Yes it is, but I'm going to escape your criticism on a technicality. Maybe I expressed it poorly, but if you look at my post, I was replying to someone who likened modern cosmology to standing on he freeway for five minutes and noticing a few cars going in different directions. Now that is wrong! What I said was that it was a weak analogy because we actually observe hundreds of thousands of galaxies all drifting away from each other. And we do. It is this that lets us
theorize
that space is expanding.
As to the winding the clock back, well I stand by that - all I mean, and I think it's clear, is that we can deduce what the state of the Universe was at different points in the past. I think we can.
What you say sounds right, and it's always nice to have a little more detail, but I was just replying to someone who seemed to have no background in cosmology, that 13.7 billion years sounded a bit out to him.
I'm still trawling my way through the article, but tihs is a brand new, non-86 architecture. I would imagine there is a lot of work to be done on porting any O/S to work on it properly.
A more pertinant question would be can Linux run on it before Windows does? If there really were a big shift in hardware platforms, which I suppose there must be at some point, then the development speeds of different OS will really make a difference to who dominates.
If this really is a big shift in the hardware basis for modern computing, then we'll really see a fair contest between proprietary and Open Source at last.
Hah! You forgot to mention what kind of car you drive, and if you have any pets. Next time be more specific please.
Idiots of the world must worship you as a god. Your inability to grasp a simple point astounds me. You may be the only person on the planet who can type without actually being able to read
Oh, and for reference, I don't drive, I cycle everywhere and I used to have a rabbit but my partner got custody.
seeing only a few cars in either direction *moving away* from him,
Those "few cars" translate into hundreds of thousands of observed galaxies. If they're pretty much all heading away from each other, it's not so unreasonable to wind the clock back and assume they started from a central point.
In fact, the situation is not like standing in the middle of the interstate on Sunday morning. It is, in fact, more like the entirety of the observable universe.
Child-proof lighters are a good thing. Who cares where I live?
Sorry, if we've crossed wires a little. I'm not trying to find out where you live. (I'm in the UK for reference). All this was, was an observation that saying "We have childproof lighters here," is unclear on an international forum. It imparts the knowledge that there are such things somewhere, but the phrasing implies that you meant to impart where they exist also.
If you had wanted to specify this without giving away your own location, you could always have used "In str_COUNTY they have childproof lighters."
I approve of child-proof lighters, and also of children smart enough to circumvent them.
Neither one of you mentioned where you live, so what is your point?
I have not tried to impart any information that would require my location to fully comprehend it. Even this statement is true in any locality. My point is that this was not true of your post.
Whilst The other poster did in fact communicate his / her location through skillful use of a code language called irony.;)
I'd argue that micro-payments aren't very common at the moment because of the inconveniance of making them. Most Web users don't think anything of a few pennies at a time, but it's a nuisance when you have to start filling in forms to spend a few pennies.
Unlike piracy, sitting at the front of the bus was legal.
Not really. Rosa Parks was arrested and it took a a court case that was elevated all the way to the US Supreme Court to overturn the restrictions on racial segregation on buses, etc. People who transgressed these restrictions were arrested (and not likely treated kindly, either).
The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, so if you want to argue that they decided it had never been illeagal and that the police and judges had only thought it were, then you could probably make that case, but I hear the ghost of Winston Smith applauding.
And if you still think Rosa Parks didn't overturn a law by deliberately breaking it and taking the consequences. Then go tell it to Ghandi.
after Department of Justice investigators downloaded content valued at US$25,000 retail from their servers
Yes, but also from the article:
Member sites required their users to share large quantities of computer files with other users, according to the DOJ.
Given how P2P works, I'd say the previous comment in the story about downloading from the website, is just ignorance / confusion on the part of the story writers. This is PC World after all.
According to this fuel costs are half that of a aeroplane of equivalent weight capacity. I would think that airships scale better on this as well, due to the building materials.
Note that this will just be regular fuel costs for A-->B. Airships can do things for almost no fuel, e.g. circle the airport for hours, that would burn up lots of fuel in a plane. Maybe more than it could spare.
That is, a 2.5 megawatt laser from the surface of earth would generate the same energy flux at the satellite as a 80W lightbulb would from a distance of 1 meter..
