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Report from the Future December 26, 2077 Today's Top Story: Wildest Oats! Sydney Hobart 'Challenge 2077' The winner of the 138th annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is once again Wild Oats, with an elapsed time of 11 hours 4 minutes 51 seconds, wining both the line honors and on corrected time, and establishes yet another new course record. Wild Oats, 72nd in the Oats Lineage and built by Hamilton-Oatley Racing conglomerate specifically to do battle with Apha Romeo, bested their arch-rivals the Crighton-Oracle syndicate by nearly 7 hours. This will prove to be a highly controversial win, as many sailors insist that this isn't a real sailing boat at all but rather should be classified as a power boat. This isn't a new debate, it began decades ago when internal combustion engines were used to power the onboard systems during yacht races. Eventually engine powered systems to utilize the power and interaction of wind and water to propel sailboats became widely accepted, and modern sailing boat systems have seen an evolution in speed capabilities and of course, safety, that those early opponents could never have imagined. The development of Magnetic Force Sails* is considered by many to the breakthrough sailing technology of the century, allowing for infinite sail shaping on the fly by relieving the sail design programmers of the need to work within the constraints of physical materials. Others claim the real breakthrough was the development of clean portable unlimited power from the FUsion Contained Kernel power cell*, a nuclear generator the size of a beer can. These technologies combined lead to ever and ever faster sailing boats, but eventually the speeds became so high that crew injuries and deaths mandated something new. Crews had not been allowed on deck for some time because the energy fields generated by the forcesails, but rather strapped in below in front of computer consoles to manage the boat systems. So it was only a matter of time until crews were safely removed to the shore, to control their sailing craft remotely and safely. Released from the need to coddle crew, speeds began to increase at an enormous rate. Eventually speeds were only limited by the limitations of physically keeping a hull from breaking up on the water surface due to impact or cavitation corrosion. The newest Wild Oats, another new boat designed by the firm of Semcon, Kerr, Farr, Roth, Cochran and Mesereau Yacht Design and Attorneys at Law., utilizes an recently developed technology for stability control called Magnetic Levitation*. Mag Lev isn't exactly new, but has only recently been developed for sailing boats. Maglev hulls ride above the water surface, with no friction at all, and use the Mag Lev field to resist the heeling caused by the ForceSails. This development has allowed for unlimited stability and more pure speed. This has been called by some the Fifth Mode of sailing although no one seems to know precisely why. Even though this technology has allowed a quantum leap forward, it has been the subject of much controversy that since this technology doesn't allow allow contact with the surface of the water, these craft are not technically boats. Scientists proved mathematically that the interaction of the water surface with the maglev field must be predicted and adjusted for on the fly by the programming, so the water is indeed still the surface medium of maglevforcesailboats*, and is also clearly legal under the biannually edited Progressive Yacht Racing Rules for 2077.5 to 2078. Naysayers argue that the 1.5 pages of the New Universal Simplified Yacht Racing Rules in Big Print, the 1,780 pages of Appeals Rulings, plus the 3.2 million lines of code that constitutes the Rules Appendices applying to Yacht Equipment Qualifying and Race Management are ambiguous and not entirely understood by anyone, and that even top experts disagree on interpretations. All of these arguments and debates may prove moot soon, as the future of yacht design is believed to be the development of pure computer simulations, proponents claim this to be the best possible of all worlds. No one would ever need to leave the comfort and security of their home or office, in fact you would never need to actually build a boat if you are clever enough to design a program to make your boat virtually perform as claimed. The best programmers say they can mathematically prove any performance claim without any need to prove it in an actual race, a practice commonly called MacGregoring or Franking, but are of course unable to comment with further details due to the 2058 Lord decision - the landmark court decision confirming that all new advances in yacht design are in fact already patented by Doug Lord Inc. This decision has lead to a reluctance within the sailing community to openly discuss any new sailing technology or design ideas. The SimRacing concept has sparked many hot debates - Should professional programmers be allowed to compete? Should the wealthy be allowed to staff their virtual offices with the best programmers in the world and buy a win in the America's Cup or the Volvo? Does the common sailor actually benefit by the technological development of computer equipment and programs for top level virtual simulations? Nevertheless it is believed by many that by the end of the decade all yacht racing will be computer simulations, thus ensuring that no one need ever put them themselves at risk by physically leaving their homes, and ending the senseless slaughter of sunfish hit by old style keelboats and the tragedy of injured whales or whales driven up on beaches disoriented by the massive electrical fields surrounding modern maglevforcesailboats. Progress indeed. *Retroactively patented technology by Doug Lord Inc. copyright 2077 by Channel 568 News A subsidiary of Nadeo, makers of Virtual Skipper 63 "Racing as real as you think it is." ____________________________________ Related stories: Cult followers of Ian Farrier and Randy Reynolds appeal to the World Sailing Federation to remove the 52 year old ban on multihull sailboats. Says a spokesperson "The safety of multis is no longer an issue since all sailboats are now unmanned..." (more) FUsion Contained Kernel creators under attack. It has been alleged that the FUsion Contained Kernel nuclear engine is unsafe and may explode. Designers refute the claim and state that the equations prove conclusively that explosion is impossible, and that none of the sudden disappearances of FUsion Contained Kernel equipped boats can be proven to be the result of any failure... (more) Other news: Today an old geezer in a tattered tee shirt bearing the logo of a scarlet letter A upon a circle, smashed a bottle of Gosling's Rum on the building housing the Virtual-CYCA Computer Center. When approached the man ran away, but witnesses claim him to be obviously intoxicated and loudly ranting on about how powered sailboats ruined yacht racing. No one a the VCYCA has any clue who he was or what he was talking about. This is not the first act of civil disobedience perpetrated by curious red logo wearing individuals... (more) 01/04/05 |