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Building the A380
Gavinsblog writes "The Independent has a report on the construction
of the Airbus A380. Amazingly, a ship is being custom-built to ferry parts
for assembly, a custom fleet of trucks are also to be used - with roads widened
to suit. Oh and the assembly building is the size of two soccer pitches, and the
height of an olympic swimming pool."
Last time I checked, olympic swimming pools weren't very high. In fact, they actually went down into the floor.
We gave you the mobile phone, and now the world's biggest/best passenger plane. So what have the Americans ever done for us?
Planes this big are used to deliver all the printed Slashdot comments to Africa so that people without internet access could still read them.
Ok the plane is big and the people have to herded in. BUT, imagine like how planes are routed along certain times the amount of traffic at customs?
HOLY MOLY! In the mornings (Europe) or afternoons (America) there is going to be a whole slew of people moving through customs. Make the security checks look like a walk in the park....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
... how many poor people could eat a year with $260m.
perosnally, i don't see the benefit of a huge plane like this. somebody convince me.
Increases productivity, increases profits for companies, company expands, company hires new people, poor people get jobs, poor people eat. I trust that they feel they need to build this, that someone wants to buy it, or they would not bother.
Every time I hear how a company is investing millions in a new project, and someone says "think of all the poor people it could feed" I just want to spit up.
HOW the plane is used is irrelevent. How many many people NEED the fastest computer? Since I upgrade every year, it creates jobs. From Dell, to UPS, in China (for parts), on the docks in California. It doesn't matter HOW or WHY I need the new computer, it creates jobs.
Capitolism: Works every time it's tried.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Who measures things in soccer pitches olympic swimming pools? What sort of standards are these? I was just getting used to meters, had a basic understanding of fathoms, and had heard of rods, but what the heck are these new units?
30M ~= 1 olympic size swimming pool?, so is it 60 meters tall? ~190 feet tall?
And just how long exactly is a soccor (soccer!) pitch (field!). My reports show between 100 and 130 yards (Arph! yet another measurement!).
Let's all get together and use either metric or english systems please. Your preference, I don't care because I can translate easily enough between those two.
ADVENTUR>You are in a maze of twisty little passages.
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
Funny how all the comments on /. that question the basic ways in which society works are marked down as flamebait. The mods obviously are happy to question how capitalist society works when it throws up monopoly software houses, but don't go any further than that or else you're a goddam commie. (Yeh, mark me down as flamebait if you like, I got karma to burn and a world still to win)
Anyhow, the real benefit is from the additional efficency - if we can get more people from A to B more cheaply that produces a benefit. The real point, however, as the man with the beard might have said, is who gets that benefit? There is nothing wrong with the plane (apart from maybe the impact of auircraft fuel on the ozone layer and global warming) - what might be wrong are the choices we have made about the distribution of the benefits of advancing technology.
When I first read th title it sounded strange that IBM had to build a new ship to manufacture a new computer.
But now that I've read the article, I see it's about building airplanes. However I thinks it's kind of amusing that the airplane parts get thier own rest stops on the highway.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Therefore I am modded -1:flamebait?
My guess is that your "feed the poor people" comment smells very much like one of the running gags on The Simpsons. When something bad happens, someone always says "Won't someone please think of the children!" whether or not the event is remotely related.
Those of us who work hard to build businesses and hire people get tired of hearing about "feeding the poor people" especially when we can't get decent employees to show up sober for $10 an hour for an entry level job. (almost twice minimum wage).
Personally, I'm tired of guys with "will work for food" signs that if you offer a job, they refuse. From my experience, most poor people suffer from bad life choices, not "big bad companies".
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Hopefully it'll have custom jumbo-size seats to accomodate today's wider, fatter traveller!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
http://www.airbus.com/airbus4u/photo_album.asp
This raises the interesting question of what happens when a large plane is damaged at a smaller airport. Somewhere like Gatwick. As far as I can see, they've only got two options: a) repair the plane with the limited facilities available or b) chop it up and remove it as scrap metal.
Does anyone have stories to tell about planes that landed too hard, and had to be scrapped because repairs couldn't be carried out on the spot?
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
[sarcasm]
good to see someone still believing in free market economy...
[/sarcasm]
WARNING only read below if you're interested in this OT discussion
do you *really* believe poor people get jobs because bigger planes are being built?
of course *nobody* needs a bigger plane, the fastest computer, etc. i'm shocked that this idea eases your mind without ever asking yourself whether the propaganda you get fed is actually true.
just show me the poor people who get better from the outsourcing of the production of computer parts (or anything, like jeans, furniture, etc). they are being exploited for lower wages than you could imagine, and they are left no other option.
free market economy only works within the boundaries of the self-proclaimed "free world". this does not include the countries outside this "free world" where people *are* poor and exploited by the "free world". think of this next time you buy one of your upgrades, levis, or ikea furniture.
disclaimer: i sincerely apologize for this off-topic rant. mod me down if you wish.
What I think is strange is the $5billion dollars put into the project from the european taxpayers.
Since when does a single company need a $5 billion subsidy from the government?
Ballmer: Developers, developers, developers, developers!!!
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
But the more people on a plane, the more that die when it comes spiralling down. Reminds me of the saying "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
Anyhow, I'd be interested in seeing what kind of engines this behemoth will be using.
-kidlinux.
> At the peak of production, when Airbus is building four A380s a month, the main roads into Toulouse from the north-west will be clogged 12 nights a month with this slow-moving procession.
I'd bet that Airbus would kill to be able to use a CargoLifter airship. This is exactly what they are designed for. Can quietly transport 160 metric tons of any size and shape, for drop off at any location.
Oh dear. Looks like they are going bankrupt.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Actually, it's not really so much need but productivity. If everyone went out tomorrow and spent all of their money on some useless thing, like dot-com stocks, and all of that money evaporated and was funneled into more useless things (like Ferraris) the productive uses of capital would diminish and... jobs would ultimately be lost because the economy would, shrink not grow, as we lost our ability to consume "productively". Read your business section for a real life example of this.
A bigger jet supposedly flys more people with less overhead. The trouble is that ultimately will mean less planes flying, less schedule freedom, and more of a pain overall for passengers. How many times have you missed the 8:00pm to London due to weather in Atlanta but you can grab the 9:30 from the same airline and arrive with minimal delay in time to make your meeting and catch the flight that evening to Dublin? It's happened to me a few times.
