Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Yes, yes, it's very safe, statistically. That's great. Glad we've got that pretty much solved. But we've got to do better.
I'm in the airport lounge in Frankfurt. Flight delayed by hours. We flew around in a holding pattern for about an hour before landing, owing to a storm and some issue with the radar tower. (On the bright side--since it would be so ungrateful to whinge after the past few weeks--the sky was uncannily beautiful, and I was highly primed to see in it evidence of life's grandeur and mystery.)
Two days ago someone noted to the Conference (I'm capitalizing that now to make it sound mysterious) that it takes longer to travel by plane than it used to. That's not what we expected. It's not what we would expect if we were making Progress. That's going backward, not forward.
This thread is now open for new ideas about how to create a safe, low-cost, pleasant and rapid long-distance transportation system. The obvious first step is to ditch this whole ridiculous Security Screening Theater system, but let's think bigger than that. I've had it with the airplane. Time for something better. Got any good ideas?
I'll check back with you in a few hours. Please have this solved by then.
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May '11
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Air travel improvements are limited mostly by fuel costs, and zoning problems.
We need to revamp the entire air transportation system by changing how we conceive of it.
Planes are not making money when they're sitting on the ground, refueling and reloading passengers and cargo. We should design aircraft to be modular. Planes should be frames and passenger and cargo and fuel should be tubes inserted into the frame. The tubes get pre-loaded at the airport and the airplane taxis to the terminal and swaps tubes and immediately takes off again.
There are problems, of course. Modular aircraft will use more fuel. The trick is to get fuel costs lower. When fuel costs get lower, then speeds increase and efficiency becomes less critical. There is a point where the increased time of use of the aircraft balances the fuel inefficiency.
Eh, I don't think it would work because of too many impracticalities, I just hate seeing planes take so long to load passengers and sit there wasting money.
Aug '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
There must be some way of harnessing the energy of overjoyed cats for transportation purposes.
Mark Wilson: If you can handle a few g-forces, someday hopefully we'll have ballistic accelerators that simply launch you (inside a vehicle, of course) into a suborbital trajectory toward your destination, then you re-enter like a space capsule and descend gracefully into the local spaceport. It would be an order of magnitude faster than air travel. It would be basically impervious to weather.
And since the vehicles are ballistic, they couldn't be diverted to a different destination, and the incentive to hijack them would be greatly diminished.
Yeah, but how will folks coordinate to prevent collisions in midair? Ouch!
Aug '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
What about pneumatic people tubes like they use in Futurama?
May '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Palaeologus
I know I'm way out of my league here.
But Mark, is this really the future of travel?
If so, I think I'm gonna continue to pitch broomsticks & floo powder.
More like this. And when I said a "few" g-forces, I was being coy.
May '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Yeah, but how will folks coordinate to prevent collisions in midair? Ouch!
The sky is pretty big! It would have to be coordinated at the point of origin, but with modern communication technology it wouldn't be too hard. The trajectory and time of arrival can be controlled.
Oct '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Happy cats ? Try dogs !!! Now there is some energy ...
May '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Didn't I read about that in various Heinlein novels?
Mark Wilson
Palaeologus
I know I'm way out of my league here.
But Mark, is this really the future of travel?
If so, I think I'm gonna continue to pitch broomsticks & floo powder.
More like this. And when I said a "few" g-forces, I was being coy. · Jun 16 at 9:10pm
Apr '11
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
There are many technological improvements in the works that will improve air traffic flow - the ADS-B system, space-based, look-down ATC radar, Free Flight Route Planning to get away from the North Atlantic Track system between North America and Europe. The delay problems for passengers. however, are often a function of everyone either wanting or having to connect through a small handful of European gateways: London. Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and to a lesser extent Paris. Of these Heathrow is far and away everyone's first choice for making connections, with Frankfurt second and the other European cities trailing behind. The high traffic volumes of northern Europe often mean airfares are cheaper, but the volume of traffic generated by cheap air travel also creates delay problems with Slot Times especially if the weather turns sour. Reading your post about the Conference in Tuscany I would have guessed you'd fly to IST direct from Rome rather than back-track to Germany and then south.
Aug '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
I think that is called a dogsled. I hear dogsledding has its charms...
May '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Mark Wilson: If you can handle a few g-forces, someday hopefully we'll have ballistic accelerators that simply launch you (inside a vehicle, of course) into a suborbital trajectory toward your destination, then you re-enter like a space capsule and descend gracefully into the local spaceport. It would be an order of magnitude faster than air travel. It would be basically impervious to weather.
And since the vehicles are ballistic, they couldn't be diverted to a different destination, and the incentive to hijack them would be greatly diminished.
Low cost...that might be more of a "long term" goal. · Jun 16 at 6:52pm
National Review seriously proposed exactly this about 35 years ago.
May '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Duane Oyen
National Review seriously proposed exactly this about 35 years ago. · Jun 17 at 12:19pm
That was when we still had the technology to put men on the moon and we were sure we would soon build a lunar base. Now there is an entire generation of engineers, my peers and I, who have not seen a man land on the moon in our lifetime.
Edited on Jun 17, 2011 at 1:26pmDec '10
Re: Modern Air Travel: We've Got to Find a Better Way
Mark Wilson
That was when we still had the technology to put men on the moon and we were sure we would soon build a lunar base. Now there is an entire generation of engineers, my peers and I, who have not seen a man land on the moon in our lifetime.
Mores the pity.
It has always struck me as sad how far we have regressed technologically in many arenas.
I read several months ago that the next gen nuclear warhead project (on hold for many decades now) will likely have to be scrapped entirely and started again if/when the initiative is revived, because the only man who knew how to create the material used for neutron insulation in the new design died several years ago without documenting the processes and materials outside the company he worked for (that owned the process, and went bankrupt many years before his death).
We've allowed many of our technological advantages to similarly atrophy. Our generation of engineers cannot be expected (and shouldn't expect ourselves) to just pick up where our elders left off, when there has been a 40 year hiatus during which much of that knowledge simply disappeared.