Technology / Gadgets

The future is now, and we are not impressed. The future was supposed to be a fully automated, atomic-powered, germ-free Utopia—a place where a grown man could wear a velvet spandex unitard and not be laughed at. Our beloved scientists may be building impressive technologies, but some key pieces are missing. Where are the ray guns, the flying cars, and the X-ray specs we expected? The time has come to hold the golden age of science fiction accountable for its fantastic promises.

At the turn of the 19th century, visionaries like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells spun tales of spaceflight and underwater adventure. By midcentury, the Apollo moon missions were gasoline on the flame. As science conquered nature, an optimistic populace yearned to live in the perfect tomorrow. Yet today zeppelins do not hover over fully enclosed skyscraper cities. Shiny robot servants do not cook breakfast for colonists on the moon. Worst of all, sleek titanium jetpacks are not ready and waiting on showroom floors. Perhaps we have become complacent in our futuristic demands.

But scientists have provided us with useful tools that portend a Tomorrowland-like tomorrow. From liquid laser weapons to Nursebots, we may yet be on the verge of a Buck Rogers way of life. To speed science along, the course of action is clear: We must educate ourselves about the technologies at hand and fight for the future we were promised. The magnificent future of humankind depends on it.

Now is the time to stop wishing, to stand up, and to shout, "Where the hell is my jetpack?!"

Look at your car sitting there in the driveway—sad, squat, all four tires on the pavement. You should feel sorry for your car for the same reason that you should feel sorry for yourself: You are both flightless. Optimistic drivers of the past imagined a future in which the stubby tail fins of their cars morphed into broad wings. According to the car companies presenting at the World's Fair of 1939, your driveway was destined to become a runway, the highway a skyway, and the only speed limit the speed of sound.

The first attempts at creating flying cars were fairly simple—install an airplane engine and two wings on a regular car. The first attempts were also disastrous. Henry Ford's "sky flivver" flew in 1928, but production was nixed after an unlucky pilot died in a crash. In 1956, Moulton Taylor, an engineer who earlier had helped develop the cruise missile, unveiled the Aerocar. The little yellow Aerocar could leap from the highway at 55 miles per hour and cruise up to 100 mph at around 12,000 feet with a range of up to 300 miles. The Aerocar worked fine conceptually, but it was too impractical for everyday use—a business deal for full-scale production fell through in the early 1970s. The only remaining Aerocar prototype was purchased by a fan who saw it advertised in the classifieds.

If you are averse to purchasing dangerous relics listed in obscure newspaper ads and you still want to acquire a flying car, the solution may be to let NASA take care of it. That's right, NASA gave us gooey foam pillows, dehydrated ice cream, and those shiny space blankets, and it may yet fork over the flying car. NASA scientists working on the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) project are making inroads on the two main problems holding back personal air travel on a massive, nationwide scale: midair collisions and complicated piloting mechanisms.

The Moller M400 Skycar launches like a helicopter, flies like an airplane, and drives like a car; unfortunately, you still can't buy one.

NASA eschews the term "flying car," preferring "personal air vehicle" instead. Nevertheless, NASA has imagined flying cars that would humiliate George Jetson. Until their vehicle program was eliminated in 2005, the folks at Langley Research Center planned to roll out three prototypes in sequence: a small prop plane that would tuck its wings in on the highway (it shouldn't cost any more than a Mercedes-Benz); a two-seater with rear-propeller drive; and, for tight parking spots, one capable of vertical takeoff. Merely providing the vehicles would not be enough, however. If everyday people are to use them, scientists must know how to track thousands of these car-planes. And knowing is half the battle.

Collision-deterring navigation systems are key to transforming highways into skyways. Personal air vehicles will use GPS and cell phone technology to automatically broadcast information about location and speed to ground-based towers. From the ground, an automated computer system will update the flight path of every sky vehicle and provide instant directions—automatically avoiding collisions and minimizing flight time. Meanwhile, onboard sensors will detect nearby trees, buildings, and power lines. And the jackpot bonus item for the sky-car consumer: For most of the flight the human "driver" can take care of anything besides flying, like eating a whole bag of potato chips.