Put megaplanes in their place and I'm delayed a day getting to London, stuck in Atlanta, and I'm on the phone with airlines for hours trying to rearrange tickets and meetings. Not to mention it will take an hour just to get the passengers on the plane, and all of the lines as passengers simultaneously arrive instead of being spread out across mulitple flights when everything goes the way it should.
Productivity enhancement? Not for the passengers. It's an ego thing for Europe, like a skyscraper or a moon landing.
Now the Eurpoeans are building something so ridiculously big that no Americans want it.
Talk about role-reversal.
Nothing is perfect. Capitalism is like democracy. It's a rotten system, and the only system worse than democracy and capitalism is everything else.
just show me the poor people who get better from the outsourcing of the production of computer parts (or anything, like jeans, furniture, etc). they are being exploited for lower wages than you could imagine, and they are left no other option.
If you live in China, a job for $1 a day is better than no job for $0 a day. They can only pay $1 a day as long as people will work for it, as their economy improves, the universe of persons willing to work for $1 a day shrinks, thus they have to pay $2 a day to get workers (rinse, repeat).
The fact that some can work so cheap means I buy new computers every year, instead of every 3 years. This means everyone in the chain gets 3x the work, from shippers, builders, etc. It also means that I am significanly more productive (my computer speed is very relative to my productivity). It also means that there are jobs for 3 persons in China instead of 1.
free market economy only works within the boundaries of the self-proclaimed "free world". this does not include the countries outside this "free world" where people *are* poor and exploited by the "free world". think of this next time you buy one of your upgrades, levis, or ikea furniture.
I do agree with your general point. I am not for worker exploitation, but I also know that if we do $1billion in trade with China (as an example) then we are more likely to have influence than if we do $1million. If you refuse to do any trade, then not only do they not care what you think, but it reduces China's economy and their average income.
As an example: Over the last 20 years, China has invested greatly in manufacturing of electronics, building a lot of plants (with the help of western companies). As a result, they are better invested for the future, last year China was the only country experiencing double digit growth in their economy, the average citizen, while still poor, is much better off. This is also leading to small improvements in the political system as well. Very small, but at least in the right direction.
In order to make China a "free" place, you have to empower the people there. Opening our markets to them, trading with them, exchanging culture with them, helps do this. As long as we do the OTHER things necessary (push them to reforms, etc) then it the long run, the average Chinese citizen will be better. Even in the short run they are better than 20 years ago.
And now, instead of producing trinkets, China is producing some pretty damn good stuff. Their quality has good up dramatically. Its not a perfect world, but at least its moving in the right direction, thanks to Capitalism.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Isn't the standard length of swimming pool 50 m?
Guess I'll wait to check the number of passengers before getting on.
so in principle we do not disagree at all...
accept for this conclusion at the end of your post:
"Its not a perfect world, but at least its moving in the right direction, thanks to Capitalism."
How do you know? Perhaps it is 'despite Capitalism, due to the hard work of the Chinese people'.
I'm sorry, I'd love to continue this discussion, but I have to get back to the lab to work...
Take care Pharmboy,
Meneer de Koekepeer
Compare this with the space elevator. The estimated initial cost ($10 bn) is about the same as that of the airbus. Govt. spending on the space elevator: $570,000. Benefit of the space elevator: It would possibly have an enormous impact on the destiny of mankind.
If only governments wouldn't be so shortsighted...
I have done some work in Toulouse for Airbus, and been at both the Central training sites and also Airbus France itself, which is next to the airport. It is incredible walking out of an office across a hanger with two A319s into another office: it is strange to do that when so often at airports the aircraft are always outside, not inside what appears beforehand as an office building! But when I saw the giant hanger that is going to be the assembly area for the A380, it is just astonishing. It was about a month ago, so the roof hadn't been added, but even so it made me realise that the 'little' models in the reception really were not representative of just how big this aircraft is going to be. I've seen the one of the guppy transport craft take off from Toulouse as well, and I didn't really beleive that could get in the air, let alone the A380. It will be really impressive (for someone that really has never been that interested in aeroplanes) to see it fly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some background info from a world trade law student:
One: European governments are subsidizing Airbus development costs, which according to the U.S. violates WTO rules on subsidies. Of course, neither the EU nor the Bush administration can really be considered champions of unrestricted free trade.
[rant] Although economists and common sense agree that free trade results in a net wealth benefit (note that this doesn't imply a "fair" distribution of that wealth), special interest groups that have much to lose from free trade (unproductive industries, unions) find it easier to exert political influence in favor of protectionism than the average person-on-the-street, who stands to lose a few cents a day on account of a specific protectionist measure, of which he is generally not even aware. [/rant]
Two: There is of course no economical or technical reason at all to distribute this kind of megaconstruction project all over Europe. It is estimated that all the silly moving around of pieces increases construction cost by a two-figures percentage. The reason, of course, is a political one: every nation wants a piece of the cake...
While Airbus' new assembly buildings for the A380 superjumbo airliner are impressive, don't forget that Boeing had to do the exact same thing some 37 years ago when the 747 airliner project was launched.
In a way, Boeing's project was more ambitious because they had to do the following:
1. Expand what was then a small regional airfield (Paine Field) to accommodate the production line for the 747, including new longer runways.
2. Expand the parking ramp to enormous size to accommodate 747's in the final completion stage after being rolled out of the assembly line.
3. Build the world's roomiest assembly buildings and a huge paintshop building that could paint a completed 747.
4. Upgrade the ship ports in the nearby city of Everett, WA to accommodate 747 parts, including fuselage sections.
5. Build a special railroad spur line to the assembly plant, with one of the steepest gradients ever attempted for a non-cog line railroad.
And all that construction mentioned above had to be done with the Pacific Northwest's notoriously rainy weather.
What Airbus is doing at Toulouse and Hamburg are pretty much just extensions to their current large assembly plants--nothing akin to what Boeing had to do from scratch to create the 747 assembly line.
Since when does a single company need a $5 billion subsidy from the government?
Since Europe wants to underbid America,Inc. for its planes it has to offset the effect of military purchases from US plane makers.
This is where the 2000 opening of San Francisco International Airport's (SFO) new International Terminal has proved to be much more visionary than people think.
