Not least being the military implications. If you have widely available tech that lets you quickly and cheaply accelerate something car-sized to a velocity of Mach Fuck (they’re meant to circle the earth in 4.2 hours, making them 2 or 3 times faster than a rifle bullet), that’s certainly a dual use technology.
Well, the cars are controlled by a centralized system with extremely good security, and the existence of the cars falls almost entirely withing an extended period of global peace and extremely low levels of violence. And when war breaks out in the fourth book they’re taken off the board right at the start, more or less.
(The cars run on embedded fusion engines, so their potential as kinetic weapons is the least dangerous thing about them).
Not least being the military implications. If you have widely available tech that lets you quickly and cheaply accelerate something car-sized to a velocity of Mach Fuck (they’re meant to circle the earth in 4.2 hours, making them 2 or 3 times faster than a rifle bullet), that’s certainly a dual use technology.
Well, the cars are controlled by a centralized system with extremely good security, and the existence of the cars falls almost entirely withing an extended period of global peace and extremely low levels of violence. And when war breaks out in the fourth book they’re taken off the board right at the start, more or less.
(The cars run on embedded fusion engines, so their potential as kinetic weapons is the least dangerous thing about them).