Poll Which way would you leave the planet in person space travel via personal Shuttle/AstroMobile?

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Hypothetically, let's say you live in the UFP in the 26th century, you're a suburban home owner with your own personal "Shuttle Craft" or "AstroMobile (Space Car)". You want to go on a trip with your family to explore "Nearby Space".

There are UFP maintained TransWarp Conduit Freeways that connect all the major systems of all member worlds, so the average civilian doesn't need to own any FTL drives or need engineering degrees to maintain their own FTL capable reactor or drives.

Any personal spelunking they want to do in nearby UFP space or go off the main trails/routes, they can attach their STL "Shuttle Craft" or "AstroMobile" to a standrdized dockable Personal Warp Ferry system consisting of a Warp Ring or Warp Sled to let them travel independently, which are powered by a Condensed Energy Matrix Battery (Similar to the Condensed Energy Matrix battery we saw in ST:VOY ep of Warhead that allowed the WMD Torpedo to travel 80 ly's on it's own battery pack).

But traveling into space in your own vessel, you have two options:
1) Fly there on your own Mini Fusion Reactor / Battery power and waste your own resources to break Atmosphere and Earth/(Planet you're on)'s gravity field.
2) Go to the local Linear Catapult Launch Tower and exchange SIGNIFICANTLY less energy resources/credits to have them launch you into space. You spend almost no resources of your own fuel/battery other than needing to turn on your personal shields for space launch.

Which one would you prefer?

Linear Catapult launch is now standard across the UFP for civilians using their own personal "ShuttleCraft" / "AstroMobile". It is very safe, safer than 21st Century Air flights.

 

[Timo]

Why externalize anything? Antigravity appears dirt cheap, and the automobile really should have that as default lest the government be required to build and maintain roads*. Letting your car float to space would seem the minimum-fuss alternative. Hooking it up to a beanstalk of any description would only make sense if said beanstalk can somehow recover the energies from downward traffic, but that seems awfully pennywise for a culture that runs transwarp highways.

There might be net gain from using an antigrav to go up and then turning it off for sliding down the beanstalk, or even turning it to reverse so that your car suddenly weighs additional tons; antigravity in itself appears to cheat Newton somehow to begin with. But playing non-zerosum games with gravity should be doable on a grand scale without bothering private drivers with it or constructing obstructive megastructures.

Limiting STO traffic to beanstalks would help with congestion. But if there's that much traffic, then LEO might be congested as well, and the cars would need external management or at least careful freeflight traffic control anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

* Having roads would really be idiotic when most vehicle traffic can be avoided altogether and transporters used instead. And "dirt cheap" appears to apply with those, too. So instead of a beanstalk structure, the most practical and efficient infrastructure involved might be transporter stations that beam the cars directly to the transwarp motorways.

 

[Dumbbell]

Of course the train. You never know who you're going to meet!

 

[ChallengerHK]

Antigravity appears dirt cheap, and the automobile really should have that as default lest the government be required to build and maintain roads*.

The big problem I've always seen with flying cars is this. In a "normal" car, something goes South and you lose power, you coast to the side of the road. In a flying car, you're cruising along and you lose power, you fall to your death. Unless, of course, the flying cars are limited to something like 10 feet altitude.

 

[Timo]

Or unless antigravity fails soft. (Helicopter accidents are much more survivable than automobile accidents: a car crashes, it's fifty gee and you die at once if you are lucky, a chopper autorotates down, it's perhaps five gee in a bad case and you walk out.)

Yet in Trek, it doesn't matter. You can crash into a planet at warp speed and still not get as much as an owie. Ships and shuttles regularly plow paths through bedrock and at most lose a nacelle. No death involved, only a slight jolt from a thousand-gee impact.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Or unless antigravity fails soft. (Helicopter accidents are much more survivable than automobile accidents: a car crashes, it's fifty gee and you die at once if you are lucky, a chopper autorotates down, it's perhaps five gee in a bad case and you walk out.)

Yet in Trek, it doesn't matter. You can crash into a planet at warp speed and still not get as much as an owie. Ships and shuttles regularly plow paths through bedrock and at most lose a nacelle. No death involved, only a slight jolt from a thousand-gee impact.

Timo Saloniemi

The External Inertial Dampeners must be doing a REALLY good job of keeping you alive and intact as possible for that to happen when you slam into a planet =D

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

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So many methods of Public Transportation available to civilians, I wonder how many of those are Rated to be "Space Worthy" and not just Atmospheric Only Vehicles.

 

[publiusr]

* Having roads would really be idiotic when most vehicle traffic can be avoided

Always good to have back-ups.

I remember an old Disney encyclopedia I used to have that speculated that…when we had antigravity…roadways would be grassy lanes…

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I think variety is the spice of life, so every method of travel will be viable.

Some people don't like to fly, and even in the future, flying will always consume more energy than driving on the road.

Same with Transporting to somewhere vs flying by Shuttle Craft.

Everything is about resources and Energy is one of those resources.

 

[Dumbbell]

When I originally watched TOS, I always believed that the future it described was a positive one where we had solved mankind’s’ energy needs. Back then, we used to believe that if we could perfect nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, we will have found a way to produce virtually limitless energy.

It seems likely to me, and this is not supported by any so-called canon information, but it seems likely to me that nuclear fission/fusion would be the mainstream power source for almost every utility in the Federation’s cities and worlds. That would mean that energy was freely available to satisfy everyone’s needs by means of the government producing the infrastructures needed for the use of all its citizens. The only deterrent to abusing such limitless power was a moral one. The Federation certainly claimed to possess a superior morality. Morality was also a lot more important to viewers back in the 1960s than it is today.

Matter/antimatter was a special additional power source that allowed peak power outputs on demand, such as for warp drive, shields, weapons, etc. (So much for the moral high ground.)

Still, it’s fun to believe that limitless energy would be available to all in Star Trek. It would mean that only imagination could limit progress.

 

[publiusr]

Electrification was the first step. I hope we get that future…