Journalists, engineers, science-fiction authors, ethicists, car manufacturers, and, naturally, lawyers, had long anticipated this moment.
According to the opening line of the website's about page, New York City's annual World Maker Faire is "an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors".
He is the author of over a dozen books on engineering and design, including the forthcoming The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems.
U.K.-based engineer and science writer Charles Butcher has worked with organisations like the Royal Society, producing conference proceedings.
Engineers with science knowledge are preferred over science students with knowledge of engineering concepts, according to the survey.
"These are the next generations that will evolve into materials and systems, that we can't even imagine right now," said Mehmet Sarikaya, director of the Genetically Engineered Materials Science and Engineering Center at the University of Washington.
For over a century engineers and science fiction authors have dreamed of running trains through their own little chunk of outer space, by sending them through tubes from which all the air has been evacuated.
The same report also found that engineers and science majors are most heavily concentrated on the East and West Coasts, with the highest percentages in the District of Columbia, California, Washington and Maryland, and the lowest in Southern and Plains states.
According to PR Week, five winners were to be given a choice of five female students with whom to "spend their time in the air in a meaningful way": two engineers, a science student, a literature student and an education student.
Most sci-fi waves away the problem of the colossal distances between stars by appealing to magic, in the form of some kind of faster-than-light hyperdrive, hoping readers will forgive the nonsense in favour of enjoying a good story.But there are scientists, engineers and science-fiction writers out there who like a challenge.
