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Well, the automotive industry has been working on making self driving a thing, and I recall when they first tried to tackle the problem of lane keeping.
The first proposal was to embed magnets or similar into the road surface that the car could have a set of sensors for to determine if it was drifting left or right in its lane.
Motherfucker, that’s just a virtual track for your dumb four-wheeled mini-train.
It didn’t catch on, but AFAIK it was implemented in small areas as a trial and it performed adequately given the technology of the time.
So I’m out here going, why the fuck are we pretending that vehicles are not just rail-free personal trains?
There’s two kinds of ground transportation: off-roading, and should be a train.
That’s not true I likewise “invented” a blimp. With sails so it can really catch the wind.
Shit you may have nerd sniped me.
Could a blimp be sailed like a boat? I don’t think so, it’s a different physics problem. A sailboat is both hydrodynamic and aerodynamic, it’s touching water and air, a blimp is only touching air. A sailboat can sail into a quartering headwind by turning the yards so they form an airfoil creating lift like an airplane wing in a mostrly forward direction, and it keeps from sliding sideways by the mass of the water interacting with the hull. A blimp with masts wouldn’t do that, the wind will act on the envelope to just push it downwind, the sails might be able to drive it slightly forward so it goes slightly off to the side of downwind?
Also, to keep it from being blown over you’d have to hang the masts below the airship rather than above like a boat. Bouyancy is much more precious on an airship than a boat because air is a much bigger pain in the ass to be lighter than, so a deep keel full of lead like a sailboat ain’t gonna cut it. Putting the masts on top would be too easy to blow over, if you hung them from below crosswinds might cause a rolling moment but it wouldn’t roll all the way over.
Damn I wish they were still making Mythbusters. “Could an airship with sails sail into a quartering headwind? Or in any direction but downwind?”
least funny meme of 2017
Train cars are crabs. They’ve got an exoskeleton, they’re squat bodied, many legged, and have pincers on either side. All they have to do is start moving that body plan around some and they will be crabs.
Crab-spotting is completely undervalued as a cultural activity.
More like Carcinistation!
IDK how but I actually thought the title was this pun when I first read it. It was only after reading your comment that I realized that OP didn’t actually cash in on the joke (skill issue, smh).
You appear to have downvoted yourself.
Cars in a station?
With how bad semis rut the road I’ve been wanting to see them with retractable train wheels on the back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container this is kinda the same idea… same container can be transferred from ship to rail to truck
Okay, now solve for local transportation and create a single network that’s highly optimized for both long distance, medium distance, and last mile solutions. Bet you it looks like cargo trucks, buses, and road infrastructure.
Okay, now solve for local transportation and create a single network that’s highly optimized for both long distance, medium distance, and last mile solutions.
Why does it need to be a single network? A shipping container can go on ship, train, and truck pretty seamlessly, and that combined multi-modal network can connect sources and destinations that no one method is sufficient for.
And once you design an optimized network under your parameters, it starts to look like a hub and spoke model, with high volume arterial routes connecting the hubs, pretty close to how parcel delivery tends to work. And once you have that, you can optimize specific segments, including using hubs connected by air for time sensitive stuff (same day, next day, 2-day service), waterways or rail for really heavy or bulky stuff, and all sorts of intermediate methods or a variety of last mile delivery needs for the specific needs of any given package.
It looks like trains, bikes, and walking
Now solve to maximize for fuel efficiency and not speed. Right back to trains, street cars, and potential trucks for local good transport.
Optimizing for anything but speed removes the primary factor humans will focus on for happiness in a transit situation.
I don’t believe you
Highly optimized for traffic jams.
Wouldn’t it be neat if companies weren’t flocking to a few neighborhoods in a few cities, creating not only traffic jams but driving up housing prices as well? Isn’t it silly how local governments are competing on who can throw the most money at private enterprise to get the new widget factory or tech campus built there?
I just hate the whole concept of housing as an investment vehicle. You get all these old ass shit houses worth a million dollars for no damn reason.
Sharing because I was delighted to learn this: trees are also an example of convergent evolution. I’m personally rooting for us to become trees. Pun intended.
There’s likely some cases of convergent evolution, but I’m not sure this is settled for all trees.
I’d suspect that at least some trees with last common ancestors that are shrubs have re-enabled genes that enable the tree phenotype rather than independently evolving the tree phenotype.
But still really cool (and maybe turns on exactly how much evolution your consider needs to happen before it’s convergent evolution.)
Okay so now we are looking at some kind of tree-crab-train as the crown of creation, am I understanding this correctly?
Sounds like a creature from All Tomorrows
That seems unfairly obvious, but I certainly didn’t consider it before.
If trains were optimal, they’d have pincers.
They do though?
So what you’re saying is the optimal form is some kind of crab train?
As a tf2 player. A crab train is majestic.
Hey there 👋, I know you mean well by that comment, like I get it, I do. ☺️ But I just wanted to let you know:
THERE HAVE BEEN ZERO STUDIES DONE ON THE SAFETY OF CRAB TRAINS.
ZERO.
But despite that, they are gaining widespread support, and now even people like yourself are calling them “optimal.”
Listen: Someone I know lost an arm in the pincer mechanism of one of these trains. More work needs to be done before we can consider them safe, nevermind “optimal”. Don’t buy into the techbro BS.
Friends don’t let friends crab train.
Choo choo Charlie intensifies
Minimum rolling friction by having hard wheels on a hard surface. Minimum wind resistance by making it long and narrow. Minimum stop time by having big doors.
BAM: train.
Well if every vehicle becomes autonomous then isn’t that just a large scaled high speed train?
Inter-vehicle cooperation and autonomy makes highways act like trains, yes, with a bunch of unnecessary steps
Yes. That is the point. Trains are optimal.
