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Pod Planes Could Change Travel Forever (cnn.com)
Max_W writes: Every year we hear about people dying in plane crashes. This does not have to continue as there is a new revolutionary pod plane design [in the works via the Clip-Air project]. A passenger pod is not heavy because it does not contain fuel, engines, avionics, etc., so in case of an accident it can be ejected and land on parachutes. The obstacle to this new invention is that the whole obsolete airport and airline infrastructure must be rebuilt. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s? The Clip-Air project is created by Switzerland's Federal Polytechnic Institute and consists of the flying component, which includes airframe, cockpit and engines, and the capsules, which are a number of detachable pods that can act as cabin or cargo hold, depending on the chosen configuration. What's particularly noteworthy about them is that they can allow passengers to board capsules well before a flight, and at a location besides an airport, such as a local bus station. As with any concept, many years of research and tests will be needed to validate the concept and turn it into a reality. Claudio Leonardi, manager of the Clip-Air project, and his team are preparing to build a small-scale Clip-Air prototype. They have already initiated some contacts with the aerospace industry.
Hyperloop will replace all forms of long-distance transportation. And you'll use your Tesla S once you get there. Elon wins.
The mass penalty / structural workarounds, and the low incentive (given how few fatal crashes there are with air travel) will see this being pushed to the "amusing thought" pile and no real further. Much like massive parachutes from a long time ago ( some people use them on their smaller planes though ).
I fail to see how this will eliminate air fatalities. Don't the majority of crashes occur on takeoff or landing?
One example that springs to mind is the Tenerife disaster of 1977, in which two airliners collided on the ground as one of them was taking off. Capsules with parachutes would not have helped a bit AFAICT.
Thanks to /. for posting this story while I'm 10 thousand metres or so above the Skagerrak and making me feel a bit special.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I don't get it.
Airtravel is one of the safest way to travel. I know the fear of flying is common, but actual dying is not.
If you want to rebuild an entire transport-infrastructure because of accidents involving people dying, then I suggest you start with cars and roads.
Scenario 1: Pilot crashes the plane to the mountain. No help from pods as there was no accident.
Scenario 2: Big country fires a missile to destroy the plane. Unlikely for the pods to help as whole system probably explodes.
There are some scenarios where this can help. E.g. if pilot realizes that he has lost control of the plane and there is enough altitude for parachutes to open.
So what is needed is some statistics. How big impact could this really have?
Then we should compare this to some alternative methods, e.g. robot pilots, more strict airplane control etc. And compare cost vs. amount of saved lives. It should also be remembered that new technology always has some unexpected problems, so people will get killed because of this technology if it is taken into use.
Someone's finally found a multibillion dollar solution to our nonexistent problem. Could you imagine the death toll if we don't drive down the 1 in a million accident rate? It could reach the thousands if we lump several years together!
See; the XC120 Packplane - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.... Though the fact it didn't work in 1950, doesn't mean it can't work now. I keep an open mind.
However, the idea of sticking the pod on a railway waggon is a complete non-starter - I'm sure a pod that meets railway crash-resistance standards would be stupidly heavy for aviation use.
Do you use the restroom?
Off the top of my head:
1. "Every year we hear about people dying in plane crashes. This does not have to continue..." But air travel is already the safest mode of travel. Hear all those people screaming for new technology to make road travel safe? No? Well, they're the same ones that will take this up.
2. "Passengers might board a capsule at a local bus station and wake up in another city on the other side of the country, or planet, after a road, air and rail journey during which they didn't leave their seat." They don't seem to realise the blindingly obvious point that this is making air travel *worse*. Air travel already involves sitting in a seat for too long. Why would I opt for a mode of travel that exchanges a few minutes of having to be polite to people in the aisles for one that involves several hours more in the same damn seat?
3. If you want to see just how off-their-faces unrealistic this is, look no further than this sentence: "Clip-Air's researchers, who are also looking into the possibility of using biofuels or liquid hydrogen as alternative fuels, have already initiated some contacts with the aerospace industry." Oh, great! You're launching publicity for a total redesign of the entire global air freight and passenger industry and you've *already* initiated some contacts with the aerospace industry??? Really??? What made you do that so soon??? And looking into hydrogen as a fuel source for this is basically admitting, "It's so far off the page that we might as well throw in any futuristic-sounding crap we can." If you're doing this seriously, get one thing right at a time. Don't complicate it by also trying to introduce a fuel that no-one else has managed to make work yet.
