6 Shockingly Affordable Sci-Fi Inventions
As we here at Cracked are fond of pointing out, technological advancements are causing real life and science fiction to overlap in increasingly interesting ways. Still, most of the really cool gear must cost a fortune and a half ... right?
Actually, no. A lot of this stuff that not too long ago was only available in your daydreams is actually well within an average person's budget. And if it's outside of yours, who would ever deny you a loan once they hear you're going to use it for ...
#6. A Zero-Gravity Flight
Price: $4,950
Seriously, gravity is the worst. There's a reason why when we design a superhero, the first thing we do is give him the ability to fly, or at least glide, like Batman does. If you had a switch in your house that would let you turn off the gravity and just drift around, we're guessing you'd never turn it back on.
"It's great until you try to masturbate. Then it's fucking incredible."
But only a fraction of humans in the history of the species have ever experienced weightlessness, considering it requires you to go to freaking outer space, and that you need a lifetime of astronaut training to achieve it. Or, you can do it right here on Earth, for less than the price of a 65-inch LED TV.
You might have heard that when NASA astronauts are training for zero-G conditions, they go up in one of NASA's wonderfully nicknamed "vomit comets." They are special fixed-wing aircraft that are able to induce a state of temporary weightlessness by flying in a series of tight parabolic arcs (basically, going up and down and up again really quickly). This gives the passengers approximately 25 seconds of total weightlessness at a time.
"You'll want to use a hustler on the way up."
Well, you don't have to work for NASA to experience that. There is a private company called Zero G Corporation, and they have their very own vomit comet in the form of a customized Boeing 727-200. They call it the goddamn G-FORCE ONE, and holy shit yes you can ride it.
Zero Gravity Corporation
You can even get married on it.
For less than $5,000, you get a short training session, a flight with a total of eight minutes of weightlessness, a signed copy of the space tourists handbook ... and a hat. The hat is important.
The actual weightlessness part is just moments of your life, and the whole experience is but a day. But the hat will remain. You can wear it as a trophy every day of your life, secure in the knowledge that for an eight-minute period, you fought physics and freaking won.
Ladies, this could be you!
#5. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Price: $19,995
Predator drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles are seeing action in Iraq and Afghanistan, piloted from the ground in a comfy chair in a manner that a bystander could mistake for a guy playing a video game. For most people, buying a Predator drone to survey the skies and vanquish their enemies seems like overkill. Those people clearly aren't fans of Cracked, and as such are dead wrong.
"We were using one of the screens to play WoW, but the general got real pissed."
It's true -- for less than the price of a decent car, you, too, can have what is essentially a military grade UAV scanner. For the connoisseur who prefers scouting your enemy at his own base, an extra investment of just a few hundred dollars will buy the long distance airplane version. The company doesn't specifically mention where you can fit the minigun and homing missiles, so we'll just assume they're open for negotiation.
Draganfly Innovations
You could probably fit a flamethrower right where that camera's sitting.
What they do mention is that both versions of the UAV can be equipped with an HD-quality camera capable of both hi-res pictures and video footage. Hell, for a little extra, you can attach a thermal imaging option. So basically this gives you the opportunity to roam the real world like a video game, using the UAV as your character, and take screencaps from the best bits of its rampage. Or, if you're not a violent person, you can enjoy the sensation of flight without the risk of crashing.
Also, imagine the look on that census guy's face when a large helicopter robot rises from your backyard to chase him back to his car. See those Jehovah's Witnesses break the world record for the 100-meter dash-the-fuck-away. Or, hell, just paint "SKYNET" on the thing's side and unleash it in a movie theater during a Terminator matinee.
Draganfly Innovations
We're one smartphone app away from the greatest breakthrough in stalking history.
Really, the only drawback we can imagine for this product is that you're more likely to be attacked by bounty hunter types in futuristic armor who mistake you for their final boss. Which, with a goddamn UAV at your disposal, you totally can be.
#4. A Matter Replicator
Price: $1,299
As we've discussed before, the day that we come up with matter replicators is the day that the global economy shuts down. Not only has humanity gotten one step closer to that, but also it has chosen to do so in the exact way you imagined when you were 8 years old. Meet the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic:
MakerBot Store
Name courtesy of Bill Watterson.
Wait, what the hell? No way can that be a real product. That looks like an unfinished set piece for a Futurama live-action movie, for crying out loud!
But real it is, and work it does. Granted, it's not quite at the level where it can crank out, say, edible hamburgers or flawless diamond rings like you see in Star Trek and whatnot, but it is a huge step in that direction, and cheaper than a new sofa. It is what they call a 3-D printer -- it literally "prints" actual physical objects.
bre pettis
At this point, we're about five product generations away from the end of the economy.
All you have to do is design a 3-D model using a program provided with the machine and send the data over to your MakerBot, then it brings your model to life. It uses something called Makerbot Plastic, with the machine putting layer upon layer of the stuff together until the desired item is produced. And you can manufacture whatever shapes you want -- be it boobs, a new part for your ceiling fan, boobs, a scale replica of the Enterprise or even boobs. If you're feeling lazy, you can just download one of the designs that are user-uploaded to their website and bring it to life.
Getty
Boobs are also an option, in case you were unaware.
Designers of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic boast that the machine is completely automated, reliable and very easy to use. And better yet, this isn't one of those situations where you pre-order the thing and just hope like hell that the project takes off and they actually start making them -- you can buy your own 3-D printer right now.
Achieving zero-gravity is not that difficult - surviving it is. Don't believe me? Jump off a high building in a big closed cage.
