Future Transport

Transport in the future will be very different.

If you look back through history from the early days of horses and donkeys to the invention of the wheel so that carts could be hauled by these beasts, we have made major advances in the last century and I believe even greater advances are imminent if they are not already being trialled.

The motor car originally required a man with a flag to walk in front of it, warning people that there was a dangerous vehicle approaching. This was a sensible precaution when people had no concept of the motor vehicle. People always need to be educated slowly, carefully, and at a pace that allows them to assimilate the implications.

Time travellers will not have access to this slow learning process. They will be presented suddenly with vehicles and pathways that they have no concept of and cannot possibly prepare for. Maglev is a great transport system and I would like to see more friction free transport but it has not become commonplace. There must be a reason.

I once watched a period piece being filmed and as the carriage emptied of people in the foreground, a sports car shot down the road at the end of the drive. The director shouted "cut" and asked who let that idiot onto the road. The point I am making is that the sports car did not fit into the time period being filmed.

Now think of those cartoons that we all watch on TV where the toon approaches a railway line. He looks left and there is nothing as far as the eye can see. He looks right and there is nothing as far as the eye can see. He then takes one step forward and an express train cuts him in half. There are restrictions (air resistance for example) but many things may be possible in future.

By far the most dangerous transport will be the time machines themselves as materialising in the same place as another machine, or even where a person is standing will result in death and carnage. That is the risk, and it will not happen often, just as motor racing drivers occasionally crash and some die, but that is the risk they accept when they race.

There will be rules. There must be rules. My rule would be that any time travel should only take place off world, and if possible outside any solar system. The universe is so vast that the odds of disaster are dramatically cut.