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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.
I agree with this post - airline economics, for both passenger and freight, is built around the cost to transport each kilogram a certain distance. That cost includes both the trip costs (fuel and crew) and also capital costs (purchase and maintenance) - which is why current generations of aircraft are based around both lowering the fuel burn, and lowering the amount of time a maintenance worker has to touch the aircraft.
A "c-check" of an airliner already costs up to a million dollars, takes months to carry out and needs to be done every few years with older aircraft, with longer intervals for aircraft such as the 787 or A350 - add more complexity to the airframe, such as ejection systems et al, and you vastly increase the maintenance time needed.
And thats without discussing the whole issue of having pyrotechnics sitting near the pressurised vessel containing the passengers...
So unless there can be found a way for the economics to not be affected by the addition of ejection systems, they simply will not happen - if you want near zero deaths in commercial aviation, the only thing this is going to accomplish is to make commercial aviation unaffordable for most people.
General aviation aircraft (think light aircraft) already are being equipped with parachute systems which are deployed if the aircraft is unrecoverable. And they are used. And they save lives. But general aviation is a *lot* more accident prone than commercial aviation, so there is no reason to foist this on commercial aviation.
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.
Spot on with point #2. The idea of having people board a pod before the flight comes up every so often, but all it does is move the hassle of finding space in the overhead bins and finding your seat while others try to squeeze by, from the airplane to the lobby. And you're not just spending more time in your crappy economy seat instead of the roomier lobby where you can stretch your legs. Moving the pod into the airplane takes time as well, and that time is added to the boarding procedure: you will have to show up for boarding even earlier.
With that said, they could leave the pod(s) attached to the airplane and board normally, and still eject them in an emergency.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.