Ask a Tim
Ask a Tim
Finally an answer to all your questions about everything. Not only an answer, but an answer from a Tim! E-mail all questions to AskingTim@Gmail.com or by clicking on the link on the left hand menu bar titled "Get your questions answered" and leaving a comment! I will reply (if I can) as soon as possible!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Lea-ving on a Jet Plane!
Why don't we have flying cars yet? It was promised to us in the 1950's that by the 1980's highways as we know it would be obsolete. Yet here I am. Stuck in traffic. On the ground.
-Grounded in the Gulf Coast
"Where's my flying car? Where's my my flying car?" What, are you not happy with the many other million of conveniences that modern technology has given you? How about the fact that you can take a crap inside your house and have it magically flushed away so someone else has to deal with it (just like cats).
What about the fact that you can contact anyone, anywhere in the world, at anytime, pretty much instantaneously?
Should we take away the millions and millions of bits of porn (and all other information too I guess) that are available at your fingertips on the internet to give you, your damn flying car?
The flying car was originally introduced to us by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pulp sci-fi mag, Amazing Stories, in the 1920's. Ever since then, shows like the Jetson's have popularized the flying car for future generations. Hey, how about the fact that we don't live in Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World. How about avoiding a seemingly perfect, dystopian society? How's that for advancement! [ass!]
really not all that stylish
Ok, fine, I'll tell you why we don't have a flying car. Its because the internal combustion engine just isn't efficient, or powerful enough to power a fleet of flying cars. Look at the current difficulties planes have getting off the ground. If we all had flying cars with the technology we have today, sure, traffic jams would be gone, but imagine the wait for the runway. We would need an alternate propulsion system that would not only give the power needed to provide for long distance personal airtravel, but also that would get the damn thing off the ground with a vertical, as opposed to horizontal, take off.
right idea, wrong price tag (approx. $80 million each)
So you get out there and produce an anti-gravity device that runs of of water, and we'll have our flying cars. Then we'll deal with the whole, "How to keep people from flying into buildings" issue!
Hobbes: A new decade is coming up.
Calvin: Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero gravity boot, uh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?
Hobbes: Frankly, I'm not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they've got.
Calvin: I mean, look at this! We still have the weather?! Give me a break!
