Question of the Day - 01 April 2024

Obviously, if Liberty Media, parent company of Formula 1, has an ultimate goal and/or agenda for its wholesale move into Las Vegas, they're not exactly publicizing it. But given the ostensible 10-year deal with the authorities here and probable plans that go far beyond a decade, it's not unreasonable to believe that they do have a grand vision. 

So we put this question to a contact of ours who claims to be on the inside track, so to speak, of the "secret" plans of Liberty Media/Formula 1 to "take over" Las Vegas for its own ends. Whether those ends are benevolent or maleficent, we'll leave to you to determine.

Here's what our guy/gal told us, in his/her own words.

"Yes, Liberty Media has a grand vision, as you call it, for Las Vegas that extends way beyond the initial 10-year agreement. I don't have all the details -- indeed, they don't either -- and I couldn't divulge them all even if I did. But I can give you the broad strokes for how the company plans to 'take over' Las Vegas. 

"First and most locally, they want to run a lot of races here. Not all of them, of course, but perhaps four or five more a year. This city has the accessibility and infrastructure to attract and accommodate way more F1 fans, media, and money than anywhere else in the world. No one on the outside looking in can even imagine how much.

"To do this, they're working to gain complete control of the Strip year round. Ultimately, they want to shut it down to private vehicles.

"What do you think all the temporary traffic infrastructure was about last year? I'll tell you: how to move employees and guests in and out of the resort corridor with vehicle access completely closed off! That was just the first test, the initial dry run, of what's to come.

"To sell it and to showcase a new technology they're patenting, the plan is to install two generations of automated pedestrian walkways or travelators down the center median of the Strip. The first generation is called the 'Strop,' your common people mover. The Strop has one speed, slow, with a solid rubber base and old-time electric motors grinding it along. Its claim to fame will be that it extends for four miles, from Sahara Avenue at the north end of the Strip to Russell Road at the south. Las Vegas will become the Conveyor Belt Capital of the World. 

"When they ram through the plan to close the Strip, just like Fremont Street did, they'll go to the 2.0 version, the patented people mover called the 'Slidewalk.' This involves a new material, Gruvium, spread on top of a plasteel base, sliding between polarizing ports at either end. The Slidewalk has varying gradients of rigidity (which diminishes) and velocity (which increases) as you move from the slow lane on the edge to the fast lane in the center.

"It's quite brilliant. The transition between street and Slidewalk is barely perceptible. At the outer edge, the Gruvium is solid and snail-paced. Little old Boomers with walkers will hobble right on. Nearer the middle of the Slidewalk, with speeds around six miles an hour, the surface resembles slightly jiggly jello. And at the inner edge is the totally tremulloid surface, like standing on inch-thick moss — that’s rolling you along at fifteen miles an hour.

"Two silica-greased ceramic handrails, absolutely slick and frictionless, are posted between the northbound and southbound Slidewalks, to prevent a variety of nasty disasters and to provide a means for rider balance. But mostly, the youngsters are expected to ride the fast lane and they'll rarely use the handrail. This is, after all, Formula1!

"Now Liberty Media can do whatever it wants whenever it wants with its circuit.

"The second Big Idea is the transition from analog -- roaring racecars on a twisting racetrack -- to digital. Toward that end, they plan to turn this town into a type of Cyberopolis (the current working place name), the most wired place on the planet, running last-mile optical fiber from a main-branch cable to every house and hotel room in the valley. Once it connects to the global trunk cable, it's a simple matter of exporting Formula 1's broadcasts of live racing, its digital entertainment, and yes, its gambling platform all over the world.

"But not the usual casino games that bore the youngest generations to tears. Here, we're talking about virtual racing, skill-based games with real money. Big money. What's currently known as esports is downright primitive compared to the grand vision.

"Players can work themselves up a hierarchy of virtual racecars: stock, dragsters, Indies, F1 of course, even demolition clunkers. From there it's on to jet cars, 20-foot-long bullets that streak along the floors of simulated salt flats at 700 and 800 miles an hour. Some racers go underwater, strapping on nuclear-powered submarines. Others go into the air, in gravity-defying hovers, gliders, and helidrones, or ramjets, scramjets, suborbitals, even lunar rovers at half-gravity, and deep spacecraft at zero gravity.

"And speaking of scramjets, Liberty isn't unaware of the new airport planned for near Jean. In fact, they're working with the designers so that it can accommodate these supersonic aircraft. All I've heard about this is that the ramjets, scramjets, pilotless freighters, and suborbitals will arrive and depart right on top of one another in an intricately woven web of global flight paths and local landing patterns. Like once every ten seconds. And of course the transportation into -- and ultimately around -- the city will be the Hyperloop, traveling 120 miles an hour on a cushion of air in a cigar tube. Forget Musk's quaint little Tesla Loop. That whole thing is just a pretext for digging Hyperloop tunnels. 

"Anyway, back to the races. The most elite esports racers will almost always wind up duking it out in deep space, way out there where they conduct astromarathons in various classes of craft — DynoSoar, Eureca, Blue Streak, Millennium Cannonball, Hyperion — using mass-drive, rail-gun, and other electromagnetic accelerators and propulsion systems, as well as solar light sails, warp speeds, worm holes, even tachyon-conversion tech, all to be the first to reach, for example, McCall, a planet near the red-dwarf Barnard's star, six light years from Earth.

"Now that's gambling! 

"Anyway, you get the idea. They have other things in mind, such as the Potlatch, the world’s greatest flea market, and the Emporium, the world's greatest supermarket, and the Medzone, a mile-long stretch of medical tampering, where the global middle-class comes for all its plastic surgery, drug treatments, fertility therapy, genetic engineering, and, of course, sexual services. Essentially, the Medzone turns a major slice of the Strip into the huge hospitals that the hotel-casinos have always seemed destined to become. 

"But all those, and more, are follow-up topics for another time. Ask me again!

"Meanwhile, suffice it to say, everything you see having to do with the Las Vegas Grand Prix is just the foundation for the furthermost Liberty Media superstructure -- a feint, distraction, surface sleight of hand for the unrevealed depths of the Formula 1 Las Vegas fantasy."