diameter solar sail and hover it at the Mars-Sol L1 point, beaming added sunlight at the night side of Mars to speed up warming? Sure, whatever, ain't nobody to complain.
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Except for those damn preserve natural Mars hippies. Hopefully they won't have nukes though.
 
robunos said:
In the words of the song . . .

'Tomorrow’s almost over,
today went by so fast.
It’s the only thing to look forward to, the past . . . '


cheers,
Robin.
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Whatever happened to the Likely Lads?
 
uk 75 said:
Back in the 1960s the airport of the future was going to be a dramatic place. Huge supersonic airliners would handle intercontinental travel while vertical lift jets would hop between cities. Monorails would swish you from city centre to vast airports built on estuaries or waste land. Movement within the airport would be aided by moving pavements or travelators.
Similar visions were provided for most walks of life. The future was going to be so exciting.
A lifetime ago and the future has arrived. Yes, I can type this on a device the size of Captain Kirk's communicator and share it with you instantly, but exciting is hardly the word I would use to describe for air travel in the 21st Century. The future got so dull so quickly.
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In Japan moving pavements move you along in the major airports, and you can get to Tokyo from Haneda Airport by monorail. Haneda is built on reclaimed land, and Kansai Airport goes one further - built on an artificial island.

So, depending on how you schedule it, a post-Covid trip to Japan could let you experience half the future of the past.
 
jeffb said:
Orionblamblam said:
Build a 50,000 kilometer diameter solar sail and hover it at the Mars-Sol L1 point, beaming added sunlight at the night side of Mars to speed up warming? Sure, whatever, ain't nobody to complain.
Click to expand...
Except for those damn preserve natural Mars hippies. Hopefully they won't have nukes though.
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Hippies generally won't survive the trip to Mars. Those few that do won't survive pre-Terraformed Mars. This universe was, despite idiot claims of "fine tuning," *not* designed for the survival of Man, and people as divorced from reality and hard-nosed engineering rigor as hippies will discover real fast that Mars will eat them in a heartbeat. And then the colony's reprocessing plant will have some more proteins and carbohydrates to add to the mix.
 

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