Just imagine, leg room, and the ability to walk around, go
for meals and drinks, look at the ocean, lie down in an actual bed. Plus, no
hanging about in several noisy and crowded airports. My trip to Greece started
in my home city, and took me to 2 more before I finally landed in Athens (4
cities in all with waits at airports to change planes). I found Toronto’s Pearson
airport particularly awful on the way over – there seemed to be noise everywhere.
If it wasn’t people talking or public address announcements, it was musak. And
the airlines hadn’t seemed to think of the concept of asking people to line up
by rows, so that we all crowed together near the gate as if we didn’t have
assigned seats. Munich airport was heaven by comparison. I had a several hour
stopover there, but I found more than a couple of quiet areas plus free
beverage stations from Lufthansa. That’s a bit more civilized.
Granted, ships are not for everyone (though the thought of
that kind of holiday appeals to me more and more as I get older). Still, it
seems to me that in the 21st century we should be able to come up
with better ways of speedy travel. What happened to the concept of the planetary
shuttle? And couldn’t we have solar powered flight? Cheaper flights so we
wouldn’t have to crowd together; everyone should have as much room as business
class does now. Or maybe we could hovercraft across the ocean. Perhaps we need
to bring back the dirigible for long distances – after all we now have gases
that don’t explode to fill the balloons.
Of course, in the Star Trek universe we would be beaming
back and forth, even quicker with less time on crowed airplanes.
Come on young entrepreneurs, research
scientists, and engineers, get moving on this transportation stuff. The right
idea could be environmentally friendly, comfortable and make someone pots of
money.
