I might have to read the book. I’m not sure I want to, if it’s going to be 60% nostalgia for a future that didn’t happen, and 40% blaming “fundamentalist” environmentalists for everything.
For 1000 mph are we talking SSTs or vactrains? Vactrains—depending on pumping losses—might be quite (whisper it, so Josh can’t hear) ergophobe. Quiet, too. For SSTs, do we just displace all electric load to nukes, so the cost of kerosene is unimportant, and fly larger Concordes? (Anyone who doesn’t like sudden loud noises is an environmentalist!) Do we fly SSTs higher, maybe fueled with cryogenic hydrogen, made from water and low-demand-period electricity?
Undersea cities… don’t sound *very* energy-intensive. How do the citizens of Atlantis earn their living?
What would the lunar base be for? Exploration? An observatory? Helium-3? Near-future projections often involved mining the moon then rail-launching ore into orbit—probably solar-powered. Is this ergophobic? It’s much more efficient than a chemical rocket...
Could you give some more examples of “innovating” and “disappointing” industries?
Arthur C. Clarke’s Comsats: energy-intensive, huge success
Asimov’s robots: disappointing because intelligence turns out to be harder than we thought.
Asimov’s “Psychohistory”: disappointing because chaos theory?
James Blish’s “Cities in Flight”: antigravity and force fields, ironically capable of running off a small zinc-air battery. Disappointing because we haven’t found a physics rootkit that interesting.
What if we pick randomly from http://www.technovelgy.com?