by frog
Is this the air travel of the future? It looks surprisingly familiar… and may not be so suitable for Wellington! Hat-tip to BJ Chip for the link.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management | Society & Culture by frog on Wed, August 30th, 2006
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
PS I note with interest that there are no photos of the thing actually in the air yet!
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Is it just me or does that thing look both flimsy and flammable?
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Flimsy yes… probably not flammable. It is a scaled prototype of a rather larger implementation that might do us some good, but as Frog says, it isn’t exactly the best suited design for Wellington, where alarm permits would be a reasonable requirement for the installation of wind chimes.
It’ll fly. The problems they have to resolve are largely in the dynamic control area, not the structure. Once they’re sure of the size and dynamics required to keep it under control it has every chance of working. It will obtain some lift from the shape and the wings and as such is not truly LTA (lighter than air), but this gives it a bit more stability than the usual LTA and renders it more controllable in winds that a true LTA vehicle would find impossible.
Whatever its actual flight envelope will be, I wouldn’t expect to see them over Wellington. IMHO Wellington is best served by rapid rail to places with less wind, fog and rain where such things could operate, but that’s not an uncommon view around here.
respectfully
BJ
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Yep, flimsy and flammable.
A glorified rice paper lamp shade… which do give quite a pleasant light.
M
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Welcome to the future: Yes, all hail the “new” model of society/economics, self-interest driven individualism/cronyism; down with inefficient government interference, let the efficiency of freedom to $$$ light our way as we regress back to the future!
In a previous post i wondered, to myself, if John Key’s $100k funded tax paid moan about govt was along a similar line as:
“Is private, not public, less bureacratic cause less oversight makes corruption less regulated giving less hassle in the production of concentrated private profits due to less competition from other bureacrats, especially the odd one or two actually functioning for the wider public good? Uknow, the type of unsavoury characters who back in the day would have played a part in creating public housing.. ”
Sue B’s latest press release shows exactly the “self-reliance” that some see as the real purpose of govt i think, based on international trends..
“Furthermore, it is concerning that the Securities Commission was the body to conduct this investigation, as it is by no means neutral in the whole sorry affair.
In 1997, Credit Suisse First Boston Asian Merchant Partners purchased Feltex’s shares for $19.5 million, split these into 120 million shares, and floated them in the IPO at between $1.70 and $1.95 a share in 2004, walking away with a cool $200 million profit. The Securities Commission gave Credit Suisse First Boston nine exemptions under the Securities Act for information not included in the flawed IPO Prospectus.”
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Didn’t anyone see the recent episode of Dr Who where the Dr and Rose went to an alternative London and the sky was filled with blimps? It was a Cyber-men revival.
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Dunno about air travel, but the “roadless trucking” model looks good to me. If energy costs and speeds are comparable to road trucks, then the infrastructure savings would be huge. Get the big-arse rigs off the roads and into the air, and road maintenance costs just about disappear.
For air travel? Well, considering that normal planes will soon be for the rich only, maybe… but how long would Ak/Sydney take, at something like the speed of a bus ? I suspect it would be like the long-distance ferries in Greece or Japan, as a travel experience.
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It will (if if follows the work I did back in my own vehicle dynamics classes) get up to about 200 KPH. Not that long to Sydney, and I follow your analogy of the long distance ferries. Similar perhaps, but longer distances.
respectfully
BJ
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