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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.
Because I know a very well educated coyote that would be really interested in this sort of innovative technology with his work in high speed pest control.
Ease back on the LSD there friend. Ease back.
Yeah. And small, fast planes can move 'em, too!
If you define your movement as descent on a vertical axis... :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
And I thought local builders were relatively safe from outsourcing. Now it seems like China has a way to take another industry...
It was super sad when that dude's wife died. The talking dog was funny though. Wait, what?
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"
"to lift 1000 grams (1 kg), you need about 163 grams (~0.16 kg) of helium"
150 tons = 150,000 kg
150,000 * 163 = 24,450,000 grams of helium needed
24,450,000 grams of helium = 137,000 cubic meters
"A billion cubic metres - or about half of the world's reserves"
2 billion / 137,000 = 14,598.5
14,598.5 airships before we run out of the current reserves. I think we're good. (Except for that last half airship, it'll be kinda screwed.)
Nice attempt at levity.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Both you and the OP are correct in different ways - and aptly illustrate why this is such a bad idea.
Buildings (and pretty much everything else on Earth) are mostly designed to resist compressive loads I.E. the force of gravity. Thus, if you want to move a structure using this method your pretty much have two major options: First, to move an existing structure you can build a heavy cage around it so you can lift it from the top. Second, to move a new structure you can design in massive reinforcements so you can lift it from the top. Both are expensive and add considerable parasitic loads to the structure and the lift.
Not to mention, this idea has been floated a dozen times or more in the last fifty odd years, and always with the same result - a bankrupt company and penniless investors. While they've got some cool hacks in this scheme, they don't seem to have overcome the basic solution-in-search-of-problem problem. I.E. there doesn't actually seem to be a market.
But what happens when they ...run into the building?
Did anybody think of that?
No, you're just waaaaaaaaay smarter than the large group of people in this liability-happy society working on this project. What's it like being a highly sought after engineer?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Remember Cargo Lifter?
One of the most spectacular failures during the wild technology startup stampede a decade ago in Germany. They burned several hundred millions before folding.
The only remaining legacy is a huge indoor pool in their former airship hangar...
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
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...