A huge paradigm shift occurring today is the “mobility as a service revolution”—MaaS, as it is so enthusiastically referenced in our acronym-rich society. 
But does serving the whims of an individual who needs to transit two blocks on an electric scooter outweigh the needs of a pedestrian who is toppled from their walk, with their face glued to their smartphone? Or is the revolution a way for the ride-share overlords to monetize your every movement, from block, to store, to vehicle choice—all in the name of convenience? Even ride-share bicycles now have “pedal assist”—while sweating is limited to CrossFit, Pilates, and working at a startup.
So, how did we evolve from bipedal to a quad-copter anyway? And why drive down the street to buy a box of tampons when a drone could just drop it in my pool (by accident)? The Americas are not new to the monetization of movement—we gave birth to the car culture. We are the print that is the big foot on the element carbon. Internal combustion engines may be going the way of the dinosaur, but their bones are still the coal that charges a battery pack.
In all the discussions on the latest app to have your burrata bowl delivered by a driverless car, what about investment in mass transit? Or the creation of bicycle lanes, the elimination of cars in city centers, and the acknowledgement that even electric is synonymous with carbon? That is, until we have a renewable grid. But to get to the heart of the matter we can explore some of the new high-tech modes of transportation that are emerging, including those I have had the opportunity to engineer and lead.
In the 1960s, science fiction visionaries imagined the transit of pods carrying people through tubes at tremendous speeds. A few decades later, in opposition to the California high-speed rail project, the hyperloop concept was born in tech companies of the greater Los Angeles area. A hyperloop has the potential to revolutionize ground travel through speed coupled with optimized energy efficiency. This modern mode of movement is a magnetically levitating mass transit vehicle, electrically propelled through a vacuum tube in excess of commercial airliner speeds. With a capacity like that of rail (20,000 passengers per hour), but at ten times the speed of a car on a freeway, operating off solar panels along its length, it is the holy grail of ground-based transit. Once a government amasses the funds and courage to implement a hyperloop, we can enable a future that connects Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 30 minutes, city center to city center.
Next on the docket and ready for takeoff is electric aviation. As a pilot and aviation entrepreneur, I can personally attest to recent progress toward lowering the carbon footprint of fixed-wing aircraft. Energy efficiency reduces operational costs and is critical to limit CO2 production and combat climate change. However, stored energy technologies such as batteries do not have sufficient energy density to achieve the transit range needed for regional, let alone cross-country, flights. Fuel cells, although possessing a promising energy density, do not yet have the technology readiness level (TRL) to reliably support commercial aviation. Therefore, there has been little progress or investment in fully electric aviation since Future Shock was first published.
However, a new movement is afoot—Urban Air Mobility, or UAM. Congestion in cities around the world has reached such levels that on average people spend 90 hours per year in traffic. That time expense, not to mention the fuel needs and carbon dioxide output of cars, makes automobile use increasingly unappealing. UAM looks to shift urban mobility to the three-dimensions of airspace by creating low-altitude highways in the sky, and eventually to rely on vehicle autonomy and AI for traffic management, collision avoidance, and optimization. The short range of urban-suburban transport, typically 10-50 km one way, inherently lends itself to the first viable use-case for fully electric aviation. The need to deposit cargo—people—in urban centers also necessitates Vertical-Takeoff-Landing capability (VTOL), versus a traditional runway.
In 2019 there are over 200 companies developing new vehicle technologies ranging from flying saucer-like quad-copters (Bell NEXUS) to the tilt-wing MOBi-One at my company, Airspace Experience Technologies. In the next decade the UAM space will kick-start the electric aviation industry, first with batteries for short-range missions, to be followed by hydrogen fuel cells for regional flights. With updates to air traffic control using V2X, and new technologies to ensure noise abatement, a future of low-altitude air travel is on the horizon in the next decade. By 2030 it is more likely than not that your Yellow Cab will have a 12 meter wingspan and a bird’s-eye view.
This brings us to the final frontier—technologies that will enable travel into space, starting in low- Earth orbit, and then on to the Moon and Mars. In the past decade we have seen the birth, first steps, and graduation of Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX—all private investor-led aerospace companies. Their goal is to enable access to space, dare I say, that is affordable to the everyday millionaire. This is a two order of magnitude reduction in cost versus the only available space tourism option at Roscosmos. The space race is now under the control of wealthy billionaires, bent on redefining the space program in their image. Perhaps this a sign of a crumbling US-funded space program, or perhaps capitalism on rocket fuel. But, with each new launch we must consider the societal implications of suborbital flights, their carbon footprint, and Amazon Prime deliveries to and from the Moon. Launch vehicle technology has not advanced much from the Apollo era. Some of the newer entrants into the market, rather than using cryogens, instead are opting for lower energy content storable propellants, which are less expensive to plumb and service. At the end of the day, launch vehicle technology has one purpose—a controlled and vectored explosion to overcome the gravity well of our pale blue dot. By 2070 I estimate economies of scale and competition by natural selection will enable that all-expenses-paid vacation to the future site of ship-building yards at Utopia Planitia.
My trepidation around these developments, having worked as an engineer and entrepreneur in the aerospace/transportation sector for two decades now, stems from the potential for misuse. Could these privately funded technological high-speed wonders be hijacked to facilitate trans-Atlantic evening entertainment options for those with the financial means? Such an eventuality would destroy the gains of carbon footprint reduction intended by these mass transportation alternatives.
In the aftershock of the MaaS revolution, my hope is that people on their stationary bicycles, stair climbers, and electric scooters will dismount, and make the first-and-last-mile bipedal. My vision is that mass transit becomes a service to provide mobility for the masses, with convenience to planet Earth as the primary optimization of function for all such endeavors.
Dr. Anita Sengupta is an aerospace engineer, rocket scientist, and pilot. She worked for NASA for 16 years where she led the design of propulsion and landing systems for deep space, Mars, and Earth reentry. Next she was senior vice president of systems engineering at Virgin Hyperloop One. She is currently co-founder and chief product officer of Airspace Experience Technologies (ASX), an electric VTOL urban air mobility company. Dr. Sengupta received her MS and PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California, where she is also a Research Associate Professor of Astronautics.