(10-24-2016, 05:25 AM)QwertyYerty Wrote: What do think about the entries themselves?
Some of them seem overly optimistic or don't seem to have a clear connection to real world developments. Others are explicitly already under development or scheduled in the real world.
In the case of the former, it's not clear what the basis is for the technology in question. For example:
[b]Antimatter power plants are widespread
A century after the global deployment of fusion, new forms of power production are becoming necessary in order to cope with the ongoing rise in energy demands on Earth and elsewhere. A new generation of power plants is becoming available, capable of harnessing the energy released in matter/antimatter collisions. The reactions involved are 1,000 times more powerful than fission produced in nuclear power plants and 300 times more powerful than nuclear fusion energy.*
[/b]
In point of fact, antimatter makes no sense as a power source outside of very specific applications due to the enormous amount of energy that must be consumed just to create it. Far more energy goes into creating amat than you ever get out of it. But if you need a very compact energy source and total matter to energy conversion (think spacecraft or undersea bases or the like), its a useful tool. But if you have the energy to make amat in industrial quantities for planetary energy production - why not use that energy to power the planet directly?
On a different note: The hyperloop concept long predates Elon Musk. I have a book by Gerard K. O'Neil (father of the O'Neil space colony idea) that he wrote in 1981 about what life might be like in 2081. It describes magnetic levitation based subways running in evacuated tunnels at high speed to get around the planet. And IIRC the idea may even predate him.
This is not a slam of either the timeline or of Musk. Musk is promoting the idea of actually making these systems real (and someone has to) and the timeline page is making use of the idea.
My 2c worth,
Todd
EDIT: Note that I'm not saying that there are no good entries on the timeline. I'm sure there are quite a few. But some of the more...advanced...technologies proposed don't seem to have a firm basis in known science or suffer from some practicality questions.