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The lecture from Dr. J. Storrs Hall was quite interesting. Growing up I had the privilege to watch the tv show “the Jetsons”. Seeing that I pictured we would one day soon live like they do. Robots tending to our every needs, fancy houses that run off the simple click of a button, extremely modern lifestyle, and most importantly owning a flying car.
Dr. Hall started off with the theory of would people be capable of driving a fly car. To test his point, he bought a small airplane. Within a year of owning his aircraft he was a licensed pilot. Dr. Hall said that he believed that with time the average person would be able to do this. It was harder but doable according to Dr. Hall. He believed that he should also test helicopters. After taking a ride on them he learned that they were more complicated and used twice as much fuel to run. But if a small plane is not hard to learn how to fly why do more people not own them? That is largely due to the economics owning one. While owning an aircraft of some sort would be awesome, they are expensive to own. The average person cannot afford a plane on their meager salary.
It was predicted when cars were still new to the world that not every person would be able to afford one. That is where the misconception of the Jetsons come from, according to Dr. Hall. Dr. Hall said that in the tv show the Jetson’s wasn’t that building one was possible, but that everyone would own one. I personally feel as if with time everyone would be able to own a flying car. Much like people owning cars today, when it was once speculated that not everyone would be able to afford one. The prices eventually become affordable after being on the market (much like the tesla).
If flying cars were actually invented and put into production that would be a guaranteed status symbol for some. You be able to travel at a faster pace. But the cons of owning far outweigh the good I believe. The maintenance on one would cost one an arm and a leg. Not everyone would be able to immediately be able to purchase one and the costs of fuel, and insurance would be astronomical. While one would be able to travel at a fast rate of speed would it really be worth the added costs that would come with this? For me personally I do not believe that they would. I would rather stick to my truck with four wheels. It has been continually tested for decades.
Dr. Hall came up with a list of predictions from the 1960’s some of which have become true, almost there, or have not. To me this list was quite interesting. Space stations, pocket phones, and video phones have all come true. I would say that hover craft has come very close if you were to include hover boards. Self-driving cars are close Aswell. The two that stood out to me most on the list that haven’t come true were flying cars and undersea cities. One could speculate that flying cars are not possible and putting a city under the ocean is never going to happen. If it were to would it have a dome around it and would people even visit because the price was so high?? These predictions came from a list of 40. The list contained some great predictions that have improved our life as we know and some that are unrealistic.
Dr. Hall stated that the average American travels around 1.1 hours per day. This would be mitigated by flying cars. But the way I see it is that for me the cost of the flying car would greatly outweigh the advantage of being able to move at a higher rate of speed.
Back in the day we were predicted to have robots that help us in our day-to-day life. That prediction is true. We have robots that are working in factories. We have robots that are vacuuming and sweeping our homes. For me I personally love this. While some of it is controversial as it takes away jobs from humans, it tends to be more efficient. In a world of business efficiency is key.
Growing up I always heard that we would have flying cars by 2020. In theory this sounds amazing, but in reality, I don’t see it happening for the foreseeable future. I have heard one thing that is speculated for not having them is due to the FFA, but I truly believe that this is because it is not currently possible. Even if they were able to produce one, I think it would be years before you saw them all over the place as most American people cannot afford one.