Practical Thinking
The Roadster, the Rocket and the Tunnel
There is a particular kind of man in this country who buys a 4x4 with low-range gearing, locking differentials and a snorkel, a car built to cross the Rub' al Khali (الربع الخالي), and then drives it, exclusively, between his villa and the mall.
I know this man well. Some weekends, I am this man.
The snorkel has never seen a wadi (وادي) in flood. The diff locks have never been locked. And yet every time he joins Sheikh Zayed Road, he feels faintly prepared for the end of the world. Over-engineering, it turns out, is a form of comfort.
Which brings me to the Tesla Roadster with rockets on the boot. The one that was supposed to do nought to a hundred in under a second, with more than four Gs of acceleration, and would, in my careful scientific estimate, pop my eyes through my behind!
Most of the public looked at Elon's magic show and thought: why? Fair question. On Earth roads it is a terrible idea. Congestion, traffic, fumes, and drivers who move from A to B like an infested fungus. The roads are not designed for a thruster car. Push harder and you do not go faster. You crash.
Bear with me. I am an idiot who needed it explained, and I suspect Tesla was short of geniuses who could do the explaining.
So let me have a go. If I may, here is my rule: nobody ever invented anything useful by trying to be sensible. The sensible man buys a Camry. The mad one tries to get to Mars, and somewhere along the way he stumbles on things the sensible man ends up using every day without a second thought.
To push physics, you have to push yourself first. A thruster that would ruin the school run might be exactly what a spaceship needs on its way down to Mars, nudging itself sideways to find a better landing spot. The Roadster was never really about the school run. It was a spaceship part, wearing a car as a disguise.
Look at the map of Musk's companies and they start to resemble three brothers from one family. One drives: Tesla, on the surface of the Earth. One flies: SpaceX, beyond it. And one digs: The Boring Company, underneath it. Different jobs, same father, same dinner table, same idea: better transportation for humanity. And each one needs new physics to get there.
Which leaves the digging brother. Tunnels want clean energy, which means electricity. Pipe the whole route with cables and you have built yourself a maintenance job for life. But if the vehicle is autonomous, and it can use thruster-like speed with high efficiency, you get something closer to a bullet train for fewer people, with customised drops between cities. Abu Dhabi to Dubai without passing a single radar.
Welcome to the future: a thrust Roadster underground that shoots you from one city to another in less time than it takes to order a latte.
And our man with the snorkel? He'll take one look at the tunnel and ask the same question everyone asked about the Roadster: why?
Then he'll buy one. For the mall.
Practically speaking,Omran