Because the terminal was built in the late 1990's when what was then the Airbus A3XX project was well-advanced, the architects of the new terminal were able to design gates at the end of Concourses A and G (the two concourses that are the International gates) to conform to the 80 x 80 meter (262 x 262 feet) standard for parking gate space used by the A380. Even the Federal Inspection Service (Customs and Immigration) areas were expanded so they could easily accommodate the influx of 500+ passengers per plane. A recent US General Accounting Office (GAO) report on accommodating larger airliners at US airports notes that SFO only needs to spend about US$70 million to make the airport fully A380-compatible, with the primary cost being runway exit ramp widening to accommodate the wider stance of the A380.
In short, once the A380 starts its flight testing phase don't be surprised that the plane is a fairly frequent visitor to SFO because SFO could be used as a reference standard for A380 airport compatibility.
Custom-built ships to ferry parts. Custom fleet of trucks. Roads widened for the trucks (custom set of roads).
Hate to say it, but sounds like a bunch of dot-com flunkies are on this project.
In England football (soccer) pitches are a common unit of measurement, but heights are either measured in double decker buses or Nelson's columns.
For larger areas than football pitches, Waleses are used.
- Brian.
This report is riddled with holes. For example everyone knows that the standard unit for length in sensationalist reporting is the football field, not the soccer pitch. And the standard unit for height is the Empire State building, not the olympic swimming pool. Also conspicuously absent is any comparison to the width of a human hair, or to how many times we could go to and from the moon of we laid something-or-other end to end. Very disappointing...
I doubt the average American even knows Airbus is a European consortium. I do, but I don't care. The U.S. is a free country. People HERE can complain about it if they want, let alone people in other countries.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Per se, democracy means "people's power", from ancient Greek, and it's de facto meaning in politics is a system in which every citizen has an equal opportunity to affect (or decide not to) the decisions made in the name of the community -essentially, everyone has a vote on everything. The reason democracy has failed so far is that after it's birth, communities grew faster than information transportation technologies, rendering the concept of equal vote useless. Now, as we are approaching the time when the whole world can be reached instantaneously, we might yet again see the real democracy rise. I'm also predicting communism will be successful when the information technologies get advanced enough.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Aerospaceweb.org
Marc Schaeffer's page
Studies (and intuition) show that it is more fuel efficient to fly short trip and refuel, than it is to pack a plane full of fuel for a long trip.
While moving lots of people in a single trip is more efficient, moving lots of fuel is not. It makes me wonder if they'll be able to afford to fly this pig on anything but an ocean route.
And for a second there I thought they were talking about building some new sort of Amiga.
--riney
Metric IS English.
You can't argue with me on this one; I am English. Top trumps.
England, part of the United Kingdom, has been metric since the 1970's and before, with the exception of road signs and beer.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
except this company is owned by the french, british and german governments, and all the pieces are moved around to spread the jobs and development around europe, kind of like military/space spending in the US.
Some people have a "zero sum" perspective, which is wrong. If someone gets rich, it doesn't mean it was at the expense of someone else, but so many socialists seem to think this.
If I make a better widget, and sell it and get rich, I am creating jobs for my widget builders, and lower costs for those who buy my widgets. The people who make inferior widgets might have to find new jobs, but those losts jobs are LESS (on average) than the new wealth created by the new improved widgets.
Some people believe that there is a "fixed amount of wealth" so when one person gets more, someone one else must have less. This is utterly incorrect. My success helps others, it doesnt take away from them. Obviously, I could do things detrimental to others by my success, anyone can, but free market capitalism is what prevents me from over charging for my widgets. Free market capitalism prevents me from underpaying my employees, according to what market conditions are in my area. If I treat my employees like crap, they leave and I can't build more widgets.
Zero sum believers simply do not get the fact that wealth is relative, not absolute. A perfect example is "poor Americans". In America, if you work for $7 an hour and you are married with one child, you are considered poor. Odds are, this poor person has heat and air, a roof that doesn't leak, a vcr, a tv, a phone, a car and a decent meal 3x a day.
In many countries, especially countries that do not have free market capitalism (China, N. Korea, etc), this would be considered quite wealthy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Quick reference: 1 Nelson Column = 185 ft
1 Washington Monument = 169 m
1 football pitch = 360 ft * 246 ft
1 football field = 110 m * 49 m
1 Wales = ~8000 square miles
1 Texas = 700,000 square kilometers
I think that you can use a Fourier transform, but according to Heisenberg, you cannot precisely measure both the data storage capacity and the height of a swimming pool at the same time.
Sigs are bad for your health.
This is the plane that is actually used to ship regular boing slices from europe factory to toulouse for final arragement.
...
see http://www.airbustransport.com/rel08_01_98.html
But unfortunatly the A380 is so big, that building a A380 compliant beluga is quite a complex task !
-SLK
www.eclipseaviation.com But our avionics package is better (dollar for dollar)
The economy is in the shitter.
Several airlines are in bankrupcy, and many are talking Chapter 9 liquidation.
Many fleets of 747s are being grounded and being replaced by the lower-capacity 777... including in Pacific Rim routes. They just can't afford to fly that many empty seats, and that large of an aircraft is just less efficient than a two-engine.
So why is Airbus gambling that the world needs an enormous airplane? It seems like extreme fiscial irresponsibility, especically considering they're government-funded! America certainly won't be buying, and I doubt much rest of the 100 plane order will go through if the economy continues to degrade in the rest of the world.
It almost reminds me of the Spruce Goose. Have fun paying off your new boat anchor, Europe. Welcome to recession.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Roadrunners fly too (but since *no one* asked, I'm not gonna 'splain).
Also, there is a Concorde in the front yard. Not having been "lucky" enough to fly on the thing, it was my first time seeing it. They're amazingly small.
The whole project struck me as insanely inefficient, though. Parts are manufactured all the hell over the place, purely for the purposes of making different governments "feel good". Special trucks are the least of the oddities; the first thing the consortium had to build was a fleet of special guppy planes to hall aircraft parts from Germany, England and Spain into Toulouse. I can't imagine that this is at all cost-effective, and I wonder whether they'd survive without generous gov't assistance (of course, you could easily say the same thing about Boeing, given their huge defence business.)
Bigger trains...bigger plains....it's frustrating.
The primary reason that mass transportation used a large single unit to transport a large quantity of people was that it required only a few people (pilots/conductors) to direct the vehicle. This was far cheaper than transporting a few people at a time.
Nowadays, we have the technology to direct the vehicle with computers. We could create something like a cross-country monorail system that ran small computer-controlled vehicles. You get to the station when you want, you immediately hop into the first available pod, punch in your target station, and it goes right away.