NASA's dream cars may be exciting (and legitimate), but they aren't available to the public right this second. So turn your attention to the Moller M400 Skycar—a partially tested prototype offered in the 2005 Neiman Marcus gift catalog. Paul Moller, a former engineering professor at the University of California at Davis, has spent all of his money and more than 40 years trying to build a flying car. The current model is a cherry-red coupe that looks as though it should be dogfighting TIE fighters outside the Death Star. The futuristic Skycar has four seats (carrying up to 750 pounds), a maximum airspeed of 375 mph, and a range of about 750 miles. On the ground, the Skycar should travel a dinky 30 to 35 mph, just fast enough to get to an empty parking lot and stun everyone with a sweet vertical takeoff. Prototypes like the Skycar have been on the verge of full-scale production for almost a century, though, and it may be another hundred years before you can score that most badass symbol of the space age, the flying car.

Yesteryear's dinner of tomorrow was designed to feed the spacefaring denizens of an overpopulated planet. It was cheap, it was synthetic, and it was so completely off the mark as to be almost wholly inconceivable to us now. These days people expect real food from the ground, preferably without any genetic splicing. But the food predictions of yesterday are as tantalizing as ever. What's more American than an apple-pie pill?

Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) are compressed, lightweight, and nutritious—but are a far cry from a food pill.

As a rule, future food does not come from the ground. In the best-case scenario it comes from lush hydroponic gardens, but it's much more likely to come from a factory, a tube, or a vat. In addition, future fodder never looks like food, either; it looks like a piece of plastic, a splash of corn-syrupy liquid, or—best of all—a tempting little white pill.

The space program kick-started a food revolution. Kids were fascinated with how food got into the astronauts (and how it got back out). Space travelers have serious dietary restrictions: Food has to be as light as possible because every ounce counts on liftoff, and gooey foods are preferred, as renegade crumbs can damage delicate machinery. As a result, early astronauts had to suck food out of tubes, toss back vitamin pills, and generally have a culinarily bad time. In the early 1960s, astronauts on the Mercury space missions sucked applesauce out of aluminum tubes. Later, the menu was expanded to include "food powder," freeze-dried food that had to be squirted with cold water and then sucked through a straw. By 1965, Gemini astronauts were subjected to Tang, which has the limited advantage of making water taste less like water. Luckily, by 1973, astronauts on the Skylab space station had a luxurious meal-preparation area and a menu with over 72 items.

But seriously, where are the food pills? The idea is theoretically possible, but like most "technological food," it's not commercially viable. Thankfully, the Combat Feeding Directorate (called Natick, after its location) is working ceaselessly to keep U.S. soldiers well fed—and the soldiers have little say in the matter. A decade ago Natick introduced MREs ("meals ready to eat")—individually packaged, self-heating food pouches. Its most recent innovation is the compressed meal (CM). A CM is one-third the size and weight of an MRE but has the same number of calories. At this rate, the food pill may be on the menu soon. Under the far-reaching metabolic-dominance program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals for a pill that will allow soldiers to operate at peak performance during prolonged periods of starvation. Meanwhile, Natick is working on a transdermal nutrient patch that will enable soldiers to go without food for up to three days.

Although military grunts must eat what they are given, the general public seems to hate the idea of nonnatural food sources. For some reason, a bloody hunk of cow meat is more appetizing to most people than a shivering plate teeming with microbial life. Go figure. Nevertheless, many technological foods (including food pills) are either available or under development. For now, you can find the closest food pill equivalent at your local 7-Eleven—go out and buy a HOOAH! brand energy bar; the bars were developed by the Pentagon and have been shown to delay time to exhaustion by about 20 percent.