New Mars Forums
You are not logged in.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Announcement
#1 2005-04-26 12:39:10
- Palomar
- Member
- From: USA
- Registered: 2002-05-30
- Posts: 9,734
Re: Automats on Mars - aka "Push Nickels"
*Okay, so I'm being a bit fanciful. Have seen these in a few "period" films, etc.:
http://www.mcny.org/Exhibitions/automat … t.htm]Horn & Hardart's Automat
Was reminded of this again in an article in a favorite magazine of mine, Reminisce. One elderly lady recalled eating at the H & H Automat as a child, which she and her family called "Push Nickels" instead.
Anyway, would be cool to have a set-up like this on Mars...or anywhere. The article in the magazine said the last of the automats closed in 1991. Dang, I could have visited it! 
Dicktice, if you read this, did you ever eat at an automat?
--Cindy
p.s. -- guess I'd better mention this would be cool as a cafeteria setup; I'm not interested in setting up corporations on Mars.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
Offline
Like button can go here
#2 2005-04-26 22:04:19
- srmeaney
- Member
- From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810
- Registered: 2005-03-18
- Posts: 976
Re: Automats on Mars - aka "Push Nickels"
AKA Dark City...Automat scene.
Offline
Like button can go here
#3 2005-04-27 08:44:28
- SpaceNut
- Administrator
- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
- Posts: 29,459
Re: Automats on Mars - aka "Push Nickels"
As a kid growing up, there were films shown to us of the future and how meals would be available at the touch of a button. Nowadays these are the frozen TV dinner and the food vending machines amoung others. With all sorts or varieties of fine foods to partake of.
Offline
Like button can go here
#4 2005-04-27 08:59:47
- Cobra Commander
- Member
- From: The outskirts of Detroit.
- Registered: 2002-04-09
- Posts: 3,039
Re: Automats on Mars - aka "Push Nickels"
I wouldn't mind seeing fast-food places start going this way. They already make everything beforehand, it already sits for an undetermined length of time under heat lamps, why not do so in a cabinet that the customer can remove it from themselves, thereby skipping the vacant-stared epsilon giving you the wrong stuff step?
Between that and those automated checkout lanes (which would be much better if they didn't talk) a person could probably go for weeks at a time without speaking to a single real human being face to face. 
For Mars I could see it working, lots of pre-made foodstuffs on little shelves in communal space. A cafeteria without staff, except for the poor shlub that keeps the shelves stocked. A chow line without surly cooks.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Offline
Like button can go here