The view from the Idea Center

Public skepticism was high when Orville and Wilbur Wright claimed they had developed a motorized, piloted aircraft. French reporters called Wilbur a “bluffeur.” Scholars, including mathematician Simon Newcomb, said human flight was unlikely, given the limited understanding at that time of the mechanics of flight.

The creation of a flying machine, Newcomb wrote in 1901, “depends, first of all, on whether we are to make the requisite scientific discoveries.”

We of the 21 ^st century know those scientific discoveries were made. Flying machines are now an unremarkable part of our lives. Ask any businessperson boarding the hourly flight between New York City and Washington, D.C., or the person providing daily drive-time traffic reports from a helicopter.

Will some 22 ^nd-century version of me be saying the same thing about Hyperloop travel, which envisions us traveling in pods through vacuum tubes at rates of more than 700 miles per hour?

As ideastream’s Nick Castele reports, potential modern-day Simon Newcombs wonder whether Hyperloop technology, still in its infancy, will work.

“There’s a big difference between theory and reality,” said Ohio State University geographer Harvey Miller. “Even if it works on a test track in Nevada, will it scale to inter-city distances?”

I think they’ll figure it out. By then, though, we may have Amazon drones picking us up and dropping us off like big, oversized packages.
 

See you, bright and early tomorrow morning on the radio,
Amy Eddings

Need to KnOH

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