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In “The Roads Must Roll" Heinlein postulates a set of roofed conveyors, equipped with variable speed strips, that run long distances across the country. A perso
by V-2 12y ago
In “The Roads Must Roll" Heinlein postulates a set of roofed conveyors, equipped with variable speed strips, that run long distances across the country. A person rides the 'roads' by getting on a slow strip at the edge and transferring (by walking) to strips of increasing speed; the center one rolls at 100 miles an hour. It’s a bold concept, conceived ten years before the rapid development of commercial air traffic and the Interstate highway system.
That's 1959. Herbert George Wells came up with this exact idea a few decades earlier (in "When the Sleeper Wakes").
- Nursie 12y agoThat one shows up in Asimov's "Caves of Steel" too IIRC.
- justin66 12y agoIt made sense in The Caves of Steel, written several years before by Asimov, at the much smaller scale of an indoor city. On an interstate scale it honestly seems goofy and inefficient.
- fixedd 12y agoMore inefficient than using an engine rated at ~ 25% efficiency to propel thousands of pounds of steel, glass, and plastic to transport a single person?
- seanflyon 12y agoActually, yes.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> More inefficient than using an engine rated at ~ 25% efficiency to propel thousands of pounds of steel, glass, and plastic to transport a single person? Sure, as you're moving a lot more material per person (and even if the engine is more efficient, upright humans aren't optimally aerodynamic -- or even as good of an approximation as typical cards -- so end to end efficiency is still going to be a problem.)
- abecedarius 12y agoCorrection: 1940.