It's 2010 — Finally My Jet Pack is Here!

Good point. The parachute is pretty worthless, too.

Provided that you’re actually high enough to use it (the parachute, not the jetpack itself), there is likely a requirement that your first detach yourself from the 252 anchor strapped to your back.

No thanks. Someone else can have my turn.

Of course, the enviros (and elitist control freaks) would raise unholy hell if the individual had this kind of cheap power at their disposal.

Actually, the enviros and associated whackjobs are the least of your worries. Let's say that tomorrow, Joe Bob Tinkerer comes up with, and can demonstrate to anyone, a device similar to a 'Mr. Fusion', or a zero point energy device (ZPM) that only costs a couple of hundred dollars to make.

Great! We can get rid of a lot of things like those ugly power lines to provide power to our homes. We can also have a car that will essentially run until its wheels fall off. Similarly, you could have airplanes that could fly all the way around the world without refueling. Sounds cool eh? Well, given our tech today, you could also have something that's not so cool. How about a small drone aircraft loaded with explosives (or nukes) that, thanks to GPS, can fly from Iran to DC, at a height of just a few meters above the surface. Radar would most likely be useless in such a case because of ground clutter. No government is going to allow this particular senerio to come to pass if they can do anything about it. So, while a ZPM would be a world-changing device, (the full implications of compact, free power are truely mind-blowing), it ain't gonna happen until islam is relegated to something that only academics will have any idea about.

I've given some thought to what such a device would make possible, and can tell you beyond a doubt, that it would change the world more than what we saw in the 20th century.

Yes, something like that would be a huge paradigm shift in our society, on the level of what “instant” transportation would also do.

However, let’s back up just a bit and say that Joe Bob Tinkerer discovered an energy source that wouldn’t be on the individual level, but could replace coal/NG/Nuclear power at our power plants.

I assert that the lefties would find some way to stop it,
because their goals are NOT to have us use energy, but quite
the opposite. They want us at about 1/10th of our current population,
shivering in the dark, and living and dying at their whims.

You and I are in absolute agreement about that. There is such a thing as "evil", and the policies of the left (and some on the right) fit that description to a T.

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