Getting around 50 yrs from now - sky cars?

[Ultima]

Right now the main way to get around is by the car and our cities and even our lifestyle is built around it. It lets us live away from the inner city and can take us nearly anywhere in a relatively short amount of time. It lets us express our individualism and without one you can't have much of a social life unless you live in the city. But.. it also chokes up the air, kills thousands of people, makes terrorists mad at us and drives people to stick huge wings on their honda civics.
Do you think it'll still be the same way 50 years from now? I wonder if we won't be using these instead. How do you think that will change lifestyle. It would let us go practically anywhere, places where there are no roads. However I can imagine it being a hell of a lot more dangerous unless you take away control and have computers control the vehicles. Just imagine a drunk driver crashing into your roof :Q. The cool thing is that you could go much farther and go anywhere, roads or not. You could live anywhere too as long as it had power and water. That's the bad thing.. this would really make sprawl worse wouldn't it? Car critics also call the car anti-social and that it isolates people. Well this would isolate people even more but also bring them together at the same time. Depends on how you look at it. So how do you think things will change in 50 years? Hopefully we won't have to rely on terrorist oil anymore.

I for one wouldn't mind having one of these sky "cars"

 

[yakko]

Walk.

 

[glen]

SEGWAYs

 

[gopunk]

segway

 

[gopunk]

<< SEGWAYs >>



you whore!

 

[her209]

I don't worry about such things cus the next WW will probably ocur before then. :-\

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein

So I guess, walk?

 

[TheOmegaCode]

maglev

 

[Kelvrick]

Maybe we'll go back to using animals. Except this time, it'll be a mutated cross between a horse and a dinosaur. We'll be riding around on hornosaurs.

 

[Jfur]

quantum teleportation

 

[d1abolic]

<< quantum teleportation >>

Mmmm... the holy grail for couch potatoes. Think of the possibilities? Teleports your dog to the park and back. Teleports pizza straight onto your lap! Even teleports the remote into your hand from the table right beside you!

 

[johneetrash]

i recommend the 'flying car' skit on jay leno that kevin smith made.

 

[Kadarin]

Can you imagine what it would be like if we lived in the world of "The Fifth Element"?

 

[Nefrodite]

i dunno, but the only way mass transportation really works is when you have high density cities we now have a problem with urban sprawl

as for sky cars, unless theres antigrav its unlikely. people are stupid and dangerous enough in normal cars

 

[GermyBoy]

Nope. Sky cars will never be available for the general public. This is due to the general public being stupid. Imagine walking and you see a skycar wreck. It would suck, especially because they'd come straight to the ground. They explode, you get shattered with debris. Sucky situation. Sept. 11th would happen on a weekly basis as well, if the general public could fly. Just not on such a large scale, as airplanes are a tad bit bigger than a car. LOL.

Plus, we'll have all of our original body parts and still need our arms and legs, much different than the opinions of the 1950's, where they said we'll all be driving sky cars and not need certain body parts.

 

[Ultima]

true, true... however don't you think that these sky cars would be automated? I don't think anyone will actually be driving them. They'd have an autopilot or something. I still hope that some control is possible.. if you wanna pull a 2G turn you should be able to and the avionics will prevent you from putting the plane out of control or getting out of your lane or whatever..

 

[shifrbv]

In the 50's they thought we'd have this stuff by now. Well, as we can clearly see, we're slowing down technology-wise, not going forward. We can't even get CAFE standards raised. We don't even have any of that cool stuff they had in the "Back to The Future" movies of the 1980's. No way we're going to be flying around anytime soon (within the next century).

 

[XZeroII]

2015. We will have sky cars and hover boards and jackets that talk to us and automatically dry themselves

 

[Ultima]

so where are all the car zealots?

What do you guys think about having a vehicle that could whisk you away at 350mph, yet you would be a mere passenger unable to control it. How about the impact on living it would have? Hell you could live in some tropical island in the carribean and get to work in a big city in the southern us within 1-2 hours.

 

[b0mbrman]

Has there been any *huge* progress in cars except for making them more fuel efficient/cleaner?

 

[monk3y]

Originally posted by: b0mbrman
Has there been any *huge* progress in cars except for making them more fuel efficient/cleaner?

Don't think so... We haven't even made the speed limit higher so we can get places faster. We're getting around with cars at the same speed we have for quite a while now.

 

[kgraeme]

I got tired of the empty promises and became a pilot.

 

[Ultima]

well, 90mph (speed most cars seem to travel at in rural expressways) isn't a bad speed for short distances. Hell, yesterday my friend's dad was going at 120mph for some time.