Yeah, something like this would be incredibly expensive to build, but really cheap to use. Like the difference between sending your files by postal mail versus using the internet.
Transporting shipments would be quicker and cheaper too.
True, it probably wouldn't work for travelling overseas. But you could use the high-speed pod system to get to the coast, and take a plane overseas.
Here in Chicago, the Metra train system wants $1.1 billion to add a train line from Joliet to O'Hare. An overhead pod system might actually cheaper, and far more useful. There's no chance of it with Metra though. They build what they know.
You're right, and I can see the headline now:
NASA Probe Lost:
Scientists forget to convert football fields to ice hockey rinks
You're right, we should standardize on our field measurements. I suggest we use the current world record for the discus toss, since the Greeks are sort of the father of sports and that's probably the most famous of them all. Now if only I knew how far that was...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
No, how high is a Mountain in China?
Yes...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
You're being a little short-sighted, aren't you? A fleet of airplanes like the A380 will last at least 30 years, if not 50. The design and construction started many years ago and cost billions of dollars. You think that should all be abandoned because of this little blip, of couple of years of bad economy?
You'll note from your own post -- 747's are being grounded. Why aren't they being sold? For the same reason.
But will the Americans let it land? Remember when the Concorde SST was introduced? Too noisy, oh my poor ears... Funny how America is always the voice of sweet reason and fair play competition - when it's winning. But when it's losing, watch out!
The market for the jumbo's is declining. People want point to point. The Mid size is where it's going to be over the next 15 years, and that's exactly where Boeing is heading.
People don't want 18 connecting flights. They wan't direct routes. That's part of the reason the market for the jumbo's is shrinking and the market for the 777's is thriving, especialy as you mention in Asia. But since the European's effort is really just a welfare project they don't care if it's sucessful.
Our wealth is at the cost of others, it will always stay like this when we keep on pushing down the poor and say they should work harder.
Funny thing about people in rich industrialized countries whining about how "exploited" the third-world employees of multinationals are. The jobs with the foriegn companies are the "good" jobs. Most workers in Mexico would rather work for GM than a local company, the pay, hours, and working conditions are generally better. They would also rather work a factory job than try to make a living with subsistance farming.
The whiners from the first world are acting like people are being forced out of nice well-paying desk jobs or something.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
... how many poor people could eat a year with $260m.
So you are suggesting all of the money currently used for capital investment be put into feeding programs for "the poor"?
I really don't see what good that would do other than result in a whole bunch more poor people.
BTW you aren't the customer for the plane, if you happen to be CEO of an airline I'm sure a meeting with an Airbus representative can be arranged. Obviously the airlines that have ordered A380s see some benefit or they wouldn't have bought the plane.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Many fleets of 747s are being grounded and being replaced by the lower-capacity 777... including in Pacific Rim routes. Actually, that is not quite accurate. The airlines are grounding 747 becuase they cost more / passenger than does the 777. The 747 engines and airodynamics are inefficient compared to the 777. It is for this reason, that the 380 will make a huge dent in the market. Southwest will not be buying these, but United, American, etc will buy fleets of these. Or better yet, if Boeing will pull their head out of their ass, they will buy the BWB's. These aircrafts will be super efficient, and fun to fly in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The P-80 was considered the best Allied fighter at the end of World War II. It arrived too late to see combat, even though 45 aircraft were delivered prior to the end of the war.
As for American casualties in europe I have anotherweb site for you . Soviet Suffered 13.6 million military casualties. Thats about 2.5 times the number of jews killed, and more than 30 times the number of americans troops lost(300,000). The germans lost 3 million. Where do you think Germany lost the bulk of its troops? Thank you Soviet Union, for getting rid of the nazi menace. Had the germans not attacked Stalin, all of europe would probably be speaking german today. Anyone tell you different, and they are victims of (UK and US) allied propaganda.
As for the US, its true that your presense probably have saved us from a communist takeover. So thank you US of A for that. Wether that is a good thing or not is debatable
I've been to Lake Titicaca in Peru and seen the two warships on what is the highest lake in the world. If correctly I recall, the ships were built part by part in the UK, shipped by ships and then train and alpaca over about 5 years across the Andes, and then built on the lakeshore. Still functional (although they had to change the engline to one which works on Alpaca droppings). Recommended visit.
-/elad
This is the first part of an article from Aviation Week last December. This group of retired airplane designers has some interesting ideas on reducing the cost of transporting passengers.
--
Thinking Outside the Box Without Getting Too Far
16-Dec-2002
By James R. Asker
For decades, it seems two types of new civil aircraft have been discussed. Those that actually get developed tend to offer modest, incremental improvements on existing technologies arranged in patterns that are familiar. Then there are those that involve radical departures from the familiar long silver tubes. Typically, these remain "paper airplanes" never getting past a set of interesting drawings and studies.
There's nothing wrong with evolving a product line. Airbus, Boeing and the engine makers have been making commercial aviation safer and more efficient for decades doing that. Nor am I saying that radically different aircraft never go into production and airline service. The supersonic Concorde was certainly a dramatic departure from the state of the art.
But it seems all too rare that an aircraft comes along that shakes up assumptions about what passenger airplanes must be like but that is not so radical that it can't succeed commercially. The Boeing 747 comes to mind. There are so many inefficiencies in other areas of the process of getting people from one place to another by air that seem ripe for improvement. And almost all of them are related to things that take place on the ground. There's a lot more time wasted on the ground than in the air.
That's why I am intrigued by the approach of a group of veteran engineers who call themselves the Reston Elders and have been working for several years on designs to bring a little radical change to air travel. Chas Willits, a member I met more than a decade ago when he was working at NASA's old space station program office in Reston, Va., candidly describes the group as "a bunch of old guys with a lot of experience."
The Reston Elders' design philosophy involves approaching aircraft and ground facilities together as elements of the air transportation system, looking at unexamined assumptions, concentrating on areas in which the biggest savings can be had and then trying to apply existing technologies to lower costs and increase passenger satisfaction--and airline profit margins.
The specific goal they have laid out for themselves is to design a family of passenger-friendly air vehicles and associated ground equipment that could allow a doubling of air transport capacity at one-third less manufacturing cost and half the current average seat-mile operating cost.
