\nWhat if the techy transportation of sci-fi movies isn't as far-fetched as it seems?
We asked
Seth Shostak, scientist and film consultant, to rate them on a scale of 1 ("dream on") to 10 ("totally feasible"). Bring on the levitating cars!
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AlienTechnology: Placing people in "stasis"-suspended animation-for long journeys
Release date: 1979
Future depicted:Rating: 7
What's the holdup?![]()
The PostmanTechnology Horses as a dominant transportation mode in a dystopian , antitechnology future
Release date 1997
Future depicted 2013
Rating 2
What's the holdup? "Fuggedaboutit. Horses are kind of fun, and they taste good on whole wheat, but even if we let the nukes loose, we're not going back to horseflesh transport."
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Back to the FutureTechnology: Time travel
Release date: 1985
Future depicted: 1985 (and 2015)
Rating: 8
What's the holdup? "That high rating is for traveling into the future. All that's required is moving ourselves at a fair fraction of the speed of light-something we can't do now, but maybe in a few centuries. Traveling into the past? I give that a two. It would require both new physics and exotic technology, and it's not clear we'll ever have either."
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Blade RunnerTechnology: Flying cars and related infrastructure
Release date: 1982
Future depicted: 2019
Rating: 8
What's the holdup?![]()
Minority ReportTechnology: Magnetically levitating autonomous car
Release date: 2002
Future depicted: 2054
Rating: 7
What's the holdup?![]()
Star Trek: The Motion PictureTechnology: Transporter
Release date: 1979
Future depicted: 2273
Rating: 2
What's the holdup?![]()
Logan's RunTechnology: Travel by pneumatic tubes
Release date: 1976
Future depicted: 2274
Rating: 5
What's the holdup? "Pneumatic tubes at every residence would allow people to shop on the internet and have their products delivered without jamming up the roads with delivery trucks. But putting people into pneumatic tubes runs into problems both technical (you need pumps every few hundred tube diameters) and physiological (do you want to be stuffed into a small cylinder and sent at high speed around a bendy tube roller coaster?)."
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