Transporters
Dec. 9th, 2002 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThis question stolen from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
browngirl (who got it from someone else):
Let's say I had access to a Star-Trek-style transporter. Limited range; can't use it for interplanetary travel. Can move me and anything I can carry, eg change of clothes. Each time I got zapped to a new location, it'd cost me twenty bucks. What would I do with it?
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the following. My first reaction was: halachically, could I travel east immediately after Shabbat? :-) In other words, if it's not Shabbat any more where I am, but it will be where I'm going, is it permissible to use the transporter?
That question aside, I would use this device to visit the friends it's impractical for me to visit now. An evening with Lee and Barry in LA, or with Harold and Becky in DC? Sure, no problem. Pop in to Boston to visit folks there? Yup. Convention in Europe? No problem. Pop out some evening to, oh, Australia to watch sunrises over the Pacific? Sounds nifty. If the space station is in range, I'd love to go there and get a different perspective on our planet. And, yeah, Simchat Torah in Israel, at least once.
Sight-seeing -- in small, managable doses -- would probably be pretty high on the list. Such a device would also fundamentally change the nature of tourism in one way: when there's breaking news of something interesting happening in a distant place, there would suddenly be lots of people popping in to see for themselves. This would probably not be good overall; while some of us would go to see the perfect eclipse or a shuttle launch or whatever, lots of folks would go to gawk at disasters. Not my idea of entertainment. (Of course, the technology could also be used to deliver immediate aid.)
browngirl (who got it from someone else): Let's say I had access to a Star-Trek-style transporter. Limited range; can't use it for interplanetary travel. Can move me and anything I can carry, eg change of clothes. Each time I got zapped to a new location, it'd cost me twenty bucks. What would I do with it?
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the following. My first reaction was: halachically, could I travel east immediately after Shabbat? :-) In other words, if it's not Shabbat any more where I am, but it will be where I'm going, is it permissible to use the transporter?
That question aside, I would use this device to visit the friends it's impractical for me to visit now. An evening with Lee and Barry in LA, or with Harold and Becky in DC? Sure, no problem. Pop in to Boston to visit folks there? Yup. Convention in Europe? No problem. Pop out some evening to, oh, Australia to watch sunrises over the Pacific? Sounds nifty. If the space station is in range, I'd love to go there and get a different perspective on our planet. And, yeah, Simchat Torah in Israel, at least once.
Sight-seeing -- in small, managable doses -- would probably be pretty high on the list. Such a device would also fundamentally change the nature of tourism in one way: when there's breaking news of something interesting happening in a distant place, there would suddenly be lots of people popping in to see for themselves. This would probably not be good overall; while some of us would go to see the perfect eclipse or a shuttle launch or whatever, lots of folks would go to gawk at disasters. Not my idea of entertainment. (Of course, the technology could also be used to deliver immediate aid.)
Re: Travel and Shabbat (slightly off-topic)
Date: 2002-12-10 01:32 pm (UTC)Re: Travel and Shabbat (slightly off-topic)
Date: 2002-12-11 04:24 am (UTC)Ah. I was assuming we were talking about places somewhere around our latitude.
There's probably an ideal latitude for this trick; if you go too far North then you run into the problems with midnight sun / no sun.