The Transport Revolution

1985. The suburbs. You get up at 9:30, enjoy a leisurely breakfast from your computerized kitchen and read the morning paper (which feeds out of a teleprinter attached to your phone). In the headlines this morning, you notice that the A. M. A. says it is no longer necessary to carry recyclable bottled air in the central city--even if you must spend many hours outdoors or in unsealed buildings. Likewise, the story goes on, the surgically implanted "noise rectifiers" previously recommended by the National Institute of Mental Health are no longer needed. Finally, you note that noise and air pollution are rapidly receding to the low levels of the early 1940s.

You skip the tranquilizers that used to be part of the precommute routine, make sure you have your magnetized credit card and then proceed to your garage, where there are two cars. One is the latest Detroit dragon, a beauty marred only by the little message stamped (under industry protest) on the chassis over the left rear wheel: Warning: Internal combustion engine emissions may be hazardous to your health. (This "warning," you understand, will be removed in a few years, when Detroit begins to hybridize some of its i.c.e.s with electric motors.)

The other car--the one you will be using today--is a sleek fiberglass compact. Its exterior bears no markings, save for the decorative imprint of the guideway authority. You enter the car, without bending, by lifting its transparent plastic dome. The floor inside is perfectly flat and nearly two feet separate a pair of bucket seats. Although the small electric motor that propels the car has a range of only 20 miles, it is more than adequate to get you to the nearest guideway entrance--only a couple of blocks from your home. The guideway itself is an elevated, fully automated highway that winds through the suburbs and into the central city. At the check-in station, you insert your credit card in a roadside meter and a central computer instantly checks your credit and the status of your vehicle; if you are delinquent in your toll payments or driving a vehicle that has not been recently inspected, you will be automatically shunted off the guideway.

Having passed muster, you drive onto the access ramp. There you cut your engine and push a dashboard button that activates a small retractable arm, which emerges from a hidden chamber in the side of the car and clamps onto one of the guideway's two side rails. Once attached, the arm ties into communications and control links that power, steer and completely take over the operation of your car. Next, you use the dashboard telephone to dial your destination and, in seconds, the central computer calculates the quickest routing under present traffic conditions--and reserves space for you all the way to your terminus. Moments later, the car accelerates and merges into high-speed traffic on the main guideway, locking onto an electromagnetic guidance wave.

Only one thing resembles the bad old days: Traffic is nearly bumper to bumper; but you don't mind, because you're moving at a steady 100 miles an hour or more. As you soundlessly speed along, you are now free to lean back in your seat and sleep, shave, play solitaire on a table that drops down in front of you, watch television, read, make phone calls, dictate, go over business memos or simply enjoy the scenery. A buzzer sounds a minute or two before you reach your exit station, where you simply abandon the car (if it's a rental) or (if it's your own) turn it over to a hostess, who routes it--unoccupied--to a parking area.

The automated guideway, now under intensive study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Federal Government and private industry, is only one of several "systems engineering" concepts expected to revolutionize transportation--and urban America--in the next three decades. Systems engineering, which evolved primarily out of the aerospace industry, combines computer technology with humanistic philosophy: Systems engineers want to know not only whether a piece of hardware can work but also what its effects on society will be. Thus, had systems engineers been in positions of power at the beginning of this century, the internal-combustion engine might never have been unleashed on the public, even though it provided a remarkably convenient means of personal door-to-door transportation. Systems engineers might have anticipated the gargantuan appetite for real estate that the automobile and its supporting highway system would develop, the blight of advertising signs that would crop up along our roadways, the industry's planned obsolescence that would result in auto junk yards from coast to coast, the resulting air and noise pollution, the devastating highway fatality rate, the time-consuming traffic jams, the expensive theft and vandalism associated with the private car--in short, the whole Pandora's box of today's all-too-familiar automotive horrors. Nor would systems engineers have been swayed by the argument that the internal-combustion engine would serve until something better came along. They might even have foreseen that once entrenched--no matter how bad it turned out to be--it would be too costly for its manufacturers to give up without a long and bitter struggle.