How do you cut seat-mile costs? Labor is the biggest single component of costs. Give labor tools that allow workers to be more productive and costs go down. If you can both reduce the number of ground workers and cut the time required to ready an aircraft for its next flight, allowing higher asset utilization, you have attacked the problem from two directions.
So the Elders aimed for a system that allows even a 600-passenger aircraft's turn time to be kept under 30 min. "The idea is not to be a carbon copy of Southwest Airlines," Willits says. "But we need to move in that direction."
To accomplish that, the group would build aircraft that can "crab taxi" so that it is parallel to the loading pier, easily allowing multiple loading ramps (see drawing). More importantly, it would allow a dramatic change in baggage handling. Airports/airlines would provide baggage carts at curbside to all passengers free, as some in Europe now do. There's a type of cart that can go on escalators. After clearing security, passengers would bring all their bags to the gate, where they would place them in containers. The containers could be loaded and unloaded on the aircraft via conveyor belts, eliminating baggage handling labor and vehicles. Fueling would be done by a system that pops up from the pavement, as done now in Stockholm and Singapore.
Getting vehicles off the ramp would reduce air pollution associated with airline activity by 20% and eliminate what the Elders claim is a $5-billion annual bill for airport "fender-benders."
The Reston Elders have ended up with designs for a family of constant cross-section subsonic aircraft having two decks with double-aisle, six-to-a-row seating in 250-, 364- and 528-coach seat variants. The 528-seater would be 208 ft. long and have a wingspan of 200 ft.
No center seats would enhance safety and comfort. Even with the comfortable 34-in. seat pitch planned, the pressure shell would use only 110 cu. ft. per passenger, a more efficient use of the volume than that of the Boeing 777-300, which uses 145 cu. ft. per passenger, according to Willits.
Obviously, to be able to park parallel to existing terminals' piers, the aircraft have to have a high-wing design. Placing the engines over the wing, with other refinements, would achieve about 10-dB. noise reduction on the ground because noise is reflected "up and out" off the wing, allowing 24-hr. operations at all airports. It would also virtually eliminate ground-sourced foreign-object damage. The aircraft would use full-span flaperons and caster landing gear, as on a B-52, which would allow for no rotation at V 1 and wings-level landings.
Consider the possibility of carrying 555 millionaires to the poor and downtrodden regions of the world and they come back convinced a-la Bono that not much is being done for their upliftment.
The main assembly building, where Boeing's widebody jets (747/767/777) are built, is the largest building on the planet. Its footprint is nearly 100 acres -- enough to accommodate Disneyland (the one in California) with room to spare. As you drive along the outside of the building, you pass a series of hangar doors, each one of which is the size of an American football field on its side -- 300 feet wide and close to 100 feet tall.
The scale of the place is so gigantic that once you're inside, you can find yourself subject to interesting optical illusions. Looking at a plane sitting at the far end of the assembly line, you think, "That can't possibly be as big as the plane right next to me." But because your brain underestimates the distance, it also underestimates the size of what it's seeing. (This is a common perceptual effect that is, in part, responsible for the famous "moon illusion" that makes the moon look bigger when it's near the horizon than when it's closer to the zenith.)
Some other interesting stats include the number of employees on-site (24,000 in three shifts) and the annual electric bill (US$18 million).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Interestingly, one of the other shows in the series - Dubai: City of Dreams - is an account of the massive infrastructure project being undertaken in the UAE. The show doesn't mention it, but another part of that project is the expansion of Dubai International Airport which will accomodate multiple A380s at Concourse 2. In fact, according to this article, Concourse 3 was added to the plan specifically to handle the increased passenger throughput from the A380.
They're going to need planes the size of the A380 anyway by 2010 for this reason: slot control restrictions at many airports for air and noise pollution control reasons.
That means fewer flights per day into many airports, and the only way to accommodate future passenger growth with few flights per day into airports is to buy bigger planes. This will lead to Boeing finally building an airliner using blended-wing body configuration, which will allow 600-800 passengers per plane flying at Mach 0.86 up to 9,000 nautical miles.
I thought the standard american (US that is) unit of measurement is the football field.
On my last trip to Florida this was the running gag of the journey. (Sightseeing tour in the harbour of Maimi: "This cruise-ship is more than two football fields long!")
The highlight was when we vitited Kennedy Space Center, a lady asking us how long a football field was ("I want to tell my son how large this building is")
I have flown in 4 777s and had a very pleasant flight. The DC-10 also was a pleasant flight. I have not had the pleasure of flying in a 747 or any of the Airbus widebodies, but the widebodies have been much more pleasurable than any of the smaller hollow tubes I have flown in.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The Soviets kept the bulk of the German Army busy while the Brits destroyed the Luftwaffe and the Brits & Americans chased them out of Mediterranian countries, and pummled their industrial centers from the air. Now imagine what would have happened if the Brits would have just been content on defending their own territories? The Germans would have had more supplies and an easier time getting them to the Eastern Front. They killed over 4 Soviets for every German killed as it was. On their own, they would have lost to Germany like they did in WWI.
Thank you Russia for the bullet stoppers.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
> As for the US, its true that your presense probably
> have saved us from a communist takeover. So thank
> you US of A for that. Wether that is a good thing
> or not is debatable.
Without the USA there also would have been much more German troops going against the USSR.
It is likely but not sure at all that USSR would still have won.
As for "being saved from a communist takeover is a good thing or a bad thing": if you're trolling, it's NOT funny!
We're not talking about a mild modern communist here, but about Stalline!
This guy sent millions of people dying in Siberia camps, and you're wondering wether it is a good thing or a bad thing to be under his control???
No, the Western europe can thanks
1) the USSR dictator Stalline and its soldiers for defeating the German dictator Hitler
2) the USA for saving them from Stalline.
BTW I'm French and even though I despise what Busch is trying to do at the moment, I'm very thankfull for what the USA and the USSR have done during the second WW.
Actually, Airbus is designing the A380 so it meets the extremely strict British Quiet Craft 2 (QC2) standard, which is actually 2 dB quieter than the extremely strict ICAO Stage IV standard for engine noise emissions that will come into force in 2006.
In short, the A380 will be quieter than today's A320 small jet for takeoffs and landings!
Damnitall, where's my mod points when I need em! Solve world hunger and poverty in one fell swoop!
As for human resources Soviet at the time seemed to have limitless. I do belive that they would have defated Hitler without the allies. I think the numbers speak for them selves. There where a lot more people to spend.
