Transportation within a habitiat

Remember that a 10,000 person habitat may only be a few miles across (or
less). I'd put my bets on small, open air, autonomous, electric cars
that are shared. They work like cabs, except the drive themselves (at
pretty slow speed) so you don't need to pay a driver and they can
deliver themselves to your door (or anywhere else) at the time you
request.

On Friday, July 5, 2002, at 01:16 PM, victoriatangoman wrote:

> So let's say we're designing a habitat for 10,000+ people and there
> will be cities, town and/or villages at different locations
> throughout the structure.
>
> I'm sure that mass transit by way of monorail will be included. I
> have trouble seeing freeways and a bunch of SUVs up there :)
>
> But, ... will we be able to do away with individual vehicles
> completely? Will we be able to minimize the use of our precious land
> area that is devoted to roads? Can a society function without
> streets but with an extensive "underground" subway system in their
> place?
>
> I used to think we could eliminate many of the streets in a habitat
> and replace them with wide paths, but then I started to think about
> it a little more and came up with some issues that have prompted me
> to write to this forum looking for feedback.
>
> How do we remove garbage from individual residences? How do we make
> furniture deliveries, construction equipment movement and material
> deliveries, get fire protection and the firefighters to a residence
> in distress, ambulance services, etc?
>
> We could have such dedicated vehicles plying the maglev subway
> tracks and coming only so far as the nearest subway terminal and
> then by foot to the location. We could use fuel cell engines on "the
> surface" and restrict such vehicles to official use only . . . but
> this requires an extensive road network to be able to accomodate the
> vehicles. We could have air services for the life and death police,
> fire and ambulance services but what of the other transportation
> services required?
>
> I think it would make the whole endeavor of having thousands to
> millions of people living in a habitat a much more do-able
> proposition if we didn't have to recreate the whole automobile
> industry up in orbit. I think an extensive subway system is the way
> to go but am curious about people's thoughts about the "last mile"
> issue?
>

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html