The nice thing about admitting your ignorance publicly, is that you have to do it less often as you go on. Thanks to those who've explained how to work it out.
It's looking pretty darn unlikely then that anyone even could have targeted a satelite with such a weapon. I was never suggesting that this had occured, but I remembered the US military doing tests of this nature. I've done some more digging and for anyone interested, they used this. The laser is in the megawatt range and powered by rocket fuel. Pretty impressive, but as you've calculated, all it did was "illuminate" the satelite.
Shame the USAF didn't post an "Ask Slashdot" first.;)
I know that the US military have done semi-successful trials of this sort of anti-satellite technology so it must be feasible.
Playing with some numbers gives me this however:
Height of Satellite: 35,000km.
Powerful Laser peak pulse: 250,000w.
Power of laser on reaching satellite =
2.5x10^5 / (3.5x10^7)^2
2.0x10^-9 watts.
Fractions of milliwatts does not sound much to me, but pulsing hundreds of times per second, and kept up for a few minutes would start to heat things up yes? How fast can a satellite dissipate heat in a vaccuum?
Anyone who remembers their physics better than I, or has a better idea of laser power, give some insight into this?
The easiest method to ruin a satellite, in concept at least, is to simply burn it out with a targeted beam of microwaves. In this case, it's a communications satellite so you wont have any trouble knowing where it is. You point and turn the power on. Satellite says: "ARRGH! I'm blind!"
Alright, it's not an A-level physics project, but its far simpler than earth-to-orbit missiles and needing so little time to operate, you could be done long before anyone figured out what you were up to. You wouldn't even need big facilities -just stick the equipment on a truck and use from anywhere.
The US military successfully blasted a test satellite with lasers back in 1997.
But if time isn't a consideration, you put it on a ship -- ships have cargo capacity that makes an airship look puny, and use even less fuel.
Very true on the cargo capacity, not sure if it's true on the fuel costs (water has a lot of drag), but the second one probably doesn't matter in comparison to the first so you're absolutely right.
But airships go overland and seaships don't. That means I can ship cargo across Europe or the US very easily. It also allows more direct routes - no sailing up and down the African coastline.
Also, remember that your big big capacity of boat means less frequent trips. Airships are cheaper so you have a constant stream of cargo travelling. Do you want sporadic packets of large size, or steady stream of smaller packets? The second is better, no?
Also, although they are not as fast as planes or as chunky as boats, they are much faster than boats and much chunkier than planes. Maybe there is room in the economic model for something in the middle. Also, whale friendly.:D
Do you now see why as yet nobody has developed a successful airship travel business? Or did you think it was because nobody had had the idea before you...?
Very charming. You seem to be taking this more personally than I am. Airships have existed since before I was born, so - no, I rather amazingly and surprisingly don't think I'm the first person to have thought of them. However, back to reasoned debate:
Your beginning and closing argument seems to be that if it could have been done, it would already have been done. This is not a good argument as were it the case we would all be living in caves. Scientific knowledge, technology, economy and lifestyles all vary. When it's appropriate time for deployment of a technology then that technology will propagate, given receptive minds. What I'm contending is that now could be such a time.
So, on to your more sensible criticisms.
"Yeah it travels at 55mph but it's a lot more comfortable than business class"
Actually, modern airships could go twice this speed and ignore terrain unlike comparable large land transport such as coaches or the trains that you mention as competition. I think it's worth removing your slant to this for the benefit of anyone reading. It means your London to New York example would take a day and a half, half of what you said. Now last time I took a flight to the USA it took the best part of a day. I think I would have been happy to have slept over night and arrived well rested. And last time I flew to Germany (a much shorter journey), I would have been much better prepared on arrival if I'd had a cabin and a desk on which to work during the trip. If I were travelling with colleagues, I might also have liked to be able to discuss things with them rather than be crammed into a line of seats with other people. So no, I don't think the idea of it for business is a "total non-starter." Not everyone has to be there and back in eight hours, and for those that do - well they pay the more expensive air-fares and get a plane.
However, you seem to have completely forgotten my point that much of modern business is conducted by new communications technology. I could legitimately re-write your hypothetical business situation very easily:
"It'll take him sixteen hours to get to New York and back? Hell with that! Put him on a conference call now."