Despite transportation's grim past and grimmer present, systems engineers such as Dr. Richard Barber, deputy assistant secretary for policy and international affairs in the U.S. Department of Transportation, believe there is considerable hope for the future. The establishment of the department three years ago, he says, was a substantial beginning, "a recognition of the fact that the movement of people and goods--no matter by what diverse means--is really one problem." Hence, the D.O.T. has brought under its purview a variety of agencies, ranging from the Coast Guard to the Federal Aviation Administration. "I believe," says Dr. Barber, "that transportation is one of the most powerful influences in our society today; it literally shapes the sort of world that we live in. If it has the power to wreak havoc, it also has the power to strengthen and reinvigorate."

If and when implemented, possibly beginning as early as 1975, the automated-guideway system will prove a tremendous boon to the environment--and our lives. MITEs Highway Transportation Program has already received grants totaling $1,000,000 (from the D.O.T. and General Motors) to conduct automated-guideway feasibility studies; to date, findings have been decidedly positive. Dr. Siegfried Breuning, former director of the MIT program, believes that the automated-guideway system will be infinitely superior to present-day motor travel. He says, "The first advantage of a guideway would be to relieve road congestion. Most urban arterial highways have capabilities of 1500-2000 vehicles per hour per 12-foot-wide lane. We feel that an automated highway with eight-foot-wide lanes could accommodate up to 10,000 vehicles per hour per lane. The eight-foot lane, of course, would also allow the nation to reclaim a considerable amount of land given over to highway use--or at least devote less land to future transportation use." Three other points raised by Dr. Breuning in advocating the automated-guideway system: Air and noise pollution would be significantly reduced, due to the employment of electronic propulsion (air pollution from the rural power plant feeding the system would not be difficult to control); parking problems would be virtually eliminated, since most of the guideway vehicles would be rentals in constant circulation; and the automated guideway would preclude driving errors that are the main cause of fatal accidents. Additionally, Dr. Breuning lists such humanistic benefits as more leisure time provided for millions of urban commuters and high-quality service priced low enough so that its benefits could be enjoyed by the less affluent.

We already possess the technology necessary to build and maintain a national guideway system and, if funded, construction could begin almost immediately. (Even advanced battery packs and fuel cells are not necessary, since power will be applied to guideway cars through external rails.) And though there is no single computer presently available that can handle an automated guideway servicing a city the size of New York, a number of integrated computers could be employed in the interim. The elevated guideway structure itself, Dr. Breuning says, will be relatively inexpensive, since it can be prefabricated. Cost per individual user, Dr. Breuning believes, may be only half the present rate on conventional highways.

As for aesthetics, MIT engineers believe the guideways, narrow and clean in concept, can be attractively integrated into the urban scene. In downtown areas, guideway structures will hug the sides of buildings--and probably pass right through others--at approximately the fourth-story level. "In the suburbs," Dr. Breuning observes, "they may be obscured from view among the trees--20 or 30 feet up." Little noise will be generated and people will be able to pass freely underneath. "In many ways," he adds, "guideways should be far less objectionable than streets and certainly less of an eyesore than bulky freeways."

Implementation, he concedes, may pose something of a problem. "The more we look into this, however, the more opportunities we see for a gradual evolution of the system." The first guideways will be built in large airports and will be used to shuttle passengers to and from terminals. Then the system will be expanded to help ease traffic in bottleneck situations. As drivers begin to grasp the virtues of the system, Dr. Breuning says, some will have their cars fitted with accessories (which may cost as little as $200 when mass-produced) that will allow them to use the short guideways. The speed and ease with which these "pioneers" navigate through heavily congested areas will serve as persuasive advertisements, indeed, and nonusers, the MIT team believes, will come over rapidly and in large numbers. "Before long," says Dr. Breuning, "the demand for automated guideways will be at least as great as it was for roads in the Twenties."

Ultimately, the guideways, run by a public or semi-public corporation, will spread out to the suburbs, and dual-mode electric vehicles capable of being driven off the guideway as well as on (where they can be automatically recharged) will be produced on a large scale. The Alden Self-Transit Systems Corporation of West-borough, Massachusetts, has already developed a number of highly successful prototypes called staRRcars, which, even in this early stage of evolution, are capable of 60 mph. Eventually, most guideway cars will be compact, "captive" capsules owned by the authority for use only on the system. By the late 1980s, it should be possible to dial a car (or bus) and have it stop at the guideway close to your house in the suburbs. By this time, intercity guideways should also be in full operation.

