Transportation within a habitiat

On Monday, July 8, 2002, at 11:33 AM, Brad Walsh wrote:

> You're not going to
> impress your gal with a souped up muffler-less muscle car if they're
> banned--is that what you want?

No. I want to get from here to there when I want to go.

> If so, what about those that disagree with
> you? Does the physics of an O'Neill cylinder allow other alternatives,
> like
> maybe elevators to and from a spine of monkey bars running through the
> weightless zone at the center of the cylinder?
>

Basically there are two choices outside of walking range: 1) a centrally
controlled mass transit system where an individual and/or committee
decides when and where the vehicles go, and 2) an individually
controlled system where each individual controls when and where the
vehicle they are using goes. The car implements the second and is very
popular with the users where available. Current cars have problems
related to emissions and excessive land use. The emissions can be
eliminated by electric cars and the land use problem substantially
reduced by automated driving.

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