This will only increase in the next few years. If airships become established then that will leave planes as a nasty compromise. More expensive, cramped and inconveniant than airships, but nowhere near as fast as electronic meeting. With both "ends" of the market covered, planes fall in a less needed gap.
As to the recreational market? Well, I think airships also have their place here. As I have illustrated, they can be comfortable, relaxing and I for one might like my holiday (should I ever take one) to begin and end in such a manner. You seem to think this market is already taken by Cruise Ships, so four points to consider.
1. Airships are twice as fast as a cruise ships and so are a valid means of getting somewhere which cruise ships usually aren't.
2. Cruiseships don't travel overland. Or had you thought that I could get on one from London to Berlin? Also, see point 1. above - travelling as the crow flies, opens up other ways in which airships are much faster than ships.
3. Airships will actually be cheaper than large ships. They can also be cheaper than planes and are less subject to variations in fuel prices (you might want to have a look at the current global situation). As I said earlier, not all of us have as much money to waste as you.
4. Luggage. Airships will carry a tonne of it, bring as much as you like.
You can say what you like from now on, as I'm going to bed. I'm sure whatever remaining/.'ers are still reading can think for themselves from here;)
the continuing decrease in long-distance travel by rail demonstrates the popular "life is the destination, not a journey," philosophy.
This is a very good counter-point. It is never good to work solely from logic and neglect empirical data.
It is also my feeling that flight has taken market share from rail travel (how could it not?), but it would be nice to verify your statement with figures as this might give us clues - e.g. Has train travel decreased by the same proportions that domestic flight has increased.
Still, I think we both have good points. You are talking about what currently is and I am hypothesising about future trends:
Environment is something that will become more important to the businessmen in the near future. If the US fail to hold on to Iraq, or launch a war with Iran (insanity), you may find fuel no longer being an issue of cost affecting the economy, but of actual availability. If this happens in the next ten years or so, maybe the travel industry will re-evaluate airships.
Also, I have forgotten in all my posts here, to mention freight. Airships have much more lifting capacity than planes and some post doesn't care if it takes a few more hours to get there. You will find your trains carry a lot of post and parcels, I think.;)
You're in the wrong forum, then. Modern materials technology has completely changed airship manufacture. In addition to the materials being puncture proof (firstly through being thick rubber and secondly using many individual gas pockets inside the overall balloon), fire-proof and being threaded with conductive elements to dissipate static, airships no longer use Hydrogen to obtain lift. They use Helium, hence there is no risk of combustion. If somehow, an airship were somehow damaged, you'd find that it would drift to the ground in exactly the way that a plane doesn't.
I would like references to the "MANY" tragic accidents because every one that you can produce, there will be hundreds more involving aeroplanes. This isn't simply down to more common usage of planes. They are inherantly less safe. They have enjoyed decades of heavy investment and development and still there are fatalities all the time. They are more costly and more damaging to the environment both in terms of gases and in terms of the depletion of natural resources,
Finally, in the post-9/11 world, when the US is obsessed with plane security, which are essentially big hostage laden missiles, I'm reminded about the old joke about the IRA trying to emulate Al Queda's tactics: "They hijacked the Good Year Blimp and they've been bouncing it off Canary Warf all morning."
Airships are safer than planes.
Time is money. Money is food. Slowing down is death. Any questions?
Yes, did you do any research before you posted your opinions to the world? Airships are not big balloons. They are heavy and they have powerful engines. They are not particularly sensitive to strong weather. In high winds they are more difficult to land (much like planes), but as has been pointed out, they can circle the airport all week if they have to.
"Mummy, what sort of meat is this?"
"It's veal, honey."
"But it's moving around the plate."
"Shut up and eat it - On sports day, you are going to WIN!"
Heh! First we add muscles to our computers, then we add computers to out muscles.
I beg your pardon, but you seem to have missed my point. The mention of modern communications technology -email, tele-conferencing, etc. - was to illustrate that for urgent communication there is now less need for fast travel than there previously was. If something is urgent, then most likely these chanels will be used more than the afternoon or day or even two days it takes to physically move someone to a meeting.
