Re: 3rd Season Enterprise - Carpenter Street - 5 star poll - SPOILERS AHOY!

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Vader) writes:
>Brian Thorn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>Archer is over 100 years before Kirk (who couldn't drive well in "A
>>Piece of the Action") so maybe cars (electric, hydrogen or
>>however-powered) are still a common mode of surface travel in Archer's
>>time? 

>Er, no, that was made quite clear. Enterprise-era trek is 100 years at
>least after the end of the internal combustion engine (2061).

...Although that 2061 date could be in reference to just about anything,
as the sentence is cut short. Perhaps 2061 was the year when fossil fuels
began to be used in far greater amounts than before, thereby hastening
their end?

>pick a random person off the street, and put them in front of a steam
>engine. Are you telling me they're going to know how which valves to turn
>and how to properly notch up the Johnson bar? I don't think so. *

But an early 20th century combustion car is far simpler to control
than a steam locomotive. And a late 20th century automatic gear car again
worlds simpler than its beginning-of-century four-pedal, two-stick 
forebear. It might be trivially easy for the average taxpayer from the
22nd century to drive an early 21st century car, training or no training. 
Not so much because it takes no skill - but because the steering interfaces 
have already been so simplified that all post-20th century ground vehicles 
use those same interfaces even if they run on Mr Fusion and fly. Archer 
could plausibly have piloted a vehicle with identical controls back home 
in the early to mid-22nd century.

Timo Saloniemi