As for "being saved from a communist takeover is a good thing or a bad thing": if you're trolling, it's NOT funny! We're not talking about a mild modern communist here, but about Stalline! This guy sent millions of people dying in Siberia camps, and you're wondering wether it is a good thing or a bad thing to be under his control???You are of course right about this. Stalin was evil. And probably even worse than Hitler in some ways. So the American way is by far better than the Stalin way. And no, it was not my intent to troll. But I also do belive that the true socialist way, is better than the capitalist.
Ummm, no. The AWACS is built on a Boeing 707 airframe, which is much older and smaller than the 747.
What you might be referring to is that a predecessor to the 747 was the losing entry (Lockheed won, I think) for the C-5, the US military's Really Big Cargo Plane.
Boeing was paid by the Department of Defense to create a prototype design to meet DOD requirements. They lost. Boeing then used the design as a basis for the 747, but note that Boeing absorbed the huge cost of making the 747 acceptable to the US Federal Aviation Administration, which has a far different set of requirements.
The original development was a "work for hire" at the request of the DOD. Every other Boeing aircraft has been internally funded by Boeing. That is a far cry from "here's 4 billion Euros, go build an airplane that competes with the Yanks" tactic of the European governments. Airbus has been a subsidy child since day one.
The US, I think, holds the upper hand here. If nothing else, the US could slap a tariff on the A380 (say, 100% of selling price), or just not certify it to operate in the States. Either action could be a fatal blow to the program. Of course, the EU would have the same options when the next Boeing aircraft is developed, igniting a major trade war.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
You're probably right but the true socialist way requires a selflessness from its citizens which is as short in supply as ever
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Had the germans not attacked Stalin, all of europe would probably be speaking german today.
Had the Germans not attacked Stalin, all of Europe would probably be speaking Russian today, as Stalin was planning to attack Germany ("liberating" Continental Europe while getting rid of the German threat). Read "Icebreaker" by Viktor Suvorov, for instance (a review).
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
... and postponing the consequences of whatever caused them to have no food to eat. What a sensible policy.
-the us airline industry, (another example would be the past "civilian" nuclear industry), is a 'stealth' way to have larger military funding/budgets without appearing to be so, and to keep aviation designers and technicians employed, just as much as for "moving civilian cargo and passengers".. They will continue to be susbsidised well past any rational civilian economic benefit angle, which is already close to just being break even and not profitable. And I am guessing it's the same with airbus and the EU, who want to become a superpower once they are more fully integrated. And china is just on track for building the worlds largest military, this is SO obvious, their merchant marine and "civilian" aircraft are a 100% part of the PLA aggregate, and any advanced tech they accrue in those fields is perfectly dual use, as are the ships and planes themselves.
I would find it hard to believe that any really large business decision being made around the world now does not have a component of carefully considered military use and planning connected to it, which planning then revolves around this decade's and the next decade's planetary resource wars.
not bothered with Yugoslavia
:) Not only he decided to attack Greece two years ahead of Hitler's plans, but he also failed to make any progress. The Greek troops in fact attacked him and pushed his army behind the Albanian front. To prevent the situation from getting out of hand, Hitler attacked but it took him more than expected to conquer Greece, especialy Crete which in fact took him more time to beat even than France. The casualties of the German paratroopers were so high that they were never again able to participate in another operation throughout the rest of the war. The contribution of the Yogoslav partisans is of course not to be underestimated at all, but IMHO the key point was Crete. See Battle of Crete
Please do a s/Yugoslavia/Greece/
Hitler's initial plan was to punch a hole in the southern part of the Soviet Union, overrun Caucasus and make it to India where the British defenses were scarce because most of them were transfered West to Egypt. But to do that, he would have to conquer the Balcans first, otherwise he would be vulnerable to a British attack from Greek soil. A brilliant plan, if you ask me, because it would split the British empire, and enable Hitler to gain access to the Indian Ocean and join with the Jananese forces that would bypass Indo-China and attack India. However Mussolini's stupidity blew it all
Since Airbus is a European consortium with production lines at various places they already have quite some experience in moving big parts. The construction major parts for A-340s resulted in a modified A-300 called 'beluga'.
I wasn't talking about computer controlled planes. If it's a plane, even a single person unit, it's not efficient, and you have all the issues of scheduling.
I'm talking about single-unit pods being transported over rail lines across the country or even in place of current commuter trains.
Theoretically, you could get across the country pretty quickly in a system like this. It could accelerate slowly, up to a constant speed of 300-500 mph or so. True, a plane will go 800mph, but you have the drawback of having to make the plane's schedule, a 2 hour wait at the airport, and any layovers or transfers that might be required.
It could easily be entirely computer controlled, and safe. Something like this would be at small risk of terrorists, as hijacking or crashing into buildings isn't possible. If someone managed to destroy a track, or damage the computer system, the pods would simply stop.
Existing transportation beurocrats aren't interested in these alternative systems because it's not in their interest.
"Remember the Airbus that flew straight into the trees when the computer wouldn't let the pilot control it because it was too close to stalling?"
If the plane is so close to stalling that the computer won't accept pilot input, what do you think would've happened if it had? (hint: They would've hit the ground even earlier)
Besides, IIRC the problem was that the pilots accidentally made the plane think they were landing, or something else... But that's a different argument. (And I have no idea if I'm right)
My Sig: SEGV
That is true up until a point. However, once energy consumption peeks out in the next few years, we will be in a global zero sum game with the sum shrinking over time. Like it or not, the GDP is constrained by the availability of energy.
Some background info from an unemployed economist:
t .html]
Point One: First a disclaimer-"Although economists and common sense agree"- economists are never able to agree about even the most trivial issues (as for having common sense, the less said about that, the better). Second, its a tit for tat argument, as the US government has not exactly been very rational with the economics relating to its tanker deal, where it'll pay Boeing more cash to lease 100 tankers than it would spend if it took outright ownership of them. [http://www.pogo.org/p/contracts/ca-020509-bailou
Point Two: The concept that applies here is comparative versus absolute advantange. The basis of all trade is to make use of the relative advantages that different countries/regions/people have when it comes to producing goods (after accounting for relevant transport costs). It makes rational sense to allocate the construction across Europe as it exploits the respective skills of different regions in the best way possible, e.g. the Brits make the best wings, so they build them, while the Germans design the most suitable fuselages, which leads them to have that contract.
