First, the farce made out of air travel has to go. Most of the huge mess caused by homeland security is pointless. A bunch of incompetent "affirmative action" employees that represent the results of federal government patronage are mostly worthless - the department regularly smuggles guns past them in tests.
A highly automated version of the scanners can stay. Bring back the older faster methods like profiling - swedish grandmothers aren't going to blow up the plane.
BO's grand 19th century socialist vision of trains is absurd - a step back into a by-gone century. Trains are inflexible in terms of route and schedule, and compared with planes on an equal basis, only differ in that they are much slower.
The future of personal transportation is cars - the nearly infinitely flexible transportation mode that uses the already-existing huge infrastructure of highways. The electric car is the car of the future. The problem is of course battery technology. Since there are unlikely to be quantum leaps there, here's a likely solution: the batteries of today and the near future are sufficient for most people for "trips around town." For highway trips, or big city freeway commutes, a means of en route contactless induction charging is needed. I read where an australian company already has a method for this.
Look at the advantages: simple propulsion, no air pollution, no enriching of opec dictatorships by importing oil.
Of course, there would be a huge new demand for electricty. I propose 100 new generation nuke plants, carefully engineered for safety. A nuclear power plant is in essence a simple device - there's no reason why they can't be made highly safe. The nuke plant accidents which have occurred in the past have been due to stupidity (japanese plant, 3 mile island) or bad engineering (chernobyl).
There you have it.
A highly automated version of the scanners can stay. Bring back the older faster methods like profiling - swedish grandmothers aren't going to blow up the plane.
BO's grand 19th century socialist vision of trains is absurd - a step back into a by-gone century. Trains are inflexible in terms of route and schedule, and compared with planes on an equal basis, only differ in that they are much slower.
The future of personal transportation is cars - the nearly infinitely flexible transportation mode that uses the already-existing huge infrastructure of highways. The electric car is the car of the future. The problem is of course battery technology. Since there are unlikely to be quantum leaps there, here's a likely solution: the batteries of today and the near future are sufficient for most people for "trips around town." For highway trips, or big city freeway commutes, a means of en route contactless induction charging is needed. I read where an australian company already has a method for this.
Look at the advantages: simple propulsion, no air pollution, no enriching of opec dictatorships by importing oil.
Of course, there would be a huge new demand for electricty. I propose 100 new generation nuke plants, carefully engineered for safety. A nuclear power plant is in essence a simple device - there's no reason why they can't be made highly safe. The nuke plant accidents which have occurred in the past have been due to stupidity (japanese plant, 3 mile island) or bad engineering (chernobyl).
There you have it.
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