Since conventional automobiles will be completely banned from the central city, probably by 1985, the guideway system will have exits situated adjacent to smaller transportation systems designed to move people over short distances in downtown areas. Among the most prevalent of these will be personalized capsules that run along the streets or on their own narrow elevated tracks (like the minirail used so successfully at Expo 67 in Montreal) and enclosed moving sidewalks, complete with air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter. These systems will link office buildings, apartment houses, terminals and shops; they will go in and out of doors, above and below ground, becoming, in effect, unobtrusive parts of buildings and arcades.

By the time guideway systems are constructed to ease the intracity traffic crunch, another new transportation mode will be similarly solving the intercity variety: By the mid-1980s, underground gravity vacuum tubes will shelter capsules that flash eerily along without motors (and almost noiselessly) at speeds possibly as high as 600 mph. Underground shuttle service is expected to be in full operation by 1985, by which time it will routinely link cities in the Northeastern urban corridor (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington) and, going west, New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis-St. Paul. On the West Coast, it will connect San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Glendale and Pasadena and, farther north, San Jose, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Sacramento.

"Almost too good to be true" is the way the prestigious Regional Plan Association of New York describes--and endorses--the gravity vacuum transit concept. The system, developed and patented by Lawrence K. Edwards, president of Tube Transit Corporation of Palo Alto, relies on gravity and pneumatics for propulsion. It will operate in the following manner: Visualize a train in an underground tube (accessible by escalators) surrounded by air at normal atmospheric pressure. Once passengers have boarded and the train is ready to roll, an air valve at the end of the station (valve A) and one at the beginning of the next station (valve B) are closed; air is then pumped out until the pressure is only about l/40th of normal atmospheric conditions. Valve A is opened and the train is pushed by atmospheric pressure into the near vacuum ahead. When the desired amount of pneumatic (air-pressure) energy has been imparted to the train, a computer will automatically shut valve A. Traveling along a downward slope, the train will continue to accelerate until, just before the next station, it will reach an upward grade, slowing it down; it will be slowed down further when air pressure from valve B ahead exceeds the pressure from behind.

The advantages of the gravity-vacuum-tube system are considerable. In the first place, as inventor Edwards notes, "Gravity costs nothing, is 100 percent efficient, universally available and absolutely reliable." Moreover, experiments have proved that passengers in a gravity-propelled vehicle scarcely perceive any acceleration or deceleration, permitting very high average speeds even over short runs. The system is nonpolluting and, because it is below ground, uses no surface real estate. In addition, it is free of complex moving parts and has no potentially dangerous on-board propulsion units. Speed, however, is probably its biggest selling point. Urban gravity-tube capsules, Edwards says, will shoot around suburbs, downtown areas and airports at 240 mph. Intercity versions will reach a speed of 420 mph and may eventually hit 600--even with a wheeled suspension.

The earliest intercity gravity capsules, which could become a reality in as few as six to eight years, will carry passengers from midtown Manhattan to midtown Washington (with 12 intermediate stops) in 75 minutes and from New York City to Boston in 73 minutes. (Currently, the total elapsed train time to go from midtown New York to midtown Washington is something over 170 minutes.) In the city area, Edwards estimates that the earliest urban gravity tubes will be built to transport travelers from Manhattan's Times Square to John F. Kennedy International Airport in under four minutes. By the 1990s, when we will have hypersonic jet planes going from New York City to Sydney in a little over an hour, people may reasonably feel they should have to spend no more than a minute or two covering the 10 or 20 miles to the airport; of all urban transit systems now envisioned, only the gravity tubes could meet this demand.

Some engineers, however, doubt that even the best wheel-rail suspension system will adequately support tube trains moving in excess of 300 mph. (Air cushions won't work, either, they point out, since the purpose of the gravity-tube concept is to free the moving vehicle from aerodynamic drag.) Hence, a third and far more exotic possibility has emerged: electromagnetic suspension. At first, this would appear to be unreasonably expensive, considering the amounts of electricity necessary to create magnetic cushions powerful enough to support the immense weight of a large train. Superconductivity, however, is expected to solve the problem. Certain metals, when cooled to temperatures near absolute zero (--460 degrees Fahrenheit), can be transformed into superconductors through which electric current passes at zero resistance, providing the ultimate in electrical economy. (At present, resistance losses in high-voltage transmission lines in this country amount to more than $350,000,000 annually; if superconducting lines were used---as they will be in another 20 or 30 years--losses would be under $5,000,000 a year.)

