Future travell technology
Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future.
The way you travel today will not be the way you travel tomorrow.
IT WAS 2006. I was a freshman. Facebook was huge. Full-length movies streamed instantly to my computer. My cell phone took 1.2 MP pictures.
In other words, technology had never been more advanced.
And that’s just it: by any measurement, we’re constantly living within the most advanced technological era of all time. Yet by the long list of aspirational technologies you’re about to read, you’d never know it.
To an outsider, it must seem like 21st-century humans believe they’re always living a decade or three in the past, and that the future and its inevitable entourage of flying cars, teleportation, and other really cool stuff we haven’t even thought about is as much a part of the human narrative as the fireplace, the automobile, and the internet. Because we believe that the future must bring more powerful technologies (and so far, we’ve been right), the future plays as much a role in how we understand ourselves as the past.
Some of these technologies you may have heard of. Others might seem incredibly far-fetched. But the important thing to realize here is that regardless of whether they ever come to fruition, the mere fact that many people around the world believe these things to be inevitable illustrates just how discontent technology makes us with the present — and also how much we long for constant interaction.
Flying cars – Yes, as in cars…that can fly. Okay, while you might not be the one piloting (or even passengering) the flying car, the engineers at Terrafugia have long been busy perfecting their Lightweight Sport Aircraft (LSA) concept and are currently accepting buyers to the tune of $270,000.
Photo: Terrafugia
“The whole idea is to address the gap in travel between 100 and 400 miles,” said Cliff Allen, Terrafugia’s vice president of sales. “You could leave your home or office, drive to the nearest GA [General Aviation] airport, convert over to the aviation mode, fly to the airport nearest your destination and drive the last 10 or 15 miles.”
No word currently on whether you’ll actually be able to drive/fly (I prefer “flive”) your Terrafugia Transition by year’s end, but you can certainly obtain ownership — and odds are good that you’ll be airborne within the next few years.
Speech-to-speech translation – Imagine you’re in India (or, if you are in India, continue being in India). This is a place where foreign languages and dialects are constantly coming together and increasingly demand a translation service. Now imagine that when someone speaks to you in a foreign language, an audio receiver automatically picks up their speech, translates it into your language, and plays it back for you. This is already a reality.
What this means is that within a year or two, you’ll be interacting with foreign languages in an unprecedented way — as puzzles to solve rather than pictures, whole stories to understand. I’m not going to be the one to decide if seamless translation is a good thing…but I do know that no matter how good the technology may be, there will always be that person who has trouble using it .
Among the futuristic gadgets in the classic TV show Star Trek, none seemed more useful than the universal translator, a handheld gizmo that helped foster understanding among intergalactic civilizations. Well, we needn’t travel beyond the solar system to find the need for such a device. Imagine being able to speak in English and have your thoughts expressed in grammatically and semantically correct Mandarin or Spanish. Then imagine the voice that expresses those translated thoughts is your own.
Augmented reality everything – By the end of this year, Google will begin selling augmented reality glasses that stream information in real time onto a user’s eyeball. Which means that finally, you’ll never have to remove your eyes from your Twitter/reddit/Facebook news feed.
Assuming our appetite for more information, more often, as fast as possible doesn’t start to diminish, we can only expect that our visible realities will inevitably become subject to the changes we choose to make upon them. Probably the biggest proponent of this idea is Ray Kurzweil, who discusses how in the future our entire realities will be created through nanobots that “re-engineer” our perceptions of the world around us by communicating directly with the brain.
The locationless classroom – Some of the younger readers might not fully agree with me here, but it’s true: school is awesome. However, the current model of getting dropped off at a turning circle to “learn” between the hours of 8am and 2pm is probably not the end-all-be-all of scholastic efficiency — especially when you consider that nearly 10% of all highschoolers drop out.
Given our steady progression to locationless communication, it only makes sense that we’ll eventually take our schools into the cloud and digital classrooms will be come, at least in some part, the norm. This already happens in towns like Branson, CO, where the official population is only 100 but 850 children actually attend the local school via the internet.
When you combine this idea with the aforementioned holographic cell phone technology, one can envision a future where going to school involves projecting yourself into a virtual classroom environment to study with your other holographic classmates. I’ll say that’s at least a few years down the road, though…
Biometric and electronically enhanced passports – Perhaps the biggest factor keeping people where they come from is not geography, not nostalgia, nor family, but passports. Human will can overcome nearly any physical obstacle — but no amount of wanting can overcome a denied passport at a political border.
So, what will the passport of the future look like? We’ve already begun incorporating RFID chips and other technology into passports — is biometric data the next logical carrier of our identification? And as human screening becomes replaced by technology, we can expect waiting times at passport controls to become incredibly diminished.
