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The Solar Powered Transnational Mega Train
A future way to share power in a monumental planet wide megastructure.
Sometimes, well quite often really, I think the world is just doing things wrong.
We continually seem to lack the ambition, drive, and most definitely the funding when it comes to the kind of megastructures and true once in a generation engineering that Thunderbirds or Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who portrayed as a technological future all those decades ago when computers, to me, where mere biro buttons on a piece of discarded cardboard.
Though I admire projects such as CrossRail, now the Elizabeth Line, and its incredible and wonderful futuristic efficiency, and the relief that we’ve finally embraced nuclear power and are building reactors once again — everything just takes so much time due to planning, funding, and at the end of the day, construction.
What I wanted from the future is a world of plenty, a post-scarcity society, hoverboards, flying cars¹, fusion power, space travel², maybe even warp drive and time travel too (issues around temporal paradoxes aside).
However, what I got was the curse of late stage capitalism, endless taxes, education being turned from something that once was free and accessible for all twisted into a paid and fully monetised commodity, and large infrastructure projects…
