THINGS TO COME
So often, at this tag end of the calandar, many people take stock of the posessions we have which help to make life more easier and enjoyable.
This is a good thing. Not only does it remind us of our many blessings, but it also causes us to list those things we don't have but think we need.
This, you see, changes the old maxim somewhat. "Need", rather "necessity" has become the "Mother of Invention".
Now that the fantastic SST fleet of superairliners has been retired and generously given to gawk gallieres worldwide, that era is being used as a good exmple of how we make mistakes in building things we don't need. We her in the United States, however, pointing out that SST "preying mantis" aircraft undetaking from design through application. It inferred that the real, underlying problem was one of proper management rather than a lack of demand for such an aircraft generation.
With such thinking rather well set in the public mind, we are continuing with plans for our pnderous flying wing MACH II passanger plane.
A leading avation magazine predicts it will be operative in this century. The same editorial breath shows us a "photograph" - air-brushed - to show what the future personal air car for individual use will look like not too far ahead. Imagine a small car, with a bulb-like, helicoper probosis area. To each side - a hint of a wing. There is a tail assmbly more like a jet ending.. The craft has no overhead rotor.Instead what appears to be the top the heat pump imstallation you see ,on top of your back yard heat pump installation. The whole rig lands, it seems, on a single skid in the center of its rounded belly.
I must be getting close to my actual age, because I did not thrill to the promotional copy that went with the picture of the just-aouund-the-next-cloud air car. The gist of the spiel was that this car would put an end to the ravaging of large parcels of the nation's best farm land for super highway construction.
When I first read the item, I kept thinking of how such an air car might bring about in the parking lots of any of the four Wal-Mart Super Stores in our area. Maybe by that time we can have reinforced roof strustures to sustain elegantly layered, valet-staffed air parks. But, who knows what Wal-Mart itself will look like that far the future?
The rate at which inventing things moves along today is much faster than it has been. Either one or both of these advances could be a reality long before this century wanes.
A.L.M. December 29, 2003 [c462wds]
