Slashdot Mirror
Large, Slow Airships Could Move Buildings
Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."
The first time a house falls on a house they will be out of business from the lawsuits.
Skyscrapers may be vastly more affordable if built from interlocking modules on the ground that could be airlifted into place. Would such a structure be feasible (I'm not an architectural nor a mechanical engineer)?
As pointed out by somebody else, if anybody (these people aren't the first with this idea) could get this to market, it would be a boon for the growing wind turbine industry.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Or even someone playing a prank.
I remember a TV show (called "a very British UFO hoax") about a group of special effects guys trying to pull off a UFO hoax. They were pretty successful, the flying saucer they built wasn't very big (I don't remember the exact size but it could be broken down into segments that would fit in a SUV) but the eyewitnesses reported it as much larger.
Most people don't understand their own vision. An eye doesn't directly tell us the size of or distance to objects just the angle is subtends on the retina (which roughly corresponds to size/distance).
Binocular vision tells us distance but it only works effectively over short distances .
So our brains use various clues to judge the size and depth of objects. One of those clues is how big we expect the object to be. An object flying at night takes away the other clues so if people are expecting it to be big they will see it as big!
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I thought local builders were relatively safe from outsourcing
Easy enough to do with panelized construction, components, etc. When they were still building houses like crazy, most of them were probably framed by illegal immigrants, and fitted with imported appliances.
Now excuse me while I prop another 2x4 against my office wall...
In all seriousness, I've been told that when looking for a house you want to find one that was built during a recession. In theory, people were able to chose better contractors during hard times, whereas boom-time houses are more likely to be slapped together quickly to make a buck.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There is a market, just not necessarily in the skyscraper size class yet. Build them smaller, but big enough to move a house. My house was moved to its present location decades ago. Aside from permanent structures, consider modular homes (trailer houses). I see four or five of those a week pass through on trucks, and I live in a small town. I also see a lot of wind farm equipment like tower segments, generators, and blades. Instead of running a convoy of 8 trucks plus spotter cars, load it all onto one or two of these lifters. Less than half as many people involved, can fly direct, doesn't impact traffic, and can carry objects larger than 2 highway lanes. Similar benefits apply to things like power substations or rail switching shacks, if you can do it cheaper than a helicopter.
Fit one out with crane equipment like that found at a major port. Now if a freighter has a problem in the open ocean, you can fly one of these to it and offload the cargo to another ship (or ships, more likely). You could also haul out a complete replacement power train, and if new ships were designed with this in mind you would eventually be able to drop-in major components in most ships afloat. Same gear could be deployed to a train derailment, or to replace a malfunctioning locomotive on the track in the middle of nowhere. The way that scale affects LTA craft is very different from how it affects HTA craft like helicopters. If you can build one big enough and fast enough, you could anchor to a sinking ship and keep it afloat, or simply pick it up and haul it to a dry dock. This could be useful for deep-sea salvage, though the existing barge-style ships are quite effective already.
In short, there may not be much of a market right now for moving large buildings, but there are plenty of other markets that such a device could tap.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...