Anyway, you forget that the "Europe" you mention is the European Economic Community, so the goods used to make the A-380 are sourced from the common European market. Would you complain about "importing" OJ from Florida if you were living in Alaska? Not likely, as oranges seem to grow easier in one place than the other.
What's with the separate construction sites in four countries? I realize that the program is somewhat of a welfare thing, to help Europeans get jobs and such, and keep Europe competitive with the US and Boeing.
But wouldn't it have saved them a lot of money to simply build a huge, single factory rather then hauling this stuff all over the continent and Britain?
It would make sense to me to build the whole thing in france and offload some of the other construction jobs to other nations.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You euros might like mobile's more then us, but the cell phone is all american.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I dont know if you're trying to troll or something, but as other posts and, indeed, the article has pointed out, the primary market is for the Europe-Asia/Pacific route, you know, London to Singapore or Hong Kong or Sydney or someplace. Rest assured this wont fly between, say, Charles d'Gaulle and Orly.
More than mere navel gazing.
How about that we just mark anyone who has anything to say about rich people, poor people, millionaires, people too stupid to hire sober customer support agents, donkey saddles, hillbilly gardening tactics, or nuclear powered vibrators down as a -1 for being offtopic.
I like big planes. They make me feel safe. The airbus is a nice model of airplane. One day I would like to fly in one.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
From Everett, WA the home of the world's (currently) largest building.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Wings by British Aerospace
Fuselage by Messerschmidt
Assembly and system integration by Aerospatiale
Engines by (God help us) . . . Fiat
Southwest will not be buying these, but United, American, etc will buy fleets of these.
LOL.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but these two airlines are in some major financial trouble.
The day of the enormous super-carrier is over. They may have thrived during the positive economy of the 80's and 90's, but now they don't stand a chance. This kind of airline survived during the 70's only because of regulation... but guess what. Airlines are deregulated now. No more federal price fixing, and unlike Europe, no federal funding of carriers.
The future is low-cost carriers such as Southwest or JetBlue.
Just ask anyone at United.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
That is true up until a point. However, once energy consumption peeks out in the next few years, we will be in a global zero sum game with the sum shrinking over time. Like it or not, the GDP is constrained by the availability of energy.
Sorry, but there is no shortage of energy, nor an anticipated peak in a few years. The amount of untapped energy on this planet is thousands of times more than all the oil, wood and coal that has been been burned since man first rubbed two sticks together.
Plants can grown and converted into alcohol very easily. Just add water. Solar energy is improving, and we have yet to see its potential. Hydrogen is the most abundent element in the universe, and we are just now beginning to develop ways to utilize it. If plants were allowed to be built, we could produce more nuclear power than we could use. The fact is, we have not even scratched the surface of our energy on this planet.
Up to now, we have used mainly the easy, and dirty, fuel. We use oil NOT because its the only fuel available, but because its so cheap, and we have developed infrastructure that converts it into usable fuel. There is so much potential fuel to run factories and transportation, it is beyond what words can express. The problem has been the costs to extract the energy. We are entering an age where alternative energy will become more cost effective. Infrastructure will be built, the cost will go down. It will get cleaner.
We are also mandating more energy efficiency in our homes, with refrigerators, air conditioners and other appliances required to meet higher and higher standards. Slowly but surely, cars are being forced to get better milage. Every few years, we create better insulation, more efficient electronics and more.
People once believed you couldn't go 70 miles an hour, or your skin would tear off. They were wrong. Then people said you could never go faster than the speed of sound because the turbulence would tear the craft apart. They were wrong. At one time people even believed the earth was flat, and the sun and stars rotated around a fixed Earth. Of course the Earth isn't moving, if it was, we would feel it, right?
We have yet to scratch the surface of our potential. Within my lifetime of 38 years, we have landed on the moon, sent probes all over the solar system, irradicated Small Pox, increased farm production many times over, and have taken the power of a computer than once required a room the size of an office building, and put it in a device that is the size of the average novel.
Some heart problems that would have been a death sentence just 20 years ago are treated regularly all over the US and other western countries, and is being delivered to the world. Before the 1980s, DNA fingerprinting was unheard of, and 20 years later we are mapping the entire human genome. We are able to communicate with other humans virtually anywhere on the planet via sataltite phone. GPS has allowed us to pinpoint our location within a few meters, anywhere on the globe. Life expectancy has skyrocketted in the last 100 years. Through our combined efforts, we have been able to devote 1326.945 years worth of computer time to look for intellegence in space, by using a simple screen saver by seti@home.
I'm pretty sure we can figure out how to keep the lights on.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It makes no sense to build larger and larger aircraft to carry more passengers. The USA (and the world) need to switch to a regional/small plane model where more small airports are utilized...
1) Small jets flying more frequently with less turnaround time would get travelers closer to their destinations with minimal transit time/distance to and from airports.
2) Direct flights between small airports would mean no layovers and no need for giant "airport shopping malls and food courts".
3) Airports could be built closer to towns and cities solving major traffic snarls in population centers. Jumbo jets have noise restrictions and huge land requirements.
4) Tickets could be booked on shorter notice (at reasonable prices) because traffic would be spread between many small airports. (instead of constrained between relatively few "hub" airports)
5) Small airplanes could be shuttled to meet demand spikes more easily than rigidly scheduled jumbo planes.
6) Overall travel time would be decreased dramatically as you would no longer have to:
a) drive/taxi/train to and from a suburban airport
b) fly to - and change planes in - a city that isn't on the way to your destination
c) arrive hours before your flight and wait for 500 other people to check their luggage and pass through security all at once. (which causes log jams and lulls in major airports everywhere)
7) Environmental impact of building huge airports would be lessened by utilizing small airports.
8) Small planes could be built entirely from light/strong composites unlike jumbo jets which are mostly aluminum and less than %25 composite. (no jumbo has a composite fuselage yet...and wont for the next decade)
9) Reduce suburban sprall development caused by major airports. (small airports can be located in city limits)
10) Allow developing nations to have tourism without having to build a major airport (and, for example, cut down rain-forest to do it).
11) Smooth out the cyclical nature of the airplane manufacturing industry... creating steady jobs and increasing the pace of innovation.
Feel free to list more great reasons to switch to a regional/small plane model...
