It's FULL THROTTLE
A new newsletter on the Transportation Transformation
It's a launch!
Hello all. Today I am starting a new newsletter on what I believe will be a decade or more of dramatic change. A change in how we get "from here to there." I'm calling it the Transportation Transformation.
You see it already.
-Elon Musk with his Tesla electric cars. A first starter indeed... but a tsunami of electric cars is coming from new and well-known carmakers.
-The race to build a better battery and a car that drives itself.
-You've seen the billionaires going to space. When are you going?
-The U.S. says it's going back to the moon. That guy I just mentioned, Musk, wants to go to Mars in his starship.
-The airlines try to get greener and faster. Is supersonic air travel coming back?
There is plenty to report and talk about. My goal here is not to give you the "news of the day" (A change for me after all those years at ABC News and elsewhere). I hope to bring some perspective and context to these rapid changes we are seeing.
A look behind the headlines and the press releases, like that splash of news from United Airlines. It says it is going to buy 15 supersonic jets. Sounds great, "the return of the supersonic age," but, a lot has to happen before a supersonic jet is okayed to fly (it has to be built first.. as you'll read in the story already published).
Also published-the trouble in the sky and at airports as we start to fly again. I take a look at how to roll out a 30% increase in power... for the space station.
As you can see, I think there is plenty here to learn. Some of you may have thought I disappeared from journalism. No, the curiosity is alive and well.
Discovery Channel Space Launch Live
I am working with the Discovery Channel on the return of space launches from American soil. The program is called Space Launch LIVE. We covered the first launch from U.S. soil in nearly a decade. It wasn't NASA, it was SpaceX. It's called the commercial crew program and we are going to see a lot more public-private partnerships. There were three Space Launch LIVE programs last year and it was just honored with a daytime Emmy!
Space was part of my beat as Senior Transportation Correspondent for ABC News based in Washington D.C. But so were all these other areas of transportation, which are going through radical change at Full Throttle.
I plan to publish twice a week and provide you with something you didn't know or a deeper understanding of what is underway.
This platform provides a lot of opportunity for conversation. Please comment. Please ask questions and suggest areas you'd like to know more about.
Think about it. The internal combustion engine car has been a part of human lives for more than 100 years. Major car makers say they will stop making them in a decade and a half. More than 100 years ago, a barnstormer might have flown to town and taken folks on a plane ride. Now, with enough cash, you can reach the edge of space and look down and see the curvature of earth.
Someday you will tell your car where to take you and you will work, talk to the kids, or watch a movie while the car's computer drives you down the road.
How can you not be excited about all of this? As you can tell, I am.
Please subscribe, share, and comment. If you have ever wondered about something specific about our transportation transformation feel free to pitch an idea for exploration.
In the coming months I will expand and bring even more content to Full Throttle.
Best...
DK