Look No Farther Than Right Here for Transportation Ideas for our Future

Imagine!

I was watching the pneumatic tube leave at the bank drive through teller and zip from outside my car window almost instantaneously, to the teller, inside the bank. I thought to myself: this is the wave of future human transportation: vacuum tubes.

Imagine, vacuum tube transportation. You climb in, strap down; the operator pushes in your destination code, a "send" button, and off you shoot, sucked through a tube, to your destination. The tubes could contain secured in line chairs, or, you could pay a commuter sleeper tube fee, and enter a tube with a bed, turn off the light and snooze as you are sucked to your destination. There would be switching areas and unload ramps. We could hire cleaned up carnies to operate the load and offload areas.

I don't know how much vacuum it would take to suck people around the state.

We could forgo vacuum chutes and use water propelled chutes instead. Those tubes would have to be very water tight and maybe contain emergency scuba tanks!

There's zip line transportation solution, too. This solution involves very high poles, at the top of which you load into a cart chamber or tube hanging by pulleys from the line. You get to the top of the loading area, by counter weight use. Other transporters going down power your journey to the top.

Gravity does the work on the zip line transport. This system of course is more easily used in one way trips from the Cascade and Coastal range areas to the valley, due to altitudes.

But, if you put a lot of heavy people or a heavy load on a trip down, you could use that weight to counter the gravity pull to transport lightweight people back to the mountain areas! You could pay heavy people a fee to travel down the line to the valley, in order to power more light people back to the mountains if you had to. But you could also transport freight down, to counterweight pulling people back up.

How about this idea, for heavily used highways? Steel overhead track lines with fold down bars, hook at end. Heavy duty eye hooks built into the tops of very lightweight cars. The hook bars have adjustable lengths. The track lines running down the lanes overhead are supported by heavier duty infrastructure above them.

The idea, take away friction caused by vehicle weight increasing efficiency. Further friction reduction perhaps could be achieved by cars on oval tires, like a ball. I have no idea how the merging would be done. Space and speed would be automatically maintained. No passing. Sure, the fun would be taken from driving somewhat but....well this is an idea in infancy.

What about this one? Weight powered paddle wheel generator. Remember paddle wheel generators, that you build on a stream? What about we could use that concept for transporting cars, like down a cliff or steep hill, instead of a driving a windy curvy dangerous road?

Car onloads to a platform that is really a sort of paddle wheel, goes down, and its weight turns the wheel as it goes down, wheel generates power? Seems a simple concept to me. Of course, I have no formal training. I'm a cat trapper, for gosh sakes. Some engineer can work out the details.

I was told by an engineer that personal very small household paddle wheels attached under house gutter systems would not produce much power. Darn it.

Now as for maximization of solar energy, and I admit to knowing zero about solar energy or its production, I'll make this suggestion regardless. How about just generating heat, no electricity, with solar?

Since black absorbs more light, you'd have like black light wave energy absorbent curtains. You'd maximize the rays maybe with prisms sewn in, or even tiny mirrors. We all know there's no easier way to start a fire, than by using your glasses, or better yet, a magnifying glass, to concentrate those light waves. Now we would not want to start fires, for sure, with our curtains. That would be bad. Some engineer can solve that issue. I'm just throwing out ideas.

Ok, you absorb the heat, with the black material, maybe magnifying effect with the prisms or mirrors, now how to use that heat in warming your house. Disregard if you live in a really hot area of the country. Using The power of Vacuum, that's how!

You suck it into your house, in one way vent systems so if the density of air, which is thicker cold, I think at least, increases, then that one way sensor system shuts it off. I don't know how to create the sucking action yet, without using more energy than would be produced, but I figure that's an engineers' problem to deal with. Just one thought on that, however. You'd create a need, a want, for the warm air in the house, to pull it in. How? Hell if I know. Engineers, that's your job. Just trying to help out.

These are just a few of my very own ideas for transportation and energy solutions in an energy depraved age. I can come up with more. How about you?

I am adding another idea: blow up vinyl cars. You heard me right. Perhaps you could buy them at your corner market. The floor and frame would be harder vinyl. The rest, you'd blow up like you would a river raft. The electric engine compartment would be made of seperate material. Of course, one would have to avoid sharp objects. Road rager types would take to carrying pointy things, to deflate the cars of those they were angry at. These cars would be so light, you could propel them with sails during Oregon storms. If windstorms were too extreme, ODOT would man ballast stations along I5, where you could add a couple of sandbags to hold your car to the road. No smoking in these cars or, well, it wouldn't be a pretty outcome. They'd melt around you!