Now so long as you see the reasoning behind that, then you see that the remaining make up of travellers is perhaps less speed-obsessed than it once was. I also think it is clear that this tendancy will increase.
All of which means that perhaps taking a day to fly across the Atlantic is not so unappealing. Imagine having a cabin rather than crammed into a seat. You would have a bed, maybe a workstation if you are a business traveller. Also, subject to meeting attractive peoples of your preferred gender on the trip, you would no longer have to try and use the cramped toilet cubicle for sexual congresses.
All in all, the trip would be much more attractive for any traveller who did not need the fastest transport available. As I was getting at earlier, these people should be a smaller proportion than in the last century. Also cost is much lower for an airship to run. Some people may be interested in cost savings. Not everyone has as much money to throw around as you.;)
I hope that explains my point of view better. I would like my Insightful mod now please.
Planes are the wrong solution for the problem. What we should be using are Airships or Zeppelins. Instead of cramming people into a steel tube, you can create a small flying hotel and all for lower fuel costs than a jumbo. Admittedly, it's slower than a plane, more like a very fast yacht, but people used to put up with far worse in the last century and these days we have tele-conferencing, email and reliable phone systems so there should be less urgency in flying for most of us.
And just imagine flying across the Atlantic whilst sitting round a dining-table. Hell, larger ones might even have space for a small kitchen. We (the species) need to slow-down and make better use of the technology we have. I mean, hasn't anyone else ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? - "No ticket!" Didn't it look grand?
Why is it that most spam is aimed at men when it is obvious that women use the net and e-mail as well?
I get a tonne of the viagra-type spam too on one of my addresses. I think the answer is that there's nothing cheap and postable that addresses women's insecurities. Although, having just typed that, I do sometimes get spam for weight-loss/diet products in amongst everything else. I'd guess that's the closest you'll get to female-targeted spam for now, thank God.
Slashdot Mirror
SPACE ITSELF is inflating.
Yes it is, but I'm going to escape your criticism on a technicality. Maybe I expressed it poorly, but if you look at my post, I was replying to someone who likened modern cosmology to standing on he freeway for five minutes and noticing a few cars going in different directions. Now that is wrong! What I said was that it was a weak analogy because we actually observe hundreds of thousands of galaxies all drifting away from each other. And we do. It is this that lets us
- theorize
that space is expanding.As to the winding the clock back, well I stand by that - all I mean, and I think it's clear, is that we can deduce what the state of the Universe was at different points in the past. I think we can.
What you say sounds right, and it's always nice to have a little more detail, but I was just replying to someone who seemed to have no background in cosmology, that 13.7 billion years sounded a bit out to him.
Also can it run linux?
I'm still trawling my way through the article, but tihs is a brand new, non-86 architecture. I would imagine there is a lot of work to be done on porting any O/S to work on it properly.
A more pertinant question would be can Linux run on it before Windows does? If there really were a big shift in hardware platforms, which I suppose there must be at some point, then the development speeds of different OS will really make a difference to who dominates.
If this really is a big shift in the hardware basis for modern computing, then we'll really see a fair contest between proprietary and Open Source at last.
---posting long after the thread below has developed---
I think you were wrong... He's from Mars. See below - I can't believe this has gone on this long.
Hah! You forgot to mention what kind of car you drive, and if you have any pets. Next time be more specific please.
Idiots of the world must worship you as a god. Your inability to grasp a simple point astounds me. You may be the only person on the planet who can type without actually being able to read
Oh, and for reference, I don't drive, I cycle everywhere and I used to have a rabbit but my partner got custody.
Those "few cars" translate into hundreds of thousands of observed galaxies. If they're pretty much all heading away from each other, it's not so unreasonable to wind the clock back and assume they started from a central point.
In fact, the situation is not like standing in the middle of the interstate on Sunday morning. It is, in fact, more like the entirety of the observable universe.
Child-proof lighters are a good thing. Who cares where I live?
Sorry, if we've crossed wires a little. I'm not trying to find out where you live. (I'm in the UK for reference). All this was, was an observation that saying "We have childproof lighters here," is unclear on an international forum. It imparts the knowledge that there are such things somewhere, but the phrasing implies that you meant to impart where they exist also.
