Diary (May 17, 2020)
Online diary of Karl Jones for Sunday May 17, 2020.
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Diary
Song of the Day for Howard Kranz
Thirteenth in a series of songs for Howard and me to cover, or be inspired by, or something.
(song title)
"..." by ...
...
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Flying cars
I too was incensed for decades about the lack of flying cars (and jet backpacks).
But I now understand the hidden assumptions which keep us grounded.
We incorrectly assumed that our righteous need for jet backpacks would cause the relevant laws of physics to suspend themselves in recognition of our Destiny in the Sky.
The actual situation is that we have helicopters, which already do everything we want a flying car to do except drive on a road. (Driving a helicopter on the road is just an engineering problem.)
Helicopters are loud, dangerous, and very expensive. Practical helicopter technology began around 1900, and since then titanic amounts of engineering effort have been expended in a effort to make helicopters less loud, less danger, and less expensive. Chances are they are as quiet, safe, and cheap as they are going to get.
What about parking? You've seen helipads? You see the space requirements for landing and takeoff. Where will we store the helicopters we can't afford, don't trust, and hurt our ears?
Even if we could afford helicopters... would you really want to be *up the sky* in your flying car *with all those other people in their very loud flying cars*?
This is all idle chatter. We can't afford it and short of a world-changing source of cheap energy we're not ever going to afford it, so let's forget about flying cars and instead go hang gliding or hot air ballooning so weekend, get it out of our systems.
(No, I can't lie to you: I will continue to dream about flying.)
"Why There Will Never Be Flying Cars" by Neil degrasse Tyson:
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