People who consider themselves "aviation visionaries" (yes, an actual term used in the article) always, always get excited about this kind of thing for no good reason. They *think* people want revolutionary concepts that change how they board planes and let them work out then drink themselves silly in a trendy bar while they're in flight. What people *actually* want are revolutionary new concepts that cut the cost of air travel.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
I seem to remember that the kids we abandoned on the island in a 'passenger tube'... that turned out really well didn't it?
Golding has prior-art on this one!
"A passenger pod is not heavy because it does not contain fuel, engines, avionics, etc., so in case of an accident it can be ejected and land on parachutes."
It contains the passengers (the payload) and is one of the major structural components of the plane, so it is heavy anyway. And if it has to be structurally sound enough to be ejected and land it will be even heavier. Big parachutes for heavy loads are not easy or lightweight too.
Besides, air travel is very safe already and this wouldn't change anything about crashes during take-off and landings.
I mean, yes, do designs and try to sell them. I doubt someone will buy this though.
And then... you get a failed clip to release a pod at high altitude. Otherwise, it would be really cool to put the "bus" in Airbus. You board your bus in your home town, you alight in your parents' village, and have some wings attached to it on part of the journey. Make them Hyperloop compatible on the ground and you may be able to claim the title of Overlord soon enough.
Load modules into the airframe instead of airframes under a bwb.
For long flights at cheap rates you could stack people like cordwood and dope them up ala 5th element. Trust me, no one enjoys a 14 hour flight from Newark to New Delhi.
Up Up To The Sky
Not godda happen
This is an intersting idea, and it would be fun to see it developed further, but this line really stuck out.
"Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?"
Bullshit. I'm not saying some improvement in air crash survivability isn't a good thing, but the idea that people are regularly dying because their aeroplane can't disassemble in midair and parachute them to the ground it frankly offensive to all the engineers who have worked over the years to make large scale commercial flying unbelievably safe.
Total number of air craft fatalities worldwide in commercial flight has been significantly less than 1000 per year for the last couple of decades. Something like 3.6 billion passenger journeys will be completed in 2016 (IATA estimate).
Safety is the single worst reason to throw away a tried and tested basic design that is fantastically safe and replace it with a much more complicated and new system.
Paul Leader
In an airplane the fuselage is not some simple shell for aesthetics or aerodynamics. It is a structural component, bearing weight. The skin, barely a mm thick carries load. The containers on the other hand are designed to carry load themselves. They are all rated to be stacked, each container can bear the load of some dozen containers stacked on top of it. That is why these containers are so strong, made with steel. Such strong containers are heavy. Too heavy to be used in air cargo economically.
We could design containers, with lower strength specs to lower the weight. This could help in unloading and reloading of cargo planes. Turn around time is very important. Such containers exist, but they are not as ubiquitous as intermodal containers and they have not taken over the industry sector the way they have taken over ship/rail/truck borne cargo.
As for passenger carrying cargo, it is so cheap to ask passengers to disembark and reboard, the cost and weight of carrying them makes it uneconomical.
The value of avoiding disembarkation is well known. In Europe, some passenger trains move from one gauge in the west to another gauge in the east changing the wheel gauge on the move. As the railcar moves along, a special section of the track, lifts the car off the truck, unlocks the wheel, slides the wheel along the axle to reduce/increase the gauge, relock the wheel, lower the railcar on to the trucks. (trucks = bogies for the brits). At 15 mph. Even locomotives change their gauge on the move! So the value of avoiding disembarkation is known, but still these pod ideas have not taken hold.
It is a nice interesting student project. Earlier graphics was expensive and we used to depend on Popular Mechanics for such crazy ideas in nice looking pictures. Now with blender and maya and photoshop anyone can create them. That is all.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The obstacle to this new invention is that the whole obsolete airport and airline infrastructure must be rebuilt. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
Yes please. Our lives aren't worth that much. Please spend the money on road safety instead rather than bankrupting an industry that is already described as the safest form of travel.
Because it is really heavy. Maybe OP should check up on what is considered heavy in the aerospace industry?
I'm guessing not, because they would be joining me in tearing my hair out over the massive increase in wetted area drag making this idea ridiculous uneconomical from a fuel consumption perspective.
Why have one drag producing fuselage to drive through the air when you can have three, or even four once you count the carrier aircraft?
Thunderbird 2.
Editor mixed up 2 schools. This project is from EPFL (in Lausanne) as you can see from the project link and not the ETHZ (in Zurich) as stated.