If you had wanted to specify this without giving away your own location, you could always have used "In str_COUNTY they have childproof lighters."
I approve of child-proof lighters, and also of children smart enough to circumvent them.
Neither one of you mentioned where you live, so what is your point?
I have not tried to impart any information that would require my location to fully comprehend it. Even this statement is true in any locality. My point is that this was not true of your post.
Whilst The other poster did in fact communicate his / her location through skillful use of a code language called irony.
I'd argue that micro-payments aren't very common at the moment because of the inconveniance of making them. Most Web users don't think anything of a few pennies at a time, but it's a nuisance when you have to start filling in forms to spend a few pennies.
This will change.
Unlike piracy, sitting at the front of the bus was legal.
Not really. Rosa Parks was arrested and it took a a court case that was elevated all the way to the US Supreme Court to overturn the restrictions on racial segregation on buses, etc. People who transgressed these restrictions were arrested (and not likely treated kindly, either).
The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, so if you want to argue that they decided it had never been illeagal and that the police and judges had only thought it were, then you could probably make that case, but I hear the ghost of Winston Smith applauding.
And if you still think Rosa Parks didn't overturn a law by deliberately breaking it and taking the consequences. Then go tell it to Ghandi.
From TFA:
after Department of Justice investigators downloaded content valued at US$25,000 retail from their servers
Yes, but also from the article:
Member sites required their users to share large quantities of computer files with other users, according to the DOJ.
Given how P2P works, I'd say the previous comment in the story about downloading from the website, is just ignorance / confusion on the part of the story writers. This is PC World after all.
Does it matter?
I think the post above yours makes the point beautifully, and if I could I'd mod it 'Funny as Hell'.
They passed a law here a few years back
Mate, you're in an international forum. Where is 'here' ?
According to this fuel costs are half that of a aeroplane of equivalent weight capacity. I would think that airships scale better on this as well, due to the building materials.
Note that this will just be regular fuel costs for A-->B. Airships can do things for almost no fuel, e.g. circle the airport for hours, that would burn up lots of fuel in a plane. Maybe more than it could spare.
That is, a 2.5 megawatt laser from the surface of earth would generate the same energy flux at the satellite as a 80W lightbulb would from a distance of 1 meter..
The nice thing about admitting your ignorance publicly, is that you have to do it less often as you go on. Thanks to those who've explained how to work it out.
It's looking pretty darn unlikely then that anyone even could have targeted a satelite with such a weapon. I was never suggesting that this had occured, but I remembered the US military doing tests of this nature. I've done some more digging and for anyone interested, they used this. The laser is in the megawatt range and powered by rocket fuel. Pretty impressive, but as you've calculated, all it did was "illuminate" the satelite.
Shame the USAF didn't post an "Ask Slashdot" first.
I know that the US military have done semi-successful trials of this sort of anti-satellite technology so it must be feasible.
Playing with some numbers gives me this however:
Height of Satellite: 35,000km.
Powerful Laser peak pulse: 250,000w.
Power of laser on reaching satellite =
2.5x10^5 / (3.5x10^7)^2
2.0x10^-9 watts.
Fractions of milliwatts does not sound much to me, but pulsing hundreds of times per second, and kept up for a few minutes would start to heat things up yes? How fast can a satellite dissipate heat in a vaccuum?
Anyone who remembers their physics better than I, or has a better idea of laser power, give some insight into this?
The easiest method to ruin a satellite, in concept at least, is to simply burn it out with a targeted beam of microwaves. In this case, it's a communications satellite so you wont have any trouble knowing where it is. You point and turn the power on. Satellite says: "ARRGH! I'm blind!"
Alright, it's not an A-level physics project, but its far simpler than earth-to-orbit missiles and needing so little time to operate, you could be done long before anyone figured out what you were up to. You wouldn't even need big facilities -just stick the equipment on a truck and use from anywhere.
The US military successfully blasted a test satellite with lasers back in 1997.
But if time isn't a consideration, you put it on a ship -- ships have cargo capacity that makes an airship look puny, and use even less fuel.
Very true on the cargo capacity, not sure if it's true on the fuel costs (water has a lot of drag), but the second one probably doesn't matter in comparison to the first so you're absolutely right.
