The Jetsons and the Future of Transportation

I spend too much time thinking about the future and probably not enough time in the present. Being born in the 60s, I grew up watching a Hanna Barbera cartoon called the Jetsons. What fascinated me about the show, even as a kid, was the future technology.

Remember that this show was written in 1962 to portray a modern family in 2062 (100 years after the show aired). Many of these inventions are here today:

Flat-screen TVs – commonplace in every home

Personal robots (Rosie) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEqHir0YFnU

Video calls – MS Teams / Zoom

Robotic vacuums – Roomba

Tablet computers – iPad

Smartwatches – Garmin / Samsung / Apple

Drones – buy them from amazon for under $100

Holograms

3d printed food - https://nypost.com/2021/02/09/behold-the-3d-printed-cruelty-free-ribeye-steak/

Jet packs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_pack

Pill cam - Capsule endoscopy  https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/capsule-endoscopy/about/pac-20393366

The one I want to focus on is George Jetson's car. What is the future of the automobile beyond what we have today? Is the design of the Jetson's car from the 1960s still a reality?

In the episode "Jetsons' Night Out," George runs out of fuel for his car, and as it falls through the sky, he notes that he's "out of fuel pellets." So when he finally crashes onto some sort of suspended byway, he pulls into a "self-service fuel station" where he asks for "two bucks' worth of high-octane pellets" and that the radium be checked.

In the episode "The Space Car," George instructs his wife, Jane, that a little button on the left activates "the horizontal power cluster," which makes me believe that Jetson's car uses multiple separate systems for generating vertical antigravity and horizontal propulsion. So, the Jetsons' car must be a hybrid of sorts.

A traffic cop pulls over George Jetson for doing 2500 in a 1250 zone. Considering they are on the way to trade in their "old heap," apparently 2500 mph is considered merely adequate performance in 2062. But it's crazy fast for today's standards, more than 300 mph faster than the speed record set by the legendary Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. And the SR-71 had two Pratt & Whitney jet engines making 32,500 pounds of thrust each; let's call it 160,000 hp. It's likely the Jetsons' "old heap" has only 200,000 hp on tap—not nearly enough. It makes the Tesla Model S Plaid look like the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. I wonder how many demerits one would get on their license/insurance doing 2500 in the 1250 zone?

Looking back 60 years, the animators and writers of the Jetsons show had an eye for what the future might hold. So if we were to write a new version of the Jetsons in 2022, what would the future look like in 2122?

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