At the same time, though, this may be a slippery slope: no data is invulnerable to hacking and manipulation, and as history has unfortunately shown us, an individual’s biological and physical makeup is often the first to become discriminated against.
Self-driving cars – Every time I mention this to someone, they don’t believe me. And then I show them the video ofGoogle’s self-driving car. And mention the fact that the UK has already begunbuilding private roads and corridors for self-driving cars.
Obviously, the main motivation here is safety. It’s the primary difference between cars of today and those of even 10-15 years ago: our cars are immensely more self-aware, and anything that can be done to reduce the more than 30,000+ deaths caused by automobiles (annually in the U.S.) will be a welcome addition to our traveling lifestyle.
London to Beijing by rail – About two years ago, China announced plans to develop a rail system to link Beijing with London — thousands and thousands of miles covered in just two days.
The elevator into space – The Japanese engineering and construction firm Obayashi announced this year that they have the ability and intention to set in motion a 36,000km elevator into space, to be completed within forty years.
Today, this sounds impossible. We have never, ever seen a 36,000km structure — manmade or otherwise. But the same was once true for so much of our world that now seems commonplace: skyscrapers, highways, hydroelectric dams. Truly, the past century and a half of unprecedented technological innovation has done more for our imagination than it has for our productivity. For the more we build and achieve, the more we feel inadequate and strive for what was impossible yesterday, but today seems all but inevitable.
With more of us carrying multiple devices; hotels streaming Netflix; and airlines offering personal device entertainment in lieu of seat-back systems, expect to see faster, better Wi-Fi in the air and on the ground. Gogo recently unveiled its 2Ku technology for fast in-flight Wi-Fi that delivers speeds of up to 70Mbps, while Boingo has installed 20Mbps Wi-Fi at several airports, including those in Boston, Chicago, and New York City. Unfortunately, many hotels still charge for wireless, although some provide it for free if you join their rewards programs.
(Courtesy Gabriele Teruzzi)
Have an extra $250 million lying around? If so, you may one day be the proud owner of the most outrageously cool yacht on the seven seas.
Designed by Gabriele Teruzzi and named Shaddai — which means, loosely, “omnipotent” in Hebrew — the low, sleek vessel looks more like a piece of modern sculpture than a boat for rich people.
Shaddai will have all the accouterments that showy billionaires desire: oversize flat-screen TVs, a pool club, cushy hangout spaces and unparalleled views.
Its most striking feature is a sort of wing in back that rises 125 feet. It is topped off with a poshly outfitted master suite and 1,130-square-foot terrace that looks perfect for al fresco dining.
“To ascend from the ground has been a desire of humankind since the very beginning,” Teruzzi writes in an e-mail to The Post, explaining the thinking behind his luxury perch.
“The futuristic shape of the yacht is inspired by the most contemporary architecture.”
If sunbathing up high gets a little intense, you can always cool off in the glass-walled infinity pool — with a waterfall, of course.
NASA has an exciting new vision of future spaceflight—the return of humans to the moon by 2020 in preparation for visits to Mars and possibly beyond.
Moon missions are essential to the exploration of more distant worlds. Extended lunar stays build the experience and expertise needed for the long-term space missions required to visit other planets. The moon may also be used as a forward base of operations on which humans learn how to replenish essential supplies, such as rocket fuel and oxygen, by creating them from local material.
Such skills are essential to the future expansion of human presence into deeper space.
The Constellation Program has near-term scientific objectives as well. Although humans have visited the moon before, our closest neighbor still harbors its own scientific mysteries to be explored—including the investigation of water ice near the moon's poles.
Future human moon missions will be preceded by robotic reconnaissance launches, between 2008 and 2011, to scout landing sites that may have the most resources available to astronauts. The moon's south pole is considered particularly promising because it is rich in hydrogen and may be home to water ice as well.
A New Spacecraft
These new NASA missions are being spearheaded by the development of a state-of-the-art new spacecraft—but one with a retro feel.
The Orion crew exploration vehicle echoes the design of the original Apollo missions but updates its systems with modern technology. The new capsules will also be larger, with three times the volume capacity and the ability to accommodate a four-person crew. The new size has led NASA officials to describe the mission as "Apollo on steroids."
The Orion capsule, which launches attached to a solid rocket booster and Apollo-like upper stage, is seen as a safer and more reliable design for future space exploration than the now-familiar space shuttle.
Once in space the flexible Orion vehicles will take astronauts to and from theInternational Space Station. They will also enter lunar orbit, a position from which landers can repeatedly visit the moon's surface.
The Orion capsules, which may be reused up to ten times, will parachute to Earth like those of yesterday—though they will arrive on dry land rather than via ocean splashdowns.
In the years beyond 2020, these spacecraft may aid in assembling Mars-bound vehicles in orbit to take the first humans to the red planet.
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