But airships go overland and seaships don't. That means I can ship cargo across Europe or the US very easily. It also allows more direct routes - no sailing up and down the African coastline.
Also, remember that your big big capacity of boat means less frequent trips. Airships are cheaper so you have a constant stream of cargo travelling. Do you want sporadic packets of large size, or steady stream of smaller packets? The second is better, no?
Also, although they are not as fast as planes or as chunky as boats, they are much faster than boats and much chunkier than planes. Maybe there is room in the economic model for something in the middle. Also, whale friendly.
Do you now see why as yet nobody has developed a successful airship travel business? Or did you think it was because nobody had had the idea before you...?
Very charming. You seem to be taking this more personally than I am. Airships have existed since before I was born, so - no, I rather amazingly and surprisingly don't think I'm the first person to have thought of them. However, back to reasoned debate:
Your beginning and closing argument seems to be that if it could have been done, it would already have been done. This is not a good argument as were it the case we would all be living in caves. Scientific knowledge, technology, economy and lifestyles all vary. When it's appropriate time for deployment of a technology then that technology will propagate, given receptive minds. What I'm contending is that now could be such a time.
So, on to your more sensible criticisms.
"Yeah it travels at 55mph but it's a lot more comfortable than business class"
Actually, modern airships could go twice this speed and ignore terrain unlike comparable large land transport such as coaches or the trains that you mention as competition. I think it's worth removing your slant to this for the benefit of anyone reading. It means your London to New York example would take a day and a half, half of what you said. Now last time I took a flight to the USA it took the best part of a day. I think I would have been happy to have slept over night and arrived well rested. And last time I flew to Germany (a much shorter journey), I would have been much better prepared on arrival if I'd had a cabin and a desk on which to work during the trip. If I were travelling with colleagues, I might also have liked to be able to discuss things with them rather than be crammed into a line of seats with other people. So no, I don't think the idea of it for business is a "total non-starter." Not everyone has to be there and back in eight hours, and for those that do - well they pay the more expensive air-fares and get a plane.
However, you seem to have completely forgotten my point that much of modern business is conducted by new communications technology. I could legitimately re-write your hypothetical business situation very easily:
"It'll take him sixteen hours to get to New York and back? Hell with that! Put him on a conference call now."
This will only increase in the next few years. If airships become established then that will leave planes as a nasty compromise. More expensive, cramped and inconveniant than airships, but nowhere near as fast as electronic meeting. With both "ends" of the market covered, planes fall in a less needed gap.
As to the recreational market? Well, I think airships also have their place here. As I have illustrated, they can be comfortable, relaxing and I for one might like my holiday (should I ever take one) to begin and end in such a manner. You seem to think this market is already taken by Cruise Ships, so four points to consider.
1. Airships are twice as fast as a cruise ships and so are a valid means of getting somewhere which cruise ships usually aren't.
2. Cruiseships don't travel overland. Or had you thought that I could get on one from London to Berlin? Also, see point 1. above - travelling as the crow flies, opens up other ways in which airships are much faster than ships.
3. Airships will actually be cheaper than large ships. They can also be cheaper than planes and are less subject to variations in fuel prices (you might want to have a look at the current global situation). As I said earlier, not all of us have as much money to waste as you.
4. Luggage. Airships will carry a tonne of it, bring as much as you like.
You can say what you like from now on, as I'm going to bed. I'm sure whatever remaining
the continuing decrease in long-distance travel by rail demonstrates the popular "life is the destination, not a journey," philosophy.
This is a very good counter-point. It is never good to work solely from logic and neglect empirical data.
It is also my feeling that flight has taken market share from rail travel (how could it not?), but it would be nice to verify your statement with figures as this might give us clues - e.g. Has train travel decreased by the same proportions that domestic flight has increased.
Still, I think we both have good points. You are talking about what currently is and I am hypothesising about future trends:
Environment is something that will become more important to the businessmen in the near future. If the US fail to hold on to Iraq, or launch a war with Iran (insanity), you may find fuel no longer being an issue of cost affecting the economy, but of actual availability. If this happens in the next ten years or so, maybe the travel industry will re-evaluate airships.
