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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
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| Camden Speedster | ||
| A super sports utility vehicle (SUV); it drives on the highway, the water and jumps into the air for short periods. |
Okay, so you've got one of those wimpy SUVs; what's the point of an off-road vehicle that can't drive underwater or jump over barriers? This is a vehicle that does it all.
| Mary Risling had no intention of permitting anyone to know where she was going. She dropped down the lift tube outside Ventura's apartment, claimed her speedy little ground car from the attending automaton in the basement, and set the control combination for North Shore. The car slid up the ramp, waited until the traffic control signaled a predicted break in traffic, then joined the high-speed northbound stream. Mary Risling settled back for a little nap...
She woke just before the signal from the car which would have called her... She signaled the traffic control ahead; it cut her out of the stream of vehicles and reduced the speed of her car, then rang the alarm which notified her to resume local control. Before doing so she fumbled in the storage compartment on the instrument board and fumbled, apparently purposelessly. But the registration number which the traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlway was not the number in which the car was registered. She followed the side road for a distance of several miles at a speed high for even a Camden speedster, turned down into a narrow country road which ran down near to the lakeshore, and stopped. She waited, lights out and sideport open. ...She reached again into the storage compartment, snapped something, and the back of the speed dial glowed, revealing another dial beyond. She studied it and made adjustments. Had there been a bystander, he would have been startled to observe what appeared to be a standard Camden rise up off the ground as easily as a skycar. He would not have long to wonder - the car moved out over the lake, dropped down to the water and sank beneath it. Seventeen minutes later, the car rose up to the surface of a small pool of water, a pool that occupied much of the floor of an artificial cavern. |
| From Methuselah's Children,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
There was an actual car from the 1960's that could double as a car and as a boat. In the summer of 2003, Alan Gibbs had a team of engineers working for years to perfect the latest version, the Aquada, which travels at 100 miles-per-hour on land and 30 miles-per-hour on the water. See pictures of this amazing craft at Check out the car-boat. A bargain at $235,000; where else can you get something this cool?
If you are more concerned with something that is more environmentally friendly, see the future of SUVs; a diesel-electric hybrid powered by both a 1.8 liter direct-injection turbo diesel engine and an electric motor. Compared to a Ford Explorer, it achieves a 100% improvement of fuel economy - 40 miles per gallon. Created by student engineers in Minnesota.
For a novelist's view of an amphibious craft, see William Gibson's take on the hovercraft, from his novel Mona Lisa Overdrive.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Methuselah's Children
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and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Methuselah's Children
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
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news articles:
- Adaptive Cruise Control
- Electronic Number Plate RFID Keeps Tabs On Vehicles
- Self-Steering Buses In Cambridge
- Honda Accord ADAS Heinlein Wannabe
- Rinspeed 'Splash' English Channel Crossing
- DARPA Urban Challenge For Autonomous Vehicles
- Car Seat Prototype Knows When You Are Sleepy
- Carnegie Mellon's Boss Wins DARPA Urban Challenge
- GM Betting On Driverless Cars
- Pribot Robotic Prius Tours 'Frisco
- Attention Assist - Drowsy-Driver Detection Standard
- WaterCar Python Not Your Father's Amphicar
| OnStar Stolen Vehicle Slowdown Foils Carjacker |
| iPhone App To Drive Your Car |
| AIDA Affective Intelligent Driving Agent |
| Autonomous Valet Parking By Volkswagen |
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Gerry was dubious. She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays before.
Let your fingers - uh - your robot do the walking. And hopping.