J. R. Powell and G. T. Danby, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, have proposed an ingenious system in which superconducting magnets support a train that, due to huge magnetic counterfields, never touches the tracks. The concept has received considerable attention from D.O.T., and Powell and Danby claim that their system is "technically and economically feasible with present materials." Such a train, pushed by an airplane propeller, has been proposed for surface use.

At the moment, however, tracked air-cushion vehicles are being more seriously considered for high-speed transportation above the ground. The prototype French Aerotrain is already in existence and will soon go into full-scale operation. The British, too, are well on the way to completing their version--the Hovertrain. The Aerotrain, which uses an aircraft piston engine and propeller, has been clocked at 215 mph. This substantially outstrips the best "rolling support" system now in existence--Japan's New Tokkaido Line train, linking Tokyo and Osaka, which averages 110 mph with a top speed of about 190 mph. Though currently far behind the British and the French, the United States may yet come up with the best tracked air-cushion vehicle in the world. The French system runs along an inverted T-rail configuration and the British runs on an inverted U; U.S. prototypes will be supported by a noninverted U-rail configuration, which, after extensive testing, has been shown to provide greater stability at lower costs than the upside-down T track. On the basis of these findings, General Electric and Grumman Aircraft have come up with preliminary vehicle designs. Both trains resemble a cross between a spaceship and a Batmobile. The Office of High Speed Ground Transportation hopes to test a full-scale research model before the end of 1973.

British and American tracked air-cushion vehicles will be powered by linear-induction motors. Although it is still somewhat of an untested quantity, the linear-induction motor is expected to totally revolutionize surface travel and will also be employed to propel guideway automobiles and, where digging for gravity tubes becomes too difficult, tube transit systems. (The highly technical linear induction motor resembles a rotary electric motor that has been sliced open, unpeeled and laid out flat. The seemingly miraculous effect of this unwinding job is to convert the nature of the motor's force from torque to thrust.) Garrett Corporation is presently developing a 2500horsepower linear-induction motor for the American tracked air-cushion vehicle program. Final evaluation of all the new high-speed ground vehicles will have to await construction of a $12,000,000 test facility at a yet unselected site. Tests of a tracked air-cushion vehicle could start next year and a tube train could be put through its pneumatic paces at this same facility as early as 1974.

The future of personal transit is far less predictable than mass-transport systems. For example, private vehicles--capable of guideway and contemporary-road usage--may be constructed of materials more radical than their propulsion systems. High-impact-absorbing plastics and fiberglass will probably be standard materials in another 25 years, but auto bodies may also be constructed of nylon and other synthetic fibers. Several new metallic alloys also show promise. None is more amazing than Nitinol-55, a nonmagnetic nickel-titanium alloy with the astonishing ability to reconstruct itself from "memory" into complex shapes and forms--even after it has been crumpled into a wad. Fabricated into auto bodies (or simply into the most vulnerable parts of them), this superalloy could take the bite out of a few billion dollars' worth of dents and bashes each year. Whether your Nitinol chariot has just one irritating little dent or is a wretched lump of wreckage, help will be only a few minutes and a few volts away. All you'll have to do is drive (or be towed) into a garage, where electric current can be pulsed through what's left of your car; almost magically, the dents, crumples and creases will unfold and your car will be like new again. (And if you're short of electric current, hot water may be able to do the trick.) The metallurgical physics underlying this phenomenon are not yet clearly understood, though it's apparent that above a certain temperature, Nitinol atoms always revert (continued on page 188)transport revolution(continued from page 114) to their original spacing. A number of industries are eager to get in on the find, and one day soon, you may be guaranteed a dent-free car.

Accidents, as well as dents, should be on the wane in another 20 years, even on the hundreds of thousands of miles of nonautomated roadways that will continue to line the country until the end of the century. Systems such as Ford's Automatic Headway Control will be available as optional equipment by the mid-Seventies and perhaps as standard equipment by 1980, taking much of the strain and danger out of driving. The biggest selling point of automatic headway control is that it's a noncooperative system, which means that one car has all the parts necessary to make the concept work for its owner.

