The Kat-apult
I have an idea. A really good idea. Better than a jet pack or a robotic pug. (I don’t actually have any use for a robotic pug but The Wedding Date is very anti-dog so a cuddly cyborg might be the best I can hope for if we ever move in together).
It came to me last night while I was on the phone with TWD. It’s been nearly a week since we last saw each other and even though a week may not seem like a very long time, it is when you’re cold and lonely and sleepy and stressed out. A week is forever then.
“Can’t you come over?” I whined, knowing full well that the 90 minutes drive was out of the question at such an hour.
“You come over here,” he replied. “My bed’s bigger and less squeaky.”
“But my bed is warm and I’m already in it!”
“Yes, well I’m already in mine too.”
“If only you had a jet pack,” I mused. “Then you could be here in a second!”
And that’s when it hit me. He didn’t need a jet pack, not when the rotation of the Earth already provides a means of instant transportation just waiting for some brilliant mind to come along and harness it!
Hence the Kat-apult.
I’ve never really believed in gravity. To me, there’s no such thing. Rather, there’s just nothing to hold things up, so of course they fall down. Buildings don’t fall down because they have walls and beams and things to hold them up, not because they’re built to overcome gravity.
So here’s my idea. Rather than flying anywhere, you just jump. Really high. Like high enough that you’re out of the atmosphere and therefore beyond the reach of the Earth’s rotation. In all actuality, you’d probably need some sort of high tech elevator to launch you into outer space but I see no need to get bogged down in details at this stage in game.
Anyway, once you’re out there, you just wait for the earth to rotate thereby bringing your destination of choice to you. When it arrives, you head straight down again and presto: you’re in India!
Or New Jersey.
The good thing about the Kat-apult is that it’s versatile. At least for east/west travel. I haven’t quite worked out the logistics for north/south but seeing as we’re talking about lines of longitude here, I’m sure I could hardness the magnetic pull of the North and South Poles somehow.
Any ideas?
Of course, you’re all sworn to secrecy at this point. Now that I’ve shared my brilliant idea, you have to promise not to share it with anyone else. At least not until I’ve patented it.
Fieldwork in Stilettos 
5 Responses to “The Kat-apult”
Hmmm, interesting concept! I have to think about this a bit more, but clearly shows that you are thinking “outside” the box.
This blog is timely since fearless Felix just parachuted from 123,000 miles high.
I’m not sure about Felix’s comments about getting blood in his eyes, which would have signaled death…so Kat you need to overcome the whole, “spin” problem he mentions before doing this. I don’t think I like this idea at all 😉 Jet pack seems safer, and I want one anyway, so we could a two for one deal
Hmmm, I used to have the same idea. If we could only rise above the planet while it kept spinning we could travel freely anywhere just by staying in the same place. I used to daydream about this as a child. Of course I thought about teleporting too, just rearranging all of our molecules temporarily, condensing them so they could fit into something like a pneumatique. Those are little pneumatic tubes that they use in Paris for express mail. A postal worker rolls a letter into one and it shoots across town in a matter of minutes. Only I thought of stepping into a post office on the east coast of the USA and stepping out moments later in a post office in a city overseas. Instant, painless travel exists only in the imagination! Too bad for those of us with lifelong wanderlust, or perhaps just the desire to get across town quickly at a late hour.
If you think about the guy that you dated that lived all the way across the state, I bet the 90-minutes to TWD wouldn’t seem so bad. 😉
Perhaps this form of transport will encourage a quickie mile high rather than the usual relationship based encounter…..?
PS. http://www.virgingalactic.com/