Every 1-2 years (or after a major air crash) someone, somewhere suggests this idea. Which amounts to:
1. Aircraft to become more complex (e.g. heavy, expensive, failure-prone, carrying less passengers per unit of fuel)
2. The idea works only when aircraft is at high enough altitude for the 'chutes to work reasonably. So no profit in takeoff and landing (when most of crashes happen)
3. The idea works only when aircraft is slow enough for the "bus" and it's precious contents to survive aerodynamic hit and turbulence without having shape and controls of an airplane, rocket or something similar. So no profit at marching speed, either.
And yes, 2 and 3 pretty much cover the whole flight.
4. Bombs inside and missiles outside still invariably fatal.
Sorry. Back to fighting terrorism, training pilots and engineering better avionics.
This plane concept has nothing to do about safety. Fatal crashes are few and fatal crashes where a detaching pod with parachutes would save you are quite rare even among fatal crashes. Bombs, mountain crashes, landing/lift-off crashes etc are unaffected. Which is why it is not the raison d'être of this design. The second part of the summary is the relevant one, it would allow you to change the configuration of the plane by attaching different cargo/passenger/etc pods and even allow pods from different companies on the same plane. But, yeah, it is a far-fetch concept since to take advantage of what feels to me not "revolutionary" benefit, it would require huge infrastructure changes. Nice university project though.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Piggy: And this is what the tube done.
Ralph: What happened to it? Where's it got to now?
Piggy: That storm dragged it out to sea. It wasn't half dangerous with all them tree trunks falling. There must have been some kids still in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-1
I've heard something similar proposed several times, for example Airbus Patent Shows Modular, Removable Aircraft Cabins, and the same issues are discussed every time.
The primary driving factor in the design of passenger aircraft in recent decades has been getting the cost per passenger down, so a solution against which can be said "the whole obsolete airport and airline infrastructure must be rebuilt" has pretty much zero chance of happening, since that would be somewhat expensive.
As far as the safety aspect, the idea of having a detachable passenger compartment that can separately parachute-land in the event of a disaster is also not new, and the obvious issues mentioned in that article seem to apply here also. Big increase in cost to achieve a questionable and at best marginal overall safety improvement in what is already the safest for of transport is just dumb.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see people working on this kind of thing, and I don't want to be that guy that dismisses every futuristic conceptbecause of a few practical obstacles, but I do wish tech journalists would present such things in a more realistic way. Lines like "... and his team are preparing to build a small-scale Clip-Air prototype. They have already initiated some contacts with the aerospace industry" tries to make it sound like this is something on the path to possibly being implemented, whereas the reality is "contacts with the aerospace industry" might not mean much at all.
Oh no... it's the future.
So the new pod design eliminates mid-air casualties. But it crushes bystanders on the ground when it lands after being ejected.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
In most cases of a plane crash there are a few seconds and a few tens of meters altitude between "We're gonna die!" and an actual crash. Just because most crashes happen on landing and there is not enough time to drop the capsule and clearly not enough time for a parachute to deploy.
Exceptions are very rare, an exaple is Air France plane loss in Atlantic ocean in 2009.
At a rate of about 700 deaths for about 3 billion passengers (both yearly averages). That's less than 0.3 ppm.
What industry would completely redesign itself and increase its costs by even 1% (this would probably be more like 20% plus the fix cost of the changes) to reduce its failure rate to below the current 0.3ppm (and then again, not necessarily to zero, as the last few year's crashed are not related to the kind where this system would help)?
This is merely interesting as an exercise for students. Studying concepts not viable in the industry is a laudable, but idiosyncratic purpose of academia; a bit like Smalltalk for instance.
I'm also not surprised it was made into an autoplaying video idiots share on Facebook.
by MS Paint.
They are going to put me alone in a pod for 37 hrs?
Or they are going to put me in a pod with 3 other people for 37 hrs?
Either way, no thanks. I want shorter and cheaper travel between Atlanta and Kathmandu and Atlanta to Cape Town.
If you haven't done those trips and smelled yourself afterwards, you just don't understand. Humans need to walk, interact, have entertainment, food, drink, and a quiet environment would be a plus during travel.
Pod people? Seriously?
These "visionaries" need to work on solving the accidents and deaths on roads worldwide. There are extremely dangerous 1.5 lane roads in Nepal that have fatal accidents all the time. There are also extremely dangerous roads around the USA and Europe which have fatalities all the time too - millions of people yearly die and 20M+ are injured. Fix that.
