Science
This actually came out last week, but we have to get it on the Beach. On its trip out into the universe, NASA's EPOXI spacecraft turned an eye back towards home. The spacecraft, from its vantage point 31 million miles away, was able to capture the moon as it was happily rotating around the earth. The video is short but very sweet.
Turtle Airships are pushing a concept vehicle for a use, and the ideal is simple enough: Create a well stocked humanitarian platform using airships. The vehicles could reach areas where roads no longer exists and deliver aid as needed. The nature of the airship allows vehicles that are quite large and therefore can deliver a lot of needed supplies. They could even be used in case of major flooding.
The Turtle Airship Blog discusses this aspect of the platform, and I do have to say they present a very solid argument of the application of rigid shelled airships for this use. On the blog there are even designs and discussions for 200 mph solar powered airships, which could close the gap between airliner prices and speed of travel.
Rigid Airships have been in the news recently, with Skycat bringing out new offerings. I am fairly certain that, if the price if jet fuel continues to spiral upward, we will see more of these graceful flyers being considered as a mass transit solution (as well as specific uses).
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Icon has a new two seater Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) that features a folding design, leaving it very tow friendly. The small plane is powered by a rear-facing engine and it can be configured for land or water landing.
Performance wise, the two seater has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,320 pounds, and a max airspeed of 120 knots (138 mph). A special dashboard is designed to be friendly to automobile drivers. The Icon is available today, and you can go to their website and place a $5,000 deposit for a plane now. The video (after the jump) shows the plane's unveiling, and a quick glimpse at the event will no doubt show you why the dashboard is designed as it is – Icon seems to have a firm grasp of their ideal target market. [more]
They say to never throw away your first ideal when working on a design, and that your first instinct typically has merit. Applying that ideal to commercial air travel, we would more than likely come up with the airship.
Compared to jet aircraft, zeppelins use practically no fuel. There are drawbacks in comparison, such as a limited seating capacity per trip and a top speed of only around 100 mph, but it is still faster than driving. Not to mention the whole experience can be put together much as a great sightseeing trip.
To this end, SkyCat of Britain has new rigid airships being built, composed of proprietary synthetic materials that are stronger than steel and extremely leak resistant. The new zeppelins even have vertical lift technology that allow them to take off and land on their own, without the need of tethering ropes.
Are airships an ideal whose time has come back to being practical? The first thought many have of airships is the tragic Hindenberg, but the explosive gas used at the time, hydrogen, proved to be its downfall. The USS Akron was much safer being helium filled, but it succumbed more or less due to a weather mishap. However, that was in1933, and weather tracking technology has vastly improved since then.
It is hard to say what the public's reaction would be to such technology. I personally think that high speed rails may be the best choice for solving the growing high speed mass transit problem, but an airport of dirigibles to complement jet travel could be seen as a way to help air travel go much more green until such a system can be built.
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