The Tech Billionaires are Grabbing The Low Hanging Fruit

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OK, so Jeff Bezos rode his rather phallic contraption 10 minutes up to “sort of” space. Sir Richard Branson flew his more Si-fi friendly looking craft earlier, but a bit lower, up into weightlessness. Elon Musk’s SpaceX machines are making these one-offs seem positively humdrum by routinely ferrying astronauts up to the International Space Station. And in addition SpaceX just sent four “citizen astronauts” on a sort of joy ride around the globe. Cool, I guess, as a pilot for a Reality TV Show “Billionaires in Space,” or something.

Forgive me if I am not terribly impressed. These efforts, from a transportation perspective, failed to raise my eyebrows, as I made my way at heart-stopping speeds - sometimes approaching 12 miles an hour - along I-85, one of America’s “super highways.” Come on guys, give me a break. From a transportation perspective Musk’s hyper loop technology is far more impressive as it, at least, moves regular folks from point A to point B far more efficiently than current systems. Of course there is the problem that that current system just moves us from from one part of LA to another. Not a big deal here in Chicagoland.

The “UFO videos” recently released by the government (see https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-military-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-08-29/ ) seem to indicate that the “My space ship is faster than your space ship” horse has already left the barn. I mean those dudes or dudettes or gender free space entities seem to be strolling around in speeds measured in many multiples of light years. Eat your heart out NASCAR. Which makes me think that rather than messing around with what seem to be sort of "Kitty Hawk" efforts when viewed in the big "transportation" picture, we ought to be putting serious thought and serious research funding into Captain Kirk’s prophetic command: “Beam me up Scotty!”

Yeah. Teleportation. Perhaps quantum entanglement might be a more fertile research field to plow than nuclear fusion or giant solar sails, at least when it comes to space travel. Although, the pandemic has made the idea of terrestrial teleporting across town an attractive notion. But with teleportation global holidays would be back again! Teleporting to Florence or Buenos Aires would beat the heck out of airports!

I know it sounds a bit like Asimov sci-fi stuff. But let me relate a quick family story. When my father received his Ph.D in sociology from the University of Chicago back in - I believe it was 1945. I’d have to look in the lining of his academic gown which I wore to every commence until my own retirement last year. The date is on a label in there somewhere. Anyhow somehow Grandmother Schrag was persuaded to travel from the tiny farming community of Freeman, South Dakota, to the wicked city of Chicago to witness her son’s big day. Dad, wanting to show her the sights took her to an upscale department store, maybe Carson Pirie Scott & Company, maybe Marshall Fields, not sure which.  Wherever, things were going along nicely until Dad led her to the escalator to show her even more wonders on the second floor. I do not know if the words “instrument of the devil” ever escaped the lips of that devote Mennonite matron, but the gist of the matter was clear. "Stairs did not move," and nothing in this fancy, frilly city could induce her to set foot on them.

The point is that we tend to associate certain classes of technology to meet specific needs. Writing moved from sticks in clay, to carving in stone, to marks on bamboo and papyrus, ink on hides, rag paper, to typewriters, printers, and now these screens. Transportation moved from riding on critters to the critters hauling various evolutions of wheels that moved people from place to place, eventually assisting with over land and water and through the air, and now into space. The problem is that each evolution seems to put blinders on the path forward. The question gets to be “How do we improve on that recent innovation? How do I build a better wheeled vehicle? To now, how do I build a better rocket-propelled space ship? How do I pick people up in one place and deliver them to another, like a load of potatoes? And research dollars and creative, innovative energy moves down that predetermined, blinder-obscured path. And the billionaires hustle down that path.

Hauling potatoes or people from point A to point B is the easy path. That’s transportation. Making a potato vanish from point A and the reappear at point B hundreds of miles or light years away - now that is impressive, that is teleportation. Difficult? OMG!! That’s transportation evolution on steroids! Beyond the transition from wooden ladders to moving stairs, from paths in the forest to moving walkways in the airport! Teleportation says no more low hanging fruit that dangle in front of the blinders on the straight and narrow part before us. It means, at least, taking off the blinders and considering the radical new questions we need to address even before we can consider the best route to the answers.

So beam us up Scotty, to infinity and beyond!  Etc,. etc., etc.