ReplyNo need for the cage, retard.
Those high buildings in closed cages are bloody deathtraps.
#6 just fly any economy air line on a cloudy day
ReplyInteresting. It is actually illegal to have in ur posession a moon rock. There are only like 9 thru the us and the only private one is the one nixon gave an oil tycoon long ago. Try to sell one on ebay and i guarantee the fbi will end up at your door
ReplyYou can have my moon rock when you pry it out of my cold, dead rectum.
Also number 2 is the best thing ever. The only thing I want more than a HUD in real life is a girl friend, and I -BARELY- want one more.
ReplyI lol'd hard at number 3. A universal translator is not, and never can be, possible. You cannot grab the sound of someone's voice out of the air and change it to match what you want to hear. Now, if it just records what they say, figures out the language, and shows it up as text on the screen of the device, then it is perfectly possible.
ReplyThat translator actually says the words out loud, but still it needs to know the language just like you said. At other stuff you are spot on. Universal translator would translate somekind of martian language wich has never been heard on earth.
Two words.
Babel fish.
#4 So how does this avoid breaking one of the most fundamental laws of the universe?
ReplyYou are supposed to buy plastic for it, if you mean that.
Alternate title: "6 Reasons I Need a Bunch of Money, Like, RIGHT NOW".
ReplySo if if anyone who reads cracked ever wins the lottery... we're fucked 97 ways from Sunday.
Im building an anti dong carving device right now
That's quite a rich average person you have there...
ReplyWell I'm guessing they're suggesting buying one of these things in place of one of the more common big ticket items people buy these days, like motorcycles, extra cars, entertainment systems and the like. It's well within a middle-class budget, assuming you drop something else extra in place of it. Basically, if you're in a household that can afford a new motorcycle or a second vehicle, you could theoretically afford one of these instead (but not both mostly likely).
From what I can gather from the comments... boobs, you guys.
ReplyDamn an affordable prototype machine and a 3d program would be so frikking useful in my architecture class. No cutting the tip of my finger (True!) to make a model
Replymonkey spunk
ReplyAgreed, my good sir.
Rapid prototypers don't put out a nice, clean, usable version of things like you'd expect a replicator to do. That's why it's a "prototyper." It saves a designer from having to carve something out of clay or wood or something. But say you printed out a cup, you wouldn't be able to use it. The material is porous; you'd end up with your drink gradually "sweating" out of the cup.
ReplyWhat about a dong customized to the exact specifications desired by my anus? would that be usable?
The UAV can be bought at Brookstone for about 300 and its controlled buy ur ipad/iphone/ipod, its not as fancy or probably wont travel as far but its a cheaper alternative
ReplyUAV is just a glorified remote controlled aircraft.
ReplyThat's the point
Rapid prototype machines are nothing new. The Makerbot Thing-O-Matic is just the most affordable one so far..... which is also why its the shitiest
Replythough it does have the name most fitting to sci-fi parody status.
AR sucks. What you neglected to mention is how it actually works in that you have to spin that stupid marker card around, or move around it yourself. Also graphically it looks like an N64 game.
ReplyHeaven forbid you must put effort into creating this 3-D image out of 2-D schematics. It's a Hell of a lot easier than building it in AutoCAD one piece at a time.
I don't know if you watched the training videos on that universal translator SQUID website, but they were marketed to law enforcement and military, being pretty heavy in the racial profiling... The military bit was pretty interesting. Use SQUID to search people's cars at a military checkpoint rather than teach your soldiers how to speak the language of the region you've been occupying for 8 years! Use the SQUID to pull over suspicious Latinos and keep a threat from 'elevating'! Disgusting.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesHow does everything circle back to racism? Take a step back and look at yourself and you might see who the real racist is. It take time and lots of money to teach the thousands of soldiers in the field the local language. Its not racism, its working smarter and cheaper, not harder and more expensive. I also doubt that police use these, at least not to specifically harass Latinos.
@Joach LOL I'm not sure where you're from but I live in LA and yes the police to pretty specifically pull over Latinos...all the time.
Yeah, but that is incidental to the translator. It's not like the translator makes cops pull Hispanic people over, but it may allow them to speak with a non-English speaker in an emergency.
Why would a soldier, who is going to Iraq or Afghanistan for just a year, need to know the language? It's not like he's staying there for the rest of his life, and a soldier's job isn't exactly cultural integration/homogenization.
@LeSprack at the rate people needlessly die over there, a term of service may very well be "the rest of his life". Or at least the "rest of his life without a disability".
Well to be fair you can't expect a soldier to spend 5 years to learn a language that they're only going to need durin a war that's only gonna last for.. ten.. years... FUCK!
And you can always tell the Latino because he's the one who doesn't know how to spell "do".
Number 2 gives me hope that we may someday have an actual Added Reality Interface... Maybe minus the crippling side-effects and evidence database.
ReplyI can go to my local LOVE shop and get silicone " boobs & a bra " for less than that. Knowledge is fondle power. You can get a silicone " Box " too. Very life like... and never says SYNTAX ERROR.
ReplyThat's... very sad..
How are people still getting shocked by 3D printers? They've been around for almost 30 years now. All they do is make a copy of a 3D object by building it up one layer at a time, it's not even that difficult.
ReplyRP machines are hardly some crazy new sci fi tech. Right now they just make the entire object out of 1 material (some metal or plastic depending on the machine). They will only start being impressive when they can mix different substances which is what people assume when they hear "3D printer". It's like the difference between making a clay model of a person and actually making a person.
Yes. But everyone knows them as CAMs.
It's because they're actually becoming affordable now.