There are no windows, it's not going to be a natural experience traveling inside the vacuum tube. Not that jet travel or flying is a natural experience but our ability to look outside helps us "ground" ourselves. It's going to be more like submarine travel. You may not even know if you've stopped moving. Oh, and why would you think this is going to be any less wretched than flying? A bit off topic, I know.

Been there, done that, about 20 years ago. The issue is the killer app. PC's had spreadsheets. What's google glasses killer app? A lot of comments here betray a lack of understanding of displays. The FOV (FOV is proportional to resolution therefore data density) is small and its a see through display. I have yet to see a "I gotta have it". All the above has been addressed, years ago. Never took. There is just not a "gotta have it". What is a google glass going to let you do, what you can't do now? Or do so much better you gotta have it? Mine was a military application. And even the Army dropped the idea. I did do a preliminary design for commodity pit traders. I've built 6 head mounted displays. Hey I love the technology. I wish there was a killer app.

Having said, that. My daughter as a science fair project did a computer model of ocean warming and it's effect on CO2 gases and therefore climate change. I have a profound appreciation for the science and it's really a complex and difficult model. So much is not known. For example, it's extremely sensitive to water temp, and water temp changes with depth and just think about the varying depths of water in our oceans. Now add in some under water volcanoes!

Glad to see an article talk about how hard it is to measure temperature to this degree of accuracy/resolution. And given much of the data is old, we can't even go back and calibrate the biases in the data. Years ago, I was visiting a major university. The campus was at the top of a large hill/small mountain, on the way down the HILL to the LAKE at the bottom of the hill going through the CITY I passed a weather gathering station in a PAVED parking lot. I said, hmmmmm.

My offspring's math text book comes in two flavors. The online version and the dead tree version. Last week it was a frantic search to find the dead tree version to turn it in, so we weren't charged. She accesses the online version that has extra features that can't be implemented in dead trees with her school provided chrome book. Which survived numerous drops. My other daughter in 11th grade, never visited her locker more than once during the school year. No need to. Point is, the change over to e-text books has started. Local school districts strapped for cash and parents worried about their kids suffering permanent back injuries from backpacks weighting 1/3 of their weight are driving change. A school district on the Gold Coast of Connecticut has for a number of years created their own math e-texts books, no dead tree version. The teachers create them and all editing and formatting is done off-shore in India. Or at least it was 3 or so years ago, the model may have changed. They may have already licensed out their IP. That would be the next logical step. By the way, school teachers are famously known for sharing their lesson plans, for free. The college text book racket and it may qualify for RICO status, collapsing before my girls get to college. The minor revisions in text and problems that render an expensive text book worthless on the used market is nothing short of theft. Profs having us proof their draft versions of their opus magus is theft of labor and services. No I'm not bitter. But I'm enjoying watching the system collapse and enjoying greatly watching Universities choke on the bile they created.

I've been following Walmart before it was cool to follow Walmart. They did big data before it was called big data. I used to know a retired VP of Walmart. My favorite Walmart story, is they discovered that sales of Twinkies and Beer went through the roof when an area was threaten by a Hurricane, down south. Seems the Southerns can survive anything if they have an adequate supply of Twinkies and Beer. If you think about it, entirely logical. Beer for if the water supply is compromised. And Twinkies never go bad. Just the combination is yuk. I'd go more with Slim Jims myself. Is the Walmart model finished? I don't think so, I've traveled to some pretty rural areas and in many places, you shop Walmart or you don't shop at all. This is an interesting story about Vlasic Pickles and Walmart. Do business with Walmart at your peril. Ohbytheway, Sears invented that model. https://www.fastcompany.com/47...

As an EE with more than a little experience in electronics in the transportation industry (Aerospace), there is a lot more to a platform than electronics. The hardware reliability is paramount and it takes years to learn what you need to know to extend the life of a car from 5 years to 10 and 15 years. I can't see the electronics platform content providers the poster is talking about acquiring that knowledge and learning how to do the processes needed to attain that level of reliability for decades, because that's what it took for those in that manufacturing space who primarly mission in business was to do so. The logo the poster is talking about are relatively hardware poor compared to those who make powered wheels. Windows took over because it made people more efficient by putting the power to make individual choices in their hands and providing a killer app, namely visicalc. (Which is why google glass died, it never had the killer app you couldn't live without). The primary mission of cars is to transport people and stuff over a distance .... and to provide young males with an image. So tell me how a content provider logo on the side of my mini van loaded with 6 Cheerleaders is going to let me do something I couldn't do before that I can't live without. Given each of those girls are texting each other in the car and out of the car and posting selfies to social media as I am driving down the road?

So 4 guys are going to carry this 400 pound shelter using d-links for handles? After about 4 or 5 shelters using small d-links, I am getting rather tired. Only 16 per flat bed? I'm still thinking tents are cheaper, and can deploy more rapidly. 100's per flat bed, lighter weight and cheaper. Listen you really want to deploy 1,000's of shelters to an area? Hire Walmart to handle it, they have the supply chain. Oh, so it comes with sensors and software to monitor when I'm in and not in? Sounds like mandatory lights out tracking.

The brain can only handle split imagery for 10 - 20 minutes then it starts to flip between eyes uncontrollably. The AH pilots handle this by turning the brightness up to the point where the non-hmd (Helmet Mounted Display) eye shuts down (pupil gets small). Of course they get wicked ass headaches. BUT if you go stereo then there a image alignment issues, the eye does not handle non-alignment images well, which would make the eyeglass mounting/holder not stiff enough or stable enough to mount a stereo display......ah all the issues come rushing back.......some day I should tell you about the display we designed for pit traders.... When I worked on the Space Suit HMD and the Army Helmet Mounted (Helmid) fighting the Sun was near impossible, causing us to raise the non-transmissiveness of the reflector (combiner) plate to 80 and 90% opaque. Making it rather difficult to see thought and causing me to use a non-see through combiner for the Army. There are a host of issues, all of them well studied, which is why although this tech is like 15 years old, (I know I built this type of device before) I doubt it will go anywhere, all the advanges and apps I heard years ago. But still some of the most fasinating stuff I ever worked.

I can think of a whole host of problems this device will have, starting with it is see through device and therefore is competing with greatest power source in the solar system, the sun. Also, this device is interfacing with a set of genes that evolved millions of years ago on the plains of Africa. And it's a mono display, the brain does not handle mono well, just ask the Ah-64 pilots. These guys need to talk to some Army Aviation folks, at Mother Rucker. Been there done this, like about 15 years ago......

Oh I had forgotten that. Oh the tech skill of past decades. My oldest child almost died laughing when I told her about cassette storage, no seriously, audio cassette. Or my dual 8" DSDD's, man was I hot shit. Got to go, my twitter feed on my smart phone is calling.......

During her recent Senate run at the GOP Convention, Linda McMahon asked what it would take to get my vote? I replied, "keep the WWF off the SciFi channel". She laughed and said, she didn't work there anymore. So I voted for Rob Simmons.

Yes, love it to. But there is another aspect to this. The government takes our money and gives it back to us if we are good little boys and girls. This is our money taken from us at literally the threat of gunpoint (don't pay your taxes, we will send men with guns to take your house or car or your person) then "given" back to us if we comply. If we scale back our government such that they consume less of us and our labors we could rein them in.