As currently designed, automatic headway control leaves only the steering to the driver. Under-the-hood components, hidden behind a decorative grille, include an infrared transmitter and receiver, a small computer, standard brake, and throttle wired for electrical control. When a vehicle equipped with automatic headway control approaches another car from behind, an invisible infrared beam shoots out to the lead ear and rebounds to the receiver, which then calculates the distance between the two cars. It continuously transmits this data to the computer, which calculates the speed of the first vehicle relative to the second. If the vehicle can safely accelerate, the computer activates the throttle and speed increases until the car is safely past. Out of traffic, speed will be maintained automatically as close to a preset maximum (usually the speed limit) as possible. An override will permit the driver to take full control at any time. The system will weigh about 20 pounds in final form and will cost between $200 and $300.

If driving is going to be considerably easier in years to come, so is finding one's way around. The Bureau of Public Roads wants to put small computers at 4,000,000 major intersections all around the country. Each of these computers will contain all the information needed to reach any of the 3,999,999 other intersections. A driver embarking on a vacation will have only to dial his destination on a dashboard console. Signals from his car will be picked up at the first computerized corner he comes to and the computer will scan its memory and determine whether the vehicle is going in the right direction. If not, this automated back-seat driver will send signals to the car that will print out instructions on a small dash-mounted screen. The bureau will soon install computers at 100 intersections in the Washington, D.C., area, and the concept will be tested with some 50 instrumented cars over the next two years. Cost for the nationwide system (including on-board equipment for 100,000,000 cars, at S150 each) is estimated at a surprisingly low 19 billion dollars.

Is it possible that all these incredible advances will be lavished on the lowly, pollutive internal-combustion engine? Yes. The i.c.e. is bound to be around in some form for at least the next 30 years. But its presence will be somewhat diminished by the late Eighties, thanks to automated guideways and the advent of the i.c.e.-electric hybrid.

While Detroit can certainly be counted on to resist conversion to all-electric propulsion, it seems likely that an i.c.e.-electric line of cars will be constructed for use in and around large cities. Hybrids combine an electric motor with a generator powered by a small internal-combustion engine. Ordinary i.c.e.s emit pollutants when they accelerate and decelerate, but hybrids will operate at a constant speed, avoiding this problem. (Energy not being used to accelerate the flywheel, from which the vehicle's drive motors draw power, will be used for recharging the energy packages.) Also, it's possible that hybrids will operate exclusively on electric power while downtown and on internal combustion while on the open road.

To power personal vehicles, however, Dr. Robert U. Ayres, a physicist and prominent transportation expert, favors the steam engine. "It is our conclusion," he noted in a recent report for the Hudson Institute and the Ford Foundation, "that steam is now the superior alternative on grounds of operating economy, simplicity, intrinsic torque-speed characteristics (which make a transmission superfluous) and the use of lower-octane non-leaded petroleum derivatives such as diesel oil, jet fuel or kerosene. External-combustion engines are also far superior to internal-combustion engines in terms of producing fewer noxious emissions." Although a superior steam-powered car could be designed and put into mass production within three to five years, the two problems yet to be overcome, says Dr. Ayres, are lack of capital and the public's low view of the steamcar, dating from the days of "the noisy, stinking and inconvenient Stanley Steamers."

Beyond electric, hybrid and steamcars, there is another type of conveyance that has so far been discussed only in terms of the tracked version: the air-cushion vehicle. Currently, the most advanced air-cushion vehicle in operation is Britain's SRN-4, a 178-ton hovercraft that can hit 70 mph in calm seas. Built by British Hovercraft Corporation, it carries 600 passengers (or 30 cars and 250 passengers) from Dover to Boulogne over the English Channel in 35 minutes (Conventional ships make the trip in 90 minutes.) Even in ten-foot waves, the SRN-4, whose air cushion is contained in a seven-foot rubber maxiskirt, skims along at 53 mph, gently cosseting even the queasiest stomach. The craft has two immense rudders that stick up like the tail on a Boeing 747 and four 19-foot propellers driven by 3400-hp Rolls-Royce engines. Twelve-foot lift fans gulp in the air that supports the vehicle. Since 1968, hovercraft such as the SRN-4 have carried more than 700.000 fare-paying passengers. They are currently being manufactured in ten countries by nearly 50 companies.