Soviet Suffered 13.6 million military casualties ... and more than 30 times the number of americans troops lost(300,000)
I wonder whay that is? The Soviets were fighting tooth and nail against the Germans since 1941 - the Americans did not get involved in ground fighting until North Africa in 1942, and that was a comparatively tiny commitment. The Soviets had plenty of people to spare, so they exchanged blood for more time to prepare their reserves. Soldiers were sometimes sent into combat without traning and without a personal weapon. Penal battalions were used to clear minefields by stepping on mines. Millions of Soviet prisoners that ended up in German hands also perished in labour camps, fighting ("Hiwis") for the Germans or were liquidated by Stalin's regime after the war (becoming an enemy prisoner was a capital offense).
There is no doubt that the Soviets suffered tremendous casualties during the war - by far the most of any nation. However, your implication that 30X the casulaties implies 30X the effort is ridiculous.
Where do you think Germany lost the bulk of its troops? Thank you Soviet Union, for getting rid of the nazi menace.
Germany did indeed lose the bulk of its troops on the Eastern front. However, it isn't like the numbers in the West were minisule - the fall of Tunisia in 1943, France in 1944 and the Ruhr in 1945 were all German defeats at the hands of the Americans and British that were at least as catastrophic as Stalingrad.
And let us not forget there are other contributions to victory besides the killing infantry. Who destroyed the most German aircraft? Ships? U-boats? Industrial capacity and oil refining? It wasn't the Russians. Who knocked Italy out of the war and forced the Germans to expend troops occupying and fighting there? Who had the means to project power and keep first-line German formations deployed in theatres they would never fight in (e.g. the Balkans)? Also not the Russians. How many billions did the US expend in lend-lease aid (food and military equipment) for the USSR?
The point is that it took a combined effort from the Soviets, Americans, British, Canadians, French, Australians, etc. to destroy Nazi Germany. To imply otherwise is assinine.
As for the US, its true that your presense probably have saved us from a communist takeover. So thank you US of A for that. Wether that is a good thing or not is debatable.
This is probably the most ignorant and disgusting comment I have ever seen. I'll tell you what - go read up on Stalin, on how many of his own people he had murdered (hint: millions) or imprisioned (hint: millions more) and get back to me on how "debatable" that is.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Any two given drops of oil are pretty much interchangable, so nobody who understands the business cares where the oil they use comes from. Take Iraq's oil off the market and the prices go up just as much for the US as for France.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but these two airlines are in some major financial trouble.
I have very much noticed. But that changes nothing in the early days of PC, many companies were built and went under. This is very natural.
The day of the enormous super-carrier is over.
That is impossible. The super-carriers will still exists. In fact, more so in the future. During the 80's, few new airport was built and during the 90's, only DIA was built. All the others are expansions, but they are quickly running out of room for runways and gates. The same problem is very accute in the far east. Instead run-ways will be lengthened to 16000 (like DIA's new runway - soon to be the space shuttles 3'rd runway ) and rebuilt to handle soon to be small aircraft like the 380 and much bigger ones as well.
As to United and American, that is a combination of ALL employees doing there most to gouge. That includes not just the unions, but management as well. American overreached by buying TWA. United by attempting to buy US scareways. Sadly, had either of these companies looked ahead a realized that this industry was already overbuilt PRIOR to 9/11, they would not have tried buyouts. US and TWA would ahve gone under after 9/11 and UA/AA would be in much better shape now. Worse, Bushs' subsidy to all the airlines only delayed the inevitable. We would be better off had he not done that or had he subsidized domestic tickets. Say for the first month, the feds would pick up 90% of a ticket (fly NY - LA for 100 ), then start dropping the subsidy, by 10 % each month. This would have gotten ppl flying again.
Oh, the employees of American will tell you that low-cost will be used for domestic travel, but that large super-carriers will still be used for long-distance international .
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well I guess even for Hitler, it was first business, then pleasure :-)
Here's one of the Interior.
More Photos can be got here.
"I think the metric system is the tool of the Devil! My car gets 40 rodsto the hogshead, and that's the way I liked it!"--Abraham J. Simpson
I remember when the 747 was first introduced...all the plans for first class bars upstairs, mimicking the same thin on the old Stratocruisers of the 50's. While the airlines did this for a while, I suspect that now, most of them just jam them full of seats, (which is why Boeing stretched the upper decks for Series 300 and 400 Jumbos). It probably won't be all that long until the operators ditch bowling alleys, casinos, gyms and swimming pools (ever see "The Big Bus"?), in favour of creating an A380 that will carry something like 800 pax!
That is a fairly common comment when first seeing the Beluga.
They (there's five of them) are used to ferry fuselages across Europe, but obviously the fuselage of a A380 is way too big for it. I wonder if they'll ever build a "Super Beluga" on the basis of an A380...
I did qualify my statements as just being my impressions based on those two flights, and made no claim that it was the result of any sort of statistically significant experiment. However, the 777 flight was sufficiently unstable for me to consider to be a statistically significant data point--no other flight I've been on (including commuter turboprops in severe turbulence) has been that rough.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
So ask yourself why the Space Shuttle is built all over the US and not simple constructed in one place
Because the space shuttle is a huge government subsidized jobs program, just like the Airbus?
Seriously though, the distributed construction of the space shuttle was to help the project get passed in congress.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I just flew a DC-10 to and from England this past weekend. IMHO, the flight was more comfortable than my aforementioned 777 experience. The exception was the rather rough landing on my return flight to Detroit, but that can be attributed directly to the pilot instead of the aircraft. Again, these observations are not statistically significant by any means, although some AC will probably post a comment to that effect, anyway. :-p
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
You correcty assert that [t]he problem has been the costs to extract the energy. To be more precise, the problem is now and will continue to be the energy cost of extracting energy. In the next few years oil usage will peak, unfortunately this is the most efficient source of abundant energy and the efficiency of extracting it will only decrease with time as we use up the easily accessible supplies. Since the average efficiency of extracting energy across all energy used in a given year is going to get worse we can presume that the cost relative to other commodities will increase. Thus the overall demand for energy will necessarily decrease and therefore energy usage will decline after a peak in the next few years. The renewable resources you mentioned are not very efficient and furthermore they are necessarily limited to the amount which can be sustainably harvested on the planet.
Which brings me back to my point. Unless we have significant breakthroughs in energy technology, per annum energy usage will cap off and likely decline to some equilibrium quantity. This will put a cap on Global GDP creating a very real zero sum game. In the end, Adam Smith may prove wrong and the mercantilist may get the last laugh.