This fix might as well be trying to make peanut butter chunkier or passenger travel on container ships possible. These people need to have their funding stopped. Idiots.
Oh - and I worked in "aviation" for a decade, but I drew designs like this when I was in 4th grade.
"...The obstacle to this new invention is that the whole obsolete airport and airline infrastructure must be rebuilt. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?"
No, we shall continue to get killed because I fail to see how this amazing new design is going to "create jobs", or should I say create enough jobs to justify those it will offset. Therefore, it will remain for the same reason we still use coal and fossil fuels regardless of the environmental cost or financial cost and dependence on foreign sources; greed and corruption as the largest standing lobbyist army in the world convinces lawmakers that the status quo is the way to go.
TSA was birthed out of 9/11. I'm not going to be ignorant in saying it was completely unjustified, but I will say that it's more greed and corruption that morphed it into the multi-billion-(taxpayer)-dollar-job-creating monstrosity we have today, with the end result of humans still being terrified that people will now die in airports instead of the air, as unfortunately evidenced by actual terrorist events, not mere FUD. Ironically, TSA security checkpoints have now created even more ways to attack humans en masse.
Sorry, but the lobbyist army is too strong for this re-design. For that reason, it's damn near a no-go from the start.
at what point does the captain/pilot decide to eject the pod? there are very few aviation incidents where doing so (ejecting a pod) would have saved lives. a pod does nothing for a missle strike, mid-air collision, rapid decompression etc.
Containers won't change that.
I don't understand how anything that looks like those planes would ever get off the ground. They're not at all aerodynamically shaped.
Sounds like a grade school project that someone decided to post to the internet. Certainly high school students would be expected to do better.
It might well be a good idea to have a detachable passenger pod, but this statement is a load of malarkey:
So far, we have the aircraft we've got because they're better. We've stuck with the same designs for a long time because they work. That doesn't mean they can't be improved still further, but it takes significant evidence to prove that something else will be better still.
It's also nonsense that we need to retool airports to implement this idea, at least enough to get it off of the ground. You could do it as a pilot program by just moving more of that stuff into the wings (or wing pods) and making the existing fuselage detachable. There's no reason for the pilots to be stuck with the failing aircraft; let them pilot it to a safe controlled crash landing remotely, as they float to safety with the passengers. Then you wouldn't need to expand airports to make them large enough to carry these planes. Also, airlines have already had to resort to assorted annoyance and trickery to fill planes, and now we're supposed to make them larger?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's far too much of a good idea,it's been suggested before,but will never happen,there are too many vested interests who will fight to keep the status quo.
if it took off and landed from solar runways.
You know, combine the most promising technologies available.
This looks like a stealth bomber with bomb shaped passenger pods.
I’m agree that flying is one of the safest transportation, far less dangerous than operating a motor vehicle. I can’t say that I believe the news about passenger pods modernization. I’m not good in plane construction. If developers find sponsorship and bring their idea in life, more people will be sure of plain safety. I’m fine with securing air travelling.
Seriously, the fact that this is being passed around major media shows how completely stupid most journalists really are...
Or they don't care and figure their idiots views don't know any better and just want to be entertained...
This has zero chance of happening, for so many reasons...
More than 3 billion people will board airplanes this year, fewer than 1,000 will die. This is SO not a problem that needs a wholesale change...
Fix the million deaths on the road first, that is a much bigger problem... Fix the medical mistakes that kill millions... fix the pollution from fossil fuels that is killing (some number larger than airplanes are)... fix ANYTHING else but this non-existent problem...
So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
I have noticed more and more these days, people coming up with some absurd premise that sounds reasonable to some. Parachutes on airplanes? Why not? Turns out, a lot of reasons why not. Air France 447 wouldn't have helped any, and neither would Malaysian Airlines MH370. The problem is where the person gets angry with how stodgy and conservative the rest of us are, and wants to change things RIGHT NOW. Because the new way is smarter, and better, and in no way detracts from anything. I see this phenomenon again and again. It's not really the idiocy of the premise, because lots of people have stupid ideas that will never work. It's the hate of the rest of us for not going along that bothers me a great deal.
Usually with hubris, you need to have been successful for quite a long time and you begin to think that your shit doesn't stink. Think of Steve Jobs or Hillary Clinton. But with this kind of hubris, success is not a pre-qualification.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Pod people could be used as general backups for any form of accident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Pod planes won't change anything because they won't happen. Ever. Those starry-eyed students should dedicate themselves to more profitable ventures, like applying for a job in the fast food industry.