In America, the leader in air-cushion-vehicle design, development and production is Bell Aerospace of Buffalo, New York. Bell specializes in airborne amphibians that are equally at home on ground, water, ice, snow, marsh and mud. Recently, the Army sent three of Bell's amphibians to Vietnam, where they buzz over mucky inland waterways like giant water bugs--at speeds up to 70 mph. They clear obstacles four feet high, bull through six-foot vegetation and can cross ditches 12 feet wide and 8 feet deep. These are armored versions of the commercial vehicles Bell employed to whisk some 14,000 people across the bay between Oakland and San Francisco airports and downtown San Francisco. The experiment was considered highly successful, presaging hover-shuttles for the Seventies in numerous on-the-water cities, such as New York and Boston.

Bell's most ambitious project is a colossal 4000-ton transoceanic hoverfreighter with a projected cruising speed of 100 mph, more than triple that of most conventional freighters. The ship will be capable of crossing the Atlantic in less than two days. Cargo will be containerized for rapid, mechanized movement and the ship itself will be highly automated, requiring a small crew. The hoverfreighter, a joint venture of Bell, the U.S. Navy and the Maritime Administration, is still in the study stages and will probably not see service before the late Seventies. By the Eighties, however, transportation experts believe large hovercraft will be used for transporting freight and passengers over inland routes, as well. Hovercraft ambulances, buses, delivery vans and patrol vehicles are all foreseen. "Hovercraft will be particularly useful in sparsely populated locales," says Dr. Breuning. "Instead of building expensive highways, we can just cut a crude swath through the countryside and let the vehicles run over a grassy surface and up and down available rivers."

Sports and pleasure air-cushion vehicles are already in existence and, with further development and diminishing costs, can be expected to become more popular than snowmobiles, motorcycles and other lightweight vehicles. The trimmest of the new sports models is Aero-Go's amphibious Terra Skipper, a fiberglass single-seater still in the experimental stage. The craft is nine feet long and weighs about 180 pounds, and its ten-hp two-cycle engine achieves speeds up to 30 mph. Larger and more powerful, but still relatively compact, is Cushion-Flight Corporation's Airscat 240, priced at $3495. This model, now in full production in Sunnymead, California, is also an amphibian of fiberglass construction. It stretches 14 feet, weighs 1000 pounds and seats two comfortably. Powered by a 58-hp Volkswagen engine, it skims along at speeds up to 45 mph. It has been used with good results over water, snow, swamp and sand.

Though man's mobility will be dramatically enhanced by all of these inventions, the innovation that may move him fastest and farthest will restrict him to his living room. Although hardly a transportation system, "telefactoring"--tactile television--will permit man to experience the thrills of walking on the moon, exploring the darkest chasms of the sea, floating in space and, for those with pioneer tastes, trekking across radioactive wastes without ever donning a pressuried suit or one of lead armor. Telefactors, or teleoperators as they are sometimes known, are largely the brain child of aerospace engineers. Edwin G. Johnsen, a scientist with the Atomic Energy Commission and an authority on the subject, says. "From the neck up, man is great. From the neck down, other machines can outperform him by a country mile. It appears that a system that combines the best features of man with the best features of other machines will add to the success of man as a machine." Such man-machine chimeras he calls teleoperators.

Quite simply, a teleoperator is a mechanical double to man that goes through motions that can be experienced by its human twin. The only difference is that the teleoperator--a type of remote-control robot--actually goes through those motions while the human operator functions in a safe, comfortable environment. Explaining the concept at a recent science seminar on human augmentation, Johnsen said, "Assume that we have a human operator controlling a teleoperator by using an exoskeleton (which the human operator wears) to control the arms and torso of the teleoperator and a head-control system to control the TV camera on the teleoperator. Assume also that the man receives feedback information through the exoskeleton indicating the relative position of the arms and the forces experienced by the arms and fingers of the teleoperator. Assume also that microminiaturized air-jet transducers under the finger tips provide him with tactile information. He would also receive visual, audio and motion feedback." There would be only one human operator actually controlling the teleoperator; but, Johnsen noted, there could be any number of duplicate exo-skeletons picking up the same visual, audio and tactile feedback information, so that "scientists, engineers and, in fact, the average person could vicariously participate in scientific exploration and experimentation."

This system will not only "transport" hundreds of thousands of earthlings to the moon visually but will also provide them with the feel of walking, digging and poking around on the lunar surface. The technology for such systems is already in the works, and Johnsen and others are confident that "feely TV," as they call it, will be available sometime around the turn of the century. Johnsen considers most science fiction obsolete--a logical enough position to take, for he and men like him are rapidly bringing our most imaginative transportation fantasies ever closer to reality.