Also, I have forgotten in all my posts here, to mention freight. Airships have much more lifting capacity than planes and some post doesn't care if it takes a few more hours to get there. You will find your trains carry a lot of post and parcels, I think.
Thankyou for making a good argument.
Wouldn't that defeat the whole idea?
Yes, but there is only space for two people in an aircraft cubicle. With a cabin, you can have proper sexual congresses.
Technology doesn't really change that.
You're in the wrong forum, then. Modern materials technology has completely changed airship manufacture. In addition to the materials being puncture proof (firstly through being thick rubber and secondly using many individual gas pockets inside the overall balloon), fire-proof and being threaded with conductive elements to dissipate static, airships no longer use Hydrogen to obtain lift. They use Helium, hence there is no risk of combustion. If somehow, an airship were somehow damaged, you'd find that it would drift to the ground in exactly the way that a plane doesn't.
I would like references to the "MANY" tragic accidents because every one that you can produce, there will be hundreds more involving aeroplanes. This isn't simply down to more common usage of planes. They are inherantly less safe. They have enjoyed decades of heavy investment and development and still there are fatalities all the time. They are more costly and more damaging to the environment both in terms of gases and in terms of the depletion of natural resources,
Finally, in the post-9/11 world, when the US is obsessed with plane security, which are essentially big hostage laden missiles, I'm reminded about the old joke about the IRA trying to emulate Al Queda's tactics: "They hijacked the Good Year Blimp and they've been bouncing it off Canary Warf all morning."
Airships are safer than planes.
Time is money. Money is food. Slowing down is death. Any questions?
Yes, did you do any research before you posted your opinions to the world? Airships are not big balloons. They are heavy and they have powerful engines. They are not particularly sensitive to strong weather. In high winds they are more difficult to land (much like planes), but as has been pointed out, they can circle the airport all week if they have to.
"Mummy, what sort of meat is this?"
"It's veal, honey."
"But it's moving around the plate."
"Shut up and eat it - On sports day, you are going to WIN!"
Heh! First we add muscles to our computers, then we add computers to out muscles.
I beg your pardon, but you seem to have missed my point. The mention of modern communications technology -email, tele-conferencing, etc. - was to illustrate that for urgent communication there is now less need for fast travel than there previously was. If something is urgent, then most likely these chanels will be used more than the afternoon or day or even two days it takes to physically move someone to a meeting.
Now so long as you see the reasoning behind that, then you see that the remaining make up of travellers is perhaps less speed-obsessed than it once was. I also think it is clear that this tendancy will increase.
All of which means that perhaps taking a day to fly across the Atlantic is not so unappealing. Imagine having a cabin rather than crammed into a seat. You would have a bed, maybe a workstation if you are a business traveller. Also, subject to meeting attractive peoples of your preferred gender on the trip, you would no longer have to try and use the cramped toilet cubicle for sexual congresses.
All in all, the trip would be much more attractive for any traveller who did not need the fastest transport available. As I was getting at earlier, these people should be a smaller proportion than in the last century. Also cost is much lower for an airship to run. Some people may be interested in cost savings. Not everyone has as much money to throw around as you.
I hope that explains my point of view better. I would like my Insightful mod now please.
Planes are the wrong solution for the problem. What we should be using are Airships or Zeppelins. Instead of cramming people into a steel tube, you can create a small flying hotel and all for lower fuel costs than a jumbo. Admittedly, it's slower than a plane, more like a very fast yacht, but people used to put up with far worse in the last century and these days we have tele-conferencing, email and reliable phone systems so there should be less urgency in flying for most of us.
And just imagine flying across the Atlantic whilst sitting round a dining-table. Hell, larger ones might even have space for a small kitchen. We (the species) need to slow-down and make better use of the technology we have. I mean, hasn't anyone else ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? - "No ticket!" Didn't it look grand?
Why is it that most spam is aimed at men when it is obvious that women use the net and e-mail as well?
I get a tonne of the viagra-type spam too on one of my addresses. I think the answer is that there's nothing cheap and postable that addresses women's insecurities. Although, having just typed that, I do sometimes get spam for weight-loss/diet products in amongst everything else. I'd guess that's the closest you'll get to female-targeted spam for now, thank God.