Moronic
"So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?"
Do you have any idea how few plane crashes there are? I'm not discounting the idea, but why in the world should the world change ALL of the infrastructure for such a low return?
Larger cross-section = greater drag, lower fuel economy, slower top speed?
The insane alt-right sure has been emboldened by Trump's vanity run for the Presidency. I wonder what you morons are going to do when America rejects your cheeto-messiah.
.. but we also need to make the planes wider and squatter. And paint them green. And put them on stilts so that the pods can descend below the planes for unloading. And add rockets to the planes.
Thunderbirds are go!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
You just survived a plane crash! You are now located in a pod floating (hopefully) in the middle of an ocean...
This must be a new low for /. submissions, when not even the submitter Reads The Fine Article...
The CNN article nowhere mentions airplane deaths or parachute drops of pods.
What it does mention (in so many words) is that they want to do for air passengers and freight, what Intermodal shipping containers have done for surface freight (sea, rail, trucking) - and yes, with the possibility to extend air networks to other modes of transport e.g. road or rail, like what has happened for shipping containers. Read like that, it makes a lot more sense than the wild hand-waving of the summary and the other comments. Albeit probably not enough sense to make this a reality... I for one am not so sure that passengers would allow for the same sort of dynamics that freight does, once bundled into a bulking container of whatever name.
It also differs from the Airbus design in that the pods are not inside the aircraft, but attached to the aircraft. Less duplication of structural material than the Airbus design? Probably. But perhaps not as much as contemporary aircraft though.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Cheeto-messiah.
That's fucking awesome.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Look at the article. No really, look at it. You don't have to read the text, just glance at the pictures for a few seconds. I'll wait ... done? Great.
In an era where 2-3% improvement in efficiency is considered a breakthrough, creating a design that has permanently extended landing struts and non-integrated passenger / cargo compartments, would seem to be a show-stopping problem for low-drag aerodynamic design.
That and, who would want to ride in a cabin where most of the windows are blocked by the landing struts?
As a poster above put it, this design should be relegated to the amusing thought pile that's full of such one-offs that design students without any solid engineering chops put forth periodically.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I'm losing my ability to distinguish reality from speculative bullshit. I thank my public education and my faith in compulsive consumption.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
What are you so afraid of?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
This is just making a really big fighter jet, and turning the wing-mounted bomb bays into passenger cabins.
The Fairchild Pack Plane, from 1950: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
Man, how often HAVE you been killed in airplane crashes, anyway?
Such deaths are very rare, considering. If we put even a fraction of the level of effort discussed into, say, removing just 10% of the in-hospital deaths caused by medical mistakes, that would save thousands and thousands more lives every year. Not that the two areas are mutually exclusive - it's just that death in airliner crashes remain vanishingly rare. And considering how many of those are the result of crazy/religious wackadoos deliberately killing those onboard, it's not clear how making the passengers ride in pods would actually solve that part of the problem anyway.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The pod-plane makes a lot of sense for cargo. That should be looked at separately from the case for people transport.
The story underplays the importance of the standardized shipping container when it says it was the most important development in commerce in the last century. By many measures, it is the most important development in commerce, ever. But it is of little use in air freight. But aerodynamic shipping containers ---pods--- that could travel long distances at high speeds without repacking would not only compete successfully with containers for certain goods, but would open new, distant markets for a number of perishable goods. When the shipping distance between pod of large items sealed in Singapore and pod opened in New York City is reduced to overnight, then new things become possible and everyone comes out ahead.
Burt Rutan's WhiteKnight/SpaceShipOne demonstrates we already have the technology to do pod-planes (and much more!). FedEx already demonstrates one successful business model for overnight freight--- using a kind specialized pod.
I expect to see pod-planes for general cargo before 2025.
. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
Or, if you are so worried about it, don't fly. Air travel is by far one of the safest means of travel. Would rebuilding all of the world's airports and replacing all of the planes significantly improve on that? Probably not. Will it make it cheaper to fly? Probably not. If it won't make it safer and it won't make it cheaper, then why do it?
for reals this time.
So much wrong with this at a purely practical level.
Very short coupled design, it's got no tail! The design is very close to a flying wing.
Not many of them flying around, there is a reason for that. Military doesn't count.
