3 ms·
It doesn't take long to commercialize feasible new tech in this day and age. If someone invented an electromagnetic hovercar tomorrow, it will be available for
by nurettin 6mo ago
It doesn't take long to commercialize feasible new tech in this day and age. If someone invented an electromagnetic hovercar tomorrow, it will be available for sale next week and regulations will follow after.
- TOMDM 6mo agoWaymo has cars that drive themselves and are dramatically safer than people in most conditions and yet they're only in select cities. Do you just think Google hates money, or does this only work for hover cars
- nurettin 6mo agoI don't know the costs and logistics of such an operation. Maybe you do?
- antonvs 6mo ago> Waymo has cars that drive themselves With the help of “remote assistance”, that is. Which is probably one of the reasons for the limited rollout.
- rossjudson 6mo agoPerhaps you could clarify your definition of "remote assistance", or describe scenarios.
- antonvs 6mo agoIt’s been widely reported, and there were US Senate hearings about it. See e.g.: https://philkoopman.substack.com/p/waymo-tap-dances-about-remote-drivers https://philkoopman.substack.com/p/waymo-tap-dances-about-re...
- atoav 6mo agoWhat advantage would hovering have?
- mastermage 6mo agoNo Street Infrastructure needeed to drive anywhere (kinda).
- atoav 6mo agoOk, and where does the energy to consistently keep a weight in the air come from and is it really worth spending? I know flying cars are some sort of futuristic trope, yet I cringe at it every time I see it. They always assume magical infinite power. In the real the reason we do not have flying cars is the same why you don't use a drone as a coat hanger at home: It is just more practical to use a mechanical solution that holds your coat for infinite time without any energy use or noise/heat emissions and it is much cheaper. Lifting stuff against gravity is not free, but a piece of wood, a brick or a rubber wheel does a pretty good job at it. One way to do it is magnets, but that means you need even more complicated roads. We are living on a warming planet where only the naive and the evil pretend that energy use is something only the poor have to think about. We all have to think about it.
- volemo 6mo agoWhat do you mean “we don’t have flying cars”? What are helicopters then?
- atoav 6mo agoDeathmachines that in their mechanical hubris angered the gods?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- shiroiuma 6mo ago>I know flying cars are some sort of futuristic trope, yet I cringe at it every time I see it. They always assume magical infinite power. No, they assume magical anti-gravity technology. "magical infinite power" implies they're basically a hovercraft, forcing air downwards to hover. Without a shroud, even with infinite energy available, this means constantly blasting high-speed air all around the vehicle, which has some really obvious practical problems. It works for drones because they're small and lightweight and not near the ground and not even that close to each other. >Lifting stuff against gravity is not free It's close to free when you have magical anti-gravity technology. Similarly, traveling to other star systems hundreds of lightyears away in a couple days isn't so hard when you have magical FTL propulsion technology that somehow warps spacetime.
- noosphr 6mo agoThe only technologies that are commercialised quickly today are the ones that can be commercialised quickly. The ones that can't won't be for decades yet. In short, if a tech takes 40 years to be commercialised it would have been invented some time in the 80s.
- antonvs 6mo ago> It doesn't take long to commercialize feasible new tech “Feasible” is doing some heavy lifting there. The whole point of the comment you replied to is that it can take a long time for some new physical technique to become commercially feasible.