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Prologue

In mentally flailing around, at the start of the nanowriter's 30-day novel's creation, for a subject, a story line, I recalled one I had begun long ago, that never got finished, or even much of a start, when back in 1985 I wrote the beginnings of a ground transportation story.

It was in conjunction with getting up steam to get a real project going, to create a ground transportation system that would have better convenience and time efficiacy than that of the personal automobile, and have far better transportation energy efficiency.

I'd been mulling over the idea since the oil shortage gas lines of the early 1970's (which gave me much time and reason to think about such a thing, sitting there in the worrisome gas lines) and among the efforts to gain public interest, in 1985 I had again written up the concept's basics and this time sent it in as unsolicited input to a major auto research corporation, where I had some hope of finding a job; I found the address in newspaper's help wanted section.

No reply was received except when returning home to my apartment one day a couple weeks later, to find that everything I had written on the concept, including my carbon copy of that letter, had been carefully removed from my possession ... except for the beginnings of that story still in the memory of my Adam computer's records, its tree-story start probably put the professional burglar off-track for a moment.

The implications were that it would now be a waste of my time to attempt to get such a project going, with my records of precedence gone, maybe even already some corporate engineer was entering the idea into legal patent record notebook as if theirs, to then be locked away from public view. Taught me a lesson, I think...? Even though the same company had built the car that was my good buddy during High School, going to an auto company for help creating a "competitive" transporation idea (thinking they were responsible for transportation systems in the country), me being an unknown in the field, was asking for ripoff by those narrow-visioned ones addicted to "winning" by ruining the "competition." Even if they were the only ones who were capable of creating the new transportation system, one clearly to be needed in a finite energy existence.

Being naive frees mental capacity to be creative technologically, but leaves one unprotected from those who have vested interests they consider rival.

And so the public (including myself) has been denied the technological head start for a better time-and-energy-efficient transportation system, due to some greedy clever wealthy businessmens' narrow vision. This was neither the first nor the last time Americans would lose out, prevented from utilizing potentially very helpful ideas produced by my unusual technological creative nature, since I'm no entrepeneur. (As for selling my ideas to corporations who can make their resulting products available to the public, I probably could not sell a tall cool glass of water for a dime to a powerful rich man dying of thirst in the hot desert, my sales skill is so poor.)

So now may be a good time to begin that kind of story anew; the original one not being "politically correct" nowadays. I have had a lot more time to think about the need for much better general commute transportation in these past 30 years. The automobile has been my companioning friend all my life; I have seen it change greatly in that time. Nowadays the city bus and light rail systems enable more economical passage around the city; yet, the convenience of one's home-garaged transportation is part of my life and that of others around me.

The transportation concept that I had conceptually designed eventually went by the title of "PullBand Commute", (an earlier title of TowCable Commute not wise as gave one mental images of one's car being towed out of some no parking zone, complete with ticket....) since the privately owned and home-garaged lightweight minimal-engined vehicles would be pulled around by inductive dragging against speedy circulating bands that run along the vehicle passageways. Originally the concept went from a scenario of worsening of the early 1970's gas lines to no gas available except for trucks and busses, initially a desperation system to get the cities up and going within a few weeks, then the system developing into more refined systems, then surpassing the current automobile-based system by far. Concept has roots in the cable car systems such as still in operation in San Francisco (mostly for tourists). However, uses currently available high tech mechanisms, and for freeways and intecity paths, would use air bearing sliding within tubeways, could be 300 mph pulled sliding on air along such environmentally protected stretches. Autopiloting for routine commutes in suburbs and cities is implied; and for offices in newly designed buildings, the people could park their vehicles up the side of the building and walk into their office directly, for examples.

Time to invite nature to help technologically marry the car to the bus and train and freighter and airplane and ... dare I seemingly-even-more-crazily say... also eventually to rail riding spacecraft up to businesses in rotating cities in high Earth orbit? Eventually not just the daily commute to work, or distant city or country, but also out of the home's garage and all the way up to a space habitat in high orbit near the Earth? So a story of that courtship and marriage ... and technological family resulting... begins in an unusual way: under a great Redwood tree.

No doubt this story won't entirely be "politically correct" either; but at least it starts from a today.

by Jim Cline 2004 10 27 / 20041116

Revision, 20041110 JEDCline: The storyline has formed into one that has a past like the one taught in our history books, up to about 1973. From 1973, I went into the "what if they had listened to me (and my technological ideas worked, as they have so often)" starting with the ground commute system now called "Pullband Commute" roughed out in about 1974 and then mentally developed to about the present level in about 1985; "Mooncable" in 1971-72, "Centristation" 1988 (later published as "Wet Launch of Prefab Habitat Modules" in 1995), "Microelevator" 1988, which has evolved into "KESTS to GEO". Some older Ideas I had even earlier are being tossed in casually, as I write, some of which have been used, even though rejected by my corporate employers's management when I attempted to raise their attention way back then (example: when offshore oil spills were considered corporate game for ways to deal with them via mechanical means, I proposed the use of oil-eating microorganisms such as had been found in aircraft fuel tanks in WWII: corporates ignored me, 1968-69 era. I have recently heard that the oil-eating micro-organism technique has been successfully used on oil spills; thusly vindicating another of my ideas.)

posted by Unknown @ 6:28 PM