The landing gear, very short coupled again. The design used is going to make flaring for a landing tough.
Aerodynamically, this is a very bad design.
Parachutes? Really? The decision to push the button and decouple is a tough one. The Cirrus aircraft that does have a parachute has the same fatality rate as non parachute designs.
Weight? Absolutely heavier than current designs, this is enough to kill it.
Clearly a design, designed by people who never designed aircraft or who work in aviation. So many dead enders in this design.
Many smart people have worked in aviation for decades, very little new under this sun.
The obstacle to this new invention is that the whole obsolete airport and airline infrastructure must be rebuilt. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
Obsolete compared to what, this untested concept? You're talking about spending literally trillions on an untested idea in an industry with the overall safest track record in all of transportation? Certainly there's always room for improvement, but when you're going to spend that much, your money is likely better spent in many other areas. It could certainly save a hell of a lot more lives.
Just another day in Paradise
These are common carriers after all.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Even the source article quotes it: "[The pod liner] would need to compete with proven and well-established technologies, and, frankly, it is dubious whether the market will be ready for such a radical new concept, even in the long term."
Engineering aside, there's always that fun part where we decide to cheerfully ignore the fact that billions have already been invested in the existing airliner model. And all the fun externalities stemming from them. And retooling airports. Hurrah.
This technology was suggested in the 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies" briefly during the start of the novel.
It's an idea that's been around for a while, but was probably more in vogue during the 50's since that's when all the silly space-race designs were out, and Airplanes in 1954 (See Boeing 377 and Douglas DC-7) lost about 25% of the 377's and DC-7's due to accidents. Pre-Jet engine era.
A passenger cabin capsule that can be ejected also leaves open the possibility of separating the passenger cabin pre-flight, eg an exact calculation could be made for fuel requirements by weighing the loaded capsule before it's attached to the airframe.
1. How *big* will they be? And then, how much smaller will the 2nd gen be? And the 3rd? A coffin, or would I have to fold up my legs to get in?
2. People with claustraphobia won't be able to fly in them, and so the airlines will, of course, with great humanity, charge them multiples of the base price.
3. Get in at a bus station? Oh, *great*, so you're trapped in that all the way for *hours* through the traffic jam to the airport, and when does TSA have their way with you?
mark "in a word, no"
Its interesting concept, I was envisioning even smaller pods however, maybe at the family or even personal level.
You could see a design that could fit into a car, and provide security for yourself from your home straight through onto being loaded into a plane. Individual pods would isolate any 'hijacker' or 'bomber' to their pod only, and could be scanned and then isolated at any number of points from the 'home' to the 'airport'.
Lots of standardization would be required, and as many have stated, air travel probably doesn't need this kind of pod-like travel, it's already the safest form of travel by several magnitudes.
Yeah, I like it too! I'm gonna start using it.
Only I can judge you.
Thanks for feeding the troll.
Only I can judge you.
The two halves of the University are quite different is some regards.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What if you just follow the instructions?
1) Light Fuse.
2) Get Away.
3) Pull Ripcord.
4) ????
5) Prophet!
No brain, no pain.
Am I the only one that noticed that the pilots are basically given a death sentence in a crash due to not having a parachute on the engine part of the plane? Also, do you really thing it would be acceptable to eject what are essentially 3 missles over a large city like NY? Parachutes or not, I don't see anything good happening to those compartments as they slam into tall buildings on the way down.
How about if you combine a rocket landing system similar to the one SpaceX uses, just drop the passenger pods like bombs and let the rockets bring it safely to the ground. I would even pay extra if they let me ride on top with a cowboy hat.
How will this help since most crashes occur during takeoff and landing?
It's not vastly different to the Sikorsky Skycrane concept, except with rounded corners.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It had to happen.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I'm just a cool dude, in a loose mood....It aint easy bein' cheezy }BÂ)
Why bother landing at all, just scoop them up and deposit them at the destination.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a20006/bucket-drop/
Particularly if those spaceships are warships. Or for large space stations or other exceptionally large infrastructure. Bu in those cases its an escape pod, not your seat/chair/bed/whatnot. Thus it becomes a dedicated piece of safety equipment, only used in emergencies.
This is not a good idea for planes.
I've seen this before - surely this is Thunderbird 2!!!
...the parachutes cannot be physically accessed from within the pod. There also should be a mandatory, multi-party inspection of the parachute compartments before each flight, with the final inspection involving sealing it with a numbered tag.
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