X-Message-Number: 18089 From: Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:00:33 EST Subject: Re: CryoNet #18081 Wrong-headed futurology about "progress' --part1_111.9944fd6.293fd6e1_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "Mark Plus" <> After re-reading Clarke's technological forecasts for the new century, I'm reminded of how wrong-headed so much popular futurology seems to me. Hypersonic air travel, full-immersion virtualities, robotic pets and other such science-fictional cliches won't do us any good in the long run if we continue to age, deteriorate and die. I think Clarke's list is not very serious. Real forcasting needs a lot of work and knowledge. I' ll take a single example: Assume I want to guess what railways will become in that century. If I look at US, I would say: that is a backward technology without interest. If I look at Europe, I see the french High Speed Train (TGV) the germain one (ICE) and the italian pandolino, a not-so-fast train adapted to old railways ( ICE and TGV need a special track to run at full speed). Today commercial service for TGV is done at 300 km/h (near 180 mph).. The South-East line from Paris to Marseille is built to work at 350 km/h. Beyond that, there are problems, mostly with traction and electric current uptake from an over head feed line. The solutions are known: Put a motor on each wheel and you get a 500 km/h service. The TGV track is in a protected site, no road cut it, the electric current could then come from a third rail at ground level without security problem. The top speed could then be in the 700 - 800 km/h. Given that you go with it from center city to center city, it beats any aircraft service inside the continent. All of that is a present day technological possibility, only economical problems put these extensions in the future. The first priority now is the network extension ( from Lisboa to Vladivostok or at least Moscow). This will be done and may take the main part of the century. Railways are not dead, they may continue to evolve for one century. On the Japan side, there is a new shinkansen using magnetic levitation. My guess is that that technology will expand after the end of TGV era, somewhere in the 2100 time frame. I would call this educated guess about mass transportation systems, we are far here from "space drive" and other sci-fi pipe dreams. Yvan Bozzonetti. --part1_111.9944fd6.293fd6e1_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18089