The Age of the Airship Returns?

Popular in Victorian and Steampunk fantasies, airships and zeppelins evoke a certain elegance that most modern travelers don't associate with the airplane. Some companies are capitalizing on that idea, and a need to move cargo by air in an era of ever-increasing fuel costs, to re-re-introduce commercial zeppelins. Popular Mechanics notes four notable airship designs, all with specific design purposes. One craft in particular, the Aeroscraft ML866, is being funded by the US government's DARPA group. It looks to combine the best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin. "The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings, Aeros says. It hopes to end the program with a test flight demonstrating the system. "

Comments

Hey!

[bussdriver]

People blame the public school system in the USA for everything. It will never please everybody and neither will having multiple private systems. American parents blame everybody but themselves and their children and that is a BIG problem. The culture has also degraded as well.

American kids want to consume, play games, play sports, watch TV AS ADULTS; not much different from their parents. TV has done so much harm and gets next to no blame.

Letting people choose school systems will not stop the complaints and sadly while test scores might get better (not much when you average everything) the core problem there is the focus on narrow minded measurements and "accountability". Education is unlike everything else and should be modeled around the human brain's development not how to run an organization or train employees. (Either system could do that; however, parents think they are expert educators and will send their kid to McDonald's school because it offers daycare, free food and makes them feel they are good parents.)

Einstein didn't think much of school, but he did make it thru the system and it did still impact him (do you really think he'd be all that much smarter if the system harmed him? one could think it helped him since he came out so well. The brain is not understood so you can't really take a solid position either way.) The USA did quite well before and had public education (with some of the big inventions involving help from former german students.)

Teachers today are thought of as daycare, therapists, and pseudo parents-- parents freak when their kids stay home and not buried in home work or calmed down with drugs. They want their morals taught but none of the morals they disagree with or that make the kid hard to manage. Bad parenting is far more common than Americans will admit and teachers have to deal with it. Most parents are divorced and both parents work, which doesn't help. There is also no more community outside perhaps a weekly church activity. My relative's kids hardly even visit friends, can't bike down the street, go to the park alone or be left in the house alone at double the age I was when I was allowed to do so. The dangers are no less real than back in my childhood.

The local high school around here used to have a shooting range in the basement; a gun in the locker was normal. A bad kid who needed a smack got it without a lawsuit; and parents had authority over their children. Children now also have diminished responsibility. In addition, we teach a lot of useless information (which grows in volume each year) we want them trained and not educated-- heaven forbid them think for themselves (because that makes them hard to manage in school and at home. Hell much of pre-school is just training them to salivate at the bell